In a surprise vote, the Senate passed the dead/reborn/dead-again food safety bill Sunday night, making it the first overhaul of regulations in the US food system since the Great Depression.
The bill that passed last night included language from the so-called "Tester Amendment" which is intended to shield many small farmers and operators from over-burdensome regulations. (I certainly hope that's what happens with this bill.)
More on the surprise vote after the jump.
First, a little background.
Originally titled S. 510, this bill was finally passed by the Senate on November 30after years of congressional maneuvering, only to hit a technical "separation of powers" snag between the House and Senate. This seemingly snuffed the bill altogether, since, to bring it back to from the dead for another vote, the Senate would have to "unanimously consent" to reconsider the bill.
A unanimous vote in the Senate? This bill looked gone-daddy-gone.
Unlikely as that unanimity seemed, even late last week, it came together last night. According to The Washington Post:
After a weekend of negotiations, tense strategy sessions and several premature predictions about the bill’s demise, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) reached a deal with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that the GOP would not filibuster.
Without notice and in a matter of minutes Sunday evening, the Senate approved the bill by unanimous consent, sending it to the House, where passage is expected.
The pressing question today, though, is why the staunchest enemy of this bill, Sen. Tom Coburn (R – OK), went back on his vow to filibuster any Senate bill that included food safety language. David Weigel of Slate implies that Reid and the Dems’ lame duck Congress may have won a war of attrition here:
Last night, I checked in with the staff of the Republicans who were expected to be impediments to the bill. Nobody knew why their bosses had let it sail through. The best theory I’ve heard is that key Republicans, having seen the bill pass with supermajority support (73-25), and having become satisfied that there were no back-door nanny provisions in the bill, decided that it wasn’t worth keeping the Senate in session past Christmas to debate it.
All that’s left now is the post-fight smack. In particular, Sen. Coburn has been throwing roadblocks at this bill all year, so it’s hard to believe he’ll leave the court without a little trash talk first. I'll report on Fair Food Fight, if there's anything worth hearing.
I'm not wild about this food safety bill: I'm nervous about its impact on small farmers (but it's NOT going to be the end of organic farming and farmers marketsas many have claimed).
That said, America has given corporate food a complete pass on regulation for way too long. A 20 million-pound meat recall here; a 350 million-egg recall there. It's pathetic how common place these outbreaks are. For our own safety, we did need this bill.
Sadly, the bill became a lightning rod for anti-regulation voices on the right, with healthy food suddenly becoming battleground in the right vs. left culture war. Totally depressing. As a result, so we can probably count on bamboozling commentary from new enemies of decent food like pro-s’more Sarah Palin or hysterical food-liar Glenn Beck.
Sigh.
(A version of this post also appeared on Fair Food Fight)