All the pieces are in place for Senate passage of major food safety legislation that would give the Food and Drug Administration new powers to police both home grown and imported foods. “[I]t is urgent that that FDA food safety legislation, which could improve the safety of 80 percent of the food supply, not get pushed behind other pressing issues that are less likely to garner bipartisan support,” Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, writes in an op-ed for The Hill.

The bill, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (S. 510), developed in a bipartisan environment, DeWaal writes:

Amid the rancorous partisanship that has marked the past year in the nation’s capital, a bipartisan effort to pass food safety legislation has been quietly taking shape. While the healthcare negotiations have broken down, restarted, and now seem to be in limbo, efforts quiet but sure to upgrade the Food and Drug Administration’s food safety mandate are progressing steadily. The last push for Senate action is near. And that effort is evidence that Washington can sometimes work, albeit slowly. 

Seven of the bill’s 15 cosponsors are Republicans, DeWaal notes. A similar bill enjoyed bipartisan support in the House where it passed last July, 283 to 142.

I’m less than sanguine about quick passage in the Senate – a body that seems to revel in slackery and incompetence. The food safety bill has been good to go since November when it passed the Senate health committee. What’s a bipartisan bill have to do to get some floor action in this town?

Nonetheless, the bill should remain a high priority for two reasons, as DeWaal argues. First, the bill would improve the safety of the food supply by allowing the agency to order mandatory recalls of tainted food products (a power it does not currently possess) and implement a program to collect fees from certain food facilities to fund increased safety inspections, among other provisions. Second, it would serve as evidence that government works to protect the public (and that government works period).

The latter is no small achievement. According to a recent CNN poll, 83 percent of Americans think our government is broken. According to a different poll, a majority of Americans think government has grown so large that “it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens.”

Ensuring the safety and integrity of the food supply is an example of government intervention that aids, not threatens. Considering voter frustration with government’s role in society – which I believe stems in large part from the political morass that has bogged down health care reform and economic stimulus – now is an opportune time to highlight what government can do well.

A new report from the Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice uncovers dozens of cases where ponds of toxic coal combustion waste have leaked into nearby wetlands, streams, and groundwater supplies.

Coal ash – sometimes referred to as fly ash, bottom ash, or, generally, coal combustion waste or residuals – is a byproduct of coal power plants captured from smoke stacks and stored in large retention ponds. The coal ash issue drew national attention in 2008 after a major spill sent the toxic goo cascading across parts of Tennessee.

The EIP/Earthjustice report makes the case that coal ash ponds are a serious hazard:

Coal-fired power plants generate nearly 140 million tons of fly ash, scrubber sludge, and other combustion wastes every year. These wastes contain some of the earth‘s most deadly pollutants, including arsenic, cadmium, lead, selenium, and other toxic metals that can cause cancer and neurological harm in humans and poison fish. This report brings to light 31 coal combustion waste sites that are known to have contaminated groundwater, wetlands, creeks, or rivers in 14 states. 

EPA pledged to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking for coal ash ponds by the end of 2009 but has yet to do so. On Oct. 16, 2009, the agency sent a draft proposal to the White House Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA); 132 days later, the rule is still under review. The draft is not available to the public, as is customary with OIRA reviews.

EPA regulation could help prevent the types of contamination detailed in the report, the environmental groups argue. “Yet, incredibly, ash and other coal combustion wastes are not subject to any federal regulations,” the report says. “The EPA promised to close this loophole by proposing new standards before the end of 2009. Instead, the EPA‘s draft rule is stalled at the Office of Management and Budget, where an avalanche of lobbyists hope it will stay buried.”

Since the beginning of the review period for the rule, OIRA has convened more than two dozen meetings between EPA and opponents of EPA’s regulation, mostly from industry. There have been five meetings with environmental groups.

One industry representative, Tom Adams of the American Coal Ash Association, told the Tennessean that OMB stayed in listening mode during the meetings: “In meetings with the federal Office of Management and Budget, Adams said he and others talked and answered questions, but the federal officials would not answer any questions themselves, and mostly took notes and listened. ‘They were doing a pretty good job of maintaining their poker faces,’ he said.”

By OIRA’s own rules, it has 90 days to review a draft rule. In consultation with the agency, OIRA may extend the review period once by 30 days (which it did on Jan. 14). The extension expired on Feb. 13.

OMB spokesperson Kenneth Baer told BNA news service (subscription), “All parties are working hard to resolve the remaining issues.”

Image courtesy of Brian Stansberry, Wikimedia Commons.

Over a million families are hanging on by thread, and all Sen. Jon Kyl (R-$$) wants to do is cut taxes for heirs of multimillion dollar estates. In fact, he wants to give scions of the rich tax cuts so badly that he's blocking health insurance assistance and a badly needed Unemployment Insurance extension from getting through the Senate.

Senate Democrats have found Republican support elusive for a bill that would combine year-long extensions of expired tax provisions with similar continuations of expanded unemployment coverage and health insurance subsidies for jobless workers.

[...]

Still, Minority Whip Jon Kyl , R-Ariz., said Republicans will block consideration of the new bill unless they get “a path forward fairly soon” on the estate tax.

Kyl has, in the past, proposed estate tax amendments that would give over $340 billion in tax cuts to heirs of multi-million dollar estates, and he would likely offer something similar given the oppurtunity.

Judy Conti of the National Employment Law Project (NELP) tells us what's a stake:

"The official statement coming out of Kyl's office is that the are holding up unemployment insurance to use as leverage for the estate tax," Conti told HuffPot. "They are jeopardizing the only lifeline that 1.2 million workers and their families have so that dead multimillionaires won't have to pay taxes."

According to NELP's analysis, 1.2 million people will prematurely lose unemployment benefits next month unless Congress acts.

United for a Fair Economy's Lee Farris calls this sort of hostage taking an "outrage":

'Why are Senators Kyl and Grassley more worried about enriching the heirs of multimillionaires than about helping Americans hit hardest by the recession?' asks Lee Farris, Estate Tax Policy Coordinator at United for a Fair Economy (UFE). 'It is an outrage that they are willing to hold struggling Americans hostage in their efforts to secure another huge tax cut for the wealthy Wall Street crowd that crashed our economy in the first place!'

Call Jon Kyl's office at (202) 224-4521, (602) 840-1891, or (520) 575-8633 and politely state your abhorrence to this move. You can e-mail his office using this form.

Many moons ago, Congress relied on facts, science, and other evidence to guide its thinking and make decisions. One repository for such information was the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), an arm of Congress created in 1972 to enlighten lawmakers on new technological applications and emerging issues and, if appropriate, recommend ways to harness science and technology for the public good.

A new push to restore the OTA to its former glory is gaining momentum. The OTA has been defunct since 1995 when Newt Gingrich’s Congress successfully eliminated the office’s funding.

This morning, the House subcommittee in charge of Legislative Branch spending held a public hearing to discuss the FY 2011 budget, scheduled to begin Oct. 1, 2010. Restoring funding for the OTA was one of several issues on the docket.

Dr. Francesca Grifo, Senior Scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, argued that Congress, and by extension the public, needs the OTA:

Members of Congress certainly do not lack for input, but in many situations they do lack credible and nonpartisan information that is structured in a way they can easily use. OTA was uniquely structured to provide credible information in the following areas:

• Unnecessary expenditure of taxpayer money on unproven technologies or other policies that are scientifically indefensible
• Early identification and analysis of technological issues before they became national Crises
• Evaluation of Executive Branch science and technology initiatives to aid Congress in its oversight duties.

While the analysis produced by OTA did not always drive congressional decision making, it did set boundaries to the debate, rule out some scientifically incorrect arguments, and help to frame political decisions in technically defensible ways. 

By federal government standards, OTA doesn’t need a lot of money to get rolling. In FY 1995, its last full year of operation, OTA’s budget was $21 million. The office had a staff of 183.

“When OTA was operational, it more than earned its keep by identifying wasteful and ineffective programs and suggesting improvements to others,” Grifo said. For example:

A 1988 OTA study, “Healthy Children: Investing in the Future” pointed out the vulnerability of low birthweight infants to a variety of physical and mental disabilities. Its research concluded that expanding Medicaid eligibility to all pregnant women living in poverty would cost much less than the cost of $14,000 to $30,000 to treat the health problems of each low birthweight infants. That study helped change Medicaid eligibility rules by expanding access to prenatal care to millions of women in poverty. 

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is leading the charge to restore funding (go to www.ucsusa.org/ota for more). Dozens of leading public health, environmental, transparency, and good government advocacy organizations have signed onto a letter calling on Congress to restore funding. (Your organization can still sign on: Contact UCS.) A separate sign-on letter for the scientific community is also available.

We’ll have more as Congress begins to write the FY 2011 budget. Check back for opportunities to get involved.