NEWS RELEASE
FOOD SAFETY WINS ONLY BECAUSE OF DIRTY TRICKS
Winter Solstice, December 21, 2010
Once again, outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, along with her sidekicks Waxman and Dingell, has used legislative "sleight-of-hand" to force through the “Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save Act” (H.R.2751) with S.510 attached. Just today, the Bill passed on a vote of 215 For and 144 Against. It is rich irony indeed that the "Cash for Clunkers" reauthorization bill (H.R.2751) has provided the ride for S.510, another “clunker” that will unleash an avalanche of useless, business-killing paperwork upon the food industry and a swarm of parasitic FDA bureaucrats. The result will be, as we have said all along, a food supply that is less safe, more expensive, and less abundant. Anyone who thinks otherwise is living in complete fantasy land.
Nor can good law come from bad politics. Following U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin’s late-Sunday-night, bad-faith embedding of S.510 into H.R.2751, they quickly passed it without even a recorded Senate vote. This was a classic late-night abuse of normal Senatorial process. Not to be outdone, today, Speaker Pelosi and her comrades then pulled her own fast one by combining H.R 2751 with two other bills and getting a suspension of the rules covering three bills at once, with a closed rule on debate and amendment. The rule passed overwhelmingly, leaving the vote on H.R.2751 as a majority vote instead of a suspension-of-the-rule vote. Mr. Obama has already said he will sign the bill.
Other legislative-process shenanigans preceded the final passage vote on H.R.2751; a majority of Democrats voted to waive all existing House rules to bring up any bill, without amendments allowed, and with limited debate. So, least people get the wrong impression; Pelosi and company followed the same abusive legislative process scenario on many other bills as well. The lame-duck House and Senate leadership has not disappointed the public's low expectations for Congress. House and Senate Democratic leaders could not get enough support in the normal and legitimate process to pass the so-called Food Safety Modernization Act. In the last three days, the Democratic leadership has done exactly what they had promised the public they would never do in Congress – ignore all norms of accountability and transparency for “their” Congress and legislative agenda. Without doubt, there is a special place in Hell reserved for them and all of the Democrats and Republicans who supported them. They are only protected by the short memories of American voters and a large reserve of ill-will against George W. Bush who also promised accountability and transparency but delivered neither.
While the misnamed food-safety bill will become law, the public policy/legislative fight is not over. Not by a long shot. It still must to be funded with new taxpayer monies to be implemented by a country that is essentially broke. There will be Congressional opportunities to "de-fund" the law in the coming two years and we plan to push for these. Effective and proactive lobbying by the health-freedom community can still result in a victory, even though the Lame-Duck Congress has just disregarded the will of the people. The good news is that we will have more freedom-oriented members in the next Congress than we do now and that can be turned to our advantage.
We once again thank all of you numerous health-freedom advocates who signed the NHF’s House- and Senate-delivered petitions in opposition, and who called their U.S. Representative and Senators’ offices to oppose this unjust law. The legislative-passage road for S.510 was significantly harder than anticipated by the anti-supplement and pro-FDA control freaks in Congressand they know it, which is exactly why they had to play dirty politics to get their way – for now at least.
One last thing, there will be many bloggers and responders to articles on the internet actually applauding the passage of this law. It happened when the Senate passed this bill the first time. We were busy writing responses. But we need your help; so, please watch the internet and hit back hard by writing on-line with our arguments against this law. We must not lose the media war on this one!
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