Killing Jobs and Making Us Sick
By JOE NOCERA
NYT
“In January, Mr. Obama signed a food safety law that provides broad new authority to the Food and Drug Administration,” wrote Robert Pear in Friday’s Times, in an article about the Congressional appropriations mess. But House Republicans, he added, had voted “to cut the agency’s budget.”
Well, yes, in a nutshell, that is the sad story of the food safety law — the first major change in how the government regulates food safety in over 70 years. But the way the Republicans have dealt with its funding represents more than appropriations problems. It also represents the way they’ve allowed their unyielding antitax, antispend ideology to get in the way of common sense — and the common good.
A few weeks ago, in describing the absurd lawsuit the National Labor Relations Board brought against Boeing — for the crime of opening a plant in nonunion South Carolina — I characterized the N.L.R.B.’s effort as a case study in how Democrats hurt job creation. In that column I promised to return with an equally absurd Republican example. The refusal to properly fund the new food safety law is exactly that.
For years, the food industry and consumer groups have been aligned on the need to modernize the nation’s food safety inspection system. “Food-borne illnesses” — an outbreak of salmonella or E. coli, for instance — are a problem not just for consumers but for industry as well. Recalls are expensive. Sales shrink, even for companies not involved in the recall. Lawsuits ensue. Employees lose their jobs. It can take years to recover from a food scare.
(More here.)
NYT
“In January, Mr. Obama signed a food safety law that provides broad new authority to the Food and Drug Administration,” wrote Robert Pear in Friday’s Times, in an article about the Congressional appropriations mess. But House Republicans, he added, had voted “to cut the agency’s budget.”
Well, yes, in a nutshell, that is the sad story of the food safety law — the first major change in how the government regulates food safety in over 70 years. But the way the Republicans have dealt with its funding represents more than appropriations problems. It also represents the way they’ve allowed their unyielding antitax, antispend ideology to get in the way of common sense — and the common good.
A few weeks ago, in describing the absurd lawsuit the National Labor Relations Board brought against Boeing — for the crime of opening a plant in nonunion South Carolina — I characterized the N.L.R.B.’s effort as a case study in how Democrats hurt job creation. In that column I promised to return with an equally absurd Republican example. The refusal to properly fund the new food safety law is exactly that.
For years, the food industry and consumer groups have been aligned on the need to modernize the nation’s food safety inspection system. “Food-borne illnesses” — an outbreak of salmonella or E. coli, for instance — are a problem not just for consumers but for industry as well. Recalls are expensive. Sales shrink, even for companies not involved in the recall. Lawsuits ensue. Employees lose their jobs. It can take years to recover from a food scare.
(More here.)
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