Suzy Khimm has a piece in Mother Jones today about how the Republicans' continuing regulation would defund the USDA in ways that would prevent implementation of the food-safety bill passed last year. Republicans hated that bill, of course, but there's massive public support for modernization of our food safety system.
But Obama's 2012 budget proposal wouldn't fully fund the Food Safety Modernization Act, either. According to Food and Water Watch, Obama's budget would actually decrease funding for food-safety inspectors by $9 million, despite a likely increase in meat production and despite the new bill's implementation cost. Food and Water Watch says that the FDA's overall budget would increase, but adds that it's not enough:
“While this is a $182 million increase over this year's funding, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has calculated that it would require $1.4 billion over the next four years to implement the newly enacted Food Safety Modernization Act. Unless the administration plans to increase its requests in future years, the FY 2012 request is half what the CBO estimated it would require to implement the new law.”
Add that to the hundreds of bureaucrats working to comply with the new childhood nutrition bill, and we're likely underfunding a lot of Obama's food initiatives. Since most of the public won't pay attention to the nitty-gritty budget details that it takes to actually change policy, they don't know when and how to demand that the promises of the Obama administration are delivered.
