The Senate on Monday advanced sweeping food safety legislation intended to protect the public from contamination by toughening federal oversight of the nation's food supply.
At the same time, senators tried unsuccessfully to eliminate a tax-reporting provision in the new health care law, an amendment unrelated to food safety but which Republican and Democratic lawmakers agreed is needed to help small businesses avoid reporting problems caused by the health care reforms passed earlier this year.
The Senate voted 69-26 to begin debate on the Food Safety Modernization Act, which would give the Food and Drug Administration new powers to recall food it believes is contaminated and would require the government to conduct more frequent inspections of farms and food production plants. The bill is expected to pass easily as early as Tuesday.
Lawmakers in both parties began pushing for passage of the legislation in recent months following several incidents of food contamination that sickened hundreds of people. The most recent outbreak occurred last summer at an Iowa chicken farm, which was blamed for a salmonella outbreak in eggs that affected several states and required a massive recall.
"The statistics are that Americans are getting sick and they are dying because of food borne illnesses," said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, a chief architect of the measure.
Food recalls are now voluntary, but the Senate-passed legislation would give the FDA the power to order food producers to recall their products, a step that could prevent tainted food from reaching consumers' tables.
Food producers would have to increase safety requirements and recordkeeping to keep the food supply safer. The bill would also increase safety standards for imported foods.
Some Republicans, including Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., opposed the bill, saying it represented a government overreach that would create unnecessary burdens on food producers and increase food prices.
Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., also opposed the bill, but for very different reasons. A recent amendment to the bill excluded some small farms from the new requirements and that, Chambliss said, "renders the potential for unsafe products to enter the market, and the FDA is going to have no opportunity to regulate them."
Much of Monday's debate on the bill had nothing to do with food safety, however.
Democrats and Republicans debated dueling amendments to strip from the health care law a requirement that businesses report to the IRS any purchase of $600 or more. The bills were debated under special rules requiring 67 votes for passage. The GOP version, which failed 61-35, would have required the government to make up for the loss of tax revenue with $39 billion in unused funds in the federal budget. The Democratic version, which failed 53-44, included no offsets and would add $19 billion to the deficit.
Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., who offered the GOP version, said there is $684 billion in unused federal funds left over from the fiscal year that ended in October.
"If we can't come to agreement on a few billion dollars of budget constraint, how can we ever hope to address $14 trillion in budget debt," Johanns said.
Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana, said the Johanns provision would "abdicate congressional responsibility over the budget" by allowing one executive branch office to decide where to make the funding cuts.
