The food industry’s heavy lobbying over the past few years to reduce regulation and paperwork has turned into a “monkey’s paw” of sorts. As the AP says, “Be careful what you wish for; lest it may happen,” is certainly the lesson to be gleaned from the stupifying, and expected, blowback the food industry is receiving right now from their long lobbying effort. Here’s the run-down:

The food industry pressured the Bush administration to reduce paperwork that would have aided health investigators “quickly trace produce that sickens consumers.” The Bush administration also killed a plan to require electronic filing that would enable regulators and investigators to more rapidly search for the source of a food contamination outbreak in the case of an outbreak. The food industry spent millions on lobbying to stop these regulations, as evidenced in this chart from OpenSecrets.org:

The food companies worried about the costliness of these proposals and labeled them “burdensome,” saying that they could disrupt the availability of consumers’ favorite foods.”

Now, according to the AP, during the current salmonella outbreak the food industry has lost $250 million, food supplies have been disrupted, and 1,300 people have gotten sick in 43 states and the District of Columbia. So, even without the regulations the food industry got their food disruption, consumers can’t eat tomatoes or jalapenos (which are chief ingredients in salsa), and a lot of people got to get sick.

The AP calls these “unintended consequences.” I’d say they are totally predictable and the public should take their scorn out on the food industry and their lobbyists for engaging in activities that have made eating more dangerous.

This whole episode reminds me of this scene from Kentucky Fried Movie, where a satirical science film posits a world without zinc oxide:

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If this keeps up much longer, our friends at OMB Watch are going to have their hand full maintaining the grants side of FedSpending.org. Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute finds that the number subsidy programs listed in the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance has skyrocketed–from 1,013 programs in 1985 to 1,390 in 1995 to 1,696 in 2006.

New programs in 2006, according to Edwards, include things like the $150 million to give to groups that promote health marriages (here’s the official Web site), $99 million to give to states and school districts to develop merit-based compensation plans for teachers (here), and $7 million to get Americans to eat more fruits, vegetables and nuts and also to improve the competitiveness of U.S. growers of these foodstuffs (no site yet, look up “10.169″ here).

I kind of liked the way that Edwards framed this type of spending:

The proliferation of special interest spending in the federal budget in recent years has created much waste and corruption. Politicians have helped special interests while helping themselves. But the main problem has not been that politicians have their hands in the cookie jar; it is that the cookie jar has grown so large.

I’m not entirely sure I agree with all the implications of the last sentence, but the first two strike me as true, and as for the third, as we’ve found with earmarks, it’s probably true that the amount and beneficiaries of a lot of federal spending are left to the discretion of very few lawmakers, who dole it out with very little oversight or exposure. And a cookie jar that no one’s watching is far too tempting for politicians and special interests to dig into…

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The Washington Post writes a profile of anti-pork Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-OK) crusade to cut earmarks out of the emergency spending supplemental before the Senate. Only one of his amendments were ultimately successful and the lack of majority support from either party led him to withdraw many of his amendments challenging the earmarks. One of his challenges was to a $500 million earmark to aid rebuilding of a Northrop Grumman shipbuilding yard in Mississippi. The Wall Street Journal reports that the vote was 51-47 with both parties evenly dividing. One of the few successul amendments aimed at controlling spending was introduced by Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) and co-sponsord by Coburn. The amendment restricts the number of no-bid contracts for rebuilding in the Gulf Coast and was agreed to with a 98-0 vote.

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CongressDaily PM reports that the Senate Indian Affairs Committee will finally issue a report on Jack Abramoff and his bilking of Indian tribes in the next two months. However, the report will not touch on Abramoff’s dealings with lawmakers or executive branch officials meaning that “two years after news of the activities of Abramoff and his allies first came to light, there is no known congressional inquiry into whether lawmakers or administration officials took improper or illegal actions on their behalf.” Congress has essentially given up its authority to investigate the matter and left it up to career Justice Department investigators and prosecutors.

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• House Republicans stripped 527-reform out of a proposed lobbying reform bill, according to The Hill.

• In a sign of the seriousness of the case against him, Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA), under investigation for alleged bribery in an African telecommunications deal, is selling his Capitol Hill house, according to Roll Call.

• Speaking of selling houses, the Washington Post reports that Rep. Jim Ryun is denying that he got a sweetheart deal when the U.S. Family Network sold him their Capitol Hill house at well below market value.

• Knight Ridder reports that the Pentagon has investigated itself for spending money “like Paris Hilton at a shoe sale” and found its “prime vendor” purchasing program “sound, even though it overpaid millions of dollars for common kitchen items.” The program “paid $20 a piece for plastic ice cube trays that previously had cost 89 cents and $81 each for coffee makers that it bought for years for $29.”

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• The Hill reports that Melissa Bean’s (D-IL) “aggressive courting of K Street” is putting her challenger at a disadvantage in fundraising. The political director of the business lobby the Chamber of Commerce stated, “In Bean’s case, she has stepped out and has supported our agenda.” Bean is one of a handful of House Democrats who voted in favor of the Central American Free Trade Agreement, which was a huge victory for the business lobby.

• Google has hired two lobbying firms, one bipartisan and another with close ties to Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman, as it enters the world of Washington politics, according to the New York Times. The internet powerhouse also plans to hire a Republican political director for a new political action committee and give campaign contributions to both Republicans and Democrats. The company currently has an image as a Democratic donor as almost every employee employee contribution in 2004 went to the Democrats.

• Lobbying reform appears to be back on track in the Senate as Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) agreed to remove an amendment that sought to prohibit a Dubai company from taking over control of a number of ports. According to Roll Call, the Senate appears ready to hear the bill and one of the bill’s principal authors Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) stated, “If they’ll give me a day, I can do it.” On the House side chances for reform look questionable as the Republican caucus cannot decide what direction to take nor which proposals to consider.

• Ralph Reed is getting off the hook for his alleged violations of lobbying laws in Texas because the two-year statute of limitations had expired, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Travis County Attorney David Escamilla said, “There’s smoke. And we have the tools, via grand juries and subpoenas, to go find out if there’s fire. But all of the smoke relates to a time period I can’t do anything about.”

• In a new report by the Minority Office of the House Committee on Government Reform the second Iraqi oil contract for Halliburton comes under intense scrutiny and criticism for “intentional overcharging,” “inadequate cost reporting,” and a “refusal to cooperate.”

• The Associated Press reports that, “The former Republican leader of the Wisconsin Assembly was sentenced Monday to 60 days in jail for putting a party fundraiser on the state payroll.” Steven Foti is the “third former state legislator to be sentenced among five convicted in an investigation that began in 2001. Two of the others are Democrats, and two are Republicans.”

• According to the Wall Street Journal, the White House has pulled the nomination of David Sanborn to run the U.S. Maritime Administration. Sanborn was previously the former director of operations for Europe and Latin America for Dubai Ports World and his nomination became a key point of attack for critics of the deal for DP World to take over American port operations. The article notes, “Sen. Bill Nelson (D., Fla.) said he would block it until he learned more about Mr. Sanborn’s involvement in the deal that gave operation of some U.S. ports to DP World, and about DP World’s pending sale of those operations.”

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The former head USAID Andrew Natsios, interviewed in Newsweek, claims that the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ruled Iraq after Saddam’s fall, was not prepared for the rebuilding of Iraq and let “ill-qualified or corrupt contractors” dominate the rebuilding process. “They didn’t have [monitoring] systems set up. They were very dismissive of these processes,” he stated. Others are speaking out on contractor fraud and corruption including the watchdog group Transparency International, which claimed that the contractor fraud could become “the biggest corruption scandal in history.” Rep. Chris Shays (R-CT), who has investigated fraud allegations states, “The administration seems to have a deaf ear to this issue … When you have men and women dying on the battlefield and you have corruption, then you’ve got a problem.” The Defense Department refused to send auditors to Iraq until numerous pleas and corrupt practices brought them to send a team to Qatar, a thousand miles away from Baghdad. The Inspector General at the Pentagon oversaw the auditing practice of rewarding and monitoring contracts – until he left his position to take a job with Blackwater USA, one of the top Pentagon contractors in Iraq.

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• The DC restaurant industry is not happy with congressional efforts to prohibit lobbyists from treating lawmakers and their staff to meals, according to the Los Angeles Times. In response to this attempt at reforming lobbying the restaurant industry has dispatched its own team of lobbyists to lobby Congress to allow lobbyists to be able to spend freely for lawmakers’ meals.

• What happens when you violate safety laws, don’t pay fines, and oppose increased oversight? The Hill reports that you get tax breaks: “After fatal mining accidents this year, the mining industry is on the verge of winning tax breaks to help pay for new safety technologies as it lobbies against government-imposed safety requirements.” Back in January the Washington Post reported that, “the Bush administration abandoned or delayed implementation of 18 proposed safety rules that were in the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration’s regulatory pipeline in early 2001”.

• President Bush’s Faith and Community Based Initiative is directing millions of dollars into organizations run by his religious right supporters, according to the Washington Post. Rep. Mark Souter (R-IN) says that the program has “gone political” and Rep. Chet Edwards (D-TX) asserts, “I believe ultimately this will be seen as one of the largest patronage programs in American history.” Outspoken televangelist Pat Robertson’s Operation Blessing received tens of millions of dollars; “local antiabortion and crisis pregnancy centers have received well over $60 million in grants for abstinence education and other programs;” Shepherd Smith, the strategist for Robertson’s 1988 presidential bid, received $7.5 million; many of the recipients of federal grants were “influential supporters of Bush’s presidential campaigns.”

• Prosecutors in the Tom DeLay (R-TX) money laundering case are trying to get two charges reinstated against the troubled former Majority Leader, according to the Associated Press. Meanwhile, the Houston Chronicle reports that DeLay believes that the charges are just political theater and prosecutor Ronnie Earle will throw out the charges after the 2006 midterm elections.

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A former lobbyist for the for-profit online University of Phoenix is moving from her post at the Education Department to work for the new House Education and Workforce Committee chairman Buck McKeon (R-CA), according to the New York Times. Buck McKeon has been an ally of for-profit universities like his predecessor John Boehner (R-OH). A few months ago, “the committee for the first time permitted institutions that teach more than half their courses online to receive federal student aid, a boon to for-profit institutions like the University of Phoenix.” Stroup was instrumental in pushing for these rule changes as she oversaw a program that judged whether the 50% rule should be waived. The Education Department Inspector General wrote that her 2003 report to Congress “contained unsupported, incomplete and inaccurate statements.” In 2004 the Chronicle of Higher Education documented the campaign contributions that for-profit universities had funneled into the pockets of McKeon and Boehner. McKeon received $126,000 from these universities from 2003-2004.

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The federal government is owed $35 billion in fines from criminals and from civil cases, the majority of which comes from white collar criminals, who only pay 7 percent of restitution. According to the Associated Press, this amount is five times higher then it was a decade ago. Much of the uncollected money comes from violations of federal regulations, such as violations of mine safety laws. In most cases the federal government has waived the fines in favor of compliance, such as in the case of violations at nuclear facilities throughout the country. Anti-nuclear activist Greg Mello calls this, “kind of an exercise in absurdity.” The Government Accountability Office, an independent investigative office, has warned that the failure to enforce penalties and fines will undermine the effectiveness of enforcement agencies. Of course, this 2004 Denver Post story may shed some light on why the federal government is failing to take punitive action against violators.

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