Food Safety Bill Is Held Hostage By An Idiot

As I said in an earlier post....the news is getting more insane every day. A good example is the latest on the food safety bill (HR 2749). Even after over 1,300 people  have suffered salmonella-related illnesses in the past couple of months due to eggs that should have never been on the market the Senate is getting ready to send the food safety bill to the toilet. The bill passed the House easily over a year ago with support from several dozen Republicans. It is sponsored in the Senate by three Democrats and three Republicans.
These egg related illnesses span across 22 states and all of them could have been prevented had the "holes in the country's food safety net." been plugged by this bill. One would think that passing a food safety bill would be a "Duh" thing. It would be insane for the Senate to leave in October without following up on the House bill and enacting some tighter food safety measures wouldn't you think?

And yet, there is a good chance it will die. The far-right idiot senator from Oklahoma would like you to believe that he thinks spending offsets are more important than the salmonella poisoning of thousands of Americans.

Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday the Senate will not take up long-pending food safety legislation before the Nov. 2 elections, citing a Republican senator's objections.
Reid announced on the Senate floor that "we're not going to be able to get this done before we go home for the elections." Reid and Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin have been trying to move the bill quickly, but Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who has a long list of concerns about the legislation, has blocked them.
Reid said Coburn's objections mean that the bill (HR 2749) will not be completed before the Senate departs Oct. 8 for the midterm election campaign. "It's just a shame that we can't get this done," Reid said.
Reid, D-Nev., could push the bill through the Senate by filing procedural motions to advance the legislation over Coburn's objections, but doing so would require days of the Senate's time.

So Tom Coburn wants you to believe that a measly $1.4 billion cost over 5 years for this bill is way too high to make our food safer when that same Tom Coburn doesn't have the least bit of a problem supporting extending tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans at a cost of $700 billion over the next 10 years. This is probably the cheapest bill the Senate will undertake this year but it is way, way too much for Tom.

Why is this not headline news? The poison eggs sure got plenty of ink yet Tom Coburn willing to poison thousand more Americans is not newsworthy. People better figure out pretty soon that the ongoing GOP obstruction and failure to govern  is hurting the country fiscally and in reality.