Congress & Food Policy Explained. Sort Of.

Yesterday I posted about my observation that our government functions in silos and that their failure to treat our food system as a system hurts our overall food policy. I received a reply asking for more information about how the government works. And I've been considering writing something up anyway, because the rumors going around about HR 875 REALLY show how little many people understand about the way Congress operates. So let's talk about it a bit, using HR 875 as an example.

First off, we all know that our government is split into 2 parties with a few independents sprinkled around. But within the parties, there are "caucuses" of like-minded individuals. Within the House Dems, there is the Congressional Progressive Caucus (the lefties) and the Blue Dog Dems (conservative Democrats). Off the top of my head, I think the CPC has about 70 members and the Blue Dogs have about 50 or so but I could be wrong. In the Senate, a new Blue Dog faction just formed with about 19 of the 58 Democratic Senators. Often even though most Democrats and the Democratic leadership are backing a certain bill, one of these caucuses might oppose it and force the rest of the party to compromise with their own agenda. Also, it's handy to pay attention to which caucus a particular legislator belongs to because you can guess what their positions will be on issues based on that.

Step one to a bill becoming a law is introducing the bill. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) introduced H.R.875. She's the sponsor. She also had about 40 co-sponsors last I saw. Those are people who are willing to publicly support the bill and put their name on it. DeLauro is a member of the CPC and so are many of the bill's co-sponsors. While that doesn't necessarily guarantee that everything they do is good, it certainly pre-disposes me to assume they are acting in accordance with my own interests unless I find evidence proving otherwise.

After a bill is introduced, it gets assigned to a committee. H.R. 875 got assigned to 2 committees - Agriculture and Energy & Commerce. Most bills die at this stage. The committee, particularly the chair, has a lot of power to kill a bill by simply not putting it on the agenda and never even voting on it. Even if the bill might pass in a vote, if you never vote then it will never pass. In the case of H.R. 875, there are a number of food safety bills and the Energy & Commerce and Ag committees more or less have their pick of the bunch. Energy & Commerce chair Henry Waxman (D-CA) favors John Dingell's (D-MI) bill H.R.759 from what I've heard. This might be because John Dingell is also on the Energy & Commerce committee and he's the former chair so he's a pretty high-ranking member on that committee.

One thing to note is that even though the Congress as a whole is strongly Democratic, committees are smaller and they might have a large percent of conservative Dems or progressive Dems that can influence the entire committee and the legislation that comes out of it. The House Ag committee, for example, is overrun with Blue Dogs and therefore rarely passes anything progressive at all. Also, because committees are small and individual members can have a very strong influence on them, sometimes the unique whims or pet issues of one member can affect what the committee does.

The House Ag committee is going to begin its hearings on food safety on April 2. The Energy & Commerce committee already had 3 hearings on the subject. I expect that each committee will pass a separate bill and then both bills will reach the House floor.

So the next step, after a bill passes out of committee is that it goes to the full House. Here, the House leadership can kill it by never bringing it up for a vote. Or they can debate the bill and vote on it. I do not know what will happen in this particular case. If two bills - H.R. 759 and one from the ag committee - reach the floor, I don't know which one the leadership would prefer. It might depend on which bill would be more likely to pass the full house. The Ag committee basically just wants to ensure that their farmers are left the hell alone by the FDA, whereas the Energy & Commerce committee wants to strengthen the FDA.

Assuming a bill passes out of the House (and I think that they will pass a food safety bill although it won't be H.R.875 because that won't ever get out of committee), the Senate will have the option of introducing and passing the bill as well. The entire committee process therefore repeats in the Senate, and if the Senate passes the bill, then they form a conference committee with members of both houses. There are already several food safety bills in the Senate, and I do not know what is going on with them yet. But I would expect that Congress will not let the peanut butter mess go without passing something. Often bills that come from the House & Senate ag committees look very different because the committee members and particularly their chairmen are very different. The chair in the Senate, Tom Harkin, is a good guy who is a strong advocate for a lot of our issues. The chair in the House, Collin Peterson, is not.

The overall fate of any bill depends on which members are assigned to the conference committee and what their own individual priorities and biases are. They can pick language from the House bill or the Senate bill for the final joint version, or they can add new provisions to the bill entirely. At that point, once they have agreed on everything, they take the final version of the bill back to each house for a vote. When both houses pass the bill, it goes to the President, who can sign it, do nothing, or veto it.

(Photo credit: Kimberleyfaye on Flickr)