Appealing to the General Masses

Congress has had a recent chain of bills that have been passed simply for obtaining the public favor. The most notably of these being the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (S. 510) and the CALM Act (S. 2847). For those citizens who are unaware (which is highly unlikely because these two now-laws have been given specific extensive media coverage to create the illusion of a productive congress):

• The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act Amends the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA) to expand the authority of the Secretary of Health and Human Services to regulate food, including the authorization of the Secretary to suspend the registration of a food facility. 
• The Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act (CALM Act) was passed in order to restrict broadcast commercials to a specific decibel. 

In a time with a multiple front war, piling debt, and rising unemployment; Congress has the gall to pass bills such as these.

The FFDCA amendment is not only a poor attempt at bribing the voters, it also hurts many businesses within the food service industry by mandating uneeded recalls. Imagine, if you will, two chicken companies, Company A and Company B. These companies are competitors, but never in their stages of production do the two share a same process. Both companies receive feed from separate farms, rear the chickens at different location, and process them at different facilities. Now imagine that chicken from company A was tainted with E. Coli. Under the new amendment, the secretary issues a full recall on both Companies A and B until a full investigation can be completed. After the full investigation of Company A's stages of production, it was shown that the initial crop of feed was tainted. Now most FDA investigations such as this will take days, if not weeks to conduct. During that time, perhaps Company B lost revenue equal to that of 100 employees and must now lay off 100 workers. Not only will those 100 persons be out of a job, but add into that the economic multiplier effect concerning the loss of income for an economic effect of approximately 500 people out of work. Now multiply that times the number of possible chicken companies in the same situation, like companies C, D, etc. The numbers really start to add up when, in the first place, the Company B could have been identified as having no relations to Company A in the stages of production, and left without recall. Essentially, all this amendment does is provide the Secretary of Health and Human Services to punish every company within a field for a single company's error or bad luck. In this time of economic instability, punishment for someone else's actions is the last thing needed.

Concerning the CALM act, there are two issues to be heard here: The first is that the bill has been given extensive media coverage at the influence of the Two Major Political Parties. The story has been ubiquitous during the past week as congress gives the people what they want. If what the people want is the fleeting thought in their minds during shows that "This commercial is rather loud and distracting", then this author plans on emigrating. It is, however, my opinion that Americans are more intelligent than that, and that Congress is simply playing and easy win by passing a bill that only an older person with a hearing aid would reject. The second issue is that the bill has been in the process of becoming law since December 8, 2009. (Bill S. 2847) This means that an elected official (and most likely many elected official's aids) have been diligently working on the passing of this bill for an entire year all while being paid with American tax dollars. It is absurd that so much time and money be spent on a remedial topic, and I am certain that when inquired about the important issues of the time, no citizen in their right mind would comment that they thought television commercials were a bit too loud.