Utah Senator Votes Against Bill Because It Costs too Much, Adds Too Many Federal Workers
After twice voting against the Food Safety bill this week, U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) issued the following statement laying out his opposition to the bill:
"Over a year ago, I joined with every Republican on the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee in initially supporting the food safety bill. At that time, I was clear that if it did not continue to improve and if there was a price tag to taxpayers that I would stop supporting the bill. I hoped to use my cosponsorship to steer this legislation away from a big government expansion that I feared it would become.
"That's regrettably what happened. After the bill was approved by the committee, not enough improvements were made to satisfy me. For example, the legislation still expands the federal workforce too much, which is a tremendous concern of mine and is precisely why I introduced legislation this year to dramatically reduce the amount of federal workers. In addition to that, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office came back with a price tag of around $1.5 billion. Because of these concerns, I voted against this legislation not once, but twice this week."