Memorandum of
Disapproval on a Bill To Establish a National
Nutrition Monitoring and Related Research Program
I
am withholding my approval of S. 1081, a bill ``to establish a coordinated
National Nutrition Monitoring and Related Research program, and a comprehensive
plan for the assessment of the nutritional and dietary status of the United
States population and the nutritional quality of food consumed in the United
States, with the provision for the conduct of scientific research and
development and support of such program and plan.''
The
Administration strongly supports the principal goals of this legislation and
reaffirms its commitment to use existing authority to achieve these ends.
However, enactment of the bill would set up Federal nutrition efforts on the
wrong course.
The
bill would create a substantial amount of unnecessary and complex Federal
bureaucracy that would hamper the achievement of the bill's goals. Under the
bill, the Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of Health and Human
Services, acting jointly, would bear responsibility for nutrition information
collection and analysis, planning for research and grants, and government-wide
nutrition program budgeting. The bill also would create an Administrator of
Nutrition Monitoring and Related Research, an Interagency Board for Nutrition
Monitoring and Related Research, and a Nutrition Monitoring Advisory Council.
The creation of so much new Federal bureaucracy would hinder, rather than aid,
performance of Federal nutrition-related functions.
The
bill would impose a substantial new burden on the American taxpayer in future
years to pay for Federal Government grants. First, the bill would require the
Secretaries, acting jointly, to develop a comprehensive plan for a coordinated
nutrition program. Then it specifies that the program must include at least two
new programs of Federal grants, under which the Federal Government would make
awards of taxpayers' dollars. The bill then further specifies that the
comprehensive plan shall ``constitute the basis on which each agency
participating in the coordinated program requests authorizations and
appropriations for nutrition monitoring and related research.'' Thus, the bill
would effectively program substantial new grant funding into future Federal
budgets.
Experience
shows that once the Federal Government begins handing out money under a new
grant program, a political constituency develops that demands greater funding
for that program. Greater scrutiny should be given to the need for the proposed
new grant programs before they are locked in as a future expansion of the
Federal budget, especially given the likely urgent future needs in other areas
of the Federal budget.
Ronald
Reagan
The
White House,
Note: The memorandum was
released by the Office of the Press Secretary on November 9.