Getting a fork into the real issues

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18 March 2011

It's been a tough week here in Washington – the Republicans have been raping and pillaging their way through the Environmental Protection Agency, Health and Human Services, Planned Parenthood, and National Public Radio – doing their best to cut funding and the ability of federal agencies to regulate, and (it seems) ignoring what is happening elsewhere in the world. They have proposed $126 million in cuts for the National Weather Service, the agency that houses the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii. They would slash the EPA budget by one-third, with no recognition that the EPA is the US agency with responsibility for monitoring radiation levels. And the head of USAID has said that the planned cuts to foreign aid would be "absolutely devastating".

So it's sad to report that the biggest partisan arguments int he Congress this week have been over biogradable forks.

When Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House , she moved to "green" the Capitol with several initiatives, including obligating the food vendor for the three main House cafeterias to provide compostable cups and utensils. But the newly empowered House Republicans have ended the program, and plastic forks and foam cups have returned. GOP Speaker John Boehner announced his hard-won victory over this most trivial and symbolic environmental concessions. "The new majority -- plasticware is back," he tweeted.

The move has enraged many Democrats, who argue that the House is now doing something bad for the environment. Republicans say the composting program cost too much and had limited environmental benefits, and that the compostable utensils were a bad deal for diners anyway because they could not stand up to hot soup and the heartier salad fixings.

The fork fracas brings the current ideological warfare into relief, perhaps because it is playing out daily on the cafeteria trays of those who work here.