The Senate Agriculture Committee is set to vote today on the privatization of grain inspections. The provision is part of the reauthorization of the U. S. Grain Standards Act (S. 1582), which originally established a standardized and uniform grain inspection system for both domestic and exported U.S. grains. According to BNA's Daily Report for Executives (subscription only), industry is divided on support of the measure, which may save the grain industry money but could also damage the credibility of U.S. grain inspections.

In one of the year's most peculiar moments, the Innovations in American Government Award has been awarded to the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART). The PART was among over 1,000 applicants considered for the award, given each year by the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard's Kenney School of Government and the Council for Excellence in Government. That PART was awarded an innovation in government award is ironic in that the ideas and goals underlying PART are certainly nothing new. The issue of government performance has been around since shortly after World War II. Past attempts to reform the management of government programs range from the 1949 recommendations of the Hoover commission to the Carter administration’s Zero Based Budgeting experiment to the Nixon Administration’s Management By Objectives initiative and the Johnson Administration’s Planning-Programming-Budgeting System. Even President Clinton jumped on the bandwagon with his Reinventing Government initiative. Most of these initiatives were short-lived and with any luck, so to will the PART. Further, PART has been criticized as having severe deficiencies including ideological and political bias and inconsistency in implementation across programs. The most egregious of the criticisms is that often times its one-size-fits-all approach actually forces programs to be evaluated tangentially or contrary to their stated purpose(s). The PART is hardly innovative and certainly not worth of praise. This is yet another step in the disasterous process of PART gaining wide and unquestioned acceptance - a step that surely will lead to fewer protections and supports for the American people.

The House passed Norwood's four pernicious OSHA bills yesterday, paving the way for increased "flexibility" for employers at the expense of occupational health and safety enforcement. Read more about the bills on Thomas:

• HR 739
• HR 740
• HR 741
• HR 742