Gadfly Probes 'Miniscule' $930 Million Budget Item

What Is the National Institute for Amelioration of Junk Food?

The editor of an obscure newsletter that tracks spending at the famed National Institutes of Health is waging a quiet but determined battle with the Bush Administration to uncover the meaning of a single line item and accompanying footnote in the new Federal budget.

Because the budget item is only $930 million, "miniscule" as one Cabinet member described it, no one in the Administration or the Federal bureaucracy can explain it or is willing to attempt to find out.

"I've been covering the budget for 40 years and I've never seen anything quite like this," said Elmore Trainer, who has published his "National Institutes of Spendthrift" newsletter since 1964. "Money has so little meaning in Washington these days that it's like filling a cup with water at the cooler, taking a sip and throwing the rest of the water away."

The Bush Administration presented its proposed $2.4 trillion budget to Congress on February 1. Trainer, who has no staff to help him put out the twice monthly newsletter, set to work analyzing the budget. He sought to find every federal dollar that might flow to the National Institutes of Health directly or through other agencies and ultimately fund medical research.

"I almost fell out of my chair when I came across it," Trainer said.

The single budget line item read: National Institute for Amelioration of Junk Food $930,000,000.

A terse footnote on page 7,313 of the six-volume budget states: "By Executive Order of the President, a research Institute to study transformation of healthy food into junk food so as to improve the diet and health of the citizenry is hereby created and funded."

After searching the budget an entire day for any other reference to what would appear to be the creation of a new Institute at the National Institutes of Health, Trainer turned to the Public Affairs Office at the Department of Health and Human Services, the NIH's parent.

"At first the flak there said she was completely surprised and had no idea, but would find out," Trainer said. "When I would call back, she was never in and never returned my calls."

Next, Trainer said, he turned up in person at the HSS Public Affairs office.

"They said the woman I talked to no longer worked there and they couldn't help me. One of them said, and honest to God, he said, 'It's such a small amount. Those things are hard to locate.'"

Trainer said he was walking down a hall in the HSS building, when who should pop out of an office but Tommy Thompson, the HSS secretary himself, trailed by his retinue.

"I dodged his security guy and fell in step beside Thompson and introduced myself." Trainer said. "So I asked him what the National Institute for Amelioration of Junk Food was. He stopped in his tracks and said, 'The what?' So I repeated the name. 'I have no idea,' he said. 'How much money are they getting?' So I told him. He sort of shrugged his shoulders and said, 'That's miniscule' and walked away."

Trainer said attempts to get clarification on the item from the White House press office hit a dead end.

"I don't have White House press credentials because I'm this little newsletter that only speaks to the world's 10,000 most important biomedical scientists," Trainer said. "So I'm not the kind of gnat they want at the briefings. I might eat too many of their donuts."

Next, Trainer tried to use contacts at The Washington Post and The New York Times to get a White House correspondent to ask the question for him.

"I couldn't get anywhere. I've got lots of contacts at both papers, but they all said to me, they said, 'Ellie, it's only $930,000 million. No big deal."

Trainer said he's now busily working his scientist contacts deep within the bowels of the NIH looking for someone who knows anything about junk food amelioration.

"I get an interesting reaction when I tell them about this new Institute," he said. "Some think it's a plot by the junk food industry to further subvert the American diet. Others say it sounds like a good idea. Take healthy food and conceal it so that people think they're eating junk food and that way you get them to eat healthy food.

"I suppose that's what they mean when they call this the Nanny Administration."

Copyright 2003-2004 William Stockton & Smithtown Creek Productions
All Rights Reserved
satire | humor | comedy | parody | satirical headlines