Bipartisan Agreement On FDA Funding?

by Stuart Shapiro

Well actually it is a bipartisan interest group agreement, not bipartisan agreement on Capitol Hill.  A new report from the Alliance for a Stronger FDA advocates strengthening the long-beleaguered agency.  The Alliance includes trade associations, individual firms, and advocates for patients and consumers.  The take-home line from the report:

The FDA’s mission is to ensure that the products it regulates are safe, effective, and properly made. Notably, the industries that the FDA regulates—unlike industries regulated by other federal agencies—have called for a stronger, more robust regulatory agency.

The industries regulated by the FDA depend upon an agency with strong scientific and regulatory capacity that can provide clear, timely, consistent and reliable science-based guidance. A vibrant, effective regulatory system at the FDA is a key contributor to the viability and success of the FDA-regulated industries — and ultimately to our nation’s economic success.

Firms argue that a regulator vouching for the safety of products is important in the global marketplace.  In cases where the products are necessities like food and medicine, this is particularly true.  Now will this point of view, which includes the slightest bit of nuance, permeate through the skulls of those bent on defunding all regulatory agencies?  Depends how thick the skulls are.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.