President Obama Vs. The FDA

by Stuart Shapiro

The New York Times ran a front page story yesterday on the numerous conflicts between the White House and the Food and Drug Administration.  The Bush Administration had regularly overruled the FDA but the agency thought things would be different under President Obama.  But apparently the FDA hasn’t been paying attention for the last several decades.

The administration also views the agency’s hostility to its oversight as hopelessly naïve, given a 24-hour news cycle and a ferocious political environment that punishes any misstep.

“They want a world that doesn’t exist anymore,” an administration official said.

Rightly or wrongly the President gets blamed or gets credit for everything that every agency of the executive branch does (see Solyndra).  That’s why every President, Democrat and Republican, has tried to exercise stricter control over those agencies. And  there is nothing that Margaret Hamburg (head of the FDA — pictured) can do to stop that.

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.