President Barack Obama is asking Congress to boost the Food and Drug Administration’s annual budget by an additional $300 million, or 14 percent, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Obama’s budget calls for the FDA to get $2.35 billion for fiscal year 2010, compared with $2.06 billion in the previous fiscal year. It’s the first year the agency’s budget hasn’t been flat or reduced since the mid-1990s and its largest increase ever, an unnamed FDA source told the business journal.
If Congress approves the numbers, FDA’s devices and radiological products office, which oversees the medical device approval process, would go from a budget of $238 million this year to an estimated $281 million next year and $315 million in 2010, according to the Journal‘s Health Blog — increases of 18 percent and 12 percent, respectively.
The agency’s food safety office would see a nearly 28 percent increase next year, from $508 million to $649 million, while its drugs arm would get an extra $108 million, 18 percent increase. The National Center for Toxicological Research’s $44 million budget would rise to $52 million, also an 18 percent boost.
All that would bring the FDA’s staffing back to 1994 levels, before flat or reduced budgets kicked in, and doesn’t include about $1 billion in user fees from device and drug makers for product reviews and facilities inspections.