Citing unprecedented future demands on the Food & Drug Administration, a group of five Democrats in the House and Senate sent an open letter to U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius, urging her to boost the Food & Drug Administration’s budget for 2012.
“After years of inadequate budgets, FDA finally received real increases in fiscal years 2008, 2009, and 2010, which enabled FDA to restore the staffing losses incurred since the early 1990s,” the legislators wrote. “However, the FY 2011 budget for FDA barely kept up with inflation, and the agency is faced with far more problems and challenges than it had in 1994.”
The Aug. 4 letter was signed by Reps. Harry Waxman (D-Calif.), John Dingell (D-Mich.), Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa).
Citing a myriad of recent FDA headlines, such as a heparin contamination episode in 2009 and a series of damaging news reports about the agency’s handling of its affairs, the group wrote that the federal watchdog has been “reduced to management by crisis” and is in danger of being perceived as a “failed agency” by the American public.
The delegation pushed Sebelius to do everything in her power to curb that perception by making sure the agency was adequately funded to meet its mandate.
Sebelius asked for a 23 percent increase to the FDA’s 2011 budget in February, to $4.03 billion.
