Panel’s Bipartisan View: FDA Is Underfinanced

WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration needs far more money than the White House has proposed for next year, senators of both parties said Tuesday.

“To us, it’s clear that they’re seriously underfunded,” Senator Herb Kohl, Democrat of Wisconsin, said after a hearing of the Appropriations subcommittee, headed by Mr. Kohl, that oversees the agency’s spending.

The subcommittee’s ranking minority member, Senator Robert F. Bennett, Republican of Utah, agreed with Mr. Kohl and tried at the hearing to get the food and drug commissioner, Dr. Andrew C. von Eschenbach, to say how much more the agency could use wisely.
If lawmakers decide that the White House “was wrong and you needed to add another $100 million, just to pull a number completely out of the air, could you handle that?” Mr. Bennett asked.

Dr. von Eschenbach said he would “welcome an opportunity to present a scenario of portfolio options” for levels of financing.

The Senate passed a budget resolution last month that would make the F.D.A.’s allocated budget — that part of its spending that comes from taxpayer revenue, as opposed to user fees paid by drug and medical device manufacturers — $375 million greater in 2009 than this year. That would be a 20 percent increase, and Dr. von Eschenbach said he did not believe that the agency could absorb so large an addition in one year.

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