Obama Acknowledges Need for FDA Reform

During a recent presidential panel on jobs and competitiveness last week, President Obama said it was a goal of his administration to modernizing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The President said the agency not prepared to handle emerging 21st century challenges in regulating food, drugs and devices.

“I’ve gotten a lot of commentary about the fact that … essentially their model was designed for the kind of medical devices you see in museums,” said Obama, according to the Financial Times.”So that would be an area where we should be getting a group to think strategically about how … [we design] these regulatory bodies so that they are up to speed and more responsive to a dynamic economy.”

The White House is continuing a push to reexamine and reform burdensome federal regulations in an effort to boost American job creation.

The administration isn’t just paying FDAreform lip service. In its fiscal year 2012 budget, the White House proposed a 33 percent increase in the FDA’s budget to $4.3 billion at a time when most agency budgets have been held steady to respond to concerns about budget deficits.