Foxes in the henhouse, blood on the floor

Don't miss "Erasing the Rules," the excellent series in Newsday on the Bush administration regulatory record. On the matter of appointments to federal agency offices: the Bush administration has imposed not just ideological litmus tests but also has expressed an unwavering favoritism towards industry representatives. Whereas Clinton's appointees with business backgrounds typically came from industry sectors that did not pose a conflict with regulatory imperatives, the Bush II administration has chosen representatives who came from the very industries that the agencies are directed to regulate: Bush tapped nearly half, 47 percent, of his top 400 Senate-confirmed political appointees to cabinet agencies from corporations, business consulting firms, or law and lobbying firms, a Newsday analysis found. That contrasts with President Bill Clinton, who turned to people with business backgrounds to fill just a third, 34 percent, of his 405 Senate-confirmed political appointees to cabinet agencies during his first three years in office. But there is even a difference among the type of business people each of the presidents brought into their administrations, the analysis found, a difference that experts say had an effect on the Clinton and Bush policies, particularly on regulatory policy. "The Clinton administration had a preference for Silicon Valley types, and investment bankers," said Light. Those firms faced little government oversight and so did not push Clinton to ease regulation. Bush appointed more executives from the traditional hard industries -- manufacturers, defense contractors, oil and gas utilities, Light said. "They do represent a set of industries that are heavily regulated," he said, and they would be more interested in reducing regulation. Case in point: the Food and Drug Administration. The second article in the five-part series is out today, focusing on the FDA and, in particular, Daniel Troy, chief counsel for the agency. In private practice, Troy litigated against the FDA, helping win the Supreme Court decision holding that FDA could not regulate tobacco products. At the FDA, Troy has been filing briefs in support of industry to help shield industry from accountability. Now the dots become easier to connect: all the effort at the FDA to suppress scientific information about the dangers of certain drugs makes sense, because Troy has been arguing in court that the FDA's stamp of approval should preclude the courts from holding drug companies liable. We have been hearing that FDA squelched science on the increased risk of suicidality in teens using antidepressants; what we have heard less of is that, at the FDA, Troy filed briefs helping Pfizer win a court decision shielding it from liability for failing to include increased risk of suicide on the warning label for its antidepressant Zoloft. Check out the series before the links expire!
  • Tom Brune, "Many agencies headed by industry veterans who are watering down regulation," Newsday, Oct. 10, 2004, at A5.
  • Tom Brune, "Staffing from the Right," id.
  • Thomas Frank, "Friends on the Inside: Bush-appointed administrators at the FDA have consistently sided with the interests of business," Newsday, Oct. 11, 2004
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