News Spotlight

New Report Highlights Importance of Funding for Agencies that Promote Public Health and Safety 

A new report released by OMB Watch, Safeguarding the Public's Health and Safety: The President's FY 2013 Public Protections Funding Requests, analyzes the parts of the president's FY 2013 budget request that support the agencies and programs crucial to protecting America’s public health and safety.

The report finds that the Obama administration has made an admirable effort to maintain the programs that protect product safety, food safety, workplace safety, clean water, clean air, and clean land and that mitigate environmental damage.  The FY 2013 budget request actually proposes very modest increases to four of the 11 program areas the organization examined (consumer product safety oversight, clean water and clean air programs, and compliance with health and safety standards).

Besides a proposed six percent increase in the budget of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the president proposes to use industry user fees to significantly increase the funds available to monitor and improve food safety and drug and medical device safety. Other public protections programs were essentially at the same level of funding as in FY 2012.  The exception was workplace safety, which saw a $43 million reduction in the request for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

Katherine McFate, president of OMB Watch, said, "Overall, the president's budget upholds the importance of providing agencies with the resources they need to protect the public, even in the face of the spending cuts required by last summer's debt ceiling deal.  OMB Watch hopes this public protections budget will be maintained as the process moves to the House and Senate. America is still the richest country in the world; we can afford to be the safest."

Read more analysis here.

Read the full report here.