Advocacy at a Glance
Advocacy at a Glance offers you the bullet point summary of current advocacy issues associated with the goals of the Alliance for a Stronger FDA.
- Wishing Everyone a Happy and Healthy New Year.
- Recapping a Busy December:
- FY 17 Continuing Resolution to Run Through April 28, 2017. As we have noted previously, a half-year CR (or longer) is not a favorable outcome for FDA or any other federal agency with growing responsibilities that can’t be met with the prior year’s budget. Among other things, a long-term CR makes it difficult to plan, risky to make hires with budget authority funds, and generally slows new, non-emergency initiatives. More details on the CR can be found in this summary. The CR also contains the first $20 million of funding for FDA to implement the 21st Century Cures legislation.
- Cures Signed by President, Becomes Law. After a 2-year effort to reach bipartisan agreement, 21st Century Cures became law on December 13. For a fuller description of the monies available to FDA under the new law, please click here. For the advocacy challenge that we face as a result of Cures, please click here. The authorizing committees went to considerable lengths to assure that FDA’s new responsibilities would be funded and for this we are grateful. However, there is no victory if the new monies offset existing appropriations rather than being additive to the agency’s budget.
- Initially, New Administrations Bring Uncertainty. The FDA stakeholder community is watching as the Trump Administration takes shape, wondering what is in store for the agency in 2017. That uncertainty will have dissipated by next Spring when personnel, policies, priorities, and programs are in place. Meantime, the Alliance’s job is to make sure that both the new Administration and the new Congress hear about what the FDA does, why it is important, and how additional resources are needed for it to run well. This week’s Analysis and Commentary looks at the importance of the agency having a permanent, confirmed Commissioner.
- Administrative Item -– Dues Payments. In December, we sent a 2017 dues invoice to the primary contact of each Alliance member. Please let us know if you did not receive one. To the extent you can put it into processing as early as possible, we greatly appreciate it.