HOLLOW GOVERNMENT: RESOURCE CONSTRAINTS AND WORKLOAD EXPANSION AT FDA

It may be true that the “era of big government is over,”[1] but new problems have replaced big government in its wake. The size of government agencies’ staffs and budgets have shrunk to respond to public perceptions of waste and bloat, but the public continues to expect a high level of services from the government. It seems that Americans expect more from government than they have invested in it.[2] As Rudolph G. Penner, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, trenchantly asked, “The question is, are taxpayers able to reconcile what they have come to expect from government during the past 50 years with any willingness to pay for it?”[3]

As agencies’ responsibilities have expanded and their resources have remained stagnant, they have been forced to limit—and in some cases even ignore—actions they are legally bound to carry out.[4] Public administrators, Washington observers, and political scientists have dubbed this new syndrome “hollow government.”[5] Today, the symptoms of hollow government are widespread in federal agencies, particularly those with regulatory responsibilities such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Indeed, FDA provides an instructive case study of hollow government.[6] FDA regulates products that account for 25 percent of the consumer dollars spent in the United States, and it oversees almost a third of the products in US markets.[7] Furthermore, the markets FDA regulates have exploded in size and complexity over the past twenty years. For example, the number of FDA-regulated shipments of imports entering the United States increased more than six-fold, from less than 1 million in 1979 to nearly 6 million today. Since 1990, public and private sector drug research expenditures have grown seven-fold, from less than $5 billion to $35 billion, leading to a 54 percent hike in annual new drug approvals during the 1990s.[8] See Figure 1.