House primes for FDA budget boost
The House is setting the stage for Congress to give FDA the spending boost that President Donald Trump was seeking. The House Appropriations Committee's subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies released a bill Tuesday calling for a more than $300 million increase in FDA's FY19 budget over FY18.
Trump's FY19 budget request proposed increasing the agency's budget by $473 million, the largest budget authority appropriation increase in absolute dollars ever proposed for the agency, according to the Alliance for a Stronger FDA. Trump's proposal emphasized an increasing investment in regulatory capacity for medical device and pharmaceutical manufacturing, as well as digital health technologies (see BioCentury Extra, Feb. 12)...