Statement on the Food & Drug Administration and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission

The Administration has requested a 5 percent increase ($168 million above the FY24 enacted level) for the Food & Drug Administration. The total FDA budget request is for $7.2 billion of which $3.682 billion would come from funds appropriated by Congress, with the remaining $3.5 billion from user fees. While we appreciate the Administration acting to increase the resources of FDA, NTEU believes this request falls approximately $250 million short of what is needed for the agency to fulfil its mission. We ask that the Subcommittee provide this additional amount.

The FDA workload is constantly growing and must keep up as private sector growth continues in medical, pharmaceutical, veterinary and food production marketing. Underfunding FDA means holding back the innovations of the private sector in these critical and necessary products. That is not in the interests of the health and safety of the American public.

FDA is a staff-intensive organization, with more than 80 percent of its budget devoted to personnel costs. FDA employees are among the most highly skilled and dedicated employees in the public or private sector and the agency needs to be able to recruit and retain skilled scientists, inspectors, chemists and other professionals. FDA certainly does not match the superior pay offered by the private sector, where these skills are very much in demand, but it does have a workforce committed to public service and public health. However, after years of neglect, FDA is in a workforce crisis. A vast number of critical positions are unfilled due to budgetary constraints and FDA’s inability to offer competitive compensation and benefits.

As we have told the Members of this Committee before, FDA has a hiring and retention crisis. FDA has a turnover rate two times the government-wide average and 70 percent of FDA staff are eligible to retire. According to a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, the crafts with the greatest pay and benefits differential from the private sector are scientists, physicians and regulatory attorneys. More broadly, there are hiring and retention problems with the professional and technical staff as well as those who work in medical product review and in FDA’s foreign inspection program. Failure to overcome this staffing crisis will mean a failure in the mission of FDA.

NTEU applauds the steps FDA has been taking to try to address this crisis. In listening to the employees at FDA, we find that the most effective initiatives are improved student loan repayment benefits, an expanded child care subsidy and telework. These initiatives can help retain skilled professionals while attracting new employees to service at FDA. Assuming robust implementation, these initiatives will achieve important strides in addressing the staffing crisis. We believe that the President’s budget submission includes the resources needed to at least partially implement these initiatives. However, $115 million of the increase is needed simply to provide cost of living increases to existing staff. Without this funding, FDA will be forced to furlough or RIF employees.

In addition, each of these initiatives also create cost savings that help to mitigate their costs, particularly in decreasing new employee training. Telework and remote work provide the greatest opportunity for recruiting and retaining the best employees. While not all positions at FDA lend themselves to telework – chemists need to be in their laboratories and inspectors have always worked remotely as they move from facility to facility for their inspections – those who analyze text rather than substances or perform administrative or grants management tasks have jobs that are well suited for telework. In the coming years, FDA should re-evaluate the amount of space it leases at taxpayer expense and significantly reduce its footprint, saving tens of millions of dollars. Further savings are likely to be achieved when full time remote workers re-locate away from the FDA offices which are often in urban areas with higher federal locality pay than rural and small town areas where the employee accepts a lower locality pay while at the same time bringing jobs and their paychecks to rural and small town America.
Beyond these broader staffing issues, I want to point out three areas where FDA needs additional attention: overseas inspections, diversity and user fees.
Among the least desirable tasks of FDA Consumer Safety Officers (CSO) is carrying out overseas inspections. It has been very difficult to fully staff these positions even though it is essential that overseas pharmaceutical, medical and food producers be held to the same high standards that domestic firms are held to. To hold importers to a more lenient standard than American producers not only harms the heath and food safety of American consumers, it is also unfair to American businesses.

Let me be clear. These inspection trips are not a vacation. They are typically three or two week trips overseas visiting multiple facilities in remote industrial zones in countries like China. All Grade 12 or above CSOs are required to be available for these inspections. It is hard work, where inspectors spend this time away from their families in a foreign country where both the facility and the government may be less than welcoming and not committed to the transparency the inspector seeks. Employees also have concerns about their personal safety. FDA needs additional funding to make these jobs more desirable. NTEU supports new funding for bonuses for inspectors and reduction of trips from three weeks to two weeks. Congress should also fund positions at FDA to serve as translators for the inspectors. Currently, the translators are provided by the facility or maybe even the Chinese government. While this has been a much criticized arrangement, to date, Congress has not provided the needed funding for FDA to hire its own translators. Despite significant efforts by NTEU and others, no progress has been made on our request to provide funding to ensure that there be translators at inspections in China who work for the FDA rather than the company or the Chinese Communist Party. This cannot be allowed to continue.

Recruiting and retaining the best and most highly skilled employees is not just a matter of compensation and worklife issues and we have called on FDA management to better recruit from parts of our society that have not been well included in the FDA staff. In our call for improved diversity, equity and inclusion at FDA, this year, I would like to particularly highlight the missed potential of many high skilled military veterans. The Department of Health & Human Services, of which FDA is part, has one of the lowest percentages of military veterans on staff of any federal agency. HHS is at 8 percent while 30 percent of federal civilian employees overall are veterans. NTEU believes that while FDA suffers significant staffing shortages, there are significant numbers of qualified veterans who would make superior employees at FDA. More robust affirmative steps should be taken to notify veterans of employment opportunities at FDA, recruit them and retain them.

Lastly, in finding resources to fund FDA, we would encourage Congress to consider additional revenue through user fees, specifically a user fee on e-cigarettes and vaping products. Currently, while FDA work on leaf tobacco products are funded by a user fees, the American taxpayer carries the burden for these other nicotine products.

Commodity Futures Trading Commission

NTEU is proud to also represent the employees at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Every day, the work the CFTC does to protect consumers in the marketplace grows more complex. Having a vigorous free market requires that the “cops” detailed to that “beat” have the resources necessary to police the ever-growing marketplace and the advancing technological developments that enable both market expansion and market fraud.
For the CFTC, NTEU asks for any appropriation of at least $411 million, $12 million above the President’s request and level with FY24. This is extremely modest and less than this amount would leave the market open to fraud and deceit. I would note that in FY 2023, the CFTC obtained orders imposing over $4.3 billion in restitution, disgorgement and civil monetary penalties, more than ten times over the FY 2023 budget.

NTEU supports CFTC to be fully funded by an industry such as with the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC). Fee funding brings a needed stability and predictability to these investor protecting agencies and reduces the federal deficit.

Thank you for your consideration. NTEU appreciates the opportunity to present this statement.