By now, we all know President Bush's recent changes to the regulatory process will further bottleneck federal regulatory policy in an attempt to help regulated industries escape new obligations. Specifically, changes regarding agency guidance documents will force those interpretive memos (often only suggestions) through a burdensome and unnecessary White House review process.

Yesterday, the Senate attached by a voice vote a drug importation amendment to the PDUFA reauthorization/FDA reform bill moving through the chamber. However, the amendment passed with its own amendment (called a second-degree amendment) which requires the Department of Health and Human Services to certify the safety and cost-effectiveness of all imported drugs.

FedTimes on appropriations... Capitol Hill watchers caution agency leaders to expect more hearings, more scrutiny, less predictability and longer wait times for their 2008 budgets. "The one thing that is clear is that departments and agencies are going to be held much more accountable and forced to disclose a lot of information that they haven't previously disclosed, and they are going to be punished if they don't disclose," said Scott Lilly, a senior fellow with the Center for American Progress.

Responding to the new CAP anti-poverty plan, the folks at Inclusionist.org have started up an interesting debate on how to talk about, think about, and address poverty. This post should get you caught up. Call me a kool-aid drinker, but I'm taken in by the Inclusionist people. I like the way they think, perhaps more so than the way they name things. I mean, the term "inclusion" just sounds too social, when we're really talking about pocketbook, security, and opportunity issues. Their work's cut out for them on that front, if they ever want the term and their definition of it to become mainstream.