In New Report, OMB Watch Highlights Importance of Funding for Agencies that Promote Public Health and Safety

PRESS RELEASE
-For Immediate Release-
February 17, 2012

Contact: Brian Gumm, (202) 683-4812, bgumm@ombwatch.org

In New Report, OMB Watch Highlights Importance of Funding for Agencies that Promote Public Health and Safety

WASHINGTON, Feb. 17, 2012—Today, OMB Watch released a new report, Safeguarding the Public's Health and Safety: The President's FY 2013 Public Protections Funding Requests, that analyzes the parts of the president's FY 2013 budget request that support the agencies and programs crucial to protecting America’s public health and safety.

In Safeguarding the Public's Health and Safety, OMB Watch finds that the Obama administration has made an admirable effort to maintain the programs that protect product safety, food safety, workplace safety, clean water, clean air, and clean land and that mitigate environmental damage. The FY 2013 budget request actually proposes very modest increases to four of the 11 program areas the organization examined (consumer product safety oversight, clean water and clean air programs, and compliance with health and safety standards). Besides a proposed six percent increase in the budget of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the president proposes to use industry user fees to significantly increase the funds available to monitor and improve food safety and drug and medical device safety. Other public protections programs were essentially at the same level of funding as in FY 2012. The exception was workplace safety, which saw a $43 million reduction in the request for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

Katherine McFate, president of OMB Watch, said, "Overall, the president's budget upholds the importance of providing agencies with the resources they need to protect the public, even in the face of the spending cuts required by last summer's debt ceiling deal. OMB Watch hopes this public protections budget will be maintained as the process moves to the House and Senate. America is still the richest country in the world; we can afford to be the safest."

The full text of Safeguarding the Public's Health and Safety is available at http://www.ombwatch.org/publicprotectionsbudget.

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OMB Watch is a nonprofit research and advocacy organization dedicated to promoting government accountability and effectiveness and increasing citizen engagement. Find OMB Watch on Facebook and Twitter.

 

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