Funding for the Food and Drug Administration is dangerously low, says a new report by three FDA advisors. Barbara J. McNeil, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School and one of the report's authors, said she was stunned at the agency's sorry state. "This was the first time that a group of people got together and really looked at all the areas that the F.D.A. has to cover," Dr. McNeil said. "We were shocked at the scope of its responsibilities, we were shocked at how little its resources have increased, and we were surprised at the conditions those in the F.D.A. had to work under." Resource mismanagement may have made the E. coli scare earlier this year even worse. The report notes that the agency's computer systems are aging and prone to breakdowns, "most recently during an E. coli food contamination investigation." "Reports of product dangers are not rapidly compared and analyzed, inspectors' reports are still handwritten and slow to work their way through the compliance system, and the system for managing imported products cannot communicate with customs and other government systems," the report stated. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, is demanding answers. The report also comes on the heels of another report finding that inadequate funding reduced the capacity of the Mine Safety and Health Administation (MSHA), which probably contributed to the spate of recent mine distasters. An underfunded Consumer Product Safety Commission is catching flak for the same thing. The promise of conservative, small government ideology is not being borne out. Indeed, it has made everything much worse. It feels like just a matter of time before the next underfunded agency fouls up something, which is pretty scary.