Editorials/Hearing Things/Strange Devices
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
STRANGE DEVICES What passes for the Current Wisdom in the Democratic Party is now undergoing a subtle and unforeseen metamorphosis. Ever since the reign of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Democratic...
...Finally, the increased menace of lawsuits will stifle product innovation...
...Our recent foreign policy was unnecessary...
...At once they stand with Senator Mitchell and say presidential government does not matter...
...I shall leave the Device Enforcement aspects of this matter for later discussion when children are not present...
...Now no less a Democratic eminence than Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell is telling us government policy does not matter...
...And even if Jimmy Carter had been reelected and been followed by Walter Mondale, something like what we have seen probably would have happened...
...Congressman Waxman is now ushering through Congress a colossal pow8 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1991 er grab, felicitously named the "Food, Drug, Cosmetic, and Device Enforcement Amendments of 1991...
...It invites further politicization of the economy, for now interested groups can get their way not by competing in the marketplace but by bringing political pressure to bear on a government agency...
...The FDA would be able to recall products and embargo them for weeks without hearings or a right of appeal...
...Senator Mitchell believes government policy has not mattered...
...Unfortunately, Senator Mitchell's skepticism of government policy is not shared by all Democrats...
...The act's very existence demonstrates the schizophrenia of the Democrats...
...Hence we can reduce our nuclear force and our strategic readiness...
...I am not certain what "devices" Congressman Waxman has in mind, but this is a disquieting term, especially in light of the power Congressman Waxman's bill would invest in his favorite governmental agency, the Federal Food and Drug Administration...
...but the increased regulations will cost us all a bundle, and only God knows what this legislation will mean for "Device Enforcement...
...Lawyers defending them will prosper handsomely...
...Amongst the Republic's intelligentsia the fashionable explanation for the collapse of the Soviet Union is not that the American arms race bankrupted the Soviets but that they were undone by their system's own "internal contradictions...
...President George Bush believes that America's Cold War foreign policy of Containment, fortified in the 1980s by the Reagan arms buildup, finally broke the resolve of Soviet Communism and led to a relaxation of hostilities between the Soviet Union and the West...
...A few weeks back, responding to the President's historic speech, Senator Mitchell asserted that the disarmament proceedings could have begun nine years ago when his fellow Democrat, Senator Albert Gore, presented a marvelously irenic disarmament proposal...
...It invites corruption, as all government regulations invite corruption—note the S&L scandals...
...There are still many, such as California congressman Henry Waxman, who believe government policy essential to human happiness...
...Then again they stand with Congressman Waxman and say the government will improve us...
...What Congressman Waxman's bill will mean for entrepreneurs and consumers can only be imagined...
...and it would impose stupendous penalties...
...Ever since the reign of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Democratic Party has favored government action over laissez-faire...
...Surely the world would be a safer place if the Democrats observed laissez-faire at home and allowed our government to wield power abroad...
...This power grab is true folly...
...As Strobe Talbott, Time magazines very au courant Sovietologist, said recently on the television show "Inside Washington": "The Cold War ended . . . because of internal contradictions and pressure within the Soviet Union...
...His act willallow warrantless electronic surveillance of companies under the FDA's vast purview (which includes approximately 25 percent of the Gross National Product...
...Perhaps Senator Mitchell will come out for a deficit reduction bill that simply shuts down the State Department and the Pentagon too...
...Recent experience proves as much, but then the Democrats have been remote from recent experience, haven't they...
...That agency now has more power to terrify the corner grocer or pharmacist than the Drug Enforcement Administration has to apprehend cocaine peddlers...
...All company records—including trade secrets and product formulations—would be exposed to FDA inspectors...
...Over vast sectors of the American economy the FDA would be able to act as policeman and prosecutor, judge and jury...
Vol. 24 • December 1991 • No. 12
