How many times have you heard senior officials in Washington say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it? So they do nothing.
But what if it is broken? So busted up that it's actually dangerous?
The U.S. Government Accountability Office, which is the investigative arm of Congress, doesn't take folksy clichés for an answer.
To make sure policymakers don't neglect critical government functions that are falling into near-terminal disrepair, GAO maintains a list of "high risk" government operations that involve, among other things, public health and safety, national security, economic stability or vast sums of money. Over the years, GAO's fix-it list has included agencies that permitted the savings and loan crisis of the early 1990s, air traffic control modernization, defense and aerospace procurement, the Medicare and Medicaid programs, pension protections and homeland security.
Last week, GAO added three new urgent priorities to the list, which now totals 30:
- Modernizing the U.S. financial regulatory system.
- Improving the federal Food and Drug Administration's ability to assure the safety and effectiveness of drugs and medical devices;
- Transforming the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to prevent toxic chemicals from causing human illness and environmental damage.
It's sobering to see the toxic chemicals problem sharing equal billing with the global economic meltdown. GAO's bill of particulars, laid out in a 99-page report, is chilling:
- EPA has assessed the risk of just 9 assessments of chemicals that could have serious impacts on human health.
- EPA's backlog of 70 assessments has hardly budged in years. Some chemicals were under study as long as 9 years. Well more than half the agency's 540 assessment may be outdated.
Here's a disturbing set of facts: what year did the federal government's Report on Carcinogens first list dioxin as a suspected human carcinogen? 1981. What year did the report upgrade that classification to known human carcinogen? 2001.
What year does EPA expect to wind up its assessment of dioxin? 2015-2017, according to GAO.
GAO blamed interference from the Bush White House for some crucial delays. Others, it said, were caused by EPA managers - who, at the highest level, are White House political appointees.
The Obama administration is expected to be far more aggressive in regulating toxic chemicals. But GAO says that it will need better tools: the Toxic Substances Control Act won't be up to the job.
That was clear from the moment it was enacted -- in 1976, to be precise. That's why the Environmental Working Group and other health and consumer groups are working for passage of the Kid-Safe Chemicals Act, introduced in the previous Congressional session by Sen Frank Lautenberg, D-NJ and Rep. Henry Waxman, D-CA, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce committee. Current law places the burden of proof on EPA to prove an industrial chemical is not safe. Consequently, some 80,000 chemicals have never been tested for safety.
The Kid-Safe act, expected to be reintroduced in coming months, would put the burden on chemical companies to show their products are safe before they are placed on the market. And the companies, not the taxpayers, would pay for testing. Until somebody does something major, GAO said, "the nation lacks assurance that human health and the environment are adequately protected."
In other words - fix it!