Hi and welcome to the your good news podcast with me your host, Katherine Getty. Each Thursday, I'll give you the scoop on the good news coming out of Washington, and how you can get involved with this thing called democracy. Welcome back to another episode of The your good news podcast. Let's kick this episode off with an update on the Food and Drug Administration, also known as the FDA. At a basic level, the US FDA is responsible for protecting public health by assuring the safety of foods protecting the public from electronic product radiation, assuring cosmetics and supplements are safe regulating tobacco products and advancing the public health by helping speed product innovations. And that last piece has been a key feature of what we've heard over the last couple years related to COVID. Ensuring vaccines, therapeutics and other products were safe and efficacious. And that they were helping speed up those product innovations. So as a portion of supporting the FDA, there's what's called a user fee product, which was created nearly 30 years ago and the first law that authorized the FDA to collect fees from drug manufacturers, it was basically to ensure they could expedite the review of new prescription drug applications since then, additional user fee programs for other human medical products. So medical devices, biosimilars, generic drugs, and animal medical products, generic veterinary drugs brand as well have also been authorized. And these programs are a big way of how the FDA funds itself. So started nearly 30 years ago, and Congress has reauthorized the user fee programs every five years since their enactment and will be charged with doing the same this year. And so over this year, and even really before that, there has been a lot of buzz on how are they going to change the user fee agreements? Are they going to change some regulatory framework? Are there going to be some more guardrails on cosmetics, and I referenced this earlier, failure to reauthorize these programs could mean that 80% of the agency's budget would go away for personnel. So that would cause massive layoffs, who review new drug and device submissions before they can be legally marketed and monitor such products? safety in mind. So a lot of that personnel could go away if they don't reauthorize so. I nervously laugh because with anything in Congress, there are some hitches and well hopes of a larger package, like I said, of creating some new regulatory framework or working on some of the pieces that over the last five years they've been like, Okay, well, that hasn't really been working for that public private partnership piece. How do we fix it? But unfortunately, or fortunately, it was announced last week that the FDA user fee agreement would be clean. And if you ever hear the word clean, that tends to mean that the same policy as before, with little to no changes will be enacted again. So this term is often used when we're talking about funding mechanisms. So you think, Okay, tomorrow will be September 30, if you're listening in real time, and it is pretty likely, as I record this, that it will be a clean CR. So straight funding levels. And why this is important as it relates to the FDA user fee agreements as given it's an election year, it also is becoming clearer. It is the same policies the same way it's been done. And it's kind of sad that it's taken until the last minute. Typically, this is a pretty bipartisan place where members on both sides can come to an agreement. But unfortunately, there weren't, and there won't be a lot of changes. And I think it's always important to understand kind of some of these little known programs or things that really do impact the average American and so that's why I wanted to share with you a little bit of an update on the FDA user fee agreements.
All right to the heart of the episode campaign finance 101. I will be the first to admit that money in politics these days is pretty eye opening, to say the least. In 2020, there was an estimated $14 billion raised and spent on federal office races. So that's presidential house and Senate races. That's a lot of money that could be spent on other things and I get that But the point of this podcast is to PLLA to give you a one on one, so to speak of the campaign finance world as it sits today. So the Federal Election Commission is an independent regulatory agency in the US whose purpose is to enforce campaign law in the United States. I raised them because they get to decide the limits for campaign finance, and that the beginning of each cycle. So in 2023, they'll make some decisions for that presidential cycle, which will end in 2024. So at the beginning of each cycle, they get to inflation adjust campaign limits, this really only applies to personal giving. So you will notice that each year personal giving, will raise a little bit, it does not affect political action committee giving. So you can't give more than 5000 to an election, it hasn't changed since the 70s. Personal giving ranks from low dollar, so $1 a year to any campaign. But it then maxes out at $2,800. In election, personal giving has garnered, I would say more interest in the last few years, given this low dollar, giving the mechanisms were online. For Democrats, it's act blue for Republicans, it's when Red, you've really seen more interest in giving that way. In the past, it would have probably been people are giving via checks, people are giving via political action committee, so
personal checks, political action committee checks, wire transfers, this online giving has really picked up and I will say Democrats are really the first to adopt this and take this in as a part of their fundraising strategy. You also used to see mail in giving. So there's also still checks. But I do like to reference mailers, because we still get them but you don't give as much via that that mechanism. So personal giving ranks from a low dollar $1 a year to someone that gives a max contribution of 20 $100 a year. And personal giving has definitely garnered more interest in the last few years with the evolution of act flew for Democrats. And when ride for Republicans, which really opened up the idea of folks giving online. These platforms provide an opportunity for you to give to a plethora of candidates, it really unlocks more of that national giving for even House members where in the past, it probably would have been a lot more money would be raised in Senate or presidential races. And I think that tends to hold true. But you'll have seen with the advent of giving online, there is more money and House races. And that trend really started in I would say the 2014 really kicked into the 2016 cycle. And you'll see that kind of personal giving at that low dollar amount has really changed the way giving is done. So that's personal giving, then there's PAC contributions. So a political action committee, otherwise known as a PAC is one of the most American institutions. It was created in 1941. As a way for a group of people to give to a single candidate. The function of a political action committee is to raise and sit spend money on behalf of a candidate or candidates for elected office at local, state and federal levels. And PACs can be created on behalf of an issue. It can be created on behalf of a company. And it really is and can be a powerful way to get involved when you can't always get to Washington, it basically creates a collective giving mechanism where you're giving can be all aggregated together and then given to a single candidate. I will say PACs are some of the most transparent money and they often get confused with Super PACs, which we will talk about next. Super PACs is you'll hear dark money or special interests and a Super PAC are typically associations or large groups of committee getting together. So think House Majority PAC is a good example. That's more affiliated with House Democrats, or you'll have something like the NRA will get involved in races and they can give it gives us unlimited amounts of money. This happens on the Republican side as well as the Democratic side. I like to call balls and strikes. I think super PAC money is something I still don't know how I personally feel about because there isn't a transparency piece with it. And as someone who's been involved with political action committees, you know, you kind of get It lumped in with Super PACs when political action committees. So, insert company has a political action committee, or insert union has a political action committee. It really gives those folks like I said, an opportunity to give money for candidates they support, but someone else is going to be able to give it out to them and make that bang for the buck. So I wanted to kind of break down these different mechanisms of giving. And I would love to hear feedback on questions you have or things that you think maybe I could delve into further, but I wanted to scratch the surface of campaign finance, you know, there's the personal giving, that you give directly to candidates. There's political action committee giving, which can be company or issue base where you are giving to a PAC that then gives out money. And then there's also super PACs where you see, you know, there are unlimited amounts of money that are going into these and they're more issue based. These are a few of the ways that we fund campaign finance. There are some cities that will do will give candidates a small amount of money. And that is definitely something you'll see kind of cities kind of trying to grapple with of there is so much money in politics,
how do we combat it if we give a limit or a small amount of money? I think it'll be interesting to unwind this money trap that we have now created, but I think getting money out of politics is I'm not gonna say couldn't be done. I think it's like Pandora's box. We have opened it and how do we I would argue maybe there's a better way to create transparency, there's a better way to put card whales there's a better way to ensure people understand where the money is coming from versus vilifying one of the sections or vilifying one of the mechanisms. I hope you have enjoyed this, you know little campaign finance one on one and learning a little bit more about the FDA user fee agreements that should be passing tomorrow, or in the next coming days. Thank you again for joining today's episode of the Oregon news podcast. If you haven't already, go ahead, hit subscribe. So that weekly episode will be in where you stream podcasts on Thursdays. Also leave a review, share with someone you know and reach out to me like I said, give me feedback on what you'd like to hear more of. I am on Instagram. My handle is at Katherine Getty. And as always tune in next week for another episode of The your good news podcast.
