Bush sabotaged regulators

Mr. Dave Stevens wrote a letter Feb. 28 saying that the FDA and USDA have failed to keep us safe and that because of that, it shows that government regulation is ineffective. What he fails to realize is that President Bush slashed their budgets in his successful efforts to destroy the efficacy of government regulation just as he shrank and politicized FEMA (see what that got the people of New Orleans) and deregulated Wall Street and the Securities and Exchange Commission (Bernie Madoff was happy with that, I’m sure).

If you deliberately underfund federal agencies so that they do not have the ability to perform their functions, you can make regulation look ineffective. I’m sure even good Republicans can understand that you get what you pay for and you don’t get what you don’t pay for – unless of course you’re a billionaire CEO, in which case you get all the money the stockholders can throw at you regardless of your performance.

Mike McKeehan

Cheney