Muzzling The Watchdog: Blame Congress, Not NHTSA

Last week testy legislators pilloried Susan Bailey, head of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, for the agency's slow-leak performance in the Firestone case. There's just one problem: Congress helped puncture the agency's effectiveness. In the 1980s, the Reagan Administration poleaxed nhtsa and other regulatory agencies as costly encumbrances to business. NHTSA's current budget is $392 million, a third less in real terms than it was in 1980.

Thus the scope of NHTSA's work has been reduced. Until 14 years ago, it examined some 13,000 accidents annually, often visiting the scene and inspecting cars. That figure is currently just 5,000. Morale, meanwhile, has plummeted. "They have suffered from a major brain drain of their most talented engineers and senior staff," notes John Graham, director of the Center for Risk Analysis at Harvard's School of Public Health.

NHTSA's attempts to improve safety have also faced congressional roadblocks. Tire-safety standards have not budged for 32 years, despite repeated calls for revision. But standing in the way of efforts to expand NHTSA's regulatory powers are such pro-auto legislators as John Dingell, the House Commerce Committee's senior Democrat, who is from Dearborn, Mich. (an auto center), and Michael Oxley, a Republican from Finley, Ohio (a tire center). Billy Tauzin, the committee's chairman, from Louisiana, tried several years ago to cut back on NHTSA's enforcement authority.

With the help of such legislators as Senator Patrick Leahy, who has proposed legislation to expand NHTSA's scope, NHTSA may soon be able to change the way it does business. But as often occurs with such underfunded agencies, nothing happens until the bodies start piling up.

--By Adam Zagorin/Washington with reporting by Mike Eskenazi/New York