Boeing Crashes Highlight the High Costs of Cheap Government

Amit Narang, the regulatory policy advocate for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch, says corporate self-regulation is failing, and New York magazine ran an article on how the “Boeing crashes highlight the high costs of cheap government.” Phil Mattera of Good Jobs First says “the idea that corporations should be allowed to oversee themselves is unwise in general but particularly wrong-headed when it comes to a company like Boeing. (…) Shamed into action, the FAA is now behaving more like a real regulator again. Yet this too is part of the typical scenario: when outrage about a deadly incident escalates, an agency acts tough. But this rarely lasts. Once the uproar dies down, the regulators return to their comfortable relationship with the regulated, and the public is once again put at risk.”