Formed in 1906 after muckraking journalists exposed practices within food industries that varied from revolting to deceptive to downright dangerous health practices, the Food and Drug Administration is the latest federal agency to come under attack by members of the Republican Party. Ten bills were recently sent to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and “aim at increasing the predictability, consistency and transparency of the FDA’s medical device review and approval process.”

The Republican signatories of the bills stated that FDA regulations hurt American businesses and force jobs overseas, hurt patients with delays in approving treatments, and “has harmed American innovation.”

Fox News commentator John Stossel has weighed in on the subject, writing that FDA policies mean that companies and the free market do not fill needs for some medications. A Senate bill from last week gives the FDA an additional $50 million, but a House bill passed over the summer eliminated $280 million from their budget, which amounts to 11 percent.

Quality drugs in our hospitals and quality food in our supermarkets are important. Having quality medications that have been well studied may even be more important than understudied medications that serve as quick fixes. Companies rushing to provide medicines may be a cheap and easy solution, but health in any country that pays its medical bills with insurance is a public issue.

Corporations act for profit in their own interest. If they get to operate in a medical field and gain some feeling of righteousness from it, fine. But their first goal is money. And that is something that conflicts with standards of decency. If the most important rule of medicine is indeed to do no harm, companies should abide by it as well.

Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency, perhaps the best Republican administration in our history, attempted to chart a new political course. Instead of choosing to legislate and preside for the benefit of corporations, as Republicans before and since have all too often done, or for the benefit of the masses, as Democrats before and since have done all too often, he decided he wanted American policy to be for the benefit of the whole American people. Instead of benefitting the majority, policy was supposed to benefit America.

The Food and Drug Administration is something from which we all benefit, and having an agency to fill its oversight role is something that makes our world better. Republicans would do well to remember that perhaps the greatest Republican ushered it into the American system.