Today, the Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing investigating recent regulatory lapses at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Christopher Conkey of The Wall Street Journal reports on the damning testimony of the Department of Transportation's inspector general:

Three days into an extraordinary bout of flight cancellations stemming from a special safety review of the nation's airlines, inspector general Calvin Scovell told a Senate subcommittee that the FAA continues to give airlines too much freedom on complying with safety regulations. He criticized the agency's reliance on industry-provided data to determine risk areas for its inspectors to examine, and said that airlines shouldn't be able to sidestep penalties or costly fixes by voluntarily disclosing safety missteps to regulators.

"We are concerned that FAA relies too heavily on self-disclosures and promotes a pattern of excessive leniency at the expense of effective oversight and appropriate enforcement," Mr. Scovell said in his testimony to the committee.

Scovell is right to condemn the reliance on industry-reporting, especially in area as critical as air safety. Relying on the cooperation of businesses, no matter how accommodating they may be, is no replacement for zealous government oversight.

A cursory review of government data shows that, as Americans take to the air more frequently, FAA employment is shrinking. In 1983, FAA employed one full-time staffer for every 107 departing flights. By 2006, FAA employed one full-time staffer for every 286 flights. (In his testimony, Scovell acknowledges that one of FAA's major challenges will be hiring in two critical areas: air traffic control and aircraft inspection.)

Granted, technological improvements have surely made FAA's job more effective and efficient. But the controversy surrounding FAA casts aside the notion that government is in the way. Instead, it underscores the idea that voluntary industry compliance is not an adequate substitute for strong public protections and a government that acts on behalf of its citizens.

Ruth Marcus has written a great op-ed in today's Washington Post. Marcus discusses recently-discovered lapses in the FAA's aircraft inspection program and connects it to the broader pattern of anti-regulatory policies in the Bush administration:

The lapses are symptomatic, too, of much deeper problems across the government. These are not outbreaks of sheer, "heck of a job" incompetence. There is some of that, certainly, but this administration's allergy to government intervention and affection for the private sector have contributed to a spate of regulatory failures, from lead in imported toys to dangerous prescription drugs to subprime mortgages.

The course of these events traces a depressingly familiar arc: paeans to the free market followed by disaster followed by grudging acceptance of regulation. Just a year ago, Treasury Undersecretary Robert Steel proclaimed that new regulation of financial markets was unnecessary because "sophisticated financial firms have both the direct financial incentives and expertise to provide for effective market discipline." Right. Just ask Bear Stearns.

Check it out here: "When a Watchdog Isn't"