Twelve years ago, the White House and Congress made an agreement with the pharmaceutical industry that seemed eminently reasonable at the time. The industry would supply substantial sums - reaching $200 million a year at latest count - to help the Food and Drug Administration hire more reviewers to speed the approval process for new drugs that might otherwise be held up solely by administrative logjams. The quid pro quo was that the government had to meet tight deadlines for reviewing drugs and had to keep steady its own financing for new-drug reviews, adjusted for inflation. That seemed a reasonable...