WASHINGTON • The U.S. office responsible for monitoring safety defects in cars has had its budget stagnate and its staff cut by one-fifth from highs more than a decade ago, when Congress tried to strengthen it. While no one has connected cuts to the failure to order a recall earlier of 1.6 million General Motors cars linked to 12 deaths, safety advocates say U.S. investigators don't have enough resources to keep up with data and detect patterns. "They're getting information, and they're not following up," Sally Greenberg, president of the Washington-based National Consumers League said in a phone interview. "They're not capturing the information in a way that's useful. They're not responding...
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