In response to recent merger activity, the agency is seeking a budget of $314 million, which amounts to a 22 percent increase, in fiscal year 2011. This would pay for 1,207 full-time staff members, up from 40 this year, and would include 17 people to “maintain competition.”

Of those, nine would be tasked with the “increased workload” caused by increasingly complex mergers, notably in pharma, health care, energy and technology. And four of the nine would oversee pharma and tech deals. “Preventing anticompetitive pharmaceutical mergers will continue to be an important priority for the FTC and a vital way to protect consumers from rising drug prices,” the agency wrote in its budget summary.

As The Pink Sheet notes, the White House has already shown interest in scrutinizing pharma with some high-level appointments. In April, Public Citizen’s David Vladeck was tapped to head the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. And in November, Julie Brill, who was an assistant attorney general for consumer protection and antitrust in Vermont, where she spearheaded efforts to publicize pharma payments to docs, was nominated as an FTC commish.