New Leadership Needed at the Consumer Product Safety Commission

This year our nation has witnessed recall after recall of contaminated products including toys, vitamins, pet food, and tires. Our fundamentally-flawed trade policy, mixed with a resistant consumer protection agency, has eroded nearly 40 years of safety standards in our nation -- safety standards that allowed parents to trust that their children's toys were lead free.

I am proud to cosponsor legislation authored by Senator Pryor that would strengthen the Consumer Protection Safety Commission -- the agency charged with keeping our families safe from contaminated products.

Earlier this week, however, a New York Times story revealed that CPSC Acting Chairwoman Nancy Nord is actively working against these improvements. That is just plain shameful.

This morning's Washington Post revealed that -- in addition to fighting agency improvements -- Chairwoman Nord has enjoyed trips across the country paid for by the very toy companies she is responsible for regulating. That is just plain outrageous. These were trips paid for by the toy industry, the industry now under scrutiny for cutting corners. Corners that earn big profits for industry CEOs and send toxic toys into our children's bedrooms.

Parents have the right to trust that their children's toys are safe. Every American has the right to trust that their government is doing its job to keep us all safe. Sadly, that does not appear to be the case with the CPSC.

Instead of working to strengthen her agency, Chairwoman Nord claims that her agency simply does not have the resources to improve. She claims that the legislation now working its way through Congress would over-burden the agency.

Why then -- one must ask -- did Chairwoman Nord fail to ask for more money when she met with the Senate Appropriations Committee earlier this year? The 2008 budget that Chairman Nord defended before Congress doesn't even increase the Commission's resources enough to account for inflation. It leaves this agency less well equipped to prevent harm to children and the rest of us.

She stood up before the House Financial Services Appropriations Committee and defended this budget, never once asserting the need for additional resources. What better opportunity could she have had to exercise her right to voice her views on funding?

The CPSC budget is half of what it was when it began in the 1970s. The CPSC staff has dwindled over the years from nearly 1,000 to 420. We must increase funding and staff to the CPSC. We need to increase coordination between CPSC and Customs. We must give CPSC the authority to examine and approve other nation's regulatory systems before imports from a country get on our store shelves. And we need a leader at the CPSC who supports these goals.

It is clear that Chairwoman Nord does not, and so she should step down. She has been given the responsibility of doing everything in her power to keep our families and our children safe. Instead, Chairwoman Nord supports an abysmal agency budget request, is actively working against efforts to strengthen her agency, and takes trips funded by manufacturers.

Chairwoman Nancy Nord should step down. It's time to put a Chairperson in place who is not satisfied with "we're doing the best we can." We need a chairperson who fights for the authority and resources the CPSC needs to do the job it is supposed to so.

We need real leadership at the CPSC. Leadership that does not side with manufacturers over consumer safety. Leadership whose only bottom line is the safety and well being of our nation, of our families, of our children.

Comments

[ScienceLady]

Mr. Brown, it's great to hear from home-town pols on Huff-Po. I'm glad you represent me (I'm from Parma). I am also happy your talented partner - Connie Schultz - is back at the Plain Dealer. It seems like the PD has steered itself to the right...if we all could just pray enough, and have enough vigils, all our problems in Northeast Ohio will be taken care of. See, if we pray enough, our toys will become safer. Let's spend an inordinate amount of money to install bad toy detectors at every toy delivery location...sort of like installing metal detectors at every Cleveland school as a solution to root out the next society-challenged gun-wielding student...that, and pray.

[VivaZapata]

Brown is one of the few senators who won't allow his pecker to go in the corporate pocket. This toy scandal is so typical of the creeps running the show.

[Catiline]

This is another example of systematic republican gutting of regulatory power in favor of business

[Shishlakji]

I would have more sympathy with strengthening the CPSC if they showed more interest in the job they were actually paid for, and less in trying to stamp out amateur pyrotechnics.

[Rightupsidethehead]

We simply need to stop buying Chinese crap.

[mamacat]

Same old Republican way of doing things.

[Bernique]

Did anyone watch Ms. Nord b.s. her way out of the Lehrer News Hour this evening? She was embarrassing.

[dwillisno1]

This one is pretty simple. The Administration constantly blames regulation for everything including why jobs are being lost to the third world. Therefore, they can never support regulation of any kind. Who makes the most money from cheap labor in China? The Chinese or American Toy Company?

[therealredstateblues]

Obviously we are now seeing the consequences of our broken trade policies.

The whole point of shifting production to china was to boost profits by exploiting cheap labor, cutting corners on safety and quality, and the avoidence of regulation and the responsibility of good corporate citzenship.

Now we know why the regulations existed in the first place. the "free" market can not be trusted to self police.

This should be a wake up call to the threat to our economic health and national security that globalization represents, as well as neocon ideology.

[TonyL]

Damn right, Senator!

On All Things Considered tonight Nord had the audacity to defend $60,000 in travel costs for her and other CSPC Executives paid for by the Toy Manufacturer's lobby.

Hell...if a County Commissioner in your home state of Ohio took those kind of gratuities from the people they regulate, he/she would be stamping out license plates in care of the Dept of Corrections.

[Quaoar]

The problem with forcing Nord out is that Bush could (and probably would) appoint someone just as bad or worse to the commission.

It's time for the Senate to grow a backbone and say no to bad Bush appointments.

[RumiSouth]

Wouldn't this also be a good time to strengthen laws that keep industry hacks from becoming cabinet secretaries? I mean, can we really afford to have industry shills being named to oversight positions on those industries?

[srmorris]

Our whole government is based on the concept of check's and balances, so that no power will be vested to heavily in one branch. However, the framers did not anticipate the rise of corporate power, or how that power would soon exert tremendous influence on at least 2 branches of government.

Now, one of the check's designed to curtail corporate power has been handed to the corporations.

[fedupnburnin]

Isn't this whole ordeal rooted in trade policies created under the pretense of global competition? The same people who caused this crap are not going to be the same people that fix it. I don't know where its going. The nation has been swamped with greed and Bush crimes. One other thing that bothers me, so many Americans died fighting communism by the command of someone who was either a Democrat or Republican That didn't stop the 2-parties from crafting "trade" policies that gave the Communist Chinese ultimate control over our economy. It's failure in progress.

[bill9851]

As John Dean's latest article commondreams.orgg and "Broken Government" clearly points out these individuals are not there to make the system work. These individuals have been brought in to deliberatly undermine, at a minimum, and completely destroy, if possible the very system of government we have. Ms. Nord, among others, has one mission and one mission only it is to make the agency as ineffective as possible. John Dean refers to this as not paying attention to the "processes" of government.

And, I am frustrated with people debating, including the media, their shock and frustration with what we are finding out; Molly Ivins, Lou Dubose and other journalists have been warning us for years of what this would be like. Anyone who has spent any time finding out who George Bush was before and what their intentions were when they got here could have figured this out--just I did years ago.

They have no other goal than to destroy the "processes" put in place since, oh lets just say around 1932 and beyond. Looks to me like they have succeeded and whoever comes into office behind them will spend their first term simply trying to get us back to a few years ago.