Durbin Blasts CPSC Chair for Recent Comments Criticizing New Consumer Safety Laws
[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-IL) sent a letter to Nancy Nord, Acting Chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) today, expressing concern with her recent comments criticizing new legislation, and showing continued resistance to modernizing and reforming the much maligned agency she leads.
“Recent comments you have made in the press and in letters to Congress regarding the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) show your continued resistance to modernizing your agency and addressing the genuine public concern over unsafe products,” Durbin wrote. You accused a law that significantly strengthens the Commission’s hand as having “taken away our responsibility to look at the risks and make judgments about what is or isn’t safe for American consumers.” You have also agreed with the appalling implication that the law is responsible for the deaths and serious injuries of children who ride adult ATVs and motorbikes. Noticeably absent from the majority of your public remarks is an emphasis on protecting consumer safety, which happens to be the mission of the agency you lead. Your recent comments make clear that your misguided personal views have not changed, even if they contradict the mission of the agency that you lead and the President that you now serve.”
Durbin, who chairs the Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, has been a leader in attempting to strengthen the beleaguered consumer watchdog agency. Last year, Durbin was instrumental in passing the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, the most significant improvement in consumer safety laws in over thirty years. Durbin’s subcommittee also provided the largest funding increase in the history of the agency, designed to help address critical staffing shortfalls, technology upgrades, and laboratory space needs.
A copy of today’s letter can be found below.
March 27, 2009
The Honorable Nancy Nord
Acting Chairman
U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission
4330 East West Highway
Bethesda, Maryland 20814
Dear Chairman Nord:
Recent comments you have made in the press and in letters to Congress regarding the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) show your continued resistance to modernizing your agency and addressing the genuine public concern over unsafe products.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is charged with protecting the American public from death or injury due to unsafe products. This is an enormous responsibility, one that involves oversight of more than 15,000 consumer products. A series of high-profile product recalls in 2007 and 2008, including dangerous toys from China, brought to light some of the serious shortcomings of the Commission, such as a declining budget, waning staff, antiquated testing facilities, and only one full-time toy tester.
Congress responded by overwhelmingly passing the bipartisan Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CSPIA), the most significant improvement to consumer safety law in more than thirty years. The CPSIA gives the Commission new authorities and resources and significantly strengthens its ability to protect Americans from defective and unsafe products. It restores the five-member leadership of the Commission, virtually eliminates lead from toys and children’s products, provides new enforcement tools, requires manufacturers to prove that their products meet national safety standards and creates a publicly accessible database of hazards.
But these new authorities and resources are only as effective as their implementation. As Acting Chairman, you are responsible for providing the constructive leadership essential to leading a newly empowered CPSC. Your recent comments, which grossly mischaracterize the law and the serious problems it addresses, have not been constructive or accurate.
Over the last two years, tens of millions of toys were recalled by your agency because they posed a serious threat to consumer safety. These recalls included wooden trains covered in lead paint and poorly produced magnetic toys. Ordinary families paid the price for weaknesses in the Commission’s oversight. Their children suffered life-threatening injuries or, in the most tragic cases, death. Yet you have referred to these problems which led to the law as “what Congress perceived to be this hysteria over recalls”.
You referred to a bill that passed both chambers by overwhelming bipartisan majorities after a yearlong process that included the Commission’s input as “pushed through”, “not particularly well thought through” and “not-well-crafted”. You accused a law that significantly strengthens the Commission’s hand as having “taken away our responsibility to look at the risks and make judgments about what is or isn’t safe for American consumers.” You have also agreed with the appalling implication that the law is responsible for the deaths and serious injuries of children who ride adult ATVs and motorbikes. Noticeably absent from the majority of your public remarks is an emphasis on protecting consumer safety, which happens to be the mission of the agency you lead.
In an October 24, 2007, letter to the Senate Commerce Committee, you called the Senate consumer product safety bill “unnecessary”. Your recent comments make clear that your misguided personal views have not changed, even if they contradict the mission of the agency that you lead and the President that you now serve.
My personal views have not changed, either. I believe in the work of the Commission and the essential role it plays in protecting our families and our children. I also believe this means supporting the Commission with the financial resources it needs to meet its responsibilities, including the new requirements under the CPSIA.
As Chairman of the Financial Services and General Government appropriations subcommittee, I increased funding levels for the CPSC from $62 million for Fiscal Year (FY) 2007 to more than $105 million for FY2009. It distresses me that these new resources are being sent to an acting chairman who disdains the authority and opportunity the new law and funding provide.
I commend the Commission for its hard work so far in implementing the law’s provisions, especially the job performed by the career staff who have responded heroically to the new workload. We can only hope that these career staffers will help make a clean break from failed policies of the past.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Richard J. Durbin
Assistant Senate Majority Leader