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Consumer Safety Agency Needs a Recall

No Chairman, Shrinking Staff & Budget Drag Down CPSC

By Joseph S. Enoch
ConsumerAffairs.com Congressional Correspondent

March 21, 2007

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The Consumer Product Safety Commission is at an all time low.

That was the conclusion of senators and consumer advocates at a Senate Consumer Affairs Subcommittee oversight hearing for the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) today.

"This is an agency in distress," Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), chairman of the subcommittee said.

Of the growing list of issues that are pummeling the CPSC, the one that Senators highlighted the most was President George Bush's proposed budget for 2008.

That budget increases the CPSC's funds by $880,000. However, due to increased office rent and inflation, the agency will be forced to fire 19 full-time employees, dropping from 420 to 401.

Despite that, acting CPSC chairman, Nancy Nord, defied Senators who offered to try and increase that budget.

"Could the CPSC benefit from more money?" Pryor repeatedly asked Nord. "Could your agency benefit from a larger staff?"

Nord, a Bush appointee, dodged those questions before finally saying, "We are not necessarily better equipped with more employees."

"I'm not trying to fight with you," Pryor said to Nord. "I'm trying to get you more money."

Apparently getting nowhere with Nord, who balked at the notion of fading from Republican Party lines, Pryor then posed the same questions to CPSC commissioner Thomas Moore.

Moore, a Clinton appointee, said the agency "very definitely" needs a bigger budget and that "without question" more employees would help.

Along the lines of financial constraints, the meeting also put the spotlight on the commission's aging testing facility.

Moore said the facility, located in a 1950s missile-tracking site, has not been updated in 32 years.

With a sinking budget over the last 20 years, it seems the ex-missile tracking site will go another year without an update.

In another "Q" and "A" that had Nord dancing around answers, Pryor asked her about a February Associated Press report that revealed the CPSC purposely did not recall children's lunch boxes that may have contained dangerous levels of lead.

Nord's programmed response was that the lunch boxes were safe: that the independent testers quoted in the story did not follow standard procedures and that food safety follows different standards than product safety.

Pryor's response was that there should be no lead, at any level, in children's lunch boxes.

"Maybe we (Congress) need to have a rule that there is no lead in lunch boxes," Pryor said.

The final major issue raised at the hearing was that there is still no quorum of commissioners. A seat has been vacant for eight months after ex-Chairman Hal Stratton, another Bush appointee, bolted the job with little warning on July 15 to join a law firm.

Bush, who is responsible for filling the position, waited so long to fill the post that the two remaining commissioners, Moore and Nord, lost all regulatory powers on January 15.

Hewing to administration rhetoric, Nord had little to say other than, "there is nothing that is ripe for commission approval."

"What if there is an emergency that requires the commission to act?" Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) asked Nord.

"That has happened maybe five times in the past," Nord replied.

Although the CPSC currently does not have a quorum, Bush has nominated Michael Baroody, a lobbyist at the National Association of Manufacturers to head the agency.

However, his Republican ties and long history of anti-consumer agitation make it difficult for the Subcommittee on Consumer Affairs to vote him in.

Instead, Pryor proposed expanding the CPSC to five commissioners so that, barring any major disaster, the committee will no longer languish without the power to set new safety rules and impose fines.

As soon as the Senators had finished asking Nord and Moore questions, Nord rushed out of the room, disregarding a second panel of three consumer advocates and an industry lobbyist. She did the same thing a month ago at a similar hearing in the House.

After Nord's abrupt departure a month ago, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said she hoped Nord's departure did not reflect her opinion of the panelists.

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