Congress, CPSC debate resources, budget

While President Bush's announcement that he plans to nominate the National Association of Manufacturers' Michael Baroody to head the CPSC might be grabbing the media spotlight right now, it's far from the only issue confronting the government agency. Earlier this week, the House Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government held a hearing about the agency, focusing on one key issue: Does the CPSC have sufficient resources to do its job?

At the Feb. 28 hearing, members of Congress and consumer advocates expressed concern over the agency’s proposed fiscal 2008 budget of $63.25 million. As we’ve recently discussed, although that’s a boost of $880,000 from this year’s budget, it’s too small an increase to cover mandated salary increases. So the budget really means the CPSC will have to trim its currently approved staff of 420 full-time employees to 401.

“How are we to continue ... to be able to feel safe if the Commission has less people to do the work?" asked Subcommittee chairman Rep. José Serrano (D-N.Y., pictured above, left). Meanwhile, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) criticized the agency for no longer including childhood drowning deaths as a top strategic priority, partly because of limited resources.   

Drownings are the number two accidental killer of children ages 1 to 14 in the U.S., Wasserman Schultz told acting CPSC chair Nancy Nord. “I don’t know how you can honestly say you can make do, when you have to make a decision like that.” 

Nord (above, right) defended the agency’s budget, noting that the agency issued a record number of recalls last year — despite a shrinking staff. (In 2005, the agency had 471 full-time employees). And this year, Nord added, the agency is “well on the way to exceeding” last year’s record. “Our staff is working flat out and we are achieving very good” results, Nord said. Reducing childhood drowning is still a top priority, she added, but no longer a “strategic one” in which results will be statistically measured.   

That’s not to say Nord did not have concerns. She said the brain drain that’s occurred at the CPSC as experienced employees leave “is something I worry about an awful lot.” And, she said, “the thing that keeps me up at night worrying” are new issues and technology, such as nanotechnology, and the challenges they pose to the CPSC staff. 

Another challenge, she noted are imports from China. Two thirds of recalled products are imports and two-thirds of these are from China.   

But to Janell Mayo Duncan, senior counsel for Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports, “the single greatest challenge inhibiting the fulfillment of [the CPSC's] mission … is the lack of adequate funding.” In her testimony before the subcommittee, she said: “The CPSC is being starved of critical resources at a time when the Commission is tasked with addressing increasing threats to consumer safety, including dangers affecting children, such as dangerous non-compliant toys, and the presence of lead in children’s jewelry. This situation is unconscionable.” 

Rachel Weintraub, director of product safety and senior counsel for the Consumer Federation of America, also testified. Noting that the CPSC has suffered a steady decline in staffing — the agency had 786 full-time employees when it was founded in 1974 and a high of 978 in 1980 — Weintraub called the proposed budget “death by a thousand cuts.” While that phrase “originally derives from an outlawed form of Chinese torture, it also aptly describes the numerous cuts to full time employees, structural improvements and programmatic goals that the CPSC’s budget has endured,” she said.

Needless to say, we'll be awaiting comments from putative nominee Baroody on the CPSC's budget and personnel issues.

Comments

[JR]

Why is everyone so shocked with the inferior products imported from China. In this country we try to get away with the very same thing. Except we have the freedom to confront government by fighting back with possible lawsuits when things go wrong. When a building falls down in China and kills innocent people, be assured that surviving relatives are not running to their attorney's the next day with intentions of pressing charges or suing. In our own public schools or any building project that requires manpower, supplies and large amounts of money cutting corners is the rule of thumb. Contractors are notified of projects where they are allowed to submit plans estimating total cost and a time for project completion. And almost always the job either goes to the lowest bidder, or to someone who has an uncle entrenched somewhere in local government. And it isn't until a fatal accident occurs and an investigation pursues uncovering inferior products and supplies as being the cause. What it boils down to is getting away with what you can. Inspectors are taught to turn the other way, whether importing or exporting, from Seattle to China. The fickle finger of blame goes both ways.....

[Nancy Bainter]

Yes, it certainly looks as if the money were the primal force because of our system of consumerism. Our outsourcing mode of getting cheaper labor for more products has obvious problems. Why is there no one organization in the control of imports more reliable and proficient at the job? There has to be some knowledgeable group of scientists and researchers able, ready, and in need of steady work to take the place of the so-called leaders in the FDA, CPSC, and the like? Who exactly are the people allowing the products to reach the consumers? Where can we find the names of these responsible ones--and not the people who are willing to fall on their swords but the ones who are manipulating/blocking the system to line their pockets? They need to be held responsible ASAP.

[Kyle Kepley]

Maybe if the CPSC wasn't wasting resources on such unmandated activities as restricting the sale of chemicals in their misguided attempt to stop bootleg fireworks then they wouldn't be running short on cash. Countless small-quantity scientific and hobby vendors are being harassed out of business with lawsuit threats because they sell things that could be combined to create low explosives. Never mind that raw materials are not PRODUCTS and that the CPSC is only supposed to regulate actual PRODUCTS and not raw materials that could be used to construct all manner of things. If the CPSC is successful in this preventative nonsense that far exceeds the scope of their authority, they could ban all sorts of things found under the common kitchen sink just because they could be combined to produce explosives.

Of course this is the same agency that recommended requiring holes in the bottoms of all five gallon buckets in order to prevent child drownings. Ah yes, we all feel much safer now. And I'm supposed to squeeze off a few tears because mandated salary increases are lowering head count? Welcome to the real world, where you can't have your cake and eat it too. In the big evil corporate world, you don't get a salary increase unless you earn it and even then only if business is doing well. With the CPSC beating down our toy makers and baby supply manufacturers with absolutely absurd compliance fines, I can only hope some of these Ex CPSC employees find them selves on the receiving end of a stagnant salary in the private sector!

-Kyle

[John Consumer]

Its all about the money! You know that. So as long as we allow foreigners and illegals to invest and buy or sell products and services we will not be able to monitor them effectively. Look at Ford and GM! All the foreign autos have more defects than Ford and GM have had but you don,t hear about it because they have the "MONEY" to stop or prevent ANY and ALL negative comments, claims. They actually will deny or ignore any claim! I know for a fact I have been there! They want to be rid of you! They want to desensitize your impact! By claiming you are not usefull! As long as they have the money and we have the money invested in these foreign countries we will and you will suffer to the bitter end (which is just starting now i.e. stock market). Good Night and Good Luck!