Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chairman, I rise to speak in strong opposition to H.R. 1615. This bill is an attempt to deliberately mislead the American people into thinking that they are at risk of losing their gas stoves.
Let me be emphatically clear. The Consumer Product Safety Commission is not banning gas stoves. The idea that anyone is coming into American homes to remove gas stoves is ridiculous. They are not banning gas stoves.
These facts have not stopped supporters of this bill from touting this false narrative to scare consumers and proposing legislation, like this bill, that will have detrimental impacts on our constituents' health and safety.
By limiting the tools that the CPSC can use to protect consumers, H.R. 1615 puts politics over people and consumer safety. It puts slogans over science-based policy decisionmaking.
The CPSC is an independent Federal agency with a long history of identifying and protecting children and adults from a wide range of products that are hazardous or that pose a risk of serious injury or death. The CPSC carries out its mission in numerous ways. It investigates safety allegations and recalls dangerous products to keep them off the market. It also works with industry to develop voluntary product safety standards. It issues and enforces standards for hazardous products so that it can ensure that these products are not dangerous for consumers.
In recent years, the CPSC has removed hazardous infant sleeping products. It has adapted corded window coverings to protect children from strangulation. It has worked with industry to reduce the risk of fires from hoverboards and scooters.
The CPSC's work saves life by protecting consumers--in many instances, children--from dangerous products, but H.R. 1615 will prevent the CPSC from doing its job.
Last December, the agency issued a recall of a gas stove product that was found to be a serious risk of injury or death from carbon monoxide poisoning. The agency was doing its job in recalling a dangerous product, but H.R. 1615 would prohibit the agency from using its rulemaking authority to ban such hazardous products, which could endanger the lives of any American who has that dangerous product in their home.
If you think about this, what you are basically saying is that this agency that protects our safety and health is just basically going to be emasculated and can't do its job. What possible help is that? Why would you do such a thing?
Each and every American benefits from the work done by the CPSC, and it would be unconscionable to weaken the Commission's authority.
This bill sets, in my opinion, a dangerous precedent, Mr. Chair, of stifling scientific investigation into health hazards and limiting the agency's authority to keep our children safe. Instead of taking actions to limit the agency's authority, we should encourage their work to explore allegations that consumer products put our children's health and safety at risk.
We should give the agency all the tools that they need, not eliminate the tools they currently have, to address health and safety risks as they arise.
Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on H.R. 1615. We must protect the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the authority to protect the health and safety of all Americans, but particularly our children.
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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chair, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky), the ranking member of our Innovation, Data, and Commerce Subcommittee.
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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I listened to my colleague from North Dakota, who I respect a great deal, but he specifically said, and I wrote it down, that this legislation would prohibit the Consumer Product Safety Commission from regulating gas stoves as a hazardous product.
Now, you listened to my colleague from Illinois, Ms. Schakowsky, who said that from a practical point of view, how does that make sense?
This is the agency that is charged with basically looking at these products to see if they are hazardous, if they are unsafe for kids, if they are going to cause serious injury or death.
Now, one person, one commissioner has made some statements suggesting that he might be interested in banning gas stoves. I don't know all the details, but I understand that there is one commissioner that keeps being quoted.
First of all, this Commission has five members. There is one vacancy. Because one commissioner says that and doesn't have the power to effectuate it because he is only one person, you are then going to tell me that we should now take this sort of hatchet approach or severe approach of saying, well, then, because one commissioner thinks that, therefore, we should say that this commission cannot regulate gas stoves as a hazardous product?
Frankly, that is like cutting off your leg because you decide that there is some threat or something. It makes no sense to me.
We have the chairman of the Commission who actually used to work for the Energy and Commerce Committee; Chairman Hoehn-Saric.
He has been crystal clear and has stated publicly that the Consumer Product Safety Commission is not conducting a rulemaking to ban gas stoves.
Now, I use the analogy as a Member of Congress. I am one out of what, 435? I don't have the authority to say that because I want something done that that is what is going to happen--or even if there were 10 or 20 of us that said that; right?
As a single Member of Congress, I don't have the unilateral authority to decide what action the House of Representatives is going to take.
By the same token, one single member of the CPSC does not get to decide what action that body will take, and suggesting otherwise is just not accurate.
Even if he said that--and I believe he said that he might want to ban them--why would you then say, now we are going to put a pox on the whole Commission and say that they don't have the authority to look at hazards and tell me whether or not certain stoves would be dangerous?
I just think it is really contrary to protection of people's health and safety to take this kind of action just because one member of the Commission suggested it, but that is what you do.
Again, I would urge that we be practical about this, and let's not just take a hatchet to this Commission and this agency that over the years has protected us in so many ways from faulty products.
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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I don't know about these celebrity stoves and Hollywood. You can bring up all of this if you want, but the bottom line is, this legislation doesn't guarantee that anybody gets to use their gas stove.
If a town in California or a State wants to prohibit it, they are still free to do so. Let's not give the impression that somehow this legislation is going to prohibit towns or States or any kind of municipality from prohibiting gas stoves if they want to do so.
What this legislation says is that an agency that is basically told by Congress to protect us from hazardous utilities, hazardous equipment, and hazardous activity is going to be hamstrung so they can't protect us. That is all you are doing here.
Let's be honest. You are not doing anything else. I think it is outrageous to say that if this agency finds out that there is something that is going to kill kids or cause them to be poisoned, that they can't do their job.
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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
The gentleman keeps saying that this administration is banning gas stoves. That is simply not the case. Plus, he is talking about efficiency standards. This legislation is not about efficiency standards. This legislation is about saying that the Consumer Product Safety Commission cannot research and make decisions about hazards and whether a particular gas stove is hazardous to people's health or might explode. It is not about efficiency standards.
Certainly we are not talking about saying that you have to move toward an electric stove as opposed to a gas stove. It just bothers me, Mr. Chair, that the other side continues to talk about banning gas stoves, about moving toward electric stoves, about efficiency standards. This is not what this bill is about. This is not what the Consumer Product Safety Commission is about.
Mr. Chair, again, I would urge opposition because the gentleman is not talking about this legislation.
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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Again, I have to speak out against the misinformation that is being promulgated on the other side. It is simply wrong to argue, as the previous speaker did, that genuine concerns about the health effects of gas stove emissions are in any way tied to President Biden's clean energy agenda.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission is an independent Federal agency that is tasked solely with protecting consumers, and especially children, from consumer products that pose an unreasonable risk of injury or death.
The work of the Consumer Product Safety Commission has nothing to do with the Biden administration's clean energy policies, whether you agree with his policies or not, and we shouldn't let Republicans' fear of protecting our environment baselessly restrict CPSC's tools to protect America's children and their families' health and safety.
I could just read the bill that Mr. Armstrong, the gentleman from North Dakota, said before, this bill says that the Commission cannot regulate gas stoves as a hazardous product or to impose or enforce any consumer product safety net standard on gas stoves. It has nothing to do with the environment. It is all about safety, so why do you talk about these other things?
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Mr. PALLONE.
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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chair, is the gentleman closing or prepared to close? I have no additional speakers at this time. I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chair, I have to very much disagree with what the sponsor, Mr. Armstrong, just said. I read section 3 to say that the Consumer Product Safety Commission would not be able to ``impose or enforce any consumer product safety standard or rule on gas stoves under [such sections] that would otherwise result in a prohibition on the use or sale of gas stoves.''
Mr. Chair, he could argue that that doesn't say that they can't adopt a safety standard, but the way this is written, it is quite clear that if they adopt a safety standard that has any possibility of leading to a ban of some type of gas stove, they wouldn't be allowed to do it.
The majority is really putting a straitjacket on the Commission by saying that if it does research or any kind of rulemaking or standard that says that this is hazardous, because that could ultimately lead to a particular type of gas stove being banned, then the Commission is not allowed to do it.
I understand what he is saying, but I disagree. I think the way this rule reads, if I were the Chair of the Commission, I would read this to say that I can't do research, can't adopt the standard, and can't adopt anything that would impose a safety standard because if I do that, then it might lead somehow to the banning of gas stoves.
Mr. Chair, he is kind of being a little cute and loose with this by suggesting that this just says they can't outright ban stoves. It says they can't adopt a safety standard.
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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chair, I keep listening to the speakers on the other side. First of all, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has not come up with any rule. Not only have they said they are not going to ban gas stoves, but this bill doesn't address any rule that they have come up with in regard to gas stoves. It simply says that they cannot regulate gas stoves by looking at potential hazards that might kill people or hurt children.
When I, as a consumer, go to the store and buy something--most people think that if they buy a gas stove, somebody locally or at the State level or in Washington has looked at that thing to see whether it is hazardous and is going to blow up and explode in my face.
What the Republicans are saying is: No, you can't do that. You can't look at this to see whether it is safe, whether it is going to explode, or whether it is going to be hazardous to my kids. You can't do that.
You are basically getting rid of what people expect. People expect, in my opinion--at least my constituents expect--that when they go buy something that could potentially be hazardous, someone has reviewed it to see if it is hazardous so it doesn't explode in their face and blow up their house.
What I am hearing from my constituents when I went home this weekend is that they are sick and tired of the Republicans coming to the House floor with misinformation and misleading ideas. They would like us to do something to help them, whatever the issue is, to actually do something that is meaningful to them.
This bill is nothing more than some kind of scare tactic by House Republicans to mislead the American public.
Lastly, Republicans were unable to muster enough votes to move forward and debate this bill. It is no surprise because the bill is terrible. At the time, a handful of my Republican colleagues acknowledged that this bill is just a messaging bill, and it has no chance of becoming law.
One Member of this body went so far as to say on the Republican side: Is it really a loss that we aren't passing anything? Haven't we had enough bills like this one that puts politics over policy and scare tactics over substance?
This body should be focused on passing meaningful legislation that works to protect the health and safety of children, their families, and consumers, and not undermining the work of an expert agency like the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Don't keep coming to the floor and saying that this is about clean energy, or this is about grills or something else. It is strictly about saying that this agency, which has the job to protect people from hazardous substances, cannot do that in the case of gas stoves.
I think it is pretty outrageous that my friends are saying that there isn't going to be a Federal agency that can do that because I know that when I go to the store and when my residents and my constituents go to the store, they would like to think that somebody is looking at this stuff to see whether it is going to explode in their face, and the other side is saying: No, that is not something that they can do.
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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky.)
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