Hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection Subcommittee - Child/Consumer Product Safety Panel I

Interview

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REP. DIANA DEGETTE (D-CO): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Parents are under a tremendous amount of stress in America today, and who can blame them. One day, they hear on television that the spinach that they bought yesterday at the grocery store is contaminated with E. coli. The next day, they read in the newspaper that the Thomas the Tank Engine toy they bought their young son is contaminated with excessive amounts of lead. It's enough to make any parent terrified that they could be harming their child simply by putting food on the table or toys in the yard. Today's hearing is before the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, but frankly I don't think consumers are feeling very protected today. They're feeling particularly unprotected when it comes to the safety of children's products, and for good reason.

So far this year we've had over 150 recall notices issued for children's products and toys. That's up from about 90 during all of last year and 60 going back to all of 2002. Almost half the products recalled this year were due to excessive lead, a dangerous contaminant for children. Some, like current Consumer Product Safety Commission Chairman Nord, have argued that the high recall numbers show the system is working. I disagree. First, a very small percentage of toys are actually returned once they're recalled.

Once these products get into people's homes they are hard to remove. And here's a good example: I have these Thomas the Tank Engine toys from my chief of staff's home. My chief of staff is incredibly diligent and she works on these issues so she should know. These were recalled in June and she found them last night in her son's bedroom. They'd been sitting there since they were recalled.

So while recalls are important to get dangerous products out of the hands of children, they're not the full answer to the crisis of deadly toys. We need to do a better job of testing beforehand so that the toys that cause harm are never sold to the public to begin with. That's going to take a combined effort from industry and government. Unfortunately, I don't think that the agency in charge of protecting consumers, the Consumer Products Safety Commission, has the resources and the staffing it needs to do the kind of job that the American people expect and frankly, have thought till now it was doing. Despite the fact that our economy has grown tremendously since the CPSC was founded in the early 1970s, it has less than half the employees than it did in 1974 when it was founded -- only about 400.

According to CPSC Commissioner Thomas Moore, it only has 90 field investigators, about 15 of whom are responsible for guarding against the millions of products that come in through dozens of ports of entry. And as we've heard from other members, the market has shifted so now 83 percent of our toys are coming in from China. Inexplicably, President Bush's budget would have caused the CPSC to have cut 19 more staff. That's the wrong approach.

The CPSC is also hamstrung by statutory restraints. Just a few examples: There's no bright line limit on lead levels in children's products. The CPSC is limited to imposing fines of 1.83 million (dollars) and the CPSC has to use a cumbersome administrative process or, in some situations, go to federal court to order a mandatory recall. That's why, back in September, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro and I introduced legislation -- H.R.3691: The Safety Assurance for Every Consumer Product Act -- to address these and other problems, as well as make additional statutory improvements. Among other things, our bill would increase the budget of the CPSC by 88 percent over this year's level by fiscal year 2012, impose an absolute standard for lead in children's products of 40 parts per million, eliminate the cap on civil penalties, strengthen the CPSC's mandatory recall powers by eliminating the need for a hearing before a recall is ordered, require independent third-party testing to make sure products meet safety standards, and prevent the CPSC from issuing rules which preempt state law.

Mr. Chairman, I was very happy to see that the bill you introduced last week, H.R.4040, contains many of these similar provisions. I'm an original co-sponsor of H.R.4040 and I think it goes a long way. I look forward to this hearing. I also look forward, Mr. Chairman, to working with you and your staff to see if some of the provisions of Congresswoman DeLauro's and my bill can be incorporated in this legislation as we move forward.

I just want to talk briefly -- well, maybe I won't. I'll yield back. I'll ask in the questions. I'm very concerned about the CPSC travel and I know that the amendment -- the manager's amendment we're going to do to the bill will address that. It is more than an appearance of impropriety, Mr. Chairman. And I thank you for our indulgence.

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REP. DEGETTE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to express my appreciation for both of our witnesses coming today, because I do think that many of your suggestions are very helpful in helping us draft this legislation.

Chairman Nord, I want to talk to you briefly about this travel issue. And I think that we can come to some kind of agreement on this, because I've been on this committee now for a long time and we've had people come in and they say, well, lawyers approved this and this has been the practice. But sometimes when that happens, no one actually stepped back and said, wait a minute. Does this really pass the smell test, even though people have been doing it? And mores have changes in society too. Members of Congress used to fly around on the tab of private industry and now we've realized that that has the appearance of impropriety.

So really, my question to you -- and it follows up on what Ms. Schakowsky -- well, before I ask the question, I want to make one more point, which in fact, many other government agencies do not allow regulated industries to pay for travel. For example, the Securities and Exchange Commission does not accept host-paid travel reimbursements from organizations regulated by the agency. The Food and Drug Administration does not do that and neither does the Federal Communications Commission.

So my question to you simply is: Given the changing mores, given what's going on, if Congress gave the agency a budget for travel to inspect these important areas, to look at -- to go to the toy show to look at these things -- if you had an independent budget, I would assume you would not object to us also banning host-paid travel, correct?

MS. NORD: Of course!

REP. DEGETTE: Thank you very much. I think that solves that situation right there.

I also want to ask you about these recalls, Chairman Nord, because in my opening statement I'm sure you heard me say that we had 150 recall notices for children's products and toys this year, 90 last year and 60 going back to 2002. In your opening statement you had disputed those numbers. But the way we got to those numbers is my staff went to the CPSC website and actually counted the number of recalls. And maybe it's because you're defining it more narrowly. You're only defining toys and I'm defining children's products and toys -- and your staff is now nodding in agreement.

MS. NORD: I'm hearing from them.

REP. DEGETTE: But the basic bottom line is -- my point is that the recall notices for this category -- children's products and toys -- are going up. I think that it's likely because we have so many increasing imports coming in from abroad. Would you not agree with that?

MS. NORD: No. I don't think I would in this respect: Our overall recalls inch up every year and that's what you would expect them to do. And I looked at, and stated in my statement twice -- and we defined that very specifically -- where we have seen the recalls go up is with respect to the lead paint violations.

REP. DEGETTE: Right.

MS. NORD: And that's where we've seen a big increase.

REP. DEGETTE: Right. And you --

MS. NORD: It's because of what we've been doing.

REP. DEGETTE: Do you think a large part of that is because we're getting an increasing percentage of our toys from abroad -- in particular from China? You're staff is -- some of them are also nodding.

MS. NORD: (Laughs.) Indeed. Indeed. The lead paint violations by and large were for Chinese manufactured products.

REP. DEGETTE: Right. And it's because the market has shifted, right?

MS. NORD: Yes.

REP. DEGETTE: So this is another point I make, which is I think that the best way to stop the kids from getting these -- I like this one. This one that says, "Stop!" And this one has lead in it too. This is one of the recalled Thomas the Tank Engine toys. I think the way to stop these toys from coming in is to prevent the lead in the first place, because I'm sure you'll agree all the studies show that a tiny fraction of recalled toys are actually ever returned. So would you agree with me that the way to stop this would be to prevent the toys from coming in the first place, if we could?

MS. NORD: That's what we were doing with the recall. I mean, we've got a lead paint --

REP. DEGETTE: Except for when -- except for when you do a recall, the toys are already out in the market and in the homes. So if you could find some way -- and I think you testified about this in your testimony -- if you could find some way to prevent the toys from coming into the homes in the first place, then you wouldn't still have these toys in actually fairly sophisticated consumers' homes.

MS. NORD: Well, my concern is that the provision in the bill is really not going to change that issue, because the lead that was coming in was above what was already violative of the law. What we need to make sure is a couple of things: First of all, the certification authority, with I have asked for -- which we do not have now with respect to these kinds of toys -- would be incredibly helpful, because what it would do is force companies to really look at these things before they are marketed.

REP. DEGETTE: Right. That's what I'm saying. So you must agree.

MS. NORD: Well, then we're saying the same thing.

REP. DEGETTE: Okay, great. Thank you.

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