Farm, Nutrition, and Bioenergy Act of 2007--Continued --

Floor Speech

FARM, NUTRITION, AND BIOENERGY ACT OF 2007--Continued -- (Senate - December 11, 2007)

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I first again wish to commend Senator Harkin, Senator Chambliss, and our entire Agriculture Committee for the work we are doing on this farm bill. I am excited that it is moving ahead. As you know, I am hopeful that we will get some more reform in the bill, including my amendment to make sure the hard-working farmers in this country are at the receiving end of the help from the farm bill as opposed to multimillionaires from across this country. I look forward to debating that in the next few days.

TOY SAFETY

I am here to talk about another topic, and that is that across Minnesota and across the country, families are making their annual trips to stores and to malls for their holiday presents. Kids are making their wish lists. I know my daughter has her own. Parents are combing the ads for the best prices. But this year, parents are thinking about something a little more than the price, a little more than the wish list. They are also wondering if the toys they are buying are safe.

In fact, just this weekend, I visited Morehead, MN, in 20-below-zero weather, and I can tell you there were a number of parents who turned out, as well as people who work in this area, to talk about their concerns about the safety of toys. They told me they are shocked that in this day and age that we have these toxic toys on our shores and in our stores and we have to put an end to it.

This year, almost 29 million toys and pieces of children's jewelry have been recalled because they were found to be dangerous and, in some cases, deadly for children. In many cases, the reason for these recalls have been truly horrific. Who would believe that a parent would buy some Aqua Dots, a very popular toy for their children, and find out the child swallowed this little dot, which normally you wouldn't think would become a disaster, but in fact this toy had morphed into the date rape drug and put their child into a coma. That is what happened in this country.

Another 9 million toys have been recalled this year for containing toxic levels of lead. The lead levels in these toys can lead to development delay, brain damage, and even death, if swallowed.

As a mom and as a former prosecutor and now as a Senator, I find it totally unacceptable that these toys are in our country. As my 12-year-old daughter said when her famous Barbies were recalled: Mom, this is really getting serious.

It is clear that the current system we have in place to ensure the safety of products for our most vulnerable consumers--our children--needs to be fixed, and we need to fix it now.

The Senate Commerce Committee on which I serve has taken strong action to stem the tide of these recalls. The Consumer Product Safety Commission Reform Act of 2007, which was passed by the Commerce Committee under the leadership of Chairman Inouye and Chairman PRYOR and with my help, as well as the help of Senator Bill Nelson and Senator Durbin, represents some of the most sweeping reforms that we have seen in 15 years for the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The bill would finally take the lead out of children's products, establish real third party verification, simplify the recall process, and make it illegal to sell a recalled product. It also gives this long forgotten agency the resources it needs to protect our children.

The recent action by the Commerce Committee sends to the Senate floor an
opportunity to reform our consumer protection laws and effectively ban lead from kids' products. I am hopeful that we will act quickly, that we will work out any details that need to be worked out, and that when we adjourn for the holidays, this reform will be passed.

To me, the focus is simple. We need to make sure there is a clear mandatory standard--not just voluntary, not just a guideline, but with the force of law. I think it is shocking for most parents when they realize there has never been a mandatory ban on lead in children's products; instead, we have this voluntary guideline that involves a bunch of redtape that makes it hard to enforce. As millions of toys are being pulled from the store shelves for fear of lead contamination, it is time to make crystal clear that lead has no place in kids' toys.

The need for this ban was crystallized for me in Minnesota when a little 4-year-old boy named Jarnell Brown got a pair of tennis shoes at a store in our State. With the pair of shoes came a little charm, and this little boy was playing with the charm and swallowed it. He didn't die from choking or from some kind of blockage of his airways. No, he died from the lead in that charm. The lead that should never have been in that charm went into his bloodstream over a period of time. When they tested that charm, it was 99 percent lead. It came from China. This little boy died.

What is most tragic about this death is that it could have been prevented. He should never have been given that toy in the first place. It shouldn't take a child's death to alert us that we need to do something about this problem in this country. The legislation I originally introduced to address this problem is included in our bill. There is a lead standard in the bill that effectively bans lead, allowing for trace levels for jewelry and allowing for some trace levels for toys.

For 30 years we have been aware of the dangers posed to children by lead. The science is clear. It is undisputed that lead poisons kids. It shouldn't have taken this long to figure that out, but we know it and know we can do something about it.

As we all know, the Consumer Product Safety Commission's last authorization expired in 1992, and its statutes have not been updated since 1990. During that time, since 1990, we have had billions of dollars' worth of toys coming in from China and other countries that have essentially been unregulated because of a lack of resources for that agency. It is a shadow of its former self. It is half the size that it used to be in the 1980s. Here we have billions of dollars' worth of unregulated toys coming into this country, and there has been no response from this agency, no requests for a big increase. Nothing. Meanwhile, these toys are coming on to our shores.

The inspection effort for toys at the Consumer Product Safety Commission is led by a man named Bob, and he has an office that is kind of messy in the back of the CPSC and he is retiring at the end of this year. We need to get more toy inspectors in the field. We need to give this agency the tools it needs to do its job.

The legislation sitting before the Senate today goes a long way in modernizing the Commission. The legislation more than doubles the CPSC's budget by the year 2015--something we wish the CPSC asked for itself, but we went ahead and did it ourselves. The CPSC Reform Act will actually make it illegal to sell a recalled toy, finally taking action against those bad actors out there who are knowingly leaving recalled products on their shelves.

I do at this moment wish to thank some retailers that have worked with us on this bill. The CEO of Toys 'R Us testified. We worked with Target, a Minnesota company. They want to get some legislation passed, and they want to actually increase the budget of this agency so there can be more inspection. This bill will also--and this is the piece of the bill that I worked on--make it easier for parents to identify toys when they are recalled.

I have to tell my colleagues, when most parents get their toys and their children open them on Christmas morning, they don't keep the packaging. My mother-in-law keeps the packaging, but most people don't. So you have this packaging, and then you have the toy. What we are saying is, the batch number should be on the toy if it is practical. You can't do it on Pick Up Sticks, but you can do it on the foot of a Barbie or on SpongeBob Square Pants, so that when a parent knows about a recall--and we know there are more to come, although we hope they level off soon--the parent can actually figure out which toy to throw out and which toy to keep in their toy box. This is good practical reform to which everyone has agreed.

The other piece of this is that the batch number should be on the packaging. That is because, unlike some of the big retailers where it is easy for them to pull these recalled toys from their shelves and to zero them out on their computer system, some people buy toys on eBay, they buy them at garage sales, and that is why we think it is very important these toy numbers be on the actual packaging as well as on the toy.

We have seen too many headlines this year to sit around and think this problem is going to solve itself. As a Senator, I feel strongly it is important to take this step to protect the safety of our children. When I think of that little 4-year-old boy's parents back in Minnesota and think about all of those other children who have been hurt by these toys--the one who just went into a coma over the date rape drug--they are just little kids. We can do better in this country. We can put the rules in place and make it easier for them to do their job. We can't just sit around bemoaning the results anymore. We have to act. We have the opportunity. We must pass this bill before we go home for recess.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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