CPSC Reform Act--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

CPSC REFORM ACT--MOTION TO PROCEED -- (Senate - March 03, 2008)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Consumer Product Safety Commission Reform Act of 2008. I applaud the leadership of Senators Pryor, Stevens, and Inouye in this effort to strengthen protection for America's consumers, especially our children. It has been a pleasure to work with the sponsors of this bill to strengthen Federal protections against dangerous toys moving through the global supply chain.

We must detect and counter threats to children before, not after, toys reach store shelves so that they don't end up in homes, schools, and daycare centers as, unfortunately, they can now.

The pressing need for this bill was dramatized last year by numerous and significant safety recalls of children's toys. The recalls have involved some significant threats to life and health. For example, last November the Consumer Product Safety Commission recalled 200,000 units of imported jewelry for children: earrings, charms, and bracelets that contained unsafe levels of lead. Earlier in 2007, the Commission recalled millions of other hazardous toys.

The tragic trend continues. CPSC recalls last month included other items that violate lead paint standards or that can burn, poison, or even strangle children.

The Pryor-Stevens bill takes a comprehensive and thoughtful approach to these threats. It authorizes increased staffing and funding for the Commission, toughens penalties for safety violations, bans the resale of recalled products, requires safety certification of children's products, and mandates permanent identification markings on the toys and other products themselves--not just on their packaging--to make safety recalls more effective. The bill also essentially bans lead from children's toys.

The need for these safeguards and resources became evident through an investigation by my staff on the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. In August, I assigned investigators from my staff to examine the toy industry, import concerns, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission itself. The committee's investigators conducted numerous interviews of manufacturers, representatives of retailers, consumer advocacy groups, Federal regulatory agencies, and other experts. They also conducted port visits and visited a manufacturer's testing lab. What we were attempting to do is to build on the expertise the committee has gained through its work on port security which resulted, working in cooperation with the Commerce Committee, in landmark port security legislation in 2006.

The Committee's findings confirmed that our current system had serious weaknesses. These included that the Consumer Product Safety Commission is understaffed and has inadequate resources and authorities for its mission.

We also found that voluntary standards can be useful in quickly addressing safety concerns, but that they lack the full force of law.

We found that the inability to effectively enforce safety standards at our ports limits the ability of Federal agencies to stop hazardous imported products from entering the American marketplace.

The bill before us will remedy these serious weaknesses in our current system, especially in the area of product safety standards. Our investigators found that the current reliance on voluntary safety standards developed by a consensus among the industry, Government, consumer advocates, and other interested parties has both some advantages and some significant limitations. That doesn't mean we should do away with the system of voluntary standards.

On the plus side, the voluntary standards process, overseen by a standards-setting body, allows safety standards to be developed much more quickly and efficiently than in many governmental regulatory processes. This was shown in the collaborative response to the reports of serious injuries after children ingested powerful magnets that had come loose from toys. There were no safety standards for these particularly powerful magnets for toys, but within a relatively quick period of time, the consensus process produced new safety standards.

By contrast, if the Commission were to go through a formal safety regulation, it would have required a detailed notice and comment process that could have taken years to accomplish. It would have taken at least 4 months, and it could have stretched on for years, delaying that protection to our Nation's children. A perfect example of this is the failed effort to formally regulate the lead content standards for children's jewelry. In numerous other cases, the system of voluntary standards, self-reporting, and collaborative recalls has led to safety recalls before injuries could occur. Despite these achievements, the fact is that dangerous toys still arrive at our ports, and far too many of them are making their way to retailers' shelves and then on to the homes of American children.

Under current law, the Customs and Border Protection Agency has only limited authority to seize dangerous products and to prevent them from entering the marketplace. Instead, what happens too often--the standard process and practice--is that these products are simply turned away and that gives unscrupulous importers an opportunity to try to slip their defective products into the marketplace by simply going to another American port. So if they don't succeed at one port and they are turned away, what happens in too many cases is the importer simply tries to ship the defective toys through another port.

Our committee's investigation has also underscored the importance of imposing standards on global supply chains. With nearly three-quarters of toys sold in America being manufactured overseas, promoting toy safety cannot start or stop at our borders. Our investigators heard reports that unethical importers can bring products into the United States and then simply disappear by changing their company's name, address, and other information in order to avoid safety regulations. I also note that they can do this to avoid tariffs, import quotas, and intellectual property laws as well.

Toys from abroad must meet American safety standards. While the Chinese Government has reportedly tightened its own standards, closed a few factories, and signed a new agreement with the Consumer Product Safety Commission on the use of lead point in toys, China has not yet demonstrated that it can adequately enforce this regime. Until then, we must take strong and effective action to prevent Chinese products that violate our safety rules from entering America.

Now, of course, we need better consumer product protections regardless of a product's origin, but I call special attention to imports because of their overwhelming share of our toy market and because of the special challenges posed by the global supply chain. Our committee's investigation led me to offer four recommendations, and I am very pleased that those four recommendations have been included in the bill before us. Again, I thank Senators Pryor, Stevens, and Inouye for adding my proposals to their bill.

First, the language I authored would empower Customs and Border Protection to seize and destroy shipments of products that the Commission believes pose a threat to consumers and violate safety standards. This is so important. It closes a glaring loophole in the current law and would abandon a practice that allows unscrupulous importers to bring their dangerous products in through a different port, depending on the Customs and Border Protection officers catching it a second time. My provision would ensure that the agency has the right to seize and destroy these unsafe toys and other consumer products.

The second provision I authored would establish a database so that potentially unsafe products could be identified by the Commission before they reach our shores. With that information, that cooperation between the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Customs and Border Protection Agency, we can much more effectively target these shipments for further investigation.

Third, I authored a provision that would require the CPSC to develop a risk assessment tool so we can focus attention on those points in the supply chain where defects and dangers are most likely to occur, be detected, and stopped.

Fourth, I drafted a provision that would place an official from the Consumer Products Safety Commission at the National Targeting Center run by Customs and Border Protection. That will allow real-time information to be shared. We can pool the resources, pool the information we have to identify likely shipments of dangerous products.

Mr. President, neither the Consumer Products Safety Commission, nor any other Federal agency, no matter how good, can guarantee a marketplace free of all risk. But we can and should strengthen the Consumer Products Safety Commission, as this bill would do, and expand its authority and provide it with the resources that are necessary to do a good job.

The commission needs to continue to work closely with importers, retailers, industry associations, and consumer groups to improve product safety.

A safety regime for children's toys will only be effective if everyone takes responsibility. But this should not be a detective game for the parents of America. They should be able to rely on Federal standards, enforcement--tough standards to make sure the toys they are purchasing for their children are indeed safe.

The foundation of this effort must be an effective and efficient system to help prevent defective and dangerous products for children from reaching store shelves in the first place.

The Consumer Products Safety Commission Reform Act adds important protections for America's children. I support the bill, and I am pleased that we are now considering it. I think it is going to make a real difference to the safety of America's children.

I thank the Chair.

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