On March 15, I wrote that the Commissioners were asked for their views on a draft bill to fix problems that have become so apparent with the CPSIA. Here are the comments that I have given to Chairman Waxman and the members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the House Appropriations Committee.
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It is encouraging to see common sense at the director level of this agency and I certainly want to encourage you to keep fighting against the pressure to shut down business through regulatory strangulation. Unfortunately common sense is probably not enough to offset the complete lack of intellectual grounding and understanding of those writing legislation. If the CPSIA is allowed to become fully implemented in its current or proposed amended state, this bill will insure that our company, the taxes we are paying and the employees we are hiring will all be gone. Not only our company will be gone, but many others that cannot afford the costs or will not risk the potential penalties that could wipe out a lifetime of work in one bureaucratic wave of the hand.
It’s hard to imagine that we are still in America when an agency of the people of this country has the power and the potential to wipe out a company for selling a problem free product even though the agency, the consumer and the company agrees the product is perfectly safe. Most people cannot comprehend the idea that a government agency has the power to penalize a company into oblivion for not proving that safe products are safe. What’s next? Will the next law establish an agency to pursue people that can’t prove that they are not guilty of some crime? Will we all need to hire attorneys to prove that we are not guilty of some crime so the agency will not arrest us because we did not prove in advance of a problem that we are not criminals? Whatever happened to the concept that we pass a law and then pursue those that break the law? Instead the CPSIA is designed to punish the people that are obeying the law, we should wish this on our enemies, not on the people and the companies that are driving the economic engines and paying the bills.
Surely there are enough real problems out here. We don’t need people in congress wasting time and resources. If there is a real problem and someone in congress can’t write a 5 page solution that my kids can understand then they need to go back to school or back home with the key word being “go”.
The better solution is to repeal the CPSIA and start over with an approach that is age appropriate and based on actual safety issues. Perhaps we could learn from the EU metal availability standards rather than total metal content that does not improve product safety.
I appreciate your response to Waxman’s proposed changes. You address most of the flaws in both the original and the proposed changes. Congress has not really listened to small businesses and it does not seem to be listening to CPSC commissioners or staff any better.
The CPSIA was well intentioned but hastily written in reaction to real but limited safety issues. We see now that attempts of fix the problems are only creating more levels of problems.
I urge you, your fellow CPSC commissioners and CPSC staff to develop an alternative, realistic, workable version of the CPSIA and work for the repeal of the current fatally flawed version of the CPSIA.