Conversations with Consumers

While some of us may be old enough to remember playing with toy cap guns, this relic of another time has pretty much faded into the memories of kids, now long grown up, who counted the Lone Ranger, Matt Dillon or Dale Evans as a hero—except at the CPSC.  Today the Commissioners received a proposal to repeal longstanding regulations dealing with toy caps.

This proposal is part (actually, the biggest part) of the agency’s “commitment” to undertake regulatory review.

I have written before of the agency’s disregard of the President’s direction to agencies to undertake rule review. He said that “if there are rules on the books that are needlessly stifling job creation and economic growth, we will fix them.” Apparently we have combed our rules and the repeal of the toy cap rule is all we could come up with. Never mind that this rule was already subsumed by another regulation and that other than cleaning up the Code of Federal Regulations, our actions have no effect—no one claims that the toy cap rule is stifling economic growth. Never mind that it took well over a year to go through the process of repealing a rule that impacted no one.

Yet there are many rules on the books here at the CPSC that do needlessly stifle economic growth. The testing rule is a good example of where we went overboard in our enthusiasm to regulate. In 2011, Congress asked us to take another look at testing costs and to take action to reduce the costs and burdens of testing consistent with consumer safety. We have repeatedly asked for comment on the same issues and then slow-walked any effort to take action in response to those comments.

Rather than taking honest action to address real pressing problems presented by overly-broad rules, we have hidden behind a rule review fig leaf—toy caps. It would be funny if it were not so serious.

Marshall Dillon, where are you when we need you?  Load up your toy cap gun and come to the rescue.