[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 165 (Tuesday, November 1, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6993-S6994]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   CONSUMER PRODUCT SAFETY COMMISSION

  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. President, yesterday, in Cleveland--the 
largest metropolitan area and the second largest city in my State--I 
was part of, for want of a better term, a celebration of a public 
health victory for our country. I met on Halloween with Jeff 
Weidenhamer, chairman of Ashland University's chemistry department and 
a leader in consumer safety issues.
  That name may ring a bell with some of my colleagues because I have 
mentioned his work on the floor of the Senate in addressing the very 
real public health disaster, in some cases, afflicting our children 
because of lead-based paint on many imported toys, especially those 
imported from China.
  Back in the fall of 2007 and the spring of 2008, Dr. Weidenhamer 
identified a number of products that were highly contaminated with lead 
paint. As part of an Ashland University freshman chemistry class 
project, he sent some of his students to Dollar Stores to buy 
inexpensive plastic Halloween toys in the fall of 2007 and inexpensive 
Easter toys and ornaments in the spring of 2008.
  Of the 97 products he tested, 12 of them were highly contaminated 
with lead paint--or about one in seven. These were products such as 
candy buckets, drinking cups, and fake teeth. Some of those plastic 
teeth the children, obviously, put in their mouths. It is what they are 
made for, I guess. The levels of lead contamination in them were much 
too high. And there were other Halloween props. Many were products 
bought at leading national retailers.
  It was clear that our trading system, our regulatory system, and our 
corporations failed basic consumer and public safety standards. We 
think nothing, and our companies, apparently, thought nothing of what 
might be in the products they were buying from China that were 
inexpensive, that looked good in terms of Halloween and Easter, and 
that our children would use.
  Dr. Weidenhamer, after collecting these products, went to work, and 
so did we. I commend especially Senator Pryor, who worked tirelessly in 
2008 on legislation to, if you will, revamp the Consumer Product Safety 
Commission through the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act to 
ensure the CPSC had the resources and funding necessary to carry out 
its critical mandate.
  Mr. President, how many times have we heard in the body of this 
Chamber, in the House of Representatives, during a Republican 
Presidential debate that government is too big; that we have to get 
government out of our lives and that government can't do anything 
right? Well, this was a case with the Consumer Product Safety 
Commission--and with this legislation, the Consumer Product Safety 
Improvement Act--where the government's involvement, the regulatory 
process, actually got it right.
  This year--not long ago--Dr. Weidenhamer sent out his students again. 
Obviously, this hasn't undergone rigorous scientific analysis, but it 
tells us how things are moving. I believe they tested some 75 products 
this year, and they found not one containing lead.
  We know what lead does to a child if that child chews on a piece of 
old crumbling wood containing lead-based paint--found particularly in 
old homes that are beginning to decay, and particularly inner-city kids 
and Appalachian kids. We know that lead in children's bloodstreams 
arrests their brain development. Children who ingest lead--and these 
are mostly low-income children or children exposed to these Halloween 
kinds of toys--can often suffer retardation or their brains do not 
develop as quickly as they should.
  So this was a huge victory. Again, this legislation hasn't done 
everything we want, but I hear so often people dismissing any 
regulation as job killing. When we hear a conservative politician--
usually enthralled to corporate America--talking about regulation to 
the largest corporations that outsource jobs, we can bet the term 
before it is ``job killing.'' How about putting the term ``lifesaving'' 
before regulation, such as lifesaving regulation that makes a 
difference in a child ingesting lead?
  How about lifesaving regulation that has cleaned up our air and 
cleaned our drinking water? How about lifesaving regulation when it is 
the prohibition on child labor worker safety rule? Instead, it is job-
killing regulation every time. Clearly, that is not the way it has 
often worked. But then we see, after my Republican colleagues too often 
want to weaken these safety rules, as they have tried to do, House 
Republicans have tried to cut more

[[Page S6994]]

than $3 million from the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
  So we have this new law in effect that can literally save children's 
lives and make children more healthy and help their brain development, 
in effect, in Eugene, OR, and Columbus, OH, but if we cut back on the 
enforcement of these laws by cutting these agencies and taking away 
employees who inspect these, who force these companies--who make sure 
these companies are doing the right thing and not selling lead-based 
toys to American children, what have we? And that is really 
unfortunate. The cuts would take us back to the very reason Congress 
passed and President Bush--a Republican President--in those days signed 
into law the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act in the first 
place.
  We know there are plenty of government regulations that we should 
reexamine and in some cases pull back or reform or repeal, but it just 
seems my conservative colleagues don't know the difference between 
regulations that might actually affect jobs and regulations that 
clearly protect the public health and clearly protect the public 
safety.
  We know the Senate will prepare to debate the fiscal year 2012 
financial services and general government appropriations bill later 
this week. I call on my colleagues to support funding for the Consumer 
Product Safety Commission. We know what that does. We know it saves 
lives. We know it makes a difference in the lives of our children.

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