[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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