The Consumer Product Safety Commission Reform Act -- Continued
Floor Speech
THE CONSUMER PRODUCT SAFETY COMMISSION REFORM ACT--Continued -- (Senate - March 04, 2008)
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Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, the Senator is very generous for sharing his time. I have come to the floor to speak on his substitute bill.
I hope the Senate realizes this is a complete substitute, and it will take the House bill and replace it for the actions that the Senate has taken through our Commerce Committee and on the Senate floor so far. While there are some portions of the House bill that are positive, and I am pleased to say we will be happy to work with them in conference. I must oppose this amendment because it would gut this entire bipartisan compromise that is now before the Senate.
Consumer product safety has been before the Senate before, and we have not been able to get to this point. We have gotten to this point because Senator Pryor, Senator Inouye, Senator Collins, myself, and others have worked together to bring to the Senate a bill that has positive safety provisions that are not currently in the House bill. I urge my colleagues to vote no on this amendment because what we have done in this bill will provide some very positive changes that I believe the House will be willing to accept in conference. The difficulty is this amendment would not include those additional protections. We would have to go back and start all over again in the legislative process to address the additional provisions we have added to this bill.
I believe we can get through the amendment process in the next couple of days, and it is my hope we can go to conference and this bill will be sent to the President as soon as possible. I believe the country is ready for a change and a reemphasis on consumer product safety, particularly as it relates to children.
I am the father of 6 children, grandfather of 11, and I hope to have more--at least grandchildren. That is supposed to be funny. I think we ought to be able to take this compromise bill to conference, and I welcome that. I promise I will confer with my colleague with regard to the changes we might make in conference, but this is not the time to end this bipartisan process.
If there is one thing the Senate needs, the one thing Congress needs, it needs bipartisanship to move forward on the business we should act on during this Congress. This is a product of that, the product of a long, hard conference on a bipartisan basis.
I urge my colleagues to vote no on this amendment. It is my hope the Senate will allow us to go to conference on the bill on which we worked so hard.
I thank the Senator for his courtesy.
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