Nomination Of Inez Tenenbaum And Robert Adler

Floor Speech

Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, yesterday President Obama announced he would nominate Inez Tenenbaum as the new Chair of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and Robert Adler as the new CPSC Commissioner. The President also announced he would restore this Commission from a three- to a five-commissioner body and provide $107 million for the agency in its fiscal year 2010 budget, a 71-percent increase in that budget over President Bush's request for fiscal year 2007.

I share President Obama's commitment to consumer safety and his goal of restoring the CPSC to prominence as our Nation's premier consumer watchdog agency. CPSC oversees the safety of over 15,000 consumer products, but for far too long it was hindered by a lack of funding, a lack of staff, outdated authorities and failed leadership. We all remember what happened after that. Faulty cribs that trapped and killed infants; toys coated in lead paint that endangered toddlers and children; magnetic toys that, when swallowed, caused serious injuries and even a child's death.

Most Americans were shocked when they read the stories. They assumed that if they put it on a shelf in a store in America, somebody took a look at it. That is not always the case. Sadly, this agency, which had a special responsibility for dangerous products, had fallen into a state of disrepair, not just in terms of adequate staffing and resources but, unfortunately, in the previous administration, not adequate commitment. There was a belief this had to continue to be a small and virtually unheard of agency at a time when exports into the United States were flooding the market. If there were ever a time when we needed a consumer watchdog, it was over the last 10 years, as more and more of these imports from foreign countries came onto our shores.

We learned the hard way. We learned with pet food from China that had been spiked with melamine for economic reasons and ended up killing a lot of dogs and cats that people dearly loved. We learned it with the toys with lead paint and the toys that were dangerous. We learned this agency was not up to the task.

I can remember meeting with some of the people who worked there. Some of them were good, hard-working people. But when I met with the man whose name was Bob, who was the toy tester, I found that his laboratory for testing toys exported to the United States looked about as bad as my workbench in my basement at home. Unfortunately, he didn't have any kind of technical equipment. What Bob had done was draw a couple marks on the wall, one was at about 4 feet, another at 6 feet, and Bob would take the toy and drop it from 4 feet to see if it fell apart into little pieces that the kids might swallow. If it made that test, Bob took it up to 6 feet and dropped it again. That was the Federal toy testing program for the United States of America.

We learned the hard way, when a lot of dangerous toys were sold and a lot of them went untested. That had to change. With the leadership of one of my colleagues from Arkansas, Senator Mark Pryor, we embarked on a reauthorization of this agency and gave it new authorities and new powers. Sadly, some of the holdovers--one Commissioner from a previous administration--complained, said she didn't understand why we needed to do this, that we were going too far in giving more power to this agency. It tells you a lot about the mindset of the agency in the old days.

Then we matched that with appropriations funds from an appropriations subcommittee that I chair to make sure they had enough money to hire testers and buy equipment and to make certain they could take a look at products before they arrived in the warehouses of America and on the store shelves to make certain they were safe before they came in.

It went along very slowly, when it should have gone quickly because the right leadership was not at the agency. When President Obama was sworn in, one of my first calls was to urge him to fill the slots at the Consumer Product Safety Commission with true consumer advocates. Our passage of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act--which President Bush had signed into law--by an overwhelming vote of 89 to 3 in the Senate was an indication this was a bipartisan issue, as it should have been. That law virtually eliminated lead from toys and children's products, made sure the products met national standards, authorized a doubling of the Consumer Product Safety Commission budget, and strengthened the Commission's ability to protect Americans.

Yesterday, President Obama's announcement of these two vacancies being filled builds on that effort to make sure the Commission has the right leadership in place to implement a law in a comprehensive, yet commonsense, manner.

Inez Tenenbaum is someone I know. She is a long-time advocate for children and families. She was the former superintendent of education in South Carolina. She oversaw an agency larger than the Consumer Product Safety Commission in both budget and staff, and under her tenure student achievement in that State improved the fastest in the Nation.

Robert Adler, consumer advocate and expert on the Consumer Product Safety Commission, was a professor at the University of North Carolina, where he worked extensively on consumer protection and product liability. He has also served as an attorney and advisor to previous CPSC Commissioners. I strongly support President Obama's nominees. I am glad he is going to bring about a new day at this agency. It is long overdue. Millions of Americans, millions of families and kids are counting on this agency to make sure that when products make the shelves in America, they are safe for American consumers.

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