Child-product makers seek softer rules

Effort in GOP-dominated House looks to scale back safety regulations.

Emboldened by a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, manufacturers of toys and other children's products are making a last-ditch effort to quash new safety regulations that they say are unfair or too onerous.

Among their primary targets is a new public database, operated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission and scheduled to go online in three weeks, that would allow the public to search for injury reports on products like cribs and strollers.

The manufacturers are also trying to scale back new regulations, drafted by the commission, that would require third-party testing to determine the safety and lead content of children's products.

They have found a receptive audience among House Republicans.

Already, Representative Mike Pompeo, a newly elected Republican from Kansas, has succeeded in passing an amendment to an appropriations bill to strip financing for the consumer products database, arguing that the idea needed to be tweaked to protect manufacturers from bogus complaints and lawsuits.

"I'm an engineer. I love data. But I know what people put online," Pompeo said at a meeting of the House subcommittee on commerce, manufacturing and trade last week. "I think this is a plaintiff's bar dream."

Other lawmakers, including at least one Democrat, Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan, suggested new regulations requiring third-party testing of all children's products for safety and lead were too broad and needed to be revised.

"Let's focus more on real dangers to our children," said Representative Mary Bono Mack, R-Calif., at the subcommittee hearing, "instead of perceived ones."

It remains far from certain that House members will succeed in cutting the budget for the consumer database or scaling back consumer product regulations. Democrats retain the majority in the Senate and are determined to block such measures.

Nonetheless, the battle over consumer regulations is one slice of a much larger war being waged in Congress to determine how much the federal budget should be slashed and where to make the cuts.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission -- never popular with manufacturers -- is a ripe target.

The commission has been criticized by consumer groups for years for being toothless and largely ineffective, a problem some attribute to major cutbacks under Republican administrations. The commission staff had been whittled to 385 employees in 2007, down from nearly 1,000 in 1980.

But 2007 brought about a "summer of recalls" in which millions of toys and children's products, mostly manufactured in China, were pulled from store shelves because they contained lead paint or potentially ingestible magnets, among other hazards.

In 2008, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, giving the commission vastly more authority and money. Its staff, for instance, is now up to 540.

The legislation was also supported by many of the manufacturing groups that are now fighting to revise the regulations, including the Toy Industry Association and the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association.

Law, enforcement questioned

Rick Locker, a lawyer who represents many of the toy and children's product groups, said the industry still supported the main points of the law, like giving the commission more money and limiting the amount of lead.

But he said certain parts of the law were confusing and others illogical, while some of the ways the commission had carried out the law -- including the consumer database -- had been problematic.

The law, for instance, now requires lead testing of all products used by children, including things like bicycles, instead of limiting it to products where lead could be ingested by children, he said.

"The problem was not in the concepts," he said, referring to the 2008 law, "but in the language Congress chose to implement the concepts, combined with the agency's own inability and unwillingness to exert authority to clarify confusion and chaos in a common-sense manner."

The debate has created an increasingly sharp rift between the five members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, three of them Democrats and two Republicans.

Changes discussed

The commission's chairwoman, Inez Tenenbaum, a Democrat, said there was a need to make some adjustments in the law, like giving the commission more flexibility to exempt certain products, like bicycles and books, from lead testing. She said she was also seeking ways to provide relief to small toy manufacturers who had complained about the cost of third-party testing.

Still, Tenenbaum said she opposed wholesale changes to the law and was determined to move forward with a lower lead level for most children's products, noting that research had shown there was no safe level of lead.

But Anne M. Northup, a Republican commissioner, is calling for more drastic changes, including eliminating third-party testing of products.

Representatives of consumer groups, meanwhile, are fretting. They said they were worried that the tougher standards they fought for, and seemed to have finally won, were now in jeopardy.

"You have folks who are seeing that there is a chance to undo consumer protections that they never liked in the first place," said Ami Gadhia, policy counsel for Consumers Union.

(Published by The Ledger - February 23, 2011)