September 10th CPSIA Hearing – Watch it online!

At long last, Henry Waxman has finally agreed to hold a hearing about the CPSIA.  Great!  Except that only ONE witness is scheduled to testify: the new CPSC Chairman Inez Tenenbaum.  How a hearing on the CPSIA can be of any benefit to Congress (and the citizens they represent) without including testimony from the affected parties, is beyond me.  You can watch the hearing online here.

We owe a huge debt of gratitude to Rick Woldenberg for his tireless dedication to this cause, and for keeping us informed and updated through his blog.  You can read the latest about the hearing here.  Rick collected more than 110 letters protesting the committee’s decision to hold a hearing without testimony from small businesses.  Because I was out of town, my letter was sent late (probably too late for inclusion) but I will post it here anyway.  I strongly recommend checking out the letters – it is an impressive collection.  Here’s mine:

September 9, 2009

The Honorable Henry Waxman, Chairman

The Honorable Bobby Rush, Subcommittee Chairman

House Energy and Commerce Committee

2125 Rayburn House Office Building

Washington, DC 20515

The Honorable Joe Barton, Ranking Member

The Honorable George Radanovich, Subcommittee Ranking Member

House Energy and Commerce Committee

2322A Rayburn House Office Building

Washington, DC 20515

Dear Chairmen and Ranking Members:

I am at a loss to comprehend how the Committee hearing set for September 10, 2009 in which the Hon. Inez Tenenbaum, Chairman of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), is scheduled to testify on the implementation of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) can be of any benefit to Congress or the citizens you represent without additional testimony from affected parties, especially the small businesses devastated by this law.

These overly-broad regulations have wreaked havoc on small businesses, crafters, and artisans producing a wide array of safe, domestically made products.  These products are good for our kids and good for our economy.  Thousands of letters to this committee and to the CPSC have detailed “unintended consequences” including business closures, like mine.  I would argue that the implementation of CPSIA has made my children significantly less safe.  Consider:

• Because of CPSIA, the CPSC is now busy issuing yard sale regulations, advising the ALA to sequester old library books, writing “handbooks” explaining that only used clothing without zippers, snaps, buttons or screen prints are fit be donated, reused or sold, as well as producing lengthy legalese detailing (without any clarity) the difference between a ball point pen intended to be used by a child vs. one intended to be used by an adult, but which may appeal to a child.  All this, instead of using the Commission’s resources to police the marketplace for real dangers.
• Because of the CPSIA (inspired by the 2007-8 toy recalls) Mattel (one of the offenders) has received approval to test their own products in-house, while everyone else is subjected to expensive (and objective) third-party testing.  How does that make my kids safer?  Not to mention, how is this good government practice: the offender is rewarded with less competition (through small business closures), and cost-cutting self-policing, while the innocent get regulated out of business?

The few steps the CPSC has taken to ease implementation have questionable relevance, as State Attorneys General retain the right to enforce the law as Congress wrote it – and as it remains today – unchanged due to this committee’s unwillingness to fix the obvious and fatal flaws.

I urge you to reconsider.  Hold hearings in good faith with real testimony from those affected.  Rework the law to allow the CPSC the latitude to focus its resources on actual risks, allow small businesses to achieve compliance by using compliant component parts, and require State Attorneys General wishing to enforce the law, to do so only according to the CPSC’s interpretation of the law, as businesses cannot reasonably be accountable to fifty different interpretations of the law.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Swab DeGrace

Owner, Designer

Jen Lynn Designs (closed since 2/10/09)