Consumer Product Safety Commission Opposes Increased Funding?

Feel safe buying products you find on the shelves of America’s retailers? Think again. The Consumer Product Safety Commission, once a genuine watchdog for hazards to consumers, is now a hollow shell. To give you an idea of its impotence, there is one inspector for all toys to test for choking hazards! Of the thousands of toy designs sold in the US, one guy is going to test them all? I don’t think so.

Well those wonderful folks now say that a bill to strengthen their agency should be rejected! Amazing! Amid the recall of millions of products for unsafe levels of lead, the latest being those Halloween teeth with over 100 times the acceptable level of lead in them, the agency designated to police them says it wants no more money or power. The head of the agency, a Bush political appointee, (sound familiar?) Nancy A. Nord, sent letters to Congress against increasing power and funding for the agency. Her argument was that more regulation would harm free trade. Guess more lead is just what our children need?

Nancy, like her clone, “Brownie” over at FEMA are what you get when you politicize every arm of government. It is strange that it’s a GOP administration that is doing this, because the former party of fiscal responsibility now seems content to pay for bureaucracy that does absolutely nothing for the billions we pour into it.