CPSC: "Don't give us resources"

      President Bush's appointment to head the Consumer Product Safety Commission has spearheaded an effort in Congress to defeat legislation that would increase the agency's budget and staffing.  Its budget has been dramatically decreased during the Bush years, at the same time that significant questions have been raised about the safety of consumer products including Chinese imports like children's toys and jewelry, toothpaste, baby cribs and SUV tires--all of which have been the subject of major recalls. 

        The proposed legislation would increase the CPSC's budget and enhance its regulatory duties and powers to include the ability to block unsafe products and to police the marketplace.  It would increase CPSC staffing by about twenty percent.  Consumer advocates were "stunned" by the agency's written rejection of enhanced resources that it had applauded previously.

      On the day after this woman denied that the CPSC needed additional resources, the CPSC scrambled to try to take lead paint-poisoned fake teeth out of stores on Halloween day.  By then, of course, most of the cows were out of the barn--or if you prefer, most of the teeth were likely out of the store.  On the following day, the CPSC scrambled to remove lead-poisoned lunch bags--also made in China--from a school "healthy lunch"program.    This woman should be sentenced to wearing these teeth for all future Congressional testimony or administration photo-ops, and someone should make her eat out of one of these lunch bags for the forseeable future:  if the lead doesn't damage her brain, she might come to her senses.