ICYMI: Parents, Consumer Advocates, & Safety Experts Warn Trump's Plan to Dismantle Consumer Safety Watchdog Harms Families

[WASHINGTON, DC] – In case you missed it, U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) held a spotlight forum this week on how the Trump Administration’s attacks on the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) harm American consumers and businesses. The forum – held just before the Supreme Court allowed the Administration to fire Democratic Commissioners – featured testimony from consumer safety experts, advocates, parents, and former CPSC staff all of whom emphasized the importance of maintaining a bipartisan, independent Commission to protect children and families from defective and dangerous products.

Brett Horn, Founder of Charlie’s House and Consumer Safety Advocate

Written testimony available here

“I’m here not just as a stakeholder in the product safety community, but as a father who lost his son to a preventable tragedy; and as a conservative voice who believes in both limited government and in life saving regulation, in particular when children’s lives are at stake. While I firmly believe individual citizens must be reasonably responsible for our own safety, I also believe that with the power to manufacture and the platform to sell comes a responsibility to provide safe products, the unfortunate reality is certain retailers and manufacturers have failed to provide their customers a minimum ‘duty of care’ by ensuring their products are free from the unreasonable risk of harm - which is why the CPSC exists.”

“Honestly, I support many of the Administration’s current efforts to cut wasteful spending, as do a large percentage of Americans. At no time however, have I considered the CPSC a fiscally mismanaged agency. Merging the CPSC into HHS doesn’t seem to make sense, as any potential cost savings would also result in a less efficient agency, with many more levels of bureaucracy between stakeholders and decision makers.”

Trista Hamsmith, Founder of Reese’s Purpose and Consumer Safety Advocate

Written testimony available here

“My name is Trista Hamsmith. I’m a mother, an advocate, and the founder of Reese’s Purpose, a nonprofit created in honor of my daughter, Reese, who died at 18 months old after swallowing a button battery from a remote control. She was curious, joyful, and full of life. And then—she was gone. The battery burned a hole through her esophagus. Despite multiple doctor visits and X-rays, it wasn’t detected in time… Since then, I have committed my life to fighting for product safety and protecting other families from the pain we’ve endured.”

“That is why I am here today: to urge us to keep the Consumer product safety commission where it’s at independent and not under the Department of Health and Human Services. The CPSC must remain independent. It is the only agency solely dedicated to consumer product safety. Moving it under HHS risks burying its mission beneath layers of bureaucracy, distracting from its core purpose, and ultimately costing lives.”

R. David Pittle, Former CPSC Commissioner

Written testimony available here

“When I first got on the scene in 1970, product safety was handled in a one-person office in the Food and Drug Administration. It was called the Bureau of Product Safety. It had one guy in it with a staffer and it grew because when the National Commission on Product Safety’s report came out and Congress read it, they acted immediately. It was bipartisan. It was signed by Richard Nixon. I mean, it was America at its best—seeing a problem that it was not aware of and it acted on it. And here we are now, coming full circle back down in the wrong direction.”

Austin Schlick, Former CPSC General Counsel and Executive Director

Written testimony available here

“The Agency has a relatively small number of engineering, chemists, and scientific safety experts. Those experts are responsible for drafting the rules, for identifying the violations that are captured by the port inspectors and shipped to the laboratory in Rockville for examination and also for supporting voluntary standards activity. Last year, the agency participated in about 88 voluntary standards linked to 26 concrete safety improvements in those voluntary standards. And the same one or two people at the agency cannot do all of those functions simultaneously and what’s been happening now is the agency is losing those scientists and one or more of those functions are already being lost and we’re talking about the potential to lose the expert at the agency who is competent to do any of that work.”

Alan Korn, Abbey’s Hope Charitable Foundation

Written testimony available here

“If the Administration truly wants to pursue government efficiency, government effectiveness, all while being good stewards of the American taxpayer and their dollars, this in my view, is not agency that should be abolished, that should cut to chaos or transferred to a small department at another bigger agency. Instead, it should be held up as an illustrative example of that exact philosophy. This is a small agency that has a small budget that does so much good.”

Don Mays, Product Safety Expert

Written testimony available here

“What I have seen, is that the business community favors being able to make an even playing field so that you don’t have the unscrupulous companies bringing in unsafe products while they’re trying to make safe products. I’ve heard that from many companies that I’ve worked with where they feel like the eye isn’t on the ball—that Chinese companies are sneaking things in the through the back door. And you’ll see that in the number of product safety warnings that the CPSC has issued so far this year…We’re on course to set a record number of recalls tis year, but the CPSC has also issued 60 product safety warnings—which they call unilateral product safety warnings—where companies have refused to cooperate with the CPSC in recalling products. And that’s a shame, and the good players are very upset about that.”

Jonathan Midgett, Former CPSC Consumer Ombudsoman

Written testimony available here

“The Consumer Product Safety Act designed the CPSC with four main goals: to protect the public against unreasonable risk of injury associated with consumer products, to assist consumers in evaluating the comparative safety of consumer products, to develop uniform safety standards for conflicting products and state and local regs, and to promote research and investigation into the causes of product-related illnesses, deaths, and injuries. This complex mission just as valid and important, especially now, when so many more products are being sold. Global manufacturing volumes and the complexity of supply chains dwarf the markets of the past. More than ever, we need a strong safety agency.”

Prior to the spotlight forum, the National Consumer League led more than 100 consumer safety, public health, and other organizations in calling on members of the House and Senate to preserve the CSPC and ensure the agency has the appropriate tools, resources, and personnel to protect families and children. The full text of the letter is available here.

The full video of this week’s forum, including witness testimony, is available here. A transcript of Blumenthal’s opening statement at the forum can be found here. Blumenthal’s statement following the Supreme Court decision that paves the way for the Trump Administration to dismantle the CPSC is available here.

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