CONSUMER PRODUCT SAFETY ACT OF 1971 MONDAY, JULY 19, 1971 U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, Washington, D.C. The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:30 a.m., in room 5110, New Senate Office Building, Hon. Frank E. Moss, presiding. Present: Senators Moss, Prouty, Cook, and Stevens. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR MOSS Senator Moss. The committee will come to order. We are opening hearings this morning on S. 983 and S. 1797, consumer product safety legislation and S. 1685, concerning power lawn mower safety. I would like to say at the opening that if ever there was an idea whose time had come it is the idea which forms the bedrock of the legislation before us this morning: The manifest need for comprehensive, strong, effective product safety legislation. The Product Safety Commission has delivered to us volume after volume of data, case study, and analysis. It has charted the treacherous shoals upon which virtually all past and present safety regulatory programs have foundered, and it has tendered us a course for action. And while there are significant differences between the legislation sponsored by Chairman Magnuson and myself (S. 983) and the administration's proposal (S. 1797), I sense no essential conflict in our objectives. Neither bill attains perfection. We will, I am confident, be able to draw upon the strongest points of each in shaping the ultimate legislation. In fact, in our preliminary discussions with the administration we have encountered openness and flexibility as to the means of achieving our shared objectives. For my own part I intend to be guided in these hearings and in the executive deliberations by the lessons which our committee's own experience in product safety has taught and which the investigations of the Commission have illuminated. Before we begin, I would like to briefly indicate what I believe these lessons to be: (1) Consumer safety programs have, in the past, suffered from a chronic lack of independence from political and economic pressures. This has resulted in a dilution of the effectiveness of the product safety laws. Tough standards formulated within a department are sent upstairs. By the time these standards find their way through the labyrinth of the Secretary's Office, the Office of Management and Staff member assigned to these hearings: S. Lynn Sutcliffe. Budget, and perhaps even the west wing of the White House, the final standards bears little resemblance to the initial consumer oriented proposal. (2) But deliberate efforts to deny the efficacy of product safety laws have not been as devastating to our product safety programs as the budget and appropriations process that has consistently starved product safety programs. The Department fails to fight for adequate funds; OMB consistently pairs whatever departmental request is made; and finally the Congress is less than diligent in insuring that the product safety programs it passes are given the appropriations they need. (3) While industry, through its voluntary standards organizations, possesses great technical know-how to contribute to the development of safety standards, the delegation of safety standards responsibility to voluntary standards organizations or reliance on those standards by the Government results in chronically inadequate, lowest common denominator standards. (4) In its zeal to afford industry procedural safeguards, Congress has too often in legislation frozen the regulatory process in procedural molasses. (5) Past consumer safety programs have lacked the comprehensive data base essential to enlightened standard setting. What is needed is both a comprehensive injury alert surveillance system and sophisticated design and engineering know-how to translate safety needs into sophisticated, adequate safety performance standards. (6) Categorical programs-toy safety, flammable fabrics, refrigerator safety, poison prevention packaging, hazardous substances, electronic product radiation-are vestiges of Congress' past inability to proceed except by halting steps to meet only the most obvious or well publicized hazards-usually long after charred or mutilated bodies have begun to pile up. The time has plainly arrived to establish a comprehensive safety program with full authority to move to head off any unreasonable product safety hazard, no matter what product, no matter what hazard—immediately by banning, if necessary deliberately, but without needless delay, to set a minimum safety performance standard, where appropriate. (7) We have learned that secrecy is the ally of stagnant bureaucracy, the enemy of regulation grounded in the public interest. Protection of true trade secrets is a valid objective where precisely circumscribed. But with this narrow exception, all of the other processes which make up the regulatory machinery must be wide open to public scrutiny. (8) Congress and the public must be kept fully informed and made welcome as participants in the regulatory process. We've learned that the voice of the citizen consumer must be granted at least equal access to the regulatory process as industry. The standards setting process must of course guarantee to affected industries the right to be heard and to have assurance that its presentations of fact and argument are seriously considered. Equally, citizen advocates both within and without government must have access to the regulators, so that consumer safety does not grow into a partnership of convenience between the regulator and the regulated, with the public interest subverted, and all but forgotten. (9) It is not enough that an agency have the power to set adequate safety standards. It must have the powers and the resources to assure that the standards are being met. The power to obtain access to relevant records and to inspect manufacturing premises where that is necessary to compliance are critical requisites. (10) The agency must have available to it a range of sanctions. which will reflect the range of culpability from simple negligence to the intentional violation of safety standards. To those who have taken the position in the past that criminal sanctions are not appropriate for legislation dealing with business executives, I say that the evidence demonstrates that they are tragically wrong. Under competitive pressure even the very largest of manufacturing enterprises is unhappily capable of placing individuals in positions of executive responsibility who will knowingly allow hazardous products to reach the market. It is not enough to fine a corporation. Those individuals responsible must be subject to suitable penalties. We have a great opportunity to benefit from the legislative experience of the past. If we do our work well, if we never lose sight of the reality of human misery inflicted by needless, avoidable product injuries, then we may finally achieve the level of performance in product safety that we have been promising American consumers for some years. That is a somewhat lengthy opening statement, but it summarizes much of what we have been trying to get at in this committee for sometime past. I am very pleased that the Senator from Kentucky, Mr. Cook, the ranking member of the Consumer Subcommitte is with us this morning. Do you have any opening comments to make, Senator Cook? Senator Cook. Mr. Chairman, because of the schedules, I am sure of everybody here, I have a very short statement, and I will submit it for the record. Senator Moss. It may be printed at this point in the record in full. Senator Cook. Mr. Chairman, in the past we have tackled product safety on a piecemeal basis. Finally we have laid the ground work for overall product safety legislation and I am confident that we can have a bill on the Senate floor in a matter of weeks. Unlike some proposed legislation, the need for an omnibus product safety law appears to be well documented. Not only has this committee had considerable experience in safety legislation-from automobiles through toys but also the committee's creation of the National Commission on Product Safety provided the hard data necessary for consideration in developing a meaningful and workable law. I know that Senator Cotton, who as a sponsor of the legislation setting up the National Commission on Product Safety and has a continuing interest in product safety, is disappointed that he is unable to be here this morning. Mr. Elkind, who is scheduled to testify, will recall that when the Commission presented its final report to the com mittee Senator Cotton expressed the hope that generic standards might be developed so as to apply to entire classes of products. I am sure that we will get into that subject again as these hearings progress. My distinguished colleague from New Hampshire and I also intend to carefully examine how safety standards will apply to imports and exports. Mr. Chairman, product safety is not a partisan political issue. I think S. 1797, which was developed by the administration after the bill suggested by the Commission, demonstrates that all of us want a strong omnibus product safety law. I am confident that with the help of the witnesses scheduled for these hearings we can fashion an effective piece of legislation so as to eliminate the needless injuries that result from unsafe consumer products. Thank you. (The bills and agency comments follow :) |