A commissioner on the Consumer Product Safety Commission said that Congress is so occupied with other pressing matters ranging from the debt limit to Afghanistan that excessive regulations, which threaten to shutter businesses and kill jobs, are flying under the radar.
Anne M. Northup, a former GOP congresswoman from Kentucky, was appointed to the commission by President Obama in 2009. The mother of six said at today’s AEI event that she approached the position as any concerned parent who wants to know that the toys she’s buying are safe and that the business environment for the toy makers allowed for constant innovation.
“I carried with me the understanding of what I want as a consumer,” she said. “But I wanted there to be a vibrant market … with new and more creative ideas. That’s a perspective I bring to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.”
Northup said that Congress needs to be alert to the fact that “every word they pass in a law is critical” when it comes to what the regulatory agency is going to be able to do with the law. She acknowledged that the makeup of the regulatory panel could push the implementation of the bill to the left or right.
She called the transition from Capitol Hill to the CPSC “insightful.”
Northup said that the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 cast such a wide net over regulating lead in products that come in contact with children, including bike handlebars and zipper pulls, that “every single child product component has to be lead free.”
“Lead actually serves a purpose,” she said, noting its strength and weight, and inclusion in components such as knobs on a child’s dresser.
Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.) introduced a bill in May that would give the commission greater flexibility and authority to regulate based on risk. Northup called it a “middle ground” that has split Congress on party lines, and thus could pass the House but has a “slim” chance of Senate passage.
“There’s a standoff that’s in place right now,” she said. “There’s complete resistance to this.”
Northup said the issue is so divisive that one Democratic commissioner said it would be “over his dead body that we’d do cost-benefit analysis on any of the rules.”
Warning that the law “threatens small businesses,” she added that her office is keeping track of case studies on business that have been forced to get out of the toy business or sell their products in other countries because of the rules.
“I would love to see the energy grow for regulatory reform,” she said.
Northup advocated that a “fair, impartial department, agency, something” be tasked with determining and reporting the costs of new regulations.
“Very few agencies really have the capacity… to give a valid cost to the economy of the regulations we’re writing,” she said.
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