right is escaped with minor injuries and a whole new mission in life one of the things that you learn in the military is that you take care of your great has heard from his fellow veterans was that despite their wounds they wanted to continue to serve so he founded the mission continues an organization offering community service fellowships to wounded and disabled veterans when we offer them a challenge enacted legislation a strong well designed and effective law bad lead in children's products a staff that is decades overdue there's no black and no reason that children should be exposed to lead in their of people today spending thousands of dollars to prove that their product is knowing full well that it is safe and so it seems to me that it's not right that congress passes a law so strange and that the commission with the authority to enforce these laws does not have any flexibility and i think we have an obligation to the people of the united states particular at this time of an economic downturn that we do not want to make it more difficult for small business people to stay in business and we need to do everything that we can do to correct the problems that are in the legislation that was passed overwhelmingly lot of house and senate illinois thank you chairman rush and i want to welcome chairman ten and by we had the pleasure of meeting each other recently i appreciate very much your reaching out to to me and hearing about your commitment to make the consumer product safety commission an agency that will truly live up to its name and i look forward to working with you i too want to talk about the consumer product safety improvement act there were many many important provisions in the bill which i think everybody would agree to some that i worked on including mandatory infant and toddler durable products standards and testing and the danny kaiser child product safety notification act and the first mandatory safety standards for children's toys are going to help grandmothers like me feel confident when i buy supplies or gifts for my grandkids that those things are going to be safe and i know that there have been implementation  problems with implementation of the new law particularly under the previously ship at the c p s i personally think that the though the law can be successfully implemented i just want to point  flexibility that i do see in the in the law the law includes language that empowers the c p s to exempt certain materials from the testing and certification requirements and to relieve those manufacturers of products that are in no danger of violating the new standards and i know that the c p s has begun to apply some of those exclusions and so i think there are opportunities within the existing bill to deal with complications for example i know that the c p s has exempted from the lead testing requirements components that can't be accessed by child components of electronics devices inside intended for hearing and i'd like to congratulate chairwoman tenable on her confirmation and welcome her before a subcommittee the consumer product safety commission has a very important job to protect consumers and families from products that may pose hazard or injured children we must ensure that the c p s the reflectively carries out this mission and has tools to do so as the father of two young children i want to be assured that the c p s c does its job and that the boys all children are playing with their safe one particular issue before the c p s see that has affected my district as well as many across this country is chinese drywall after florida louisiana has had the most cases in the nation of toxic drywall the louisiana department of health and hospitals has received over eight hundred complaints about chinese drywall and it is estimated that the amount of chinese drywall brought into louisiana after hurricanes katrina and rita could potentially affect approximately seven thousand homes my office has received numerous complaints from consider constituents affected by chinese drywall one man who called lost his home t hurricane katrina and had to relocate his family to another town only to find out that the home he moved into was built with chinese drywall another constituent realized he had chinese drywall in his home when his wife who was four months pregnant wasn't gaining any weight her doctor told her to move out of the home and now she and her husband are living in separate towns while their home is repaired during these tough economic times many of our constituents cannot afford to purchase another home or run a second one while repairs are being made it is clear that chinese drywall is wreaking havoc in homes charring electrical wires corroding metal and causing serious health problems we must determine the origin and scope of the toxic drywall and we must take action against those who introduced the dry wall into american markets it is also important we continue testing in order to realize the potential health problems that chinese drywall can cause woman ten a bomb in your testimony you mention that the c p s see is committed to finding answers and solutions for all the homeowners impacted by this issue i want to know what those answers are and solutions you have found the of louisiana and elsewhere in the country who have been impacted by chinese drywall deserve clear answers and solutions those affected in my state have already been through so much and now four years after katrina many once again have to rebuild their homes this is unacceptable and we must ensure that no one bob i'm pleased that we have the opportunity to discuss consumer product safety improvement act you have outstanding experience and your background as a teacher and the state school superintendent for the state of south carolina demonstrate your commitment to family and consumer and you're off to a great start and in many ways stemming from the lack of information and what to expect from the consumer product safety commission rumors were flying that children's book stores would be forced to close or thrift stores would not be able to sell toys at all but under your leadership in the last few months many of these concerns have been addressed and i thank you for that i appreciate that was given to the consumer product safety commission was not an easy one the new consumer product safety improvement act was fundamental shift from reactive product safety regime to a proactive approach before parents just had to hope that they were buying for their kids and watch for product recalls and all too the prevailing consumer product the consumer safety policy with regard to toys and this resulted in a disastrous two thousand and seven christmas shopping season when popular  that the building materials in their walls corrosive talked gases into their homes so i look forward to hearing more from you about what the commission is doing about toxic drywall and what we can do to help  the issues and the future of the consumer product safety commission i think we all agree that protecting consumers specially children from products is a worthy goal government regulation in two thousand and eight the house of representatives passed the consumer product product safety improvement act with the goal of improving the safety of products that children and parents use every day however the implementation of this law has given many cause for concern we have observed a number of unforeseen and negative consequences arise that are now putting undue pressure on businesses and manufacturers here in the united states these consequences are increasingly problematic especially during tough economic times when we desperately need the jobs provided by businesses and manufacturers i received countless e mails and phone calls and letters from businesses expressing the difficult and damaging effects this was having on the c p s she needs the proper resources and the time and the flexibility to carry out the implementation of this law in a reasonable and thoughtful matter i have grandchildren and i want to be sure their toys are safe i don't want to weaken the laws that ensure the products on the market are safe are all consumers but we need to do this in a way that is realistic clear and fair and that is i've joined many of my colleagues in co sponsoring h r eight hundred fifteen i believe this bill instituted the needed flexibility the commission needs in order to respond to the concerns of businesses and industry embalm i think the most important component of your very impressive resume is your experience as an elementary school teacher because elementary school teachers use common sense and enforcing a lot of their classroom every day my mother has been teaching in iowa for over fifty years and at the age of eighty she still subbing so i have great respect for elementary school teachers but i want to focus on a couple of things that have not really been discussed here this morning and one is  the point that you raised in your opening statement about the need for increased port monitoring but underneath that there's a subtext that we rarely talk about and that the incredible impact of foreign manufactured goods on the safety of consumers in this country we've seen an incredible shift and consumer products that were manufactured in the united states that are now being made overseas most states have product liability laws that limit recovery in the chain of distribution to the manufacture of those products if the manufacturer is subject to the jurisdiction of the courts and has not been declared insolvent and anyone who ever tries to hold a chinese manufacturer accountable to the jurisdiction of the courts in the state will tell you it isn't in the mant challenge back many of these factories in china are de facto agents of the chinese government and so the whole concept of accountability in u s courts is an enormous impediment to consumer safety that's why the role of your agency is so critical and that's why the lack of enforcement on defective foreign products is one of the biggest challenges u s consumers face so i applaud your efforts to focus on this we need to realize that many u s consumers are not being protected for the injuries and deaths caused by foreign manufactured products and come up with a joint strategy to address those concerns on the issue of chinese drywall i inspected homes and boynton beach florida with defective chinese drywall and came back here and was sick for the next six weeks i saw with my own eyes  effect on metal drywall as having melby odors in these homes it is an enormous crisis and it's just the tip of the iceberg what's wrong with our import monitoring in this country we have a lot to do to improve the enforcement of the quality of goods coming into this country and i pledge my commitment to work with you and your office to make sure that we are doing a better job of protecting us  refrain from taking this opportunity to personally welcome you and congratulate you on your appointment our pay as met five years ago when i was seeking election to the house our guest today was seeking election to the other body and all i can say is that the other body is a great loss is the consumer product safety commission is great you are certainly the best one of the best things to come from south carolina in a long long of consumer products safety is not an area that we can afford to ignore and last year i was probably passed the consumer product safety improvement act that law created basic safety standards for keeping toxic lead out of children's products manufacturers in recent years the relationship and i know you're well aware of this the relationship between our nation's safety crisis and our nation's trade policy has become painfully obvious as important continue to grow eighty percent of all toys sold in the u s are imported from china alone some manufacturers have shown a remarkable failure to adhere to basic safety standards it's a national shame and embarrassment when companies and importers pay more attention to their cost than our safety and the safety of our children and their families and our families product safety must be the primary focus in two thousand and seven and two thousand and eight more than thirty seven million toys were recalled in the u s this year there have been twenty three toy recalls issues affecting over four million toys and every single recalled toy was manufactured in china we have also seen reports of serious health problems and residence of homes containing imported chinese drywall and in response i'm pleased that the established drywall task force working with other agencies to investigate the hazards of imported drywall and i'm very interested to see the results of the task force studies and see what we can do legislation for a long time i was on the conference committee that after we passed the act to try to bring it to the floor and i was really happy to work with my friends on the other side of the aisle  in particular ranking member barton to come up with this compromise what i'm what i'm now interested in is how the consumer product safety commission is going to implement these far  ranging provisions of the legislation some issues have come up as we're all well aware since the enactment of the bill and one of the things i'm interested to know and i think  as we move forward i assure you that this committee that we will continue from all involved parties and work to implement commonsense rules that are squarely focused on maximizing product safety and  commission staff to agreements with the customs and border protection to allow but better information sharing it is also critical for this agency to respond diligently to new and emerging product safety issues such as problems now being employ and we are thirty six full time employees that we have hired since january two thousand and nine we have twenty nine vacant where interviews are currently underway and twenty seven  physicians are in the stages of the recruitment process we hope by october to reach the ceiling of five hundred and thirty employees so that we will be fully staffed and we will be putting additional staff in port our ability to educate consumers there is nothing more disheartening and sad that find out that products that were recalled several years ago are resulting in injury and death and we have found that recently we have to go back in and  also want to focus on in the minority outreach of looking at how we can enhance our ability to talk directly with minority organizations we welcome the recommendation of the g a o in the two increase awareness awareness and product in targeted markets which will be a media and working with organizations and then we also work with the neighborhood network members and these are several hundred committee room here to kind of highlight some of the problems it seems to have with small business and and there's a couple of products over there that cost sixty five dollars a microscope for sixty dollars and then testing for those products for the microscope is three thousand six hundred seventy eight dollars for one twenty four that was for one of twenty four samples that were submitted and the other one was five thousand nine hundred seventy three dollars but i think the item that represents problems with small business the most is this native american ceremonial costume that was created in the southwest where we recently my family and i came across the country california to each one of them individual none of them are made the same and this poses a real problem because understand this would have to be one one hoss human a time would have to be tested and you'd be destroying the costume at the time that it needs it but it's testing so it's a it's a really a small batch run product problem with ships and and i think this item highlights the problem the most now products like this  especially with crystal beads and such that that folks had a problem with and they submitted a request to exclude crystal and glass beads from the lead provisions in tips and and  amount which would allow staff to utilize a risk based approach that's well commission staff recognise that most crystal and glass beads do not appear to pose a serious serious health risk to children the requests for the exclusion must be denied flexibility to exempt safe products that don't meet the exemption exemption standard or is it virtually impossible under the standard of any lead absorbtion for most products and materials  injury so before you could regulate the lead content you had to prove that there was substantial illness or injury when you passed the c p s we were not required to prove that standard and congress struggled over test things on a risk based assessment and what i guess what i think i'd like to get an answer from is do you think that products that are excluded such as crystal presenting on reasonable risk of injury  flexibility to grant exemptions to permit safe products that can't meet the statutory limit well it goes to the heart of the matter in congress but do you feel you need that flexibility so that you can a delegation continue to receive more complaints and serious problems and i know some of my other colleagues from other states have expressed similar things or experience in their state because i guess of the high number of homes that have been rebuilt and obviously some of th toxic chinese drywall was used in many of these homes we can continue to receive higher numbers have you talked to our state department of health and hospitals to see if i don't know if maybe some people might have reported incidents to them that didn't find their way to your office to make sure that the numbers in the incidents that have been reported are accurately been delivered over to your office within the state in the cases where the state knows about an incident are working with our partners w dramatically a few years ago in two thousand and five we imported three point six billion dollars worth in two thousand and six that's over thirty two billion dollars worth before dropping back down to six billion when that kind of massive spike occurs in trade for a product that could potentially cause problems does that raise a red flag for that maybe we should take a closer look during your investigation have you considered an interim ban on chinese dry wall and finally there been a number of proposals in the congress ask you to please review and get back to us on what you recommend not while you wait for the you'll have to to post another stay do you think you're hoping that we won't have to post another if you do it won't that be evidence of the need for statutory statutory change in order for you to get all this done and and in your i think aware of this provision under six section one of three a regarding the tracking of products and i guess they've expressed concern about that being impractical with respect to some of these smaller items that are contacted in bulk and then are destroyed distributed across the country to vending machines and so forth and to the commission credit to your credit and evidence of you moving quickly in the job to try to address these areas of concern on july twentieth there was a statement of policy issued by your office that for that certain category of products one of three by your interpretation would not apply and they've just expressed some concern i wanted to relay and get your comment on about the fact that that doesn't necessarily prevent  action at the state level by state attorney channels acting with respect to the statute where doesn't necessarily mean that future commission couldn't reverse its position on that and i just want