Madam President, I wish to notify our colleagues that I think we are making great progress on this legislation. Senator Cornyn is here to talk about one of his amendments. We know there are a few other amendments that are being discussed…
Madam President, I wish to notify our colleagues that I think we are making great progress on this legislation. Senator Cornyn is here to talk about one of his amendments. We know there are a few other amendments that are being discussed right now, maybe in the cloakrooms or in Senators' offices. That is very encouraging. The feedback we have received has been very positive. It looks as if there are some amendments that will require votes.
I encourage all Senators who would like to come and speak to make plans to do that at some point today. I encourage anyone who has any amendments that they would like to have
considered to run those down to the floor as quickly as possible, if they have not already. We are really making good progress. I was encouraged yesterday by the vote we had at 5:30.
Here, again, we find that the Consumer Product Safety Commission is an agency that needs our reform. They need us to come in and to not just give them more resources--it is not a matter of just throwing money at the problem. They need more tools in their tool box and more resources and a little bit of restructuring. It has, again, been the goal of this legislation to make sure the American marketplace is safe, make sure that when people go to a store and buy a product, they can rely on the fact that there are safety standards, that it doesn't have materials in it that are dangerous or harmful. Really, this is an effort for us to accomplish something great in this Congress, in this election year, for the people of this country. So I thank all my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for their diligence in trying to get this done.
I ask any colleagues who would like to speak or anyone who has an amendment, please let us know because I am starting to get this sense that there are many who would like to wrap this bill up as quickly as we can.
With that, I yield the floor.
Reserving the right to object, once the Senator finishes his presentation, we will go back to the pending amendment.
Madam President, before the Senator from Texas leaves, I wish to thank him publicly. He has been very constructive in this process. He has offered a couple of amendments that he feels very strongly about, and we met with him and his staff on them. So I have talked to him about them. He is being very constructive in the process. I thank my colleague from Texas.
The other thing I noticed, Madam President, is that Senator Collins of Maine just walked on the floor. This bill has been called the Pryor- Stevens bill, but I could not exaggerate the amount of contribution Senator Collins has made to this effort as well. I have found her, in the last 5 years, to be a wonderful colleague to work with. She has made this bill better in some very fundamental ways--maybe not very exciting ways, but she really focused on one of the major problems we have with the CPSC today, and that is that the CPSC, with all due respect to the people who work there, has been almost incapable of dealing with imports in the way they should.
Senator Collins, I believe, had four amendments. We accepted all four. We have worked with her office and with her personally to make sure the language is right, to make sure the policy is right, to make sure it is smart law, which I think it is, and also to make sure it is a big improvement over the present situation; I don't think anybody can look at her sections of the bill and ever say she is not greatly improving our ability to protect our shores from dangerous and unsafe products. I am certainly glad she is here this morning to help manage this legislation.
The other point I wish to add is, Senator Collins has a lot of respect on both sides of the aisle. The fact that people know she worked on the legislation gives a comfort level on both sides of the aisle, but certainly on the Republican side, because they have seen how she has conducted her business since she has been in the Senate, but also the fact that she has had hearings in her committee on CPSC and some import problems. She has been a key player, a key architect in this legislation. I thank her.
I know we are going to have a lot of amendments today and a lot going on in this Chamber. We are going to try to clear a lot of amendments. Again, I encourage colleagues to come to the floor if they do have amendments or wish to speak. We are going to try to be in that process today of clearing amendments, putting a managers' package together, and having votes.
Before the day got crazy and confusing, I wanted to thank Senator Collins for her leadership.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
Mr. President, I would like to talk about a provision in the Consumer Product Safety Commission Reform Act that deals with a database to make sure information about dangerous products is available to the public.
Here again, this has changed through the process. We have tried to build in safeguards. I want to talk about those. We have tried to find something that is balanced, that provides information, but also has some filtering so we make sure erroneous information is not disseminated. But the goal of this provision is that the public has the right to know when products are dangerous.
We have many examples--and I will go through some of these right now. But I promise you, for every one example I am going to give, there are probably 100 others I could talk about--we have many examples of dangerous products that are being sold and used while the company and the CPSC know of the risks of the product. But because of the inability for CPSC to get a mandatory recall or the inability of them to work out the terms with the manufacturer in many cases, the public does
not know about these dangerous products. So what happens is that the product continues to be sold and continues to be used when the Government and the manufacturer know it is a dangerous product.
Let me start with this one statement. This is from OMB Watch. It says: ``CPSC estimates the number of toy-related injuries''--just toy- related injuries--``jumped from about 130,000 in 1996 to about 220,000 in 2006--more than 600 injuries every day.''
Now, this is over a 10-year period: to go from 130,000 injuries--we are not talking about incidents; we are talking about injuries--130,000 in 1996 to 220,000 in 2006. We are not talking about isolated incidents where there might be the occasional toy or the occasional product that might cause a problem. We are talking about 600 injuries every day--600 injuries, not incidents--to children. This is just in toys. This statistic is just for toys. So, again, we are not talking about things that are in isolation that do not matter in the real world. This bill matters in the real world.
The next chart I wanted to show you is the recall process. This is a flow chart about recalls. My colleagues can see how complicated and how long and how many steps there are in the recall process. Listen, it is not that important about what each and every step is. But this is how it works. You can see, for a product to be recalled, there are a lot of hoops that have to be jumped through. Those hoops take time.
There again, as I mentioned just a moment ago, we know of many instances. I will give you one right here. There was a product called Stand & Seal, which was a product that, apparently, you spray on tile to seal the tile. That product was dangerous, was actually killing people, and definitely injuring people. The company knew about it, the CPSC knew about it, but the public did not know about it.
What happened was, in the one incident I am most familiar with-- again, there are many others--in the one incident I am most familiar with, Home Depot continued to sell this product not knowing that it was a dangerous product, not knowing it was injuring people, not knowing it violated U.S. safety standards. They were selling it to the public.
Well, at the end of the process, guess what happens. Home Depot gets sued. They get sued for selling a product for which they had no knowledge of the problem. The CPSC knew, the Government agency knew about the problem, but the general public did not. The retailer did not know. So part of the reason we get into that situation is because of this long recall process.
Now, we are going to address a lot of this in the legislation. We are going to give the CPSC the ability to move through this process much quicker. We are going to give them the leverage they need to make decisions. Right now, the manufacturers, unfortunately, in many instances, have the leverage, not the CPSC. So we are going to try to address some of this.
But that is not even what I am talking about because I want to talk about the database. The database provision that is in the legislation, we believe, is a very important provision. It is very balanced. We have tried to find that right balance.
Let me, if I can, talk about one specific toy which has actually received a lot of attention nationally because of some of the egregious injuries and the serious problems. This is a toy made by Rose Art, which is a company that makes a lot of toys and crayons and art supplies and lots of other things--a lot of craft kinds of stuff. Rose Art makes a toy called Magnetix. This is the ``Xtreme Combo Flashing Lights Castle.'' Well, you can understand why this would have a lot of appeal to parents and children. Just look at the box. It looks like something that would be fun to play with.
If you can notice on this picture, there are these little silver dots, these little silver balls. Those are magnets. That is how you put this together. You can see right here in the picture, in someone's hand, that little dot. I hope it shows up on television for the folks watching around the country. That is one of those little dots.
The problem with these little magnets is they fall off. They can come loose. In 2007, over 1,500 incidents were reported before the 4 million units of Magnetix were recalled. So we have 1,500 examples of these either falling off or, in some cases, children swallowing pieces with the magnet still attached. The reported incidents included 28 injuries and 1 death.
I do not want to go into the details of this on the Senate floor, but the medical issues that children have to go through when they ingest one of these is not pretty. Again, I do not want to go through that on the Senate floor and turn this debate into a gory example. But, nonetheless, trust me when I say these toys, this Magnetix set--there are many varieties--has caused a lot of hardships for parents and children.
But what do kids like to do? They like to put things in their mouths. They eat things. They suck on things. We know how it is. But this is why we need a database so that people can know what is going on out there. We have 4 million units of this toy that were eventually recalled, but there were over 1,500 incidents reported before the recall. That is 1,500 incidents where parents and grandparents, et cetera--day care centers--had no way of knowing this was a dangerous product. So the database solves that problem.
Again, this is just a chart to run through the timetable. We do not have to spend a lot of time on the details. But in 2003, Rose Art introduced these building sets. They were very popular. By the way, they were on lists for a couple of holiday seasons about the best toy for kids, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The retailers loved them because they just flew off the shelves.
We could go through this long process, but you can see the first attempted recall was in March of 2006. That is almost 3 years later. They later had to do another recall, a more comprehensive, clearer recall. They did that in mid-2007. So these were on the shelves for a long time. But I am telling you right now, the parents have no way of knowing these are dangerous until the CPSC does their recall.
One of the things I want my colleagues to understand is that, again, this is not an isolated incident. We mentioned Magnetix. We are not trying to pick on Rose Art. We are just reporting the facts as they exist. But here is Magnetix shown on the chart. There were 1,500 incidents before it was recalled, before the public knew of the problem.
Again, we are not going to go through this, but you can see this next particular product had 679 incidents, this one had 400, this one 278, and on down the line.
My fellow Senators, we could print 10 or 20 or 30 of these charts and go down the numbers. You can see the different types of hazards we are talking about. I am telling you, the evidence is overwhelming that in the legislation we need to fix the CPSC.
So what is the best way for the public to know? Well, I would say the best way for the public to know is to inform the public, give the public some information, let them look at it. I must be candid right now to say we have had a few people--not all. I want to be fair. Not all, but a few people--a few companies in the business community, a few associations that have been opposed to this database idea. They think it will create a hardship. They think it will smear companies. They are concerned about the uncontrolled nature of that.
Well, we keep pointing them to the NHTSA Web site. What we are proposing is not novel. It is not new. It is tested. We have seen it in action for years, and that is the NHTSA Web site, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration Web site. It looks like safercar.gov might be at least one of the ways to get there. But this is actually a copy of the NHTSA Web site.
When you go to safercar.gov or nhtsa.gov, I guess, you can come up with this page. You can see, it has ``Defects & Recalls.'' You can click on this and find out about the defects and recalls.
Let me walk the Senate through this, if I may, for just 1 minute. Here again, you click on something; you go to this page, you click on ``Search Complaints.'' Here again, we are talking about complaints from consumers and from third parties such as hospitals, day care centers, et cetera, who can put their information on a Web site. You put your information on the Web
site. If you are a parent or grandparent or day care center operator, and you are searching on a Web site, you would come to a place like this one or two or three screens later--and it is probably a little bit hard to tell on television, but right here it says ``To use the `Drill Down' search method'':
What they do is walk you through these tabs--1, 2, 3, 4, 5 steps--and you put in information about the product that you are curious about. What happens is, you go through these steps. I did it yesterday in my office. I am going to tell you, you can look up a product in about 1 minute. It just takes that long. It is easy to use. It is very user friendly.
NHTSA has been doing this for years and years. This is the kind of thing, we would hope, when this legislation passes, that the CPSC would set up. It could be very useful for people all over this country. But you go through the tabs, and you set up what you want to set up. You search the items you want to search. You finally come to this page. This is the page that is the page that most Americans would love to see the Consumer Product Safety Commission offer. They would love to see this type of information.
This is a ``Complaints'' page. This information was filed by a consumer. In many cases, it is done online. It does not have to be, but in many cases it is done online. It is real easy, very inexpensive to do--not a lot of manhours for most of this. It has a ``Report Date,'' which in this case is March of 2008. That is when we ran this. It has the ``Search Type,'' and you see we typed in: ``child safety seat.'' We typed in the name: ``Fisher-Price.'' And for the ``Model,'' we just put the generic child safety seat model. This is all on little pop-up menus and little scroll-down-type menus. It is very easy to use. So we looked at Fisher Price. Crash: No. Fire: No. Number of injuries: One.
We come down here to this child seat: Tether, or strap.
Here is the summary, and this is pretty much what the consumer wrote, right here. It says: The consumer states that the harness strap of the child seat snapped from the back, causing the child to fall out of the seat, and there were some minor injuries.
You will see it has an ID number so they can track each record.
Here again--this is important. Part of the compromise we reached with Senator Stevens and Senator Collins on this issue is that we don't provide information about the complainant. In other words, some in the business community--again, not all, but some--were concerned if we provided information about who is filling these out, then they get a letter from a trial lawyer and all of a sudden you have a lawsuit. We are putting the safeguard in to make sure that doesn't happen. The CPSC under our bill cannot provide that type of information.
Another thing we require of the CPSC is to remove any incorrect information that may be offered by the consumer, by the complaining person. We also allow manufacturers the opportunity to comment on information in the database. For example, they may offer a comment which said: Be sure you follow the instructions because if you don't get it buckled in right, you may have a problem, or whatever; I don't know what their comment may be. But these comments can actually be very useful to people who are searching this. So we built in these safeguards to make sure this NHTSA-type database will work with the CPSC. This is the goal we are trying to get to. We are trying to get to providing that information. While the CPSC is going through this long recall process or working through whatever they have to work through, at least the public has the right to know.
I know I have at least one colleague here who wishes to speak, so let me wrap up on this one final point.
There is a girl who was 14 months old. Her name is Abigail Hartung. She is from New Jersey. When Abigail was 14 months old, she was trapped by a crib. The crib collapsed and her hand was trapped in it. She was 14 months old. It turned out she didn't have a very serious injury, but certainly it was upsetting to the parents and to the child. When the father, Mr. Hartung, called the manufacturer to ask them about this and to tell them about it, the manufacturer told him on the phone: Well, this is amazing. We have never heard of this before. Are you sure you had it set up right? Are you sure the child wasn't somehow abusing the crib, Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Come to find out, the company told him they had never heard of this happening before. Come to find out, the company had already received 80 complaints about this happening--80.
This database will build in the accountability for some of these companies that are going to do that. Some of these companies--again, not all; I don't want to paint with a broad brush here, because many of these companies are very responsive. They take these consumer complaints very seriously. They are trying to do the right thing; others, not so much. So for those who are not going to respect the safety and the welfare of their customers, this database will help level the playing field. It will provide information to families and consumers of all sorts to know that there is another place they can go and check and find out if this product has a problem, so companies won't treat others as the Hartungs were treated.
Mr. President, I see I have a wonderful colleague who wants to say a few words, so I will yield the floor.
Reserving the right to object, to make sure, we will go back on the pending amendment as soon as he completes his presentation.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
Mr. President, it looks as if we have a couple Senators who are preparing to speak. I wish to follow up on the comments, very briefly, that the distinguished chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee made about the attorneys general.
This idea of allowing State attorneys general to assist Federal agencies with enforcement of Federal decisions is not new in this bill. This has been around for a long time. I have nine examples I want to mention very quickly.
In the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the Telephone Disclosure and Dispute Resolution Act, the Children's Online Privacy Protect Act, the Telemarketing and Consumer Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act, the Credit Repair Organizations Act, the Controlling the Assault of Nonsolicited Pornography and Marketing Act, and one section of the Truth in Lending Act all provide for State attorneys general to have a role in enforcement.
My last point--and this is the ninth one I want to mention--a few years ago, the FTC's telemarketing sales rule went into effect. They said at one point:
The commission believes that the joint Federal-State
enforcement model under the Telemarketing Act provides a
practical framework for coordinating our efforts with those
of States and results in an efficient and effective law
enforcement program.
We are utilizing a model that other Federal agencies that had this model before recognize is an effective and efficient use of resources.
My last point on adding the attorneys general to the enforcement of the CPSC rules, regulations, and decisions is that it is a very efficient way to do it. If we wanted to, the Congress could add another $5 million, $10 million, $20 million, $50 million--whatever it may be-- in appropriations to this Federal agency to put people out there around the various States to do the very same work the State attorneys general offices can do without any Federal taxpayers' dollars involved.
I thank the distinguished chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee for his comments.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a vote immediately in relation to Klobuchar amendment No. 4105, as modified, with 2 minutes of debate prior to the vote, equally divided; further, that no second-degree amendments be in order prior to the vote; that following the vote in relation to the Klobuchar amendment, there be 1 hour of debate on Cornyn amendment No. 4094, as modified, with the time equally divided between Senators Cornyn and Pryor, or their designees; further, that a vote in relation to the Cornyn amendment occur at a time to be determined by the two leaders; that no second-degree amendments be in order prior to the vote, and there be an additional 10 minutes of debate prior to the vote in relation to the Cornyn amendment.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum, and I ask unanimous consent that the time run equally.
I suggested the absence of a quorum and that the time run equally on both sides.
Madam President, I thank Senator Stevens for his comments on the Cornyn amendment.
I oppose the Cornyn amendment for several reasons, although I must say Senator Cornyn has been very fair in his dealings on this amendment. We have sat down with him. I have talked to him several times on the Senate floor. But let me give you a few reasons I oppose this amendment. I know some other Senators want to come and speak.
First, we have to remember what we are doing in the context of this legislation. We have drafted a bill that contains a provision where the State attorneys general can enforce what CPSC says. We made it very clear in this statute that the State AGs must follow the CPSC. They cannot get out in front of the CPSC.
One of the concerns by some in the business community, in fairness to them--not all but some in the business community--is where they have had the concern that there are going to be 51 standards; that it is going to be a patchwork, a crazy quilt of AGs running around out there. That is not what we are doing in this legislation. I believe we drafted the legislation very clearly, where the attorneys general must follow the CPSC. The CPSC remains in the driver's seat. That is very important.
The second limitation on the States in this legislation is that the State AGs can only pursue injunctive relief. In layman's terms, what that means is there are no money damages. They can only pursue injunctive relief. If you think about it, given the nature of what we are talking about, I think it is going to be the rare exception when a State would ever want to use outside counsel because by the nature of what we are talking about, if they found some dangerous product that is in circulation in their State, they--in my experience as attorney general--probably will approach that business, and probably that business will immediately respond by taking corrective action. That is probably what happens 99 percent of the time because the company does not want the bad publicity. They do not want the legal headache. Once you point out to them they are in violation of some Federal law, they are going to pull those products off the shelves, whatever the case may be. So it is going to be very seldom used.
But in the event the company does not do that, in every case I have ever heard of--and I used to be the attorney general of my State of Arkansas--in every case I have ever heard of, when the attorney general sues--excuse me, has to hire outside counsel to do it--those are complicated and expensive and in some cases long-term cases.
This is not one of those kinds of cases. These kinds of cases will be that when they find some violation in their State, they will want to act quickly. They will not want to have to go through maybe an RFP process. Or in our State, we had a statutory process we had to get signed off on by the legislature, signed off on by the Governor. All that takes time; you have to negotiate a contract; you have to bid it. I am going to tell you right now, most
States are never ever going to use outside counsel when it comes to trying to enforce CPSC rules.
Another reason--and this is just a practical reason, where the rubber meets the road--they are not going to pursue outside counsel to help them because it is injunctive relief only. In injunctive relief cases, there is no money, so there is no way to pay for the litigation. I think it is going to be very seldom used.
Now, I have had brought to my attention--at least one and there may be more--fee agreements that have been negotiated where there is some sort of contingent fee based on injunctive relief. Again, I have never heard of that. I do not know how you enforce that. If you do a contingent fee based on some value of injunctive relief, that money is going to have to come out of the State's hide. It is not going to come out of the defendant in the lawsuit.
So there, again, I think people are concerned about this, and I do not doubt their sincerity but, really, I think you are going to see this happen very seldom, if ever.
The last couple of things I want to say about the States attorneys general before a couple of my colleagues come and talk on this bill and other matters are, we have to remember who the State attorneys general are. They are elected officials. They were elected by the same people who elected us. The people in their home States trust them. They like the fact that the attorney general is out there looking after the public interest. They like the fact that the attorney general is looking after public safety issues. I will guarantee you, they like the fact they are out there making sure unsafe toys are taken off the shelves. So the people of the States, they have elected the attorneys general to do things such as this.
My experience in Arkansas and in talking to other AGs around the country is the people in those States have a high level of trust and confidence in their attorney general. And they know--we may not always understand this--they know the attorney general will not abuse this right they will be gaining under our Senate bill.
This Cornyn amendment smacks of micromanagement. I understand what he is trying to do. I appreciate it and I respect it. Like I said, I do not think you are ever going to see any contingent fee cases anyway. But regardless of that--maybe you will under some circumstances--let's allow the States to make that decision.
Again, almost all these States have some sort of a legal process they have to go through before they can hire outside counsel. Let's let the States do it. These State AGs in most cases are elected by the people of the State. There are a few who are not. A few are appointed by the Governor; appointed in one case by the State supreme court. But, nonetheless, let them make that decision. We do not need to micromanage this. Let them do what they believe is in the State's best interest. That is what this bill is all about anyway.
So I oppose the Cornyn amendment. But I certainly appreciate Senator Cornyn reaching out in the manner he has to work with us on this legislation.
With that, Madam President, I yield the floor.
Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that during this quorum call, the time run equally against both sides.
Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
Madam President, let me say that, again, I thank the Senator from South Carolina for being very constructive during this process and working on this legislation this week. We sat with him and his staff on a number of occasions to try to work through language in amendments. He has been a delight to work with on this matter. I appreciate that.
Let me talk about this garage door provision that is in the Senate bill. I think it is important for colleagues to understand the history of why, and why it is in there. You can look at existing law and, basically, what the Congress did years ago was to more or less allow Underwriters Laboratories to set the safety standards for garage doors. For years and years, there was a two-part safety standard. One dealt with pressure for a motorized garage door that, when it hit a certain level of pressure, would stop and reverse, and also some sort of noncontact systems, where if someone were to pass under the garage door, such as a baby crawling or whatever it may be, it would trigger these sensors and the door would never come down and touch in the first place. That has been the standard in this country for a long time.
But what has happened over the last year or so, UL has changed their standards and they have actually gone, in my view, backward by saying this pressure sensor is enough. They have updated the standard--and I may be overgeneralizing that a little, but they are basically saying you don't need that second safety mechanism. We all probably remember the years of the 1970s and 1980s when it was common for garage doors to kill people. It is not as common anymore, and power garage doors are much more common today than they used to be.
In section 31, we tried to not just restore the old law, but we tried to enhance it and improve it. This is what it says:
All automatic garage door openers that directly drive the
door in the closing direction that are manufactured more than
6 months after the date of enactment of this Act shall
include an external secondary entrapment protection device
that does not require contact with a person or object for the
garage door to reverse.
This is a technology-neutral provision. Many companies make this laser technology we have all seen. I used to have one on my garage door where there is a mechanism that shoots a little beam of light. When you interrupt that contact somehow--I don't know exactly how it works--it triggers the door, stops it, and it opens. That is actually a fairly cheap piece of technology. I have heard estimates of that technology costing something around $10 per door. I am sure it depends on the brand, who installs it, where you buy it, et cetera. Roughly, as I understand, it is about $10 per door. It is very cheap, very inexpensive, very effective. That is the traditional laser technology.
As we might expect in today's world, there are all kinds of new emerging technologies. We do not know what the future holds. We do know that this technology the automakers are putting on their bumpers now, the reverse indicator, the backup warning--when you are backing up your car, some cars that have this technology will beep when you get too close to an object behind. Apparently, as I understand it--do not ask me to explain it in any detail--apparently, that is some sort of radar technology. Again, it is pretty cheap and pretty effective. Supposedly, the garage door people are coming up with some sort of new radar technology that some believe may be better or may be a good alternative, at least, to the laser technology. Apparently, there are other types of motion sensors. Again, I don't know all the technology, and I don't know how the technology is going to emerge.
What we are trying to do with this provision in this act is, quite frankly, have a little belt-and-suspenders here. We want to make sure we have two safety mechanisms on doors. That has really been, again, what Underwriters Laboratory set as the U.S. standard for years and years. Now they reversed that standard. I think they are going in the wrong direction. They are going back to basically one type of safety device, not having two per door. This is a stronger safety provision than what is currently under U.S. law.
Another point I wish to mention is there has been some discussion that this might set a bad precedent for us, the Congress, to set a safety standard; isn't this what CPSC is supposed to do? The answer is yes, this is what they are supposed to do, but there are many occasions where the Congress has specifically laid out safety standards. I will give a few: lawn mowers; garage door openers; bicycle helmets; a toy that has been banned called Lawn Darts that was unsafe, and Congress actually banned it; lead-lined water coolers. There are safety standards Congress has mandated on refrigerators and other products. Certainly, we authorize CPSC to come up with a lot of safety standards, and they should; they are the experts, but there have been many occasions in the past where Congress has laid out a safety standard for a specific product or specific item.
Here, again, this approach we are utilizing in section 31 is a little bit redundant. With safety, it is not all bad to be redundant. It is a little bit of belt-and-suspenders. Again, it basically would reestablish a previous standard in the United States that when you have a power garage door, there would be some sort of pressure mechanism with the motor, that when it feels the right amount of pressure, it will stop and reverse.
Also, there will be some, as it says, external secondary entrapment protection device. In other words, it would be separate from the motor. This is a very technology-neutral, very vendor-neutral phrase, and we will let the industry sort out what an ``external secondary entrapment protection device'' may mean because there may be technology on the drawing board today we know nothing about, maybe designs of these garage door systems about which we know nothing. Nonetheless, we want to make sure we have that double protection.
Absolutely.
Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the vote in relation to the Cornyn amendment, No. 4094, as modified, occur at 4:45 p.m., with the provisions of the previous order remaining in effect.
Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
Mr. President, I wish to address my colleagues here for a minute and tell them about our status and what we are trying to accomplish this week. Of course we are on the Consumer Product Safety Commission reauthorization bill.
Again, I thank all my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for their spirit of cooperation that we have seen all week. It has been exemplary. I appreciate it. I have told several of you that privately and publicly. It has been great.
Our status is right now we are going to have a vote at 4:45 on the Cornyn amendment. It deals with attorney's fees with regard to attorneys general. We are going to have a vote on that.
Then we would love to set up more votes tonight. We have several amendments that have been filed that are pending. It is not a long list, but we do have several. We would love for Senators, if at all possible during this vote, to come and talk to me or talk to Senator Stevens or talk to our staffs about how you wish to see your amendments sequenced.
I think it is very realistic that we can finish this bill tomorrow. At some point tonight, we are all going to sit down and begin to work very diligently on a managers' package. We have had several amendments, noncontroversial, or that we have made modifications to. There has been a lot of progress made. I know sometimes when you watch the Senate you wonder if anything is going on. A lot of progress has been made. Again, I thank all of my colleagues for that.
So we are going to sit down tonight and work through a managers' package. If a Senator wishes their amendment included in the managers' package, please let me or Senator Stevens know. We are going to be working on that very diligently tonight. That is where we stand.
We encourage people, if they want votes for their amendments, to please let us know. We encourage people to come in and talk about their amendments. We encourage Senators to work together and either try to get their language included in the managers' amendment or have a vote on it tomorrow or tonight. We would love to have some more votes tonight. We think there are at least one, two, or three that we may be able to vote on tonight, realistically. So I wanted to alert Senators to that fact.
I yield the floor.
Yes. I have no objection to that. We have spoken on the Cornyn amendment extensively.
I yield back my time.
I move to table the Cornyn amendment and ask for the yeas and nays.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
Mr. President, just to reiterate what the leader said a few moments ago, we are making great progress. Again, I thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. Everyone has been very reasonable.
My sense is that this body really wants to get this done tomorrow. I can tell my colleagues right now that our staffs will be working, burning the midnight oil tonight trying to put together a managers' package. We made progress during this vote, with one or two amendments going away.
So thank you to all of my colleagues who have been working so hard to get us where we are today. We will continue to work. Again, if any Senator's staff wants to come and talk to us about amendments or something they would like to see in the managers' package, now is the time to do it because we are about to work very hard to try to get this bill done tomorrow.
Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.