Floor Statements

Mr. President, I have an amendment at the desk, No. 4090, that I wish to call up.

Mr. President, we are today, once again, starting the debate on the Consumer Product Safety reform bill. This is a very important piece of legislation, and I am sure Senators from all over the country have heard from their constituents about this because we saw last year a record number of product recalls, especially in the toy area. We saw last year recall after recall after recall, and some of the news stories that made the headlines were about lead in toys, but certainly the recalls last year were not in any way, shape, or form limited to lead.

Lead is a very serious problem. We deal with lead in this legislation. In fact, we virtually ban lead in all children's products. That is a very important new safety rule. If the Senate adopts this measure, the new safety rule would be that there is a very tough scientifically based lead standard for toys.

When I say ``virtually ban,'' I do think it is important for my colleagues to understand that we can probably never absolutely get rid of lead in any product because there is some lead out in the atmosphere. It is a naturally occurring element. But we virtually ban lead in all children's products.

Another thing that we do, which I think is very important, is illustrated by this chart, and that is we recognize the changes in the U.S. economy. The last time the Senate reauthorized this legislation, which was in 1990 or 1992, we have to think about what the U.S. economy looked like. If you think about how many imports we had coming into this country from overseas, one of the things this chart illustrates is the number of imports in dollar figures, starting in 1974 and going up here to the year 2006. The actual numbers and the years aren't as important as the trend line. You can see what is happening with imports coming into this country.

We all know we are getting more and more imports, and one of the things I think we need to fight for is our U.S. manufacturing base, but that is not the discussion we are having here today. We are seeing more and more imports coming into this country. However, at the very same time, over the very same years, if you go to this bottom chart, again starting in 1974 and going up to this year, you will see what the Consumer Product Safety Commission's staff has done year by year.

Unfortunately, you see it peak in about 1980 or so, and then it starts to drop off dramatically. Here again, the numbers are not as important as the fact that you see this downward trend when it comes to employees at the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The reason that is important--and, by the way, the numbers are 420 full-time employees, and at the height of the agency there were about 900. But those numbers are not as important as the trend. You can see that today we have less than half of the full-time employees at the CPSC as they did 20 years ago.

The problem is when you compare these two charts. Again, I totally understand we can work more efficiently today with things such as computers and telecommunications and all that. We can work more efficiently. We can do more with fewer people. I do acknowledge that. But when you look at how the imports have grown and how the Consumer Product Safety Commission staff has shrunk, that explains why you see a record number of recalls. That explains why you see millions and millions of products being pulled from the shelves last year. Because as the Consumer Product Safety Commission has become less capable, less able to deal with the changes in the import economy, what you are seeing is more and more dangerous products coming into this country.

I don't think it is an accident. My colleagues need to know that I don't think it is an accident that last year every single toy recall-- and we will talk more about this in a few moments--but every single toy recall from last year was made in China. None of these were U.S. made. In fact, they weren't made in any other country except China. So we need to reexamine the priorities of this agency. We need to restructure the agency in such a way that it meets the needs of the changing U.S. economy. We need to help this agency right here, when it comes to dollar amounts and full-time employees for this agency.

Again, it may be another discussion where we try to help the U.S. economy here in the number of imports and try to manufacture more products here--that is another bill and that will come at some point in the future--but right now this is what we are focused on, is trying to make sure that the Consumer Product Safety Commission is equipped to handle the changes in the U.S. economy.

Mr. President, I see Senator Klobuchar is here, and she wishes to say a few words. I will be on the floor all day today. I encourage my colleagues to come down and talk to me if they have amendments. Certainly we have seen a growing list of amendments. My hope would be that all the amendments would be germane and that we could maybe get a bipartisan agreement on amendments.

I know Senator Stevens has been very good to deal with on this legislation. He and I have not talked about any of the amendments yet. I think our staffs have been talking with each other. But I encourage my colleagues to come to the floor when it is convenient, or send their staff over when it is convenient to talk about whatever

amendments they maybe wish to offer. I know we had some meetings last night with various staff people on certain Senators' staffs on the Republican side of the aisle, and certainly we have an open door to try to talk through those.

One last thing, again for the staff members watching this on C-SPAN and for the folks all around this country who are watching it on C-SPAN 2. We have made many changes in this legislation since it left the committee, and we have listened and we have worked very hard to try to find common ground on a whole variety of issues. When we started, there were maybe 20 or 30 or 40 controversial parts to this bill. I think we are now down to two or three. I am not sure that anyone has put a number on it, but we have worked very hard to try to come up with a bill that can have bipartisan support and something that people all over this country can be very proud of.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Reserving the right to object, as soon as he finishes his 10 minutes on his amendment, we will go back to the pending amendment.

Mr. President, I ask that we return to the regular order.

Mr. President, I wish to thank my two colleagues who just spoke--really, all three.

Senator Klobuchar has shown great leadership when it comes to this issue. This is a very personal issue with Senator Klobuchar. These recalls and injuries and even deaths of children have affected some families in her State, but she has taken this on as a very important personal issue that just so happens to be good for the country.

I also wish to thank Senator Durbin for his leadership. He has been involved in this legislation since the beginning. He has given a lot of wise counsel over the course of this legislation. He has a very strong passion about this issue. He also has been able to, as he mentioned, talk with Toys R Us and have them come in as one of the largest toy retailers, to allow them to show some leadership in the retail industry, which I think has been very helpful and very positive in the last few days.

Lastly, I wish to mention Senator John Cornyn. Again, we are going to look at his amendment to see if it is something we can agree to. I have a few traps running over here, but I told Senator Cornyn a few moments ago that we would definitely give his amendment a very serious look, and maybe it is something we could work on and work through and maybe attach to the bill. But I have some work to do on my side.

I wish to say a few words about one provision of the consumer product safety legislation we are working on right now. It has to do with the Commissioners. This is an agency that, when it was formed in the 1970s, had five Commissioners. No one can really tell us why, but sometime in the 1980s or 1990s, it went down to three Commissioners. It may have been an appropriations issue, and it was perhaps a pragmatic decision at the time. No one is really sure about that. However, I feel strongly--and I have talked to several colleagues, and they see the wisdom in this--that we really need five Commissioners on the CPSC. The reason is because the CPSC deals with over 15,000 types of products. It has a huge amount of jurisdiction that is really too much for three Commissioners to handle.

In fact, I have had the opportunity to talk to Commissioners from the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission, as well as former Commissioners from the CPSC. All of them agree that given the broad jurisdiction the CPSC has, it would be very helpful to have five Commissioners. For one thing, it gives a broader variety of perspectives and opinions, but another thing that happens as a matter of practice is the five Commissioners, whether by design or because it just happens this way, tend to start to specialize in certain areas.

Again, given the 15,000 types of products the CPSC oversees, we could understand how we might need a little bit of specialization and we might need the Commissioners to focus on specific areas because it will help the Commission be stronger overall. So we change the law in our legislation. We go from

the three-Commissioner setup we have today and we move it to five Commissioners. We return it back to the way the Commission was originally designed. We feel as though this will be a very positive development.

As part of this issue as well--in a little different section of the bill but nonetheless related--I believe and the cosponsors believe we need to reauthorize this Commission for 7 years. Part of that is because we need to help retool and rebuild this Commission over a several-year period.

One of the things we make very clear in the legislation is we don't try to fix everything on day one. There is a lot that needs to be fixed, a lot that needs to be addressed, but as a practical matter, realistically, we can't fix everything in 1 day. Rome wasn't built in a day, and you can't rebuild the CPSC in one fiscal year. What we are trying to do is phase this in over time and make sure we do it the right way, make sure we do it the smart way. That is why I believe that a 7-year reauthorization makes good sense under the circumstances.

The last point I wish to make this afternoon, or at least right now, is that we have a provision in this bill that I think will really benefit families in a very practical way; that is, we have a provision in this legislation to put identifying marks on products.

We have all been in the situation where big brother gets a G.I. Joe or whatever it may be and passes it down to little brother, or your daughter gets a set of dolls from a neighbor whose kids don't play with those dolls anymore, or whatever the case may be, and we never even saw the original packaging on a lot of that stuff. We don't know when it was made. We don't know how old it is. We don't know anything about it. All of a sudden, we read something in the paper or see something on television about a recall. Right now, we don't have any way of knowing whether it is this particular toy that has been recalled.

So what we are trying to do is set up a regime here where--and by the way, we worked with the manufacturers on this to make sure this is a practical, sensible solution, and we think it is--but to actually stamp the products with different identifying numbers, maybe batch numbers, lot numbers, whatever--not to get into all the technical aspects of it--so that when there is a recall, when there is a problem, or there is some sort of hazard that has been identified, families can look at their product, look at their toys, and know if that is a product that is subject to recall.

So we are trying to be very practical in how we approach this. We are trying to beef up the number of Commissioners. We are trying to make this a 7-year reauthorization, but we are also trying to do things that help families make the determination to keep their families safe, and this is something which I think has been lacking in the current system. Hopefully we will be able to measure in the number of injuries and in the number of deaths and even the number of recalls that happen and the amount of litigation--we hope all of that will go down when it comes to consumer product safety. Hopefully, we will be able to look back and see this as a good piece of legislation.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I am sorry, what were the two amendments?

I am sorry. Was the request just to talk about those?

Call them up and then go back to the pending amendment?

Mr. President, I ask to return to the regular order.

Mr. President, I think we have some colleagues who may be on their way to the floor shortly. I would encourage our Senate colleagues to come to the floor and offer amendments if they have amendments or offer constructive suggestions if they have those or even if they just want to come down and speak. We would really like to get this legislation wrapped up this week. So far, the cooperation has been excellent on both sides.

Again, I wish to commend Senator DeMint and Senator Cornyn for coming down and offering and addressing amendments that are germane. One of the concerns I had is that we might see the floodgates open up on this legislation and come in with all kinds of nongermane amendments. So I thank colleagues on both sides of the aisle for keeping the amendments germane and on point.

Mr. President, I note 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 stand in recess until 2:15.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, let me start our conversation this afternoon about the consumer product safety bill with a chart. I will come back to it in a few minutes, but as the camera focuses on this chart, these are the toys that were recalled in the last year. You can see it starts in March of 2007 and goes to February of 2008. Represented on this calendar are the record number of recalls that we saw last year. I am sure members of the public recall over the summer months--May, June, July, August, and even into September--there were a series of newspaper articles, news magazine stories, television, radio, in addition to Internet stories about the excessive number of recalls.

Really, this matter came to the public's attention through the toy recall issue. Now, of course the Consumer Product Safety Commission deals with a lot more than just toys. Toys are very important, and it is a big piece of what they do, but the CPSC does a lot more than toys. But this chart shows the toys, to give a sense of how many recalls we are looking at every year. And what we have done is, we have picked one item that would represent that recall every month. You can see that most months it is four or five recalls in that given month.

So the CPSC has been very busy. Unfortunately, that is part of the problem. They are overwhelmed with the marketplace today, and it has been very difficult for the CPSC to keep up with the tremendous number of imports.

By the way, every single toy on this calendar is from China--every single toy. I didn't come here to pick on China today, but facts are facts. Last year, in 2007, every toy recall was from China.

One of the things we are trying to accomplish in this legislation is to make sure imported toys meet our safety standards. This is a very basic function of Government; that is, to provide for the health and safety and the general welfare of the people. The Consumer Product Safety Commission is on the front line of doing that.

Now, I want to talk about this again in a few moments, so I will leave it up and allow people to look at it if they want. But before I do, I want to talk about another provision in the legislation that some have found to be controversial. To be honest with you, some of this controversy is because people have looked at the previous version of the bill.

In the previous version of the bill, we had an attorney general enforcement provision that was very aggressive and somewhat open, and people were very concerned that the attorneys general might go wild, so to speak, and start to initiate litigation and bring lawsuits that the CPSC was reluctant to bring.

Regardless of how the committee bill was drafted, that has changed in this legislation. I want to be very clear for my colleagues and, again, for staff members who are watching in their offices on Capitol Hill, that has changed dramatically. I want to go through those changes, if I may, very quickly.

First, when we talk about adding State attorneys general to this enforcement mechanism for the CPSC, we are talking about putting more cops on the beat or, as someone said the other day, ``more feet on the street.'' You can call it what you want, but the idea is that we have a choice to make. If we want to enforce CPSC decisions, we can do it one of two ways: We can hire more people at CPSC and maybe the Justice Department and pay another $5 million, $10 million, $20 million, $50 million, or whatever it may be for enforcement personnel, who are Federal employees, or we can turn this responsibility over to the States and allow the States a piece of this so if there are problems in their home States, they can go after their problems with no Federal taxpayer expense. And that is the route we have chosen in S. 2663.

I know there are some, especially in the business community, who fear the attorney general. When I say that, I mean the State attorney general. They have seen what happened in the tobacco case several years ago. They have seen what has happened in a few other cases since then, and they fear what the attorney general can do, and will do, given the opportunity. Well, let me say a couple of things about that.

First, I was the attorney general of my State, and I know how that office works and I know how attorneys general think and the approach they take to problem solving. I would say that most attorneys general have resource issues like everybody else. They are strained in terms of how much time and attention they can devote to certain matters. Most AGs--not all but most AGs--have the consumer protection ability in their State offices right now. There are very few who don't.

The other thing that is very important about the attorney general is, in the States, the attorney general position is a very respected position. If you take a poll around the country and ask various people in their States, they have a high degree of respect for the attorney general because, by and large, these men and women have done a great public service for their States. In fact, we have to remember, as Members of the Senate, these attorneys general are elected by the very same people we are. I think it is 44 States--I can't remember the exact number--where the attorney general is popularly elected. There are a few that are not. I think Tennessee has the State supreme court appoint the attorney general. But, regardless, most State AGs are elected by the people, and the people trust them.

The other thing I wanted to say about attorneys general is, in general, the reason the State attorneys general act is because Congress fails to act. We saw that in the tobacco case. Several years ago-- again, this has been about 10 years ago now or a little more--there was a bill in Congress to regulate tobacco and to fundamentally change Federal tobacco law and the national tobacco policy. Again, I don't remember exactly what year this was--it was sometime in the mid-1990s, I don't remember exactly, but that bill got bogged down. That bill did not make it out of the Congress, and it never became law.

That was the triggering mechanism for the States' tobacco litigation to rev up. I think it had existed before that, but once the Congress failed to act,

once people here in Washington couldn't address and couldn't resolve one of the Nation's great problems, the States acted. And that is the nature of it.

So one thing I encourage my colleagues to think about is to think about our acting and our taking care of the Consumer Product Safety Commission so we don't see that patchwork out in the many States, where State legislators come in with these great ideas about consumer product safety legislation, where State AGs don't try to get creative and come up with some sort of master plan for litigation. Let's avoid that. Let's pass this S. 2663, the CPSC Reform Act. Let's pass this and allow the State AGs some enforcement responsibility but also keep this in the Federal purview.

Let me talk briefly about that. S. 2663 would authorize the State attorneys general to bring a civil action to seek--and this is very important--injunctive relief only for clear violations of the statute or clear violations of orders by the CPSC. So I need to be very clear.

What we are talking about is enforcement only. We are talking about injunctive relief only. That means no money damages. That is what we are talking about. We are talking about the States watching the CPSC, maybe the best example, maybe doing a recall somewhere in the State. They find that product is still on the shelves; it should not be. Maybe it is showing up in Dollar Stores, maybe some retailers like small guys or whatever ignoring it. The State attorney general can step in and get those products off the shelf.

You all know as well as I do the way that is going to work in the real world is the minute the attorney general shows up at that store, they are going to get those products off the shelves. That is the way it works.

It is like a friend of mine told me--one time I called him up and I was the attorney general. He said: Oh, man, my worst nightmare is to have the attorney general call me at my office because you never know what the AG is going to do. It is like having ``60 Minutes'' show up in your front lobby or something.

But, nonetheless, that is the way it is going to work. The mere fact that the States have this authority gives a local hammer to the CPSC that they do not have right now. Right now, what we have to do is rely on the Justice Department or we have to rely on CPSC employees to turn around and try to enforce those out in the various States; try to track down all of these products wherever they may be.

It is hurting enforcement. The States and the State attorneys general are naturally in a better position to know what is going on in their State, and they are in a better position to enforce the CSPC orders in their State. That is the way it is.

Let me say a few more things. I want to get back to this chart. The Consumer Product Safety Commission bill we are talking about now not only limits the attorneys general in the two ways I have mentioned, they have to follow the CPSC, and it has to be for injunctive relief only, but also this requires that the State would serve written notice on the Commission 60 days prior to them filing. So they have to actually notify the Commission.

The fourth thing, the fourth out of five safeguards that are built into this legislation, is that the Commission, if they so choose for whatever reason, can intervene in that litigation.

The last thing is that if the Commission has a pending action going, the States cannot get in that action. Here again, we want to make sure that the CPSC remains in the driver's seat. One of the myths about this legislation that I have heard--and, quite frankly, it has been mostly on this side of the aisle and this is in the business community--is if we pass my bill, what is going to happen is there are going to be 51 different standards out there, there is going to be litigation coming everywhere. That is not the case. Again, because of Senator Stevens' work that he did to make this bill a bipartisan bill, what we are left with is these very tight controls on the attorneys general. Nonetheless, I think there is value, good value in the States having that enforcement mechanism on a State level.

The other thing I wanted to say before I turn to this chart is this is not a new approach. This is not a new approach. In fact, for over a decade State attorneys general have been able to seek injunctive relief under the Federal Hazardous Substance Act, a statute enforced by the CPSC. This authority has not resulted in varying interpretations of law that have been a concern--if we give the States some authority, we are going to have all of these 51 jurisdictions out there doing all of these different things. That is not the case. We have a 10-year track record with the Hazardous Substances Act and the States have not abused it. They have not abused it. So we know the States can play a very important role with the CPSC and with the Federal Government.

And, by the way, there are lots of other examples--I do not have to get into all of those right now, but lots of other examples where there is a Federal component and a State component to something where the States are allowed to do some enforcement or play a State role, an important State role. I think that is what this has as well.

Let me go to this ``toxic toy'' calendar again. Here again you see these toys that look very familiar, like Thomas up here. Here is the ``Evil Eye'' up here in June of 2007. If I am not mistaken, this is one where they actually had kerosene in the eyeballs. Can you imagine that? They sell these little rubbery or plastic eyeballs that actually had kerosene in those. And this was a children's toy. It is hard to believe.

But you see tops, you see Sesame Street characters, you see little things such as building blocks, you see little scooters, dart boards, a wagon, you see all kinds of things. Some of these might have had lead paint, some of these may present choking hazards. But you can see how busy the Consumer Product Safety Commission is.

Again, part of our legislation is to give them the resources they need in order to do these recalls. But you can imagine with all these recalls and how busy they are--you know, they are over here in September of 2007. They do these toy recalls. Well, suddenly it is October, and they are working on five more. They do not have time to go back to the State of Arkansas or the State of Delaware or Wyoming or wherever it may be in order to go back and enforce what they had been doing in the previous month. They do not have time for that or have the resources for that.

Again, I think the way we have this structured is very positive. Let me give a few examples of what we are talking about here. Let's start with this first month, March of 2007. See this airplane right here? The batteries can overheat in this airplane and cause a fire. This animal farm, this little farm right here, these little pieces can fall off and they become a choking hazard. This keyboard can catch fire. This easel has lead in it.

Then we go over here to April. We see on the infant bouncer, which is right here, this little infant chair, a falling hazard out of the seat. There may have been something in the design or construction that made children susceptible to falling out of this.

This puzzle has a choking hazard. Again, maybe these knobs come off or something will break off, I am not quite sure, but a choking hazard; this activities chart, a choking hazard; the bracelets that you see here, lead poisoning. Again, you can go down this list. This infant swing right here is an entrapment hazard. I am going to tell you, these entrapment hazards are terrible stories. I have talked to those families before. We had a case in Arkansas a few years ago. It was not with an item here, but it was with a crib type playpen. I am going to tell you, it collapsed on the child and choked the child. It was terrible. Unfortunately, we see that all over the country.

This ``Evil Eye'' eyeball, they are ``evil eyes'' because they are full of kerosene. It is hard to believe. Seriously. Think about that. It is hard to believe that any company with any sense at all--I mean, unbelievable--would actually put kerosene in the little toys. Think about it. I do not know why in the world they would ever do that. But that is exactly what they did.

Again, we can go down a long list of what can go wrong with these toys. But this is why the marketplace needs some supervision. The marketplace needs something such as the CPSC and someone on a State level, such as the

State attorneys general, to make sure these toys are not present in the stream of commerce in the various States.

Again, the attorneys general provision of this proposed bill has been a little bit controversial, but it should not be anymore because we have built in the safeguards. We have tried to find the consumer protections. We have tried to make the right policy but at the same time make sure that the attorneys general have the right parameters on them and also keep the CPSC in the driver's seat and to make sure that the State AGs can only seek injunctive relief.

That is a very important point, that injunctive relief, because what that means is there are no money damages with an injunction. They are going out there to force someone to do something such as pull something off the shelf or stop selling something or whatever the case may be. That is a very positive development.

I have heard from a few groups in the last several days on this concern about contingencies: We should not have any contingent fees. Well, realistically, as a practical matter, I do not think you are going to see any contingent fees with injunctive cases. It is very rare to find injunctive cases with a contingency fee. I guess it can happen. I have seen one example where some lawyers tried to do that.

The other thing about the State AGs, given the nature of these claims, I do not think you are going to see very many States use outside counsel. Usually the States bring in outside counsel when there is something very complicated, where there are a lot of costs, or it is a long-term piece of litigation that is going to take years and maybe millions of dollars to repair, very complicated. Again, this is not one of those types of cases. This type of case is you see a CPSC finding, for example, they say the evil eyeballs, kerosene-filled eyeballs cannot be sold in the United States. Some AG is out, they look around, they see it being sold in a Dollar Store, they see it being sold in some discount store somewhere, and they can go after that store and make them get them off the shelves.

Again, I think what you will see here is probably very little litigation. I think once that attorney general tells them, we are about to come after you, in my experience as attorney general, most people will respond to that and respond to that very quickly. They do not want the publicity, they do not want the hassle of selling something such as that.

The last thing I was going to say on the contingent fees is contingent fees, of course, are used in lots of different types of litigation. But if you think about it with injunctive relief cases, there is no money to base a contingent fee on. So if you are going to pull a bunch of ``Evil Eye'' eyeballs off the shelf, how does the contingent fee work? I think more often than not, much more often than not, you will not see any contingent fee cases. I do not think they apply.

The last thing I was going to say on the outside counsel, most States have a process you have to go through to get outside counsel. In fact, when I was attorney general of Arkansas, we never went through the process. We knew about the process; we never went through it. But you actually had to get approval of the State legislature and have the Governor sign off on it. They did that before I became AG. I do not think they ever did that when I was there. I do not think they have done it since. Everyone has a different process, but usually the States will have to go through an RFP type process that can take months. Again, we already have a provision in here where they have to send notice to the CPSC for 60 days. So I would be surprised if you see the States want to stretch out this timeframe, because usually what they have done is they have found a dangerous product in their State, and they are trying to get rid of it.

We have worked very hard to listen to everyone's concerns about the State AGs. We have tried to meet these concerns. We have tried to make sure the concerns are valid. We have tried to meet those and tried to make sure we can keep this bill bipartisan, and hopefully get the 50 votes on this bill as it is written right now.

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 time until 5:30 p.m. be used for debate on DeMint amendment No. 4095; that the time be equally divided between Senator DeMint and Senator Pryor or their designees; and that following the use or yielding back of time, the Senate proceed to a vote in relation to the DeMint amendment No. 4095, with no second-degree amendments in order prior to the vote.

Mr. President, I wish to speak about the DeMint amendment. Senator DeMint, by the way, has been very constructive in our meetings and in our discussions. His staff met with my staff last night. The meetings to date have been constructive and positive. We are hoping that they might actually lead to some improvements to the legislation, but we will have to wait and see to know how some of this works out.

I think it is very important for colleagues to understand what this amendment does that Senator DeMint is offering first and that we will vote on at 5:30, and that is it would take the work the Senate has done on this legislation so far and throw it out the window and adopt the House-passed measure. Now, there are a lot of differences between the House and the Senate versions. Senator DeMint was correct a few moments ago when he talked about how there are a lot of similarities as well, and that is exactly right. I think I can be fair in my discussion when I say that at least my impression is that when the House started their process last fall, they were doing it--again, from my perspective--more in terms of a reaction to a lot of the news stories everybody was seeing about dangerous toys and children's products that were setting off alarm bells all over the country. I think their bill started as a reaction to that. That is not a bad way to start a bill; I am not critical of the House in any way on it. I am proud of what they did and glad they got it through their committee and actually passed it on the House floor. I believe it was the very last day they were in session last year--if not the last day, it was the last week. So I am proud of what they have done. I would say their bill is a pretty good bill.

Part of the reason, though, or the primary reason their bill has a lot of similarity to ours is during that process--and this is just legislation; I am not critical at all, but during that process they eventually looked at our bill that we were working on in committee, and they took about half or so of it--maybe about 60 percent of it--and did some cutting and pasting and just put it in their legislation. Again, I am honored that they did and flattered that they did because we had been working hard in the Commerce Committee to make sure the reform we were talking about was comprehensive and was good.

I would say generally, in broad strokes, there are two or three major differences between the House bill and the Senate bill as the Senate bill exists today. One is that we have more enforcement in our legislation. We have more transparency in our legislation. We have more comprehensive reform in our legislation than the House bill does. Again, I am not taking away from the House bill. I appreciate their bipartisan effort over there, so I don't want my words to be interpreted as in any way critical. But I do think our bill is better. Ours is bipartisan--and so is theirs, by the way--with Senator Stevens and Senator Collins. I have spoken with several of my Republican colleagues over the last few days, and I would hope they would consider joining

us as cosponsors. I would love for them to consider doing that today. I had some discussions yesterday with a handful of Republicans who said they were interested in at least considering cosponsoring. So we are waiting to hear back from some of those offices today, but we would love to add more Republican cosponsors if at all possible.

Let me go through some of the primary differences in what the House bill does and what the Senate bill does. There are many. Again, the bills are largely similar because the House adopted a lot of what we did, or more or less adopted what we did in the committee. A lot of that has not changed at all, or it has changed very little. So let me run through a few points, five or six points.

First, I would say the Senate bill is more transparent. When I say that, what I am talking about is, under our bill--again, the bipartisan Senate substitute--what I am talking about is there is more information publicly available to people under the Senate bill. We have seen this happen on many occasions. I was going to tell this story later. We have some charts to this effect I didn't want to bring out right now because we will get into this in more detail later. We are going to talk about several examples of incidents where people were injured and where they had bought and used a product that the CPSC had known about and known about the dangers of it, but the CPSC was in negotiations or in discussions with the manufacturer about doing a recall. In fact, there is one incident we are going to talk about later--and it may be tomorrow at this point, depending on how the rest of the day goes-- there is one product we are going to talk about where a baby crib collapsed, and it caught a young girl's hand in that crib. I think she was roughly about a year old. We will get the facts on this when we go to it. I think she did end up avoiding serious injury, but it was scary. There were some moments there for the parents.

So the father called the manufacturer of the crib and the manufacturer played dumb. They say: Gosh, we didn't know. We never heard of this problem before. We didn't know our cribs had this problem. Are you sure you had it set up the right way? Are you sure she wasn't abusing it somehow? All of those kinds of things.

The father found out later that by the time he called, that company had 80 complaints about that crib doing exactly the same thing. But because there is no transparency under the current law, there was no way for the father to find out.

If our bill passes, we will set up a database that is searchable where you can go and look at a specific product and know if there have been complaints about it before. This will be a huge benefit to parents and grandparents all over the country. We need to do this. The House bill doesn't have that provision. The House bill has a study. It says: Yes, we ought to study this idea of a database, but they don't have a database. In fact, the database we are talking about, we are not inventing this out of whole cloth. We are using another Federal agency's idea which has worked very well, and that is NHTSA, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. I would encourage--here again, I mentioned this before--all of the staff people who are watching in their offices and who think their boss might be undecided on this legislation or undecided on this one point, I would encourage them right now to go to the NHTSA Web site, and there is a little area you can click on that talks about recalled products. I encourage you to do that and go through that and see first how easy it is to use; secondly, the quality of the information that is on there.

Again, we are going to show this later with charts to show all of my Senate colleagues how easy it is, but also how balanced and how fair it is. The industry has had some concerns they will be smeared, that they will be slandered or libeled with all of these complaints. But I think the NHTSA Web site shows it can be done in a very responsible way and done in a way that does help the general public.

Another difference I want to talk about, the second difference between the House version and the Senate version is, the Senate bill-- the bill we are on right now--adopts what they call ASTM963-07, which is a standard that is widely accepted by the industries. ASTM stands for the American Society for Testing and Materials, and that has just kind of become a lingo--ASTM has become a lingo in the consumer product world for a set of standards. ASTM963-07 has become a widely recognized, widely utilized standard.

What we do is, we codify that standard. If our bill passes, it is not going to be voluntary. It is not going to be--some people may be following it, and some people may not. We are going to codify it. We will make it law. Again, these are standards that the industry has been using and has accepted. This is not a controversial piece of this legislation. However, this ASTM963-07 is not in the House bill. So the House bill keeps the status quo. They say they are going to assess the effectiveness. Well, it has already been assessed. It has been out there for years and years and years. Again, it is basically universally agreed that these are good safety standards that set the standard for industry and should be adopted into Federal law.

The third difference with the House bill I wanted to talk about is this idea of punishing companies when they do the wrong thing. The Senate committee passed the bill out of committee with a $100 million civil penalty--$100 million. It went from $1.8 million to $100 million--over 50 times what is in existing law.

The House, in the meantime, passed a provision that had a $10 million penalty. Well, the concern I have with the $10 million penalty--civil penalty--is that for a lot of these big companies, $1.8 million can just be the cost of doing business. Again, we have some charts on this that we may show in the next couple of days--it can be the cost of doing business for some of these big companies--$10 million is better. It gets their attention. But what we do is, we set our cap under the Senate bill at $10 million unless there are aggravating circumstances. If there are aggravating circumstances such as maybe you have a repeat offender, maybe you have some particularly egregious behavior, or maybe you have a company that just absolutely does not have any regard for U.S. safety standards. Again, a lot of these products that are defective are coming in from overseas. Maybe they don't have the quality control over there. I don't know. They maybe have a chronic problem or whatever it may be. The Senate bill allows you to take the $10 million max and do an additional $10 million, again, if there are aggravating circumstances.

Quite frankly, I hope the CPSC never has to use that, but the fact that they have that ability maybe will put a little fear in some people when they make some of these decisions about cutting corners on lead paint or making defective products, whatever they may be.

So, again, the Senate bill has a 10-plus-10 provision, which is $10 million max in lesser aggravating circumstances, and then you can go for an additional $10 million. The House bill just has the flat $10 million.

Another difference, and I would call this the fourth difference between the Senate bill and the House bill, is that the Senate bill has a protection for employees who notify the CPSC of violations. Now, this is important. You don't want employees to be punished for doing the right thing. We all know how it works in the real world. It happens where an employee will, over the objections of a company--over the objections of his employer--go and inform the CPSC about some safety violation. It does happen. Again, we have examples. We have charts if anybody wants to see them, or we have memos and background, news articles, et cetera, if people want to see those. But the truth is, you have to keep this in perspective.

What we are talking about with our so-called whistleblower provision is a provision where an employee--it is basically only triggered when an employee of a company tells the CPSC about a dangerous product.

This is fundamental stuff. This employee is out there letting the public know, basically telling the Government there is a dangerous product that is either in the U.S. market or about to get to the U.S. market. Again, that employee for doing the right thing should not be fired or demoted or whatever the case may be. If we set up a process in our law that is based on existing law where the employee goes

through the Department of Labor process, it is well established, we adopt what this Congress has passed in previous years as the standard we would like to see on our whistleblower statute. The House bill has no such protection. We feel as if this is an important improvement in the legislation because we think we will get more information to the CPSC if the employees understand they are protected.

Let's talk about misinformation about this one provision. In the Commerce Committee bill, we actually had a bounty for these employees for turning in companies. We had a bounty in the bill. When I talked with Senator Stevens, that was not acceptable to him. He made it very clear that he thought it would cause a lot of heartburn on the Republican side. He was very adamant we take that provision out, and we did.

We have also done some other things to build in some safeguards. For example, if an employee files a frivolous claim with the Department of Labor, he can be subject to a $1,000 penalty. I don't have to go through all that today.

Our Senate bill, we believe, is balanced, we believe it is fair, we believe it is in the public interest to have this information come forward and the employee not be punished at work for telling the Government about a safety violation.

The fifth matter I wish to talk about is lead. I heard someone say this bill is the ``get the lead out'' bill. This bill does, for the first time, in a very historic manner, set a standard for lead in children's products. Most Americans believe there is a standard for lead in children's products. There is not a standard. There is a standard for lead in paint but not for children's products.

Every pediatrician with whom I have ever talked and every pediatrician who has testified either on the House side or the Senate side and every scientist will tell you of the dangers of lead. It is basic scientific medical knowledge today that lead is bad for children.

What we do in the Senate version of the legislation is we essentially ban lead. We do not completely ban it because we understand that lead is a naturally occurring element. We are going to have trace amounts of ambient lead in the atmosphere. We acknowledge that in our legislation. And our legislation, when it comes to lead, is more aggressive in getting the lead out of children's products. We do it quicker, and I think we do it in a better way than the House bill does.

The last point I wish to mention on the seven major differences between the House version and the Senate version is the DeMint amendment--and that is what we are talking about today--to make sure the Consumer Product Safety Commission has the funding it needs to do what we want it to do.

The Senate version is a 7-year reauthorization. The DeMint amendment would flat line the funding at a 10-percent level after 2009. Our bill actually has a slower ramp-up or it does have a ramp-up in resources, but we acknowledge there is a lot of work to be done with this Commission. We cannot just give it a year or two of increased appropriations and then flat line it and hope it is going to be OK. What we need to do is continue to invest in this Commission to make sure long term we set it up for success.

The Senate version has that major advantage over the DeMint amendment. The current version has a big advantage over the DeMint amendment when it comes to providing the resources to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

On that point, I say this: My colleagues all know, because they have seen my voting record, there have been times when I have been pretty much a deficit hawk around here and times when I have tried to shrink Government and different efforts such as that. I am not a person who believes we ought to throw money at a problem because I think generally when we do that, we do not get a very good result. I have seen that time and time again on the Federal level. But this is an exception. This is one of those times when I think we are being targeted, I think we are being responsible, I think we are slowly ramping up this Commission and not throwing a bunch of resources at it right now, but we are measuring out those resources over time, over a several year period.

I think what we will see in 7 years is a much stronger CPSC than we have today. It is not just about the CPSC as a commission being stronger. That may, in and of itself, be OK, but what is good about our legislation, the Senate version, is I believe very strongly we will have a big improvement in safety all across America.

We talk about toys, and toys are a very important piece of what the CPSC does, but they do all kinds of things. Part of this legislation is to have a Federal standard on portable gas cans and the caps that are on gas cans. We have seen that problem in many incidents around the country because there is no common standard on gas caps on these gas cans.

What we will be able to do with this legislation, with the Senate version, is to make the consumer product safety world much safer. Again, my hope is that when we stand here, say, 5 years from now, we will see a precipitous decrease in litigation, we will see a decrease in recalls, we will see a decrease in injuries, and we will see a decrease in deaths as a result of consumer products and consumer product violations.

I say to my fellow Senators, it looks as if we are going to vote on the DeMint amendment at 5:30 p.m. today. I encourage Senators and their staffs to look at the DeMint amendment and look at how it weakens the Senate version of the Consumer Product Safety Reform Act. It does weaken the Senate version. The DeMint amendment is basically--well, it is exactly accepting everything the House has done. We can do better than that. We can be stronger. In fact, I have talked with several House Members who like what we are able to do in the Senate version. The DeMint amendment puts us where the House is, and we need to have the Senate's stamp on this legislation so we can go back home and tell the people what we are doing for them.

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 time during the quorum call be equally divided.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I ask that the time come out of the Republican time, because I think the Republicans have 55 minutes, or something like that, and the Democrats only have 28 minutes.

I thank the Senator from California for being so gracious. While she was speaking, I talked to some of the Republican staff. I think they need a little more time and maybe even people on our side need a little more time on the amendment. If possible, I ask the Senator from California to set it aside. We will have a vote at 5:30. We have several Senators who we think will come and speak on the DeMint amendment. We will be working with the Senator as this goes along.

I suggest the absence of a quorum and ask unanimous consent that time under the quorum be divided equally.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in

the Record a letter, dated February 29, 2008, from the National Association of State Fire Marshals. It is addressed to Senator Inouye and Senator Stevens, where they endorse this legislation, this Senate bill.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from South Carolina for his gracious allotment of time and tell him how much I appreciate his spirit of cooperation and trying to come together and find as much common ground as we can on not just his amendment that is pending but other amendments and other matters. He has been a true gentleman in how he has conducted himself, and I appreciate that.

I wish to say a few words about the DeMint amendment. Really, all the DeMint amendment does is it cedes us to the House version of the bill. It is significantly different. As I said before, the House, during their process, basically took about half, maybe a little more of the Senate committee bill and basically cut and pasted it into their legislation. So we have a little bit of, I guess you can say pride of authorship in the House version. There are a lot of good provisions in the bill.

The House version is different in several material ways. I went through some of those before, but let me touch on about 8 or 10 more items right now. And I can do this very quickly.

First, the Senate bill gives a financial responsibility in the sense that it requires, under certain circumstances, manufacturers to put funds in escrow or to get insurance in the event of a recall. It is not automatic, but it allows the CPSC to do that under cases that might warrant that action. The DeMint amendment takes that away.

The Senate bill has a specific provision on portable gasoline containers and makes it clear that there will be a national standard. Again, the DeMint amendment takes that away.

The Senate bill has several provisions on all-terrain vehicle safety. It sets a national standard. It sets all kinds of benchmarks that need to be met, and it makes the Federal law very clear about ATV safety standards in this country. Unfortunately, the DeMint amendment takes that away.

The Senate bill also contains a garage door opener standard. We all know how dangerous garage door openers can be. They do not have to be. There is technology available. We set a national standard which is a good belt-and-suspenders type of standard. Again, we are talking about garage doors that have a track record of causing injury, in some cases death, not just to children but mostly to children. The DeMint amendment takes that standard away.

The Senate bill also contains a provision on carbon monoxide poisoning, specifically with generators. Again, this has been a problem, not just with Katrina and Rita and other situations such as those but just generally for people who use these generators in various contexts. There has been a carbon monoxide poisoning problem. The Senate bill takes care of that problem. Unfortunately, the DeMint amendment takes that away.

The completion of a cigarette lighter rulemaking is something that has been pending with the CPSC for quite some time. We clarify that there will be a national standard. We set that standard. We pretty much tell the CPSC what needs to happen with this issue. Unfortunately, the DeMint amendment takes that away.

The last point I want to make--there are several other points I could make, but the last one I want to mention is under certain circumstances, the Senate bill provides for the destruction of imported products that violate our safety standards. This is important because if we do not destroy those products, somehow, some way, oftentimes they end up in the U.S. market even though they are not supposed to, but also we see the dumping of these products in Third World countries. If we do not take a principled stand on this issue, we are just going to be dumping our problems on other countries. Unfortunately, the DeMint amendment takes that away.

I am certainly not critical of Senator DeMint or critical of the House. The House came together in a bipartisan way. The bottom line is, we just have a stronger bill in the Senate. It is a bill of which we can be proud. It is a bill people in our home States would love to see us pass. I tell you, most people in Arkansas, most people around the country in the other 49 States probably could not tell you what CPSC stands for, but they could tell you they want stronger and tougher protections when it comes to imported products. They want to make sure someone is watching to make sure the toys they buy for their children and grandchildren are safe. They want to make sure that someone in the Federal Government is watching to make sure products, such as lighters, are safe and products as simple as gasoline cans are safe and that when you use a portable generator, you do not get carbon monoxide poisoning. People in our country expect those kinds of standards, and that is exactly what the Senate bill does. It is good not just for the CPSC, but it is good for this country.

As I have said before, we have several specific differences I have just articulated, differences between the House version and the DeMint amendment, which is basically the House version. The bottom line is, the Senate bill has more transparency, more enforcement, and more comprehensive reform. This bill is something of which we can all be proud. Not that we go home and brag to people in our home States about getting something right up here, but this will give every Senator in this Chamber an opportunity to go to their home State and talk about something good the Senate is doing for this country, something that is nonpolitical, something that is bipartisan, something that is good public policy, and that is the Senate bill.

Again, the House bill is good. It is OK. It is an improvement over current law. I do not have any criticism of our House colleagues for doing what they did, I really do not, especially considering that about half of that bill is really the Senate committee bill. Regardless of that, I do not have any criticism of them, and I do not want anything I have said to be interpreted as criticism. But the Senate bill is stronger, it is better, it is more comprehensive, it is better for the American people, and I think it will, over time, lessen the amount of litigation, and I think over time you will see fewer recalls and you will see consumer confidence in products they buy go up.

Overall, this is a very good bill for the people of this country. I encourage my colleagues to vote no on the DeMint amendment, and on final passage of the Senate bill, whenever that happens--tomorrow or the next day--I

encourage all my colleagues to vote yes.

Mr. President, I yield the floor, and 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 move to table the DeMint amendment, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote and move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Change of Vote

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, before my dear colleague from Florida leaves the floor, I would like to acknowledge his work on this legislation. He has been a real go-to guy on these toy issues. In fact, he had filed a bill--before we even filed our bill that became the committee bill, he filed a bill that basically--I don't want to say we took verbatim, but we took large pieces of it and all the concepts of it and incorporated his legislation, and it really became the bedrock piece of the committee bill, which has now been amended and substituted, and now it is the bipartisan bill the Senate is working on. So Senator Bill Nelson of Florida really deserves a lot of credit for helping to get the ball rolling and getting things moving in the right direction.

In fact, we have so many colleagues who have helped in this process, and I will thank them more as the week goes on. But I think of Susan Collins of Maine, who came in probably, I don't know, several months ago--I don't remember exactly when--and she had a very important role. Of course, Senator Stevens really worked hard to make this bipartisan. Both of them are Republican cosponsors.

Again, for all of the Senators who are listening, I would love to talk to more Republican Senators about maybe possibly becoming cosponsors in the next day or two because, as we saw from the vote tonight, this bill does have broad-based bipartisan support. I appreciate the effort all of our colleagues have done, but I did want to single out Senator Bill Nelson, who has been so instrumental in moving this forward.

Mr. President, if there is no one else who is planning on speaking, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, it looks as if we are at the close of our business today. Tomorrow, I look forward to returning to the consideration of S. 2663, the Consumer Product Safety Commission Reform Act.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 4, 2008, at 9:30 a.m., in open and closed session in order to receive testimony on the United States Central Command and Special Operations Command in review of the Defense authorization request for fiscal year 2009 and the Future Years Defense Program.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 4, 2008, at 10 a.m., in order to conduct a hearing entitled ``The State of the Banking Industry.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 4, 2008, at 2:30 p.m., in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building, in order to conduct a hearing.

The purpose of this hearing is to evaluate operational incidents associated with oil spills. The Subcommittee will examine non-tank vessel fuel tank design, the Coast Guard's Vessel Traffic System, and the U.S. vessel pilot system.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate in order to conduct a hearing on Tuesday, March 4, 2008, at 10:00 a.m., in room SD 366 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. At this hearing, the Committee will hear testimony regarding Energy Information Administration's revised Annual Energy Outlook.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 4, 2008, at 9:30 a.m. in SD-410, in order to conduct a hearing on Kosovo.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 4, 2008, at 2:30 p.m. in order to conduct a closed hearing entitled ``NSPD-54/HSPD-23 and the Comprehensive National Cyber Security Initiative.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for the Committee on Veterans' Affairs to be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 4, in order to conduct a joint hearing with the House Veterans' Affairs Committee to hear the legislative presentation from the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the U.S. The Committee will meet in room 216 of the Hart Senate Office Building, at 9:30 a.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 4, 2008, at 2:30 p.m. in order to hold a closed hearing.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces of the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 4, 2008, at 2:30 p.m., in open and closed session in order to receive testimony on military space programs in review of the defense authorization request for fiscal year 2009 and the future years defense program.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Disaster Recovery and the Ad Hoc Subcommittee on State, Local, and Private Sector Preparedness and Integration of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, March 4, 2007, at 10 a.m. in order to conduct a joint hearing entitled, ``Is Housing Too Much To Hope For?: FEMA's Disaster Housing Strategy.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent, notwithstanding rule XXVI, paragraph 7, of the Standing Rules of the Senate and rule III of the Senate Budget Committee rules, that any member of the committee be permitted to vote by proxy, with the concurrence of the chair and ranking member of the committee, at the meeting of the Senate Budget Committee on March 6, 2008, and that any vote cast on behalf of that member by proxy in the Budget Committee on that date be treated by the committee as if that member were physically present but the proxy not count for the purposes of establishing a quorum present; and that if the Budget Committee orders reported a concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2009 on that date, such measure be deemed to have been ordered reported in compliance with rule XXVI, paragraph 7, of the Standing Rules of the Senate and the rules of the Senate Budget Committee.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 467 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate, and that any statements relating to the resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 471, which was submitted earlier today.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 472 submitted earlier today by Senator Lieberman.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate, and any statements be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 9:30 a.m., Wednesday, March 5; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business for up to 1 hour, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the Republicans controlling the first half and the majority controlling the final half; further, I ask that following morning business the Senate resume consideration of S. 2663, a bill to reform the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent it stand adjourned under the previous order.

Mr. President, what is our status right now on the floor? Are we still in morning business?

Do we have any time remaining in morning business?

I ask unanimous consent to yield back that time.

Mr. President, this is a historic day for the Senate because we have the opportunity, starting today, to consider the Consumer Product Safety Commission Reauthorization Act.

What I would like to do, if I may, is, when Senator Stevens of Alaska comes--apparently he has an urgent, pressing need, and he cannot stay for what would have normally been his allotted time. I would like to allow him to use his time--I think it is about 10 minutes or so--to speak, and we will cross that bridge when he walks in.

For most Americans, when they hear the term ``CPSC,'' they think of some sort of alphabet-soup Federal agency. They do not really understand what it does, why it exists, or why it is important.

In fact, I had that same reaction back when I was the attorney general of my State. I was out playing in my front yard with my kids, and my kids had some toys, and they were called Star Wars Lightsabers. They are like flashlights, but they look like a lightsaber. They were out there playing around, and one of my neighbors came up and said: Wait a minute, I think those have been recalled. Well, I did not know whether they had been recalled. She did not know for sure. I asked her, and she said: Well, I think I saw something on television about that, but I am not sure.

Well, one thing led to another. It was very hard for me to figure out whether my children's toys had been recalled. So through a process at the State Attorney General's Office in Arkansas, we established a Web site called childproductsafety.com, which had the goal of making it easier for parents like me and grandparents to go to one Web site and find all the recalled children's products that are out there. All we really did was link to the CPSC Web site. But that gave me my first experience with working with the CPSC, and it was through that process that I began to understand how important they are and why we need a very strong and capable Consumer Product Safety Commission.

To reinforce this, last year I became the chair of the Subcommittee on Consumer Affairs as part of the Commerce Committee. When I looked at all of the various consumer issues--and there are many we can focus on--I decided that the subcommittee's top priority should be to reauthorize the CPSC. The reason I did that is because in 2006 we had seen a record number of recalls. We began working on this, and we realized that because of the changes in the marketplace, because the U.S. marketplace had changed a lot because of imports--and a lot of other changes going on in the marketplace--we realized the Consumer Product Safety Commission had not kept up with the times. So we made a concerted effort to get the Consumer Product Safety Commission reauthorized.

We started that about a year ago, had a few hearings, and then, over the summer of last year, we began to see the toy recalls. I may have it wrong, but I think it was the Chicago Tribune which had the first story. But after that, a series of national news stories came out-- television, radio, newspaper, and other media like the Internet and news magazines--to talk about the record number of toy recalls from last year.

In fact, if you look at the Consumer Product Safety Commission, every year they think there are about 28,200 deaths and about 33.6 million injuries from the products the CPSC overseas. They oversee 15,000 types of products. So when you see big numbers such as this, you have to understand that these numbers cover almost every product in the American marketplace, with a few exceptions. There are a few things in the automotive world and a few other things that it does not cover, but by and large, consumer products are covered by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

We saw this again last year. We saw a record number of recalls. We thought 2006 was a bad year, but 2007 was even worse. What we are seeing now is we are seeing an escalating effect. We are seeing more and more products being recalled all the time.

So let me give a very quick background, again, for a lot of the staffers watching in their offices and for the Senators who have not yet made up their mind on how they are going to approach this Consumer Product Safety Commission legislation and maybe some amendments. Let me give a few minutes of background to talk about why we are here today and what role the CPSC plays and why it is so important to Americans all over this great country.

First, let me say that the CPSC was established in the 1970s. They have done a good job. In fact, I wish to praise the employees at CPSC, because what you have seen in the last few years is a dwindling budget. It has either been flatlined or they have had cuts. You have seen the staff there shrink over time.

Let me give you the CPSC overview that they have on their Web site. It says:

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is charged with

protecting the public from unreasonable risks of serious

injury or death from more than 15,000 types of consumer

products under the agency's jurisdiction. Deaths, injuries,

and property damage from consumer product incidents cost the

Nation more than $800 billion annually.

Let me read that again for those folks who are watching in their offices here.

Deaths, injuries, and property damage from consumer product

incidents cost the Nation more than $800 billion annually.

The CPSC is committed to protecting consumers and families

from products that pose fire, electrical, chemical, or

mechanical hazard or could injure children. The CPSC's work

to ensure the safety of consumer products, such as toys,

cribs, power tools, cigarette lighters, and household

chemicals. . . .

Et cetera, et cetera.

The CPSC is a very important agency, and it is one that, unfortunately, Congress and the White House over the last several years have neglected. It is very important that we reauthorize the Consumer Product Safety Commission. It is long overdue and has not been done since 1990 in a major way. There was a little reauthorization in 1992, but

this is 18 years in the making. And we have seen a lot of changes in the American marketplace in the last 18 years.

Another thing I would like to mention is the personnel at the CPSC. When the CPSC was in its early days in 1977, they had 900 employees, full-time employees, at the CPSC. Today, they have 420. So this agency is less than half the size it used to be. That is a problem. Again, especially considering the changes in the marketplace, that is a serious problem. But the approach taken in our legislation, S. 2663, is not just to throw money or to throw people at a problem but actually to restructure the agency and retool the agency so it can be smarter and more effective from top to bottom.

One of the problems, one of the challenges we have with the CPSC right now is the matter of a quorum. Back in the old days, back in the 1970s when the CPSC was set up, there were five Commissioners. Somewhere along the line, that got changed to three Commissioners. Today, there are only two Commissioners at the CPSC--only two Commissioners--and they have a statute that says that after a certain time, they cannot function with two Commissioners. So last year, we had to get a provision added to the law to allow them to function with just two Commissioners. This bill contains that same provision, but also I think this bill makes a very important change; that is, it returns the CPSC to the five-member Commission it used to be.

Why is that important? Think about the number of products this Commission oversees. In some ways, I think it is a little bit like the Federal Trade Commission or the Federal Communications Commission or some of these other Commissions that have a lot of jurisdiction. What it is, when you have five members, they are able to generally specialize in various areas. When you talk to Commissioners on those other Commissions, they think that is very important. And when I have talked to former CPSC Commissioners, they think it is doing a great disservice to the country to only have three Commissioners. When you only have three, everyone has to be a generalist and you do not have enough manpower to specialize in everything.

One of the things this bill does is fix that problem. It fixes the immediate quorum problem until the full five Commissioners of the CPSC can be reappointed, but it also fixes the long-term problem of having three Commissioners versus five Commissioners.

The next thing I wanted to mention is there is, in our bill, in section 10, a very important provision that is a major innovation and a major improvement over existing law, and that is third-party certification for children's products. In other words, if this law passes, we are going to set up the situation where children's products will have to be certified by a third party. This is something which has worked in other contexts--that is, generally speaking, most industries. I am not saying every single company, but most like this innovation.

The goal here is to keep these dangerous products off our shores if they are made overseas and certainly keep them off our shelves by preventing any need for recall in the first place. If you have third- party certification, you would hope you would see fewer and fewer recalls over time.

I see my colleague from Alaska has walked in, and as I understand it, he has some constraints on his schedule today. So I will be glad to sit down and hear from him.

Mr. President, again, I want to give a special thanks to Senator Stevens because he really has helped make this bill bipartisan and make it possible that we could actually pass this bill, hopefully, this week. So, I say to Senator Stevens, thank you for all that you have done to make this legislation better.

Let me get back, if I may, to the bill itself. What I am trying to do, a lot of it is for the staff, or folks who are watching in their offices, and people around the country so they can understand what we are trying to accomplish. I want to run through the provisions of this bill. It is rather lengthy, but I will try to give an abbreviated, highlighted reel of what is in this bill.

A few moments ago we talked about third party verification for toys. This toy, the Thomas and Friends Railway Toys, in some ways became almost a poster child for the problem. It had lead. These are toys designed specifically for young children, little toddlers, and little kids. You know how children do. They put things in their mouths or scratch on them or crawl all over them. No telling where they end up. The fact that you see lead in so many toys today is a great concern.

We are trying to fix that. I mentioned one of the major innovations of this legislation is the third party certification. The other thing we want to do is put tracking label information on the toys. We have all been there. As parents we have had dolls or whatever the case may be. We like the doll; the doll is passed down from one child to another, maybe from a grandparent, a neighbor, who knows what it may be. But there is really no identifying information on that doll. So this bill makes sure that as practical as it can be, we are going to put that identifying information on it.

I mentioned the Star Wars lightsabers a few moments ago. You

can go on the Internet right now or to a toy store, and there are probably 10 or 20 different varieties of those lightsabers. So if they did a recall, it is important that there is something on there, some batch number or some ID number that parents and grandparents can know and, in fact, daycare can know when those toys should be taken away from their children.

Another major improvement is the corrective action plans. Some people might call these voluntary recalls. Sometimes they do end up in voluntary recalls--not always. But the importance of the corrective action plan is that as it stands today, basically under current law--I believe it is fair to say--it is up to the manufacturer to come up with a plan. Under this bill, if this bill were to pass and become law, that shifts, and it means the Consumer Product Safety Commission lays out the parameters of that action plan. That is a very important shift in responsibility.

Believe it or not, with a lot of these products that come onto our shores today, we have no idea who makes them. Right now it is not clear whether the CPSC even has the authority to ask the question about who actually makes the product, in many cases a toy. This bill fixes that. We also go through a long list of prohibitive acts. Some of those are just clarifications. Sometimes we make it clear in the law that it is unlawful to sell or distribute a product that has been recalled. Right now there is no law on the books that says it is unlawful to do that. It clarifies that. We go through a long list of things that you can't do. For example, you can't take a recall product and dump it on Third World markets. You can't take a recall product and send it over to Dollar Stores. You can't just willy-nilly go out and sell it on the Internet.

We have a list of prohibited acts. These are commonsense acts. These are acts that will save lives if this law is implemented.

We also enhance the penalties over what they are today. Again, the penalty section is a little complicated. Under current law, our fix therefore is a little bit complicated. I don't want to spend a lot of time on it today. But the committee bill actually had a $100 million civil penalty. We have chopped that down now with a bipartisan compromise to $10 million, plus an additional $10 million if there are aggravated circumstances. We doubt that will be triggered very often, but we think it is important for the CPSC to have that added ability to enhance that penalty, to go after the really egregious behavior, maybe repeat offenders, maybe people who are just absolutely thumbing their nose at U.S. law.

Sharing information with Federal, State, local, and foreign governments is very important. Again, we believe the information sharing is good. We have talked about stove piping when it comes to intelligence, when it comes to homeland security, when it comes to DOD. We have talked about the stove piping and how unhelpful that can be. We feel the same way about this type of information. We need to share this information and make it available to State governments, local governments, foreign governments, et cetera.

We also have a financial responsibility provision in this law. Again, this is a big improvement over current law. What we do with financial responsibility is under certain circumstances a company may have to have an escrow where they put certain dollars in or they have proof of insurance or they provide some sort of security. Again, I don't think the CPSC will require that all the time, but we give them that authority because right now they don't have it.

We also are asking the GAO to do a study and get back to Congress about injuries to minority children. There is anecdotal evidence that these defective and unsafe products disproportionately harm minority children. We don't have the facts to know that for sure, but there is some anecdotal evidence to that effect. We want to make sure GAO takes a good look at that and lets us know.

There are a lot of other miscellaneous provisions in here. I will not spend too much time on these, but there is a provision about child resistant portable gasoline containers. We have seen this problem all over the country for a long time. There is not a national standard. Most people are surprised to know that. We want to have one standard that is a good standard, and this bill takes care of that. We want a toy safety standard. There is not even a toy safety standard on the books. There is one in the private sector that industry has agreed to. We want to codify it. We want to make sure we have a strong toy safety standard.

All-terrain vehicles, Senator Stevens mentioned something he has been working on a long time, and so have I, as part of the Commerce Committee. There is a garage door standard. Right now almost all garage doors--it is not required in most States--have two mechanisms for safety. One is like a laser beam mechanism, and the other is a motor; that if it feels too much pressure, it will stop or go back up. That is not required. We want to make sure on the Federal level all the new garage doors have those two safety mechanisms because we believe that will save lives.

I can go through a lot of other issues with regard to this legislation. Let me cover three of the issues that have been somewhat controversial. I want everybody to hear what I am saying about these controversial issues because we have found common ground. We have found the commonsense solution to some issues that had been very controversial and very negatively received as this bill came out of committee, but we have made major changes to these three areas.

First is the database. The goal is to have more transparency in the system. I will talk about this in the upcoming days. But we are trying to fix a real-life problem that has caused a lot of injuries. That is, there are many examples of when a product is dangerous, and that product is being sold in stores, people are buying it, people are using it, but the CPSC is in negotiations or discussions with the company, that product has been identified as dangerous, but the public doesn't know about it. We are trying to provide the transparency. The public has a right to know. So we have been working on this for a year. We have come up with this database idea. We have put a lot of parameters around it. If it is not true information or not accurate, it can be pulled off, and the companies are able to list an explanation. We don't identify the people, so you would not be able to use this, for example, where trial lawyers could go out and troll around and find new plaintiffs. We have tried to build in safeguards around this to take the objections away. But at the end of the day, if someone has a better idea on how to increase this transparency, we would love to hear about it. So far the best thing we have been able to come up with is this database.

The second controversial provision--and it was very controversial when it came out of committee--is this State attorneys general provision. I am a former State attorney general, so the AG provision is not going to cause me as much heartburn because I have lived through that for 4 years. I know how the State AGs work, and I know how diligent and careful they are. They have to manage their resources as well. But we have done two major things to the provision that came out of the committee.

First, we make sure--and we write it into the statute. We make sure the State attorneys general have to follow what the CPSC does. They can't get out in front of the CPSC. We are not going to have 51 different standards out there. They follow what the CPSC does. We made that very clear in the statute. The second thing is, we limited the State AGs to injunctive relief only.

So the situation that would be the most common would be that the CPSC does a recall, 6 months later in a State, whatever State it may be, they notice these recall products start to end up in the Dollar Store. Well, the CPSC has moved on. They are working on other things now. They don't have the resources or the time to deal with that. But the State might. If it is important enough for a State AG, he can get an injunction and make sure those products come off the shelf. These are products already identified as dangerous. We are not letting the States get out in front of the CPSC on this issue. They are following the CPSC. It is limited only to injunctive relief. We believe we have found the balance there.

The last thing I want to talk about in terms of the controversial parts of this legislation that have changed substantially since we have come out of committee is the whistleblower provision. The goal is to make sure people are not punished for doing the right thing. If an employee finds something his company is doing and he actually tells the CPSC about it and he later gets fired, we want to make sure he has some whistleblower protections such as in other areas of Federal law. We took this provision from a transportation act, the STAA, that the Senate passed not too long ago. So it is based on existing law. We have some statistics on how it should really work. So I want to encourage my colleagues to look at that.

Mr. President, how am I doing on time?

OK. Mr. President, let me speak just for another couple minutes. I see a couple colleagues coming in the Chamber to talk.

There has been a little bit of discussion about the House bill. Again, I want to thank our House colleagues for working hard down the hall here in getting a bipartisan bill. We have a bipartisan bill. But I think there are three fundamental differences between their bill and our bill.

One, our bill has more transparency. I think that is good. I think that is something we, the Senate, should insist on.

Second, our bill has more enforcement. We are able to get these products off shelves quicker and able to make sure they stay off shelves more so than the House bill.

Third, our bill is more comprehensive reform. I have gone through a long list of items on how our bill has a lot of comprehensive reform in it.

I think our bill should stand. I understand there are some people who might be interested in looking at the House bill and some of those provisions, but I think when you lay them down side by side you will see the Senate bill is stronger because it is more transparent, there is more enforcement, and it is more comprehensive.

Mr. President, I will be glad to yield.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I have no objection to that.

Reserving the right to object, would the time run on the Republican side?

I have no objection to that.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of the quorum and ask that it be equally divided.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, we are going to vote in a couple of minutes on the motion to proceed to the CPSC--the Consumer Product Safety Act--and I want to urge my colleagues to vote for this motion and to move to this legislation so that we can consider it over the next couple of days in the Senate.

I think the American public saw the record number of product recalls last year, especially in the toy sector but in all sectors of our economy. The people back home understand how important it is for the Senate to act on this and act in a way that is responsible and balanced and act in a way that is very meaningful.

Again, our legislation as compared to the House bill is more transparent, there is more enforcement, and it is more comprehensive reform. I thank my House colleagues for doing what they have done and also thank my Senate colleagues, especially Senator Ted Stevens and Senator Collins. We have several on our side who have all come together to make this a bipartisan bill, and I appreciate the Senate's consideration.

Cloture Motion

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

I ask unanimous consent that there now be a period of morning business with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.