CPSIA - Nancy Nord Points Out the Unpleasant Truth

In the June 1st edition of the WSJ, Nancy Nord was featured in a Letter to the Editor about over-regulation.   Commissioner Nord has had a front seat for the baloney "effort" by the Obama Dems to "reduce" burdensome regulation and to eliminate "uneconomic" regulations.  As Ms. Nord points out, the CPSC has been an oasis of normalcy during this period of regulatory introspection.  Certainly no such deregulation project has been started at the CPSC.  As she notes, she has lost vote after vote requesting cost-benefit analysis for CPSIA and other regulations - all on a party line vote.  Yes, the Dems are voting AGAINST a cost-benefit analysis again and again on the CPSC Commission.

It's your money they are spending.  It's your business that is crumpling under the burden of their over-reaching laws and rules.  There's nothing we can do to stop it - except to vote ALL Democrats out of office, including the big guy.  Since they won't play ball, this is their just desserts.

Here is Nancy Nord's letter:

Administration Isn't Serious About Regulatory Reform

I read with interest Cass Sunstein's assertion that federal agencies are working to eliminate excessively burdensome regulations ("21st-Century Regulation: An Update on the President's Reforms," op-ed, May 26). As a commissioner at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), I can attest that no such activity is happening at this agency. We certainly have not combed through our regulations to eliminate those that are "out-of-date, unnecessary, [or] excessively burdensome," as he suggests is being done across the government. Instead, we are regulating at an unprecedented pace and have pretty much abandoned any efforts to weigh societal benefits from regulations with the costs imposed on the public.

The CPSC is an independent regulatory agency and therefore, technically, it is not required to follow the president's executive orders such as the one Mr. Sunstein refers to mandating a "cost-effective approach to regulation." In past administrations, the agency has always followed the lead of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which Mr. Sunstein heads, in such matters. However, under this administration, we have ignored the recent direction to look for and eliminate burdensome regulations. We are just too busy putting out new regulations.

I have repeatedly requested that the agency do cost-benefit analysis on our various regulations only to have that request voted down by my fellow commissioners on a party-line basis. Consequently, we are issuing regulations without having done the necessary work to understand the impact of our actions both on those being regulated and on the public. As a result we have imposed regulatory burdens and caused people to lose their livelihoods without a real payback in terms of safety. At the CPSC, common sense regulation doesn't even get a head-nod.


Nancy A. Nord
Commissioner
Consumer Product Safety Commission
Washington