commission, i will be a partner with all of you and protecting the lives and the health of the children in our country. my life's mission has been enhancing the quality of life for children and families in south carolina. this mission has remained constant though i have worked in different venues than the many different issues affecting the safety, health and the well-being of the children in my state. from 1999 to 2007 i served as south carolina state superintendent of education and directed and managed a state agency of nearly 1,000 employees. the department of education was a part of the state's 85 school districts in implementing legislation and policy that was passed by the south carolina general assembly. families, a public schoolteacher, licensing had starts, research director of legislative committee is an attorney in private practice. as an attorney at practice in the area of health, and run

until law and public safety. during this time i served as the chairman of the environmental and natural resources section of the south carolina bar and before going into private practice i was director of committee of the house of representatives and interestingly enough that committee reported out the first south carolina led poisoning prevention control act. we down with a drug proud of selection act and the hazardous waste management act. i'm aware that if confirmed by the senate i would assume the chairmanship of an agency in the face of living in challenges and i want to ensure a that is -- then i'll were collaborative played with a other commissions at the commission as well as with you to ensure that the consumer product safety and women active 2008 is implemented in a timely and effective manner. it does conclude my remarks this morning mr. chairman. and i wanted to say that if confirmed by you that i will work with you in a full

partnership to implement the laws that to pass, i wanted you to know that i thank you for your attention today and for your phone and reconsideration of my nomination and i'd be happy to answer any questions give i thank you for that statement. for the senators who have just arrived and looks like we have a vote scheduled for 11:45 a.m. unless that changes. and what i like to do is have everyone some of their opening statements for the record and dive into questions. i will try to give my to less than five minutes of i can inez tenenbaum, let me ask about your background. i think one of a very significant things you have send in your life is taking on this challenge there in south carolina with education system and. can you tell the committee how you think that as some to prepare you for the task that you have a this cpsc? can i thank you mr. chairman.

as state superintendent of education and managed an agency with over a thousand employees. of that agency were to implement policy and regulations passed by the general assembly and we also work with the school district to provide a transportation, food seven less, to provide textbooks, to train teachers in an area of teaching and learning that it had i think what i wanted to know about that is that i had multiple projects going on at the same time paragon had various positions and we regularly had to implement legislation that was passed by the general assembly many times in a very quick fashion. i never tried to find legislation passed by the general assembly. if it wasn't perfect at the moment than average for the general assembly and words with the statute to see if i can implement that statute. i am very familiar with the regulatory process, due process,

writing regulations, carrying them out, working to form a consensus with industry, with advocacy groups come with people concerned about the well-being of children to make sure everyone has a fair hearing. i think that has trained me to know being in the executive branch that we are not alone in the executive branch, that if i'm confirmed as chairman that i need to have a partnership with you to inform you regularly on matters that the commissions involved in and to secure guidance and assistance in carrying out the laws you pass. >> thank you. and could you talk a little bit about your management style? you mentioned the have a thousand employees in south carolina and you have 500 year. and it is fair to say anything most people would agree that there is an issue of morale other other consumer product safety commission right now just for various reasons and could you talk a little about jim

management style and some of the things you in like to see happen at cpsc? command thank you mr. chairman. it confirmed i want to assure you that the commission will operate in an open, a transparent and collaborative way and in a way that engenders the trust from the president, the congress and american people. the commission will have proper management and accounting controls and opera to the greatest efficiency. i want to buy persons with the greatest talent, integrity and motivation to protect the american people from. one of the things that assertion is the full implementation of the consumer product act last year. and we have certification of products that is coming on-line accreditation of third-party laboratories, tracking levels that are guidance and due in august. we also have a mandate under that law to increase public awareness of consumer products and create a website in which consumers can talk about their

experiences with products and certain other products. that is one of the largest challenges that we will face very its timely implementation so we can rent regulation so that industry has guided us. i have heard about the morality agency and i think some of that morale comes from the fact that they have had a large agenda and they have had a surge of imports and some months to handle and yet they did not have the staff in place and did not have the budget necessary to meet all of these challenges. so i want to work with you and to use wisely the 71% increase in the budget that you have provided for this coming year, to hire the people who have the greatest motivation to protect the people coming into work to settle many of these uncertainties that have arisen of consequences human not have anticipated when you pass the act. >> thank you. and i do think this is going to

be a work in progress. you need a little time to get your feet wet and get your bearings in there at that agency, so as issues present themselves i am sure the committee would appreciate hearing from you on various things whenever they maybe. challenges, successes, what ever they may be and is probably a good idea for you to make come back to either the committee formally will have a meeting informally with us and i will say 60 days after your confirmation to give us a sense of how things are going and if there are specific issues that are still out there maybe we can talk about those in detail was you are there. senator hutchison. >> thank you mr. chairman. i was very pleased to have a meeting with ms. tenenbaum last week and i was very encouraged with heard talk of her record, of working with the south carolina legislature in your position as head of education in

the state and i think that a good sign for working with congress as well. as you know, we did pass the act last year. our chairman was a real leader in that effort and i think that many good things were done in that legislation. however, there are some glitches as often happens with legislation and semiserious weather has been a difference of opinion about the intent of some of the language area so i would like to ask you a couple of questions. riss as of the required question that the ranking member always asks and that is our committee has always worked well with the staff and the agency's and the heads of agencies and when we are developing or proposing legislation we need the technical expertise and my question is, can all of our members of our committee with

count on being able to call into your agency for the expertise that we might need to help us draft legislation to its board to exercise our responsibility and oversight? >> yes, senator and thank you for that question. you will have access to the work of the agency in. we have a very talented people at agency, you can talk of the scientists, engineers, the experts in that area and also we want you to be able to call me at any time or any member of my staff. we will work with you in partnership. >> one thing i think our committee probably will need to do is have a hearing on the act that we passed last year to see where the kinks are and see where we need to do some technical corrections. let me ask you one question on that. we discussed some of the

unintended results of a impacting thrift stores, a charity sales, a small businesses, and you used the word common-sense in your description of what you think is right in these enforcement arena as so i would ask you if you think the law gives you sufficient flexibility for the common sense enforcement that i think we agree is in the right standard. and where do think it doesn't get enough flexibility in the long clear even if it is pretty hard to enforce? >> well, thank you, senator. it would be premature and we talk about this in the office to take a position on whether the lawn needs to be amended, but i hope that my tenure at the commission it will be seen as a tenure where we worked with people to exercise common sense and a regulatory matter.

acting chairman more has said that we need to wait until the commission is fully formed to collectively make decisions and i am a collaborator. i won the input of my fellow commissioners as well as the staff and also in conversation with you to talk about can we go ahead and implement some areas of the law or will there be areas which are unclear. as soon as we can get guidance and regulations in place, industry will know what to do. i know there are some areas like tracking labels that industry is wondering whether required to do about this and as soon as we can promulgate to the regulations and give guidance in place and all these areas working with industry to make sure and consumers their concerns are heard, the less i believe you will hear. the senate about the law can i can i ask you one other question and that is the use of enforcement where you have found that a business needs more time

to comply with a lot. do you think this state of enforcement is sufficient or do think we need to revisit may be that area of the law to give more flexibility again when business does mean more time? and in this situation that with good news 80 vehicles were then used to be some other approach? >> well, the commission -- thank you, the commission has ordered a general seven horsemen on testing and certification requirements. there are some products that are not included in that light lead based paints and pacifiers and prince, but they also specifically issued a stay of enforcement for the dtv to give the industry more time to look at removing coming to see if they could remove lead, those without jeopardize saying its structural integrity. to me the state of enforcements seems to be working pair of the general state of enforcement

protesting acidification gave the commission time to write regulations and as soon as these regulations that are in place, we probably -- and the commission will probably have to issue it puris days of enforcement. as i have found out and doing my research and talking to members of this committee and two others who are involved with enforcing the law that what is needed is the clear guidance on all of the sections of the cpsc and also regulations. once those are in place the figure will see fewer stays of enforcement him and thank you very much. thank you mr. chairman. >> thank you. senator lautenberg. >> thank you mr. chairman. and thank you speefour -- ms. tenenbaum for your willingness to take on this assignment. in -- we and our professional lives here have a chance to any

candidates for office that are recommended and it is so nice very frankly when we have someone who is here presenting themselves to a committee to have the kind of background that you have which is i think privately sudan to taking the responsibility that you are about to take and i noticed the that you and i are focused on the quality of life for children. in that is really a principal focus for this consumer product safety commission. one of the things that we have seen happening now is that there is a focus on toy guns. news reports have shown the popularity among children with toy guns that look like real ak-47 or other assault rifles.

as a matter of fact, in some instances young people have been killed@@@@@ , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @

>> severely injured due to a crib that had collapsed. oddly enough, my wife's daughter, my stepdaughter had a baby and she is just turning a year old and i was with her this weekend. and she was chewing the paint off the crib. and even though these things are leadfree, i don't think it's very healthy for children to have paint chips in their system. now, under your leadership, will

be cpsc require grids to be tested to prove that they are herbal and will not collapse under pressure? >> thank you, senator. if i'm confirmed i will see that the requirement under the new law, consumer product safety improvement act to take voluntary crib standards and makes it mandatory if carried out. that's what this log requires for durable nursery equipment and products. those volunteers were under voluntary standard and the law requires the commission this year to a issue rules to make a mandatory. and therefore we would have enforcement over the paint chips if they came up in a baby's mouth. >> despite the high number of recalls on children's products,

consumers rarely return recalled products. as a matter of fact, it's estimated that only 5% of the time do they do so at i hope that you will increase outreach with a full complement of staff to make consumers aware of recalls of dangerous products are and that circuitry and under and that surely is a quality-of-life issue and i'm sure that that we can pretend here, we will pretend here that you are chairman and that you will look to see that when there is a recall, the reason is produced for doing so and that you will do your best to alert the public of the importance of accepting a recall and returning the product. >> thank you. i will, if i'm confirmed, make public information and education a top priority. i also will work with the states

attorneys general, the department of health and environment control, the state consumer affair offices to enlist their support with recalls. one of the things the agency is charged to do is educate the public on recalls. i understood that the agency has recall a certain items and then later on there were deaths attributed to those items, and that would worry me tremendously if that happened under my watch. and public information will be a top priority. >> thanks, mr. chairman. thank you. >> senator demint. >> thank you, mr. chairman. you have really covered a lot of my concerns with the current law in words like common sense and courage me. i know the agency has done some things to delay implementation it seems perhaps not beneficial,

and as you and i have talked a fair amount about this law and whether or not we need legislation and we will just wait to hear from you on that. but just one comment that i guess goes under the umbrella of common sense is the goal more safety, not more regulation. and the problem we often have is we develop a comprehensive regulatory scheme that it tends to favor large companies who have contingents of lawyers and people who can deal with them. and in this country there are a lot of small manufacturers, a lot of products, a lot of small toy manufacturers, handmade toys. and some of the law has been interpreted in a way that would make it very difficult for these companies to do the type of testing that would be necessary to comply in any way that they could afford to do it. and i would just ask you, as you

look at this, the whole point of this is not to run small companies out of business, but if we have such a heavy regulatory scheme, it may be very difficult for them to afford the tests that are required to comply. and there are often other ways to do that, such as make sure the components are tested, not necessarily the final product, but i would just appeal to you to do everything you can to make sure that we make our products safer, but also keep america a good place to make products. >> thank you, senator. i'm very sensitive to the concerns of small businesses. my husband worked with his families a steel company for many years, and that was a small business, and i understand that there is a great deal of worry among the 20 manufacturers and other smaller businesses. i can't because this is a quasi

judicial administrative body, the cpsc say how i would go. i have to refrain from doing that. but i will approach the interpretation of this law in a cognizant way. the component testing is an issue that will get full attention. but i cannot tip my hand on it without talking to my fellow commissioners and the staff at the cpsc. but that is an issue that handheld toy and a small manufacturers have brought out that if the components are tested, and we know they contain no lag, can we go forward and not have a test on the finished product. that will receive my full attention and consideration, if confirmed by the senate. >> that's all i can ask. thank you spirit thank you senator boxer. >> thank you and welcome and congratulations on this great nomination. you know, one of the former i think most memorable chairman of

this committee, fritz hollings, is a great fan of yours. you know that. and i fear that anyone who has earned the admiration and respect of senator fritz hollings and senator lindsey graham and senator jim demint is a person of great ability. [laughter] >> and the ability to bring people together and to win their respect, really it means so much in the role that you're going to play. i am only going to ask one question and preface it by some remarks that would show where my biases is in my biases protecting children. it always has been and i know you come from that place as well. but i just want to make sure you know that in the 80s when i came to congress that all of our regulations were based on protecting 8155-poun a 185-poun.

all of the tests went to the nih. there were no women in the test. there were no children in the tests. we worked together, all of us across party lines, change that and i think the beauty of our work is very simple. when you protect the children, you protect everyone. if you protect 155-pound, healthy man, it's going to be good for all those guys who are in that category. but the vulnerable folks, the children, the pregnant women, those with disabilities and so on are not protected. so it's such a win-win to protect the children, and i think that was our goal when the road this law that you are going to find herself in the middle of, the consumer product safety commission act.

so i guess my one question is can you assure me that in your work that you will put the children first? >> senator, thank you. i appreciate that question and yes, i will put the children first. i often gave a speech as state superintendent of education, and i quoted the hoagie indians who before they made any decision would ask one thing, is it good for the children. and i will ask before we make any rulemaking, is this good for the children of the united states. thank you. >> thank you. and i think following that we can't go wrong. we will all be protected, and yet you're going to do it anyway that allows responsible companies to make good products and sell those products. and i get so excited about your nomination, and extremely pleased at the bipartisan support you have received thus far. i hope mr. chairman we can do this very quickly. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you. senator warner. >> thank you, mr. warner. i know this is kind of a course

we are hearing from both sides, but i want to add my strong support of inez. i have had the opportunity to work with her in politics that i've had the opportunity to work with her when she did such a great job in education in south carolina. she was a great partner we found in virginia on a series of education initiatives, and i think you are absolutely the right person at the right time for an agency that has truly been troubled. and while i know you introduced your husband, they are looking around this room. there are a series of other distinguished south carolinians who are here to show support for you. some of them it's tough to get them in the same room in the same common cause. i hope you're not paying all of them. some of them are pretty expensive, high-priced folks in town now. let me just put a marker out. i know when the chairman was initially talking as we came in, he had raised an issue that he's

had played a leadership role on and senator martinez and senator nelson from louisiana and florida, and that's this chinese drywall issue. i know your agency or your new agency is working on this issue. i can tell you the stories that we had with some of the folks who have been victimized by this almost cough gasp tragedy was pretty remarkable when lee had been in recently. and the folks on your agency were saying they were starting the testing. i want to make sure virginia continues to be because we have been hit down in hampton roads on this issue. but it was amazing, they were saying we are doing the testing but we still don't have enough money or resources to do it in a timely manner, and ineffective

these people who are living in these virtually worthless homes at this point were basically told, you know, we think it's tough, we understand it's challenging, but you've got to continue to live in these places where you could be treating a health hazard for yourself and your children. and i think the thing that was most remarkable afterwards was the reason the families came out and talked to me about the fact that some of the inspectors had stopped going in and inspecting in person, and instead were simply doing soliciting the information over the phone because of the inspectors were finding just coming in and spending an hour or two in the home, they were starting to get some of the ill health effects in terms of finding shortness of breath and finding breaking out at other bad health effects. and it was just amazing to me that our federal government was then saying we don't even want

to send our inspectors in to do this. we want to do it over the phone. but by the way, if you have misfortune having done nothing wrong on your own part, to be living in one of these health hazard, we have no recourse for you. so from my college you are hearing of the issues of great concern that this chinese drywall problem is an enormous, enormous challenge. i hope you will continue to also press to make sure that we can work with you to find relief for these families. and if there is a legislative solutions that need to be taken, i know that chairman has moved aggressively on this issue. i just want to add my voice we will be there to do all we can to make sure this issue is brought to a full and speedy resolution. i know you are not even into the job you're i'm sure you have been briefed on this. but you have any comments on the chinese drywall i would love to hear them. >> if i am confirmed i will work with you to get a