miss tenenbaum, let me ask about your background. i think one of the very significant things you've done in your life is taking on the challenges there in south carolina with the education system. can you tell the committee how you think that has helped to prepare you for the tasks that you have at the cpsc? >> thank you, mr. chairman. as state superintendent of education, i managed an agency with over 1,000 employees. that agency worked to implement policy, and regulations that were passed by the general assembly and we also worked with the school district to provide transportation, food service to provide textbooks, to train teachers in an area to -- of teaching and learning and what i wanted you to do that i had projects at the same time. i had to pass them in a very quick fashion. i never tried to fight legislation passed by the general assembly. if it wasn't perfect at the moment, then i worked with the general assembly and worked with the statute to see if i could implement that statute. i am very familiar with the regulatory p

tenenbaum here. she is a real breath of fresh air. i am glad that the white house saw fit to nominate her. i knew that we were in pretty good shape when the day she was announced we had several consumer groups as well as several business groups who came out in support of her. she also has the encouragement and support efforts to home state senators, and we all know on this committee, we understand the trials and tribulations of the cpsc over the last few years. i think just in layman's terms what is happened is this cpsc is that its budget cut in dwindling resources as challenges have increase, and when we saw this huge influx of products that were manufactured overseas, most notably china but from a lot of places overseas, the cpsc quite frankly was not able to keep pace with that, and was overwhelmed. and, we have been working on this over the last couple of years in this committee. we were able to pass the bill last year, passed overwhelmingly, went through both houses, went through conference. in fortunately sins that bill's best

and miss tenenbaum. great to see you in my office and we're glad your nomination is before the committee today. i was wondering if i could ask you about emerging products that are associated with hazards. in 2007, the commission established be a pilot program for an early warning system on emerging products and associated with hazard. it uses subject matter expert to allow the commission staff to quickly identify these issues and propose corrective action. do you know whether this pilot has been successful? >> i don't, senator cantwell. i thank you for the question, but i don't have information on that. if it seems like a commonsense approach to work with the industries ahead of time the advise them of the regulation and the requirements on consumer products before they develop these products and then put them in the stream of commerce. >> i guess that's what i was getting at is whether in principle that approach helps the commission to be more proactive than completely reactive and should the commission

tenenbaum, you can give the answer for the record because i don't want to hold everything up.i strongly believe one of the problems is in the past there has not been enough, and work in coordination of all multiple involved agencies like international trade commission customs, u.s. -- ustr in your soon-to-be working for practical result. for instance the chinese drywall, at the end of the day if the only action is some sort of class-action suit against some shell entity in china which is qassam hour of the chinese government that goes and their litigation and takes years and years more that's not a solution. that's not a good result. that's maybe making some lawyers busy, but it's not helping the victims. really what has to happen is for this to be a priority of the u.s. government including ustr, everybody who deals weekly with china to get a practical resolution and have the victim's reimbursed in a whole and quick way and i just ask for the record your response to that idea and how would you work toward that sort of practical bottom-line result. thank you. >> thank you, sym

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

this morning, this committee had a hearing on inez tenenbaum and her confirmation process. and she had real good ideas about how the cpsc can better communication dangers and recalls and safety and all this stuff to the general public. but one thing that struck me is most of her ideas -- not all, most of them dealt with people having broadband capability so they could receive this type of information from the cpsc. i would like to ask you about the broadband technology and opportunity program in the stimulus package. do you know much about that? and do you have a sense about how that's going to be administ administered? >> my understanding is it's the commerce department and the agriculture department that have the grant-making authority, the sec as i understands it has p s responsibilities to consult with those agencies as they put together the plans for distributing the grant. >> is your understanding the sec is involved in that process? >> my understanding is there's been consultation, yes. >> and is it -- are you happy with what you hear on that? or do you think the fcc

chairman, thank you, miss tenenbaum for your willingness to surf. i wanted to focus on the chinese dry wall issue also. it has an enormous negative impact in louisiana. by my estimate, they are up to 7,000 louisiana homes affected. ril of those situations are, as senator warner described, serious health symptoms, yet people down no what the bottom line is, there is major damage to the home, which brings up fundamental safety issues with gas lines. in louisiana it is crippling the tragic, because by definition, these are folks who are flooded by hurricanes, katrina or read or gustav or

tenenbaum. >> thank you, and i appreciate you being here and i appreciate your question.if i am confirmed as the chairman if confirmed to implement rules and regulations and issue guidance pursuant to the ec psa as soon as possible. the phones are ringing off the hook because there are unanswered questions about how certain sections of bill ball will be interpreted and what industries are supposed to do. consumer advocacy groups are concerned. everyone needs to know what the road map is going to look like. i have found in implementing legislation in south carolina and year after year once the comprehensive legislature is past you have lots of pushback and people concerned because of unanswered questions. as soon as you can put in place the regulation, the guidance and train people and answer the unanswered questions the sooner people that the phone calls by down and get about the business of implementing the act and that is my goal. >> that's terrific. for the librarians and thrift store operators and the bumper folks that want with their 80 fees' in missouri, thank you f