Congress Toys With Draconian Legislation

By Hugh Hewitt

On February 10 the heavy burdens of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 kicked in--and literally hundreds of millions of dollars of American products became illegal to ship in commerce. These staggering losses will affect hundreds of industries from the very large to the local thrift store. A panicked reaction to the lead-in-Chinese-toys scandal, this law criminalizes the sale of any product with levels of lead or phthalates above the very restrictive limits set in the law. With no means of testing efficiently or inexpensively, sellers of goods aimed at children are now at risk of violating the draconian law, and plaintiffs lawyers are lining up to sue everyone involved.

This is what happens when the Congress rushes in and legislates for the headlines rather than the result. The law needs to be reformed immediately--before even more economic chaos results.