Need I say more...
"Bush slowly killing Consumer Product Safety Commission"
By Joseph S. Enoch
ConsumerAffairs.Com
July 29, 2007
Despite intense public concern about product and food safety, the Bush Administration is slowly killing the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), commissioner Thomas Moore complains.
"Two years of significant staffing cuts and other resource reductions have limited the Commission's ability to carry out its mission and have left the agency at a point where it is now doing only what is absolutely necessary for it to do and little else," Moore wrote in a letter outlining his hopes for revitalizing the agency.
Bush's most recent budget proposal increases the agency's funds by $880,000. But with standard inflation and rent increases, the CPSC was still forced to fire 19 employees, reducing its staff to 401 total.
The chronically underfunded agency still uses a 1950s missile-tracking site as its testing lab.
"Staff morale is very low," Moore wrote. "Employees see the agency being gradually but continually downsized; managers cannot fill vacant positions and employees either take on additional jobs as their colleagues leave or see projects shelved for lack of funding.
"Many employees at the agency are looking for other jobs because they have no confidence the agency will continue to exist (or will exist in any meaningful form) for many more years," Moore continued. "The clear signal from the administration is that consumer protection is just not that important."
