In conjunction with the confirmation hearing for Inez Tenenbaum to chair the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), issued a news release calling for a Senate Commerce Committee hearing to work on fixing the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act.

This is the clearest statement from a Senator we’ve seen about the CPSIA’s problems, and it carries weight because Hutchison is the ranking Republican on the committee.

From “Senator Hutchison Calls for Committee Hearing to Fix New CPSC Law“:

“Overall, last year’s law is a good one, and it makes many improvements to the agency. As with most new programs, though, there are a few glitches that need to be worked out,” said Senator Hutchison. “While we worked very hard to write a good bill and had the best of intentions, we knew it was not perfect, and unintended consequences of the law have since surfaced.”

Senator Hutchison voiced her concerns with the new law’s effect on thrift stores, charity sales, and small businesses and noted the need for “common sense” when it comes to enforcement. She added that she was concerned with the time businesses have to comply with the law, as well as the need to provide flexibility when a business needs more time.

“This Committee needs to hold a hearing to discuss implementation of the law and identify significant problems so we can find a solution that will not inflict further harm on the industries and businesses, including small businesses and home crafters, that are already suffering during these tough economic times,” Senator Hutchison said. “Everyone can agree that we want to protect consumers from harmful products, especially children, but an unreasonable law will only be counterproductive.”

Banning dirt bikes, ballpoint pens and pre-1985 kids books and the closure of scores of home-based businesses qualify as more than “a few glitches,” but we won’t quibble with the diplomatic rhetoric of a Senate news release.

What’s significant and welcome here is a key committee member says it’s time to fix the law. For that …thank you.

From Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s floor statement Wednesday on S. 181, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act:

[In] the bill before us there is a major change in common law and in tort law that has also been a part of our legal system and our case law since the beginning of law in our country and in other countries that have the types of laws we do; and that is that a tort accrues a right to the person who is offended or damaged or hurt by another action. It does not accrue to another person who is affected by or might be considered affected by this claim.

Now, there are exceptions to that. But in the main, it is, I think, essential, if we are going to have a statute of limitations that goes beyond the act itself–and in this case it would be 6 months, which is the law today–that it accrue to the person actually injured, the employee, and not some other person on behalf of the person who did not bring the case.

Under the Mikulski bill, the Ledbetter Act, a new right has been given to a person who may not be the person with the injury. So it could be a case where the person dies after working at a place of employment, a business. The person dies, and within 6 months of that person’s last paycheck and subsequent death, some other person–an heir, a child, a mother, a father–could bring a case, which the person who has allegedly been discriminated against chose not to bring or did not bring. In such an absurd case, possible under the Ledbetter bill, you do not even have the person discriminated against to testify.

I think this is a very big hole in the concept of fair play that our legal system tries to provide. By saying “other affected parties,” I think we have opened up a whole new right and possible class of plaintiffs that has not been contemplated before and could achieve an inequitable result.

Also, from the Pennsylvania Labor and Employment Blog, “Record Retention Nightmare Created by Ledbetter Fair Pay Act .” (Hat tap: Point of Law.)

UPDATE (10:40 a.m.): The Enzi amendments are designed to narrow the scope of the change, allowing claims ONLY by the victim, not “other affected parties”:

• Enzi Amendment No. 28, to clarify standing.
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• Enzi Amendment No. 29, to clarify standing.
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Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) were on Fox News Sunday this weekend, a lengthy interview on energy policy. (Transcript.) At one point, Senator Dorgan said, “This issue of production is a canard.”

With respect, no it’s not. It’s not a canard, a wild goose, a red herring or a bowl of knoephla soup. The lack of domestic production is a fundamental failure of U.S. energy policy.

We point the readers to a very good column by Noel Sheppard of Newsbusters on the policies that have contributed to high energy costs:

Despite 35 years of empty rhetoric from politicians bemoaning U.S. dependence on foreign oil, legislatively enacted environmental barriers have actually resulted in a 25-percent decline in domestic production since the first ’70s energy crisis — while our usage has increased 20 percent.

And to the argument that, “It won’t help now, it will take years to develop, no, no, no…”

Predictably, the liberal counter-argument is that such production is years out, and won’t solve today’s supply problems. Such thinking ignores the speculative component to energy prices, and how much today’s bullish consensus about oil is based on the expectation that American production will continue to decline as it has for going on four decades.

With that in mind, anything Congress did today that indicated a change in philosophy concerning U.S. oil production would send shockwaves throughout commodities exchanges across the globe.

Read the whole thing.