All praise to radio talk show host, lawyer, and law professor Hugh Hewitt, who has labored hard to spread the word about the disastrous economic and personal harm caused by the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. On Friday, he interviewed Rick Woldenberg of Learning Resources, Inc., a leading activist calling for CPSIA reform, and the three-segment discussion covered all the law’s problems from A to X. (Y and Z are still out there waiting to make themselves known.)

We posted on the interview Saturday, and now Hugh Hewitt has made the transcript available. Thank you! (See also his post: “When Congress Screws Up: ESA, CPSIA and Obamacare.”)

Read the whole thing, but for now here’s the section about tracking labels. The NAM appreciates the mention, Hugh.

HH: Now in terms of the labeling, the tracking label requirement that we talked about during the break, it is effective August 14^th. Explain to the audience when you got word on how to implement the requirement.

RW: Two days ago.

HH: See, no one’s going to believe that, because it’s so absurd.

RW: Well, and there’s been a great deal of interaction with the agency about tracking labels. You know, I must say candidly, the agency has been put in a situation where they always look bad on this kind of thing, and I don’t really want to jump on their back for it. Yes, it’s really unfortunate that it took 11 ½ months, but I will say it’s not like the agency had nothing else to do. They were given a lot of simultaneous, impossible requirements to meet. The mistake I believe that the agency has made is not just admitting that it took too long, and then slow the process down to allow for the kind of discussion with industry, and the time for a smooth, reasonable implementation that a process like this would require. The idea that you can put a six page document out three weeks before it’s due, and that that would make everything okay just doesn’t make any sense. It effects 60% of the economy.

Rick Woldenberg of Learning Resources Inc., a leading advocate of reforming the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, enthusiastically endorses the NAM CPSC Coalition’s renewed request for a one-year stay of the CPSIA’s product tracking label requirements:

In its letter, NAM called the lack of CPSC implementing guidance on tracking labels “an unconscionable dilemma for industry”. The tracking labels fiasco creates enormous burdens for industry and is in many ways pointless and unjustifiable. See my earlier posts (here, here, here and here) on this topic and my testimony before the CPSC for background (here and here). To allow this provision to stand, without having given ANY guidance or answered ANY of the legitimate and appropriate questions of industry, would be shamefully irresponsible of the CPSC Commission. [Unfortunately, Congress seems immune to shame when it comes to the CPSIA and will not act to delay this provision. As its leaders will tell you, Congress has already acted with great "common sense".] The notion that it is okay to induce widespread economic convulsions as part of some kind of jolly “learning process” must be REJECTED.

If Rick comes across as exercised, frustrated and angry, well, thousands of manufacturers — including many, many small, home-based business owners — are similarly besides themselves. When Congress passes a law that puts you out of business and then pretends there’s not a problem, frustration and anger seem like a reasonable reaction.