Mark Pryor listed his work on “toy safety” in Monday’s debate as one of his biggest accomplishments during his tenure in the Senate. Of course, readers of The Arkansas Project already knew that Pryor’s “toy safety” legislation was just another example of big-government regulation in search of an imaginary problem. Overlawyered, a national legal blog that also covered the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, wrote about our work earlier this week. From Overlawyered:
Readers who followed Overlawyered in 2009-10 will recall that the closest this site has ever come to a crusade was in covering the truly horrible Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008, enacted after a media-fed tainted-toy panic, a law that needlessly drove out of business many small retailers and manufacturers of children’s goods posing no hazard whatsoever to consumers. Some will further recall that the chief Senate handler of the legislation was Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Arkansas), who cut a poor figure throughout as both ill-informed and dismissive about the side effects his own legislation was having. Now Sen. Pryor is locked in a tight race for re-election with challenger Rep. Tom Cotton, and a group called the Arkansas Project has been reminding readers of Pryor’s record on CPSIA, digging up many new details in an August series written by Washington, D.C.-area policy analyst Marc Kilmer (who generously credits Overlawyered coverage as a source throughout). Most of the series can be found at this tag or via search.
Pryor was happy to mention his “toy safety” work during the debate. Mysteriously, however, he never found time to get back to us when we had a few questions for him about the CPSIA. Speaking of not finding time for something, we discovered this week that Rep. James McLean, alleged chair of the House Education Committee (and Democratic state Senate candidate), once again failed to show up for work earlier this week at the committee hearing. That makes 14 out of 19 education committee meeting he’s missed in 2014. A .263 batting average might be acceptable in baseball, but it isn’t so great for a committee chairman.
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