House Energy and Commerce Committee Approves Schakowsky's Child Safety Recall Registration Bill

HOUSE ENERGY AND COMMERCE COMMITTEE APPROVES SCHAKOWSKY'S CHILD SAFETY RECALL REGISTRATION BILL

Washington, D.C.–U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Vice-Chair of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection, delivered the following remarks before the full Energy and Commerce Committee approved her child safety bill, H.R. 1699, the Danny Keysar Child Product Safety Notification act. Schakowsky's bill would require that each durable infant and toddler product — high chairs, cribs, and strollers — come with a postage-paid recall registration card attached to the product.

Congresswoman Schakowsky delivered the following opening remarks during the House Energy and Commerce Committee's hearing on H.R. 1699.

"I am so proud today to be part of this committee. I am proud to be a part of the commerce trade and Consumer Protection subcommittee, and the Health subcommittee.

We are moving so quickly forward today to protect the lives of children, to bring hope to those who have diseases like ALS and Post Partum Depression. We are actually saving lives and I appreciate the opportunity to be part of it.

And I am particularly glad–I want to mention a bill that I've been working on for a long time that is coming up today, along with my cosponsor, Fred Upton, the Danny Kaiser Child Protection Safety Notification Act, Danny's Act, which passed the subcommittee by a voice vote. It's about dangerous products and the timing couldn't be more fitting.

Last Saturday, the Chicago Tribune ran a big front page story about its investigation into the crib related deaths of three children. The investigation determined the defective and improperly installed drop rails on cribs produced by Simplicity Inc. were responsible for these deaths. Despite several deaths and numerous complaints, the CSPS failed to notify the public for several years. If it hadn't been for the Chicago Tribune the public would have never learned about this dangerous product and the CPSC probably would not have recalled nearly a million cribs.

And just today, we learn about a play-pen, play yards–425 thousand of them'–because a child was killed, maybe we will learn that even more were killed. So here we have products that were meant to have children that are unattended, we leave our children in play-pens and cribs and mean to have them with nobody watching them, and yet they have killed and injured children.

How are we going to get the word out?

That is the point of this law, which is to provide a recall return card on every product that is a durable product, so it can be mailed directly to the parent or caretaker or purchaser that may even be a daycare center, so that we can prevent these deaths.

I will talk more about it when we get to that, but I really appreciate the fact that it is being heard today, moving along, and hopefully signed into law before other children die. Thank you Mr. Chairman, I yield back for now."

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