Get thee over there and watch me make a fool of myself in three (maybe four!) languages.

At the end of my post about the CPSIA, I asked you to contact your representatives if they voted for the Act and ask them to reform or repeal it before February 10.

This is especially important if one of your Senators is on the Commerce, Science, & Transportation Committee, and especially if he or she is a Democrat, as they make up the majority:

Senate Democrats (listed in alphabetical order by state, except for the chair)

• [WV] Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV: (202) 224-6472
• [AK] Mark Begich: 202-224-3004
• [AR] Mark Pryor: (202) 224-2353
• [CA] Barbara Boxer: (202) 224-3553
• [FL] Bill Nelson: 202-224-5274
• [HI] Daniel K. Inouye: 202-224-3934
• [MA] John F. Kerry: (202) 224-2742
• [MN] Amy Klobuchar: 202-224-3244
• [MO] Claire McCaskill: (202) 224-6154
• [ND] Bryon L. Dorgan: (202) 224-2551
• [NJ] Frank R. Lautenberg: (202) 224-3224
• [NM] Tom Udall: 202-224-6621
• [VA] Mark Warner: 202-224-2023
• [WA] Maria Cantwell: 202-224-3441

Senate Republicans

• [TX] Ranking Member Kay Bailey Hutchison: 202-224-5922
• [FL] Mel Martinez: (202) 224-3041
• [GA] John Isakson: (202) 224-3643
• [KS] Sam Brownback: (202) 224-6521
• [LA] David Vitter: (202) 224-4623
• [ME] Olympia J. Snowe: (202) 224-5344
• [MS] Roger Wicker: 202-224-6253
• [NE] Mike Johanns: 202-224-4224
• [NV] John Ensign: (202) 224-6244
• [SC] Jim DeMint: 202-224-6121 (was one of only 3 Senators to vote against the CPSIA)
• [SD] John Thune: (202) 224-2321

Source: Zip-n-Go Blanket.

The CPSIA is a shining example of slapdash, knee-jerk legislation that was given a politically-popular title and passed without most of Congress having bothered to read it or understand what unintended consequences it might have. Call your representatives and make them understand that the CPSIA will kill the children’s market in the name of protecting it.

I know I said I’d avoid blogging things political, but I can’t keep quiet on this one.

If you do not follow handcrafting news, you may not be aware of something called the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), passed last year with supermajorities in response to concerns about lead in Chinese-made toys. Forbes.com recently posted two very good articles about what the law does: prevent the manufacture and sale of tainted children’s products by making it near-impossible to legally manufacture and sell any children’s products at all.

To quote liberally from the first Forbes article:

Congress passed CPSIA in a frenzy of self-congratulation following last year’s overblown panic over Chinese toys with lead paint. Washington’s consumer and environmentalist lobbies used the occasion to tack on some other long-sought legislative goals, including a ban on phthalates used to soften plastic.

The law’s provisions were billed as stringent, something applauded by high-minded commentators as a way to force the Mattels and Fisher-Prices of the world to keep more careful watch on the supply chains of their Chinese factories.

Barbed with penalties that include felony prison time and fines of $100,000, the law goes into effect in stages; one key deadline is Feb. 10, when it becomes unlawful to ship goods for sale that have not been tested. Eventually, new kids’ goods will all have to be subjected to more stringent “third-party” testing, and it will be unlawful to give away untested inventory even for free.

The first thing to note is that we’re not just talking about toys here. With few exceptions, the law covers all products intended primarily for children under 12. That includes clothing, fabric and textile goods of all kinds: hats, shoes, diapers, hair bands, sports pennants, Scouting patches, local school-logo gear and so on.

And paper goods: books, flash cards, board games, baseball cards, kits for home schoolers, party supplies and the like. And sporting equipment, outdoor gear, bikes, backpacks and telescopes. And furnishings for kids’ rooms.

And videogame cartridges and audio books. And specialized assistive and therapeutic gear used by disabled and autistic kids.

Again with relatively few exceptions, makers of these goods can’t rely only on materials known to be unproblematic (natural dyed yarn, local wood) or that come from reputable local suppliers, or even ones that are certified organic.

Instead they must put a sample item from each lot of goods through testing after complete assembly, and the testing must be applied to each component. For a given hand-knitted sweater, for example, one might have to pay not just, say, $150 for the first test, but added-on charges for each component beyond the first: a button or snap, yarn of a second color, a care label, maybe a ribbon or stitching–with each color of stitching thread having to be tested separately.

Suddenly the bill is more like $1,000–and that’s just to test the one style and size. The same sweater in a larger size, or with a different button or clasp, would need a new round of tests–not just on the button or clasp, but on the whole garment. The maker of a kids’ telescope (with no suspected problems) was quoted a $24,000 testing estimate, on a product with only $32,000 in annual sales.

Could it get worse? Yes, it could. Contrary to some reports, thrift and secondhand stores are not exempt from the law. Although (unlike creators of new goods) they aren’t obliged to test the items they stock, they are exposed to liability and fines if any goods on their shelves (or a component button, bolt, binding, etc.) are found to test above the (very low) thresholds being phased in….

Thrift store managers, often volunteers themselves, have no way to guess whether every grommet or zipper on a kids’ jacket or ink on an old jigsaw puzzle box or some plastic component of Mom’s old roller skates would pass muster.

“The reality is that all this stuff will be dumped in the landfill,” predicted Adele Meyer, executive director of the National Association of Resale and Thrift Shops. Among the biggest losers if that happens: poorer parents who might start having to buy kids’ winter coats new at $30 rather than used at $5 or $10.

And even worse: Since the law does not exempt books, children’s’ sections at libraries and bookstores will, at minimum, face price hikes on newly acquired titles and, at worse, may have to rethink older holdings.

After all, no one has the slightest idea how many future violations lie hidden in the stacks and few want to play a guessing game about how seriously officialdom will view illegality. “Either they take all the children’s books off the shelves,” Associate Executive Director Emily Sheketoff of the American Library Association told the Boston Phoenix, “or they ban children from the library.”

Emphasis, the whole bloody lot of it, mine. It is important to note that the law is retroactive. Even items manufactured before the law was passed are subject to the new testing requirements.

If this law stays on the books, many of the small businesses who manufacture or sell items for children under 12 will go out of business on Feb. 10. The companies who survive will likely pass the costs of compliance onto the consumer.

Because that’s exactly what we need in this economy. To “fix” an isolated problem with items manufactured in one foreign country with sweeping, seat-of-the-pants regulation that will cripple an entire US industry, put more people out of work, turn millions of dollars of useful, safe products into landfill waste, and saddle households with small children with additional expenses.

There are reasonable alternatives to the existing legislation that would ensure safe children’s items without requiring thousands of dollars of redundant testing for each batch manufactured.

The people behind the CPSIA are Bobby Rush (D, 1st District, IL) and Henry Waxman (D, 30th District, CA).

Please, if you live in one of these districts, pick up the phone and tell your Congressman that the CPSIA needs to be reformed or repealed like…next week.

If you do not live in one of those districts, please check the CPSIA page on Govtrack.us to see if any of your representatives co-sponsored and/or voted for it (odds are: yes). If so, give them a call too.

More reading on the CPSIA:

• Reform CPSIA
• Handmade Toy Alliance
• National Bankruptcy Day
• Change.gov: Save small business from the CPSIA