Consumer Federation of America (CFA) and Kids In Danger (KID) are nonprofit organizations dedicated to protecting consumers. We are strong supporters of the mission of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to protect the public from unreasonable risks of injury and death from consumer products. The agency has a broad mandate with jurisdiction over roughly 15,000 different types of consumer products used by 330 million American consumers in everyday life. However, the CPSC has been significantly underfunded for decades and therefore short staffed compared to other federal health and safety regulatory agencies.

The CPSC’s current budget is by far the smallest among federal health and safety regulatory agencies. We have deep respect for the staff and leadership of the CPSC. We interact and work with them regularly, and it is clear that a substantial increase in funding is needed for an expansion of personnel to ensure that the agency can effectively and efficiently serve its mission, especially due to increases in eCommerce and consumers purchasing products from third-party sellers. Many programmatic and technological needs for the agency require a significant funding increase. We ask Congress to increase the agency’s budget to $212 million as requested by the agency to adequately fund CPSC’s programs.