While “thirteen million toys have been recalled in the last two months due to unsafe levels of lead,” Nancy Nord, the head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) — the agency responsible for protecting Americans from faulty products– has “taken dozens of trips at the expense of the toy, appliance and children’s furniture industries” and other industries regulated by the CPSC.

“This is a blatant violation of the ethics code,” said Craig Holman, an expert on governmental ethics law for the nonprofit consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. The rules allow nonfederal sources to pay for trips, “but not if you’re a private party with business pending before the agency,” he said.

Rather than regulate industry, Nancy Nord has allowed herself to be coddled by it. The agency, operating under a “budget [that] is half of what it was in the 1970s,” has resorted to encouraging businesses to voluntarily recall lead-laced products and currently employs “exactly one full-time toy inspector and only 15 inspectors who oversee all of the imports under the agency’s jurisdiction — a $614 billion market.”

While President Bush’s FY 2008 budget proposal cuts CPSC’s funding and reduces the number of staff from 420 to 401, Nord has resisted Congressional proposals to expand the CPSC. Calling such efforts “unnecessarily burdensome,” Nord sent two letters to Congress opposing legislation to double CPSC’s budget to $141 million, increase its staff by 20 percent, “require pre-market testing for children’s products,”protect industry whistle-blowers and help prosecute companies that violate safety regulations.”

Earlier this week, the Campaign for America’s Future, House speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator Sherrod Brown and Congresswoman Rosa DeLaura called for Nord to step down. Pelosi:

Any commission chair who [says] … we don’t need any more authority or any more resources to do our job, does not understand the gravity of the situation. I call on the president of the United States to ask for the resignation.

UPDATE: But as Steve Benen points out, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel put it best: “Now we know why Nancy Nord opposes efforts to give the Consumer Product Safety Commission more resources: Who needs more resources when the industries you regulate will pay your expenses for you? After taking dozens of trips on the industry dime, it is now time for Mrs. Nord to take a permanent vacation from her post.”

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