Thursday, October 5, 19.72 Senator Sam Ervin Says... i WASHINGTON —ln an age ' which has witnessed more and more regulation over business and personal affairs, consumer advocates have come up with a drastic piece of legislation to do what they say ,is not being done by a multitude of existing regula tory agencies. The measure carries the Impressive title of Consumer Protection Organization Act of 1972 and is supported by complaints that the consumer is not being well protected in this age of technology and mass marketing. The ques tion which I have been at pains to point out in recent days is not whether there are consumer problems but how should we go about dealing with them. What has been lost sight of by many is that there are al r ready more laws on the stat ute books designed to pro tect consumers than on any other subject. Some of these laws came over with the first settlers. Some have come into being during this cen tury. To keep matters in perspective, we should recall that since early times it has been a civil and criminal of fense to cheat or defraud on. other. As life' has grown more complex, Congress hes passed many laws on this subject. It has created agencies, commis sions and regulatory bodies to insure that the public interest is protected in transportation, health, safety, trade and com merce. In the last two decodes, Congress has passed more than a dozen major consumer acts. They are the Flam mable Fabrics Act of 1953, the Pesticide Chemical Am j[ endments of 1954, the Fire- I works Transportation Control i Act of 1954, the Safety Devices Act of 1956 (to protect child ren from being locked into abandoned refrigerators), the Hazardous Substances Label ing Act of 1980, the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Amend ments of 1900 and 1962, the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act of 1988, the Radiation Control for Health Act of 1988, the Wholesale Poultry Act of 1988, the Wholesale Moat Act of 1069, the Child Protection and Safety Toy Act of 1969. and the Truth-in- Lendlng Act of 1909. It Is now said by advocates of the consumer protection bill that these laws and their administrators may be at fault when consumer interests are not protected, and there fore we need a new agency whose paramount Interest will be the consumer. Before one is swayed by this line of rea soning, permit me to mention that a better argument was I used in behalf of the Prohibl ' tion Amendment by the great evangelist, Billy Sunday, when ho assured the American peo ple that one of our consumer problems would be solved by a change In the Constitution. In rosy language, he portray ed what America would be like If we would not enact a law to control alcoholic bev erages. He said: “The slums will soon be -only a memory. We will turn our prisons into fac tories and our jails into store houses and corn cribs. Men will walk upright now. Wo men will smile and the child ren will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent." The noble experiment failed in spite of the best intentions of its auth ors. What ought to be recogniz ed is that this bill creates a new agency to do what a of other federal agencies are said to have 'failed to do; i. e., protect the consumer. It seems to me that Congress ought to make inquiry as to the sufficiency of the laws under which these regulatory agencies act. If 4ihe particular laws are in sufficient to promote the pub lic interest they ought to be amended, and if they are suf ficient, we ought to ascertain if the administrators are per forming flie statutory duties imposed upon them. Instead, this proposal says that we are not going to re write particular , regulatory laws; we are not going to con demn regulators who arc in competent to administer laws; we will just create another all powerful agency whose cost must be borne by,the taxpayers. There is danger in this. It subjects our entire economic system to everchanging non -7 statutory standards promul gated by an administrator in Washington. 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