Liz Hitchcock, our public health advocate in Washington, D.C., urged the Obama administration to replace the head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) with a strong proponent of product safety.

“Consumers need a product safety watchdog who puts America’s kids first,” said Hitchcock.

Caving in to pressure from manufacturers, in January the CPSC’s chair, Nancy Nord, announced a one-year delay to the enforcement of a new product safety law intended to make children’s toys and products safer.

Product safety champions on Capitol Hill and across the country joined us in urging the Obama administration to replace Nord, a Bush administration appointee who opposed the new product safety law.

Under the law, which passed in August 2008, manufacturers must test toys and infant products before they are sold. It also bans lead and hormone-disrupting phthalates in toys.

PIRGIM has long supported fixing our campaign finance laws to encourage candidates to raise campaign funds from small donations rather than the current big-donor-dominated system. The Fair Elections Now Act, authored by Sen. Durbin (Ill.) with significant input from PIRGIM democracy advocate Lisa Gilbert, will do just that.

Introduced in March, the fair elections bill aims to encourage small donations by providing a candidate $4 in federal funding for every $1 in small donations received. For example, a contribution of $50 would provide $200 in federal funding for candidates.

“Our nation’s current campaign financing system makes it virtually impossible for our elected officials and candidates for office to be viable without the support of big donors,” said Gilbert. “That skews the democratic process.”

The maximum federal Pell Grant award will increase from $4,730 to $5,550 as of July 1, thanks to a Student PIRG-backed measure contained in President Obama’s economic recovery package.

The Pell Grant program aids almost 7 million low-income students.
 
PIRGIM’s federal education associate, Rich Williams, helped to build a coalition with the United States Student Association and other groups to ensure the aid was included in the final package. Student PIRG campus chapters worked to get more than 200 colleges and universities signed on to a letter calling on Congress to increase the Pell Grant Program.