While California tightens consumer safety laws, banning testes-shriveling chemicals in children’s product, insuring that “California’s kids” will, in the delicate formulation of Will Swaim, “get bigger junk”, the head of the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission is fighting to shrink its proposed budget, so that the agency will remain as shriveled and useless as a phthalates-soaked testicle.

The New York Times reports:

The nation’s top official for consumer product safety has asked Congress in recent days to reject legislation intended to strengthen the agency, which polices thousands of consumer goods, from toys to tools.

On the eve of an important Senate committee meeting to consider the legislation, Nancy A. Nord, the acting chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, has asked lawmakers in two letters not to approve the bulk of legislation that would increase the agency’s authority, double its budget and sharply increase its dwindling staff.

Ms. Nord opposes provisions that would increase the maximum penalties for safety violations and make it easier for the government to make public reports of faulty products, protect industry whistle-blowers and prosecute executives of companies that willfully violate laws.

You, assuming you’re not Nancy A. Nord, might think the commission could use a little more help, given how many poisonous items have recently turned up on store shelves. And you would be right.

The agency has suffered from a steady decline in its budget and staffing in recent years. Its staff numbers about 420, about half its size in the 1980s. It has only one full-time employee to test toys. And 15 inspectors are assigned to police all imports of consumer products under the agency’s supervision, a marketplace that last year was valued at $614 billion.

And how did Nancy A. Nord explain her opposition to having enough money to have more than one full-time employee to test toys?