By Dana Milbank
Thursday, September 13, 2007; A02

Lawmakers had just begun to question Nancy Nord, acting chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, about all that lead showing up in children's toys. Her fellow commissioner Thomas Moore rose from the witness table to depart -- for a dental appointment.

"Are you leaving?" a surprised Nord asked, pausing in her testimony. "Can I come with you?"

"You're facing your own dentist here," pointed out Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.).

"It's a sad day," Nord replied, "when you'd rather go to the dentist."

Actually, the lawmakers' drilling of Nord made it sound as if every day is a sad one for her agency. Product safety regulators, broke and undermanned, have been powerless to prevent millions of Barbie dolls, Polly Pockets, Dora the Explorers and Thomas the Tank Engines from entering the country from China with lead paint and other defects. Parents -- and therefore lawmakers -- are furious. But instead of showing contrition, Nord treated the lawmakers as if they were impertinent children.

"Are you saying that the Chinese have now adopted a new and different standard when it comes to lead paint?" asked Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), chairman of the panel examining the issue.

"I think, sir, that that's a question you would really need to put to the Chinese," Nord replied curtly.

Durbin, with some of the offending toys on the table in front of him, asked why the commission didn't do more to block lead in children's jewelry.

"Well, the law is what it is" was Nord's brushoff.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) asked Nord if she knew what percentage of toys get lead tests.

"No, I don't."

After much hemming and hawing from Nord about her agency's ability to stop dangerous toys coming from China, Brownback got cranky: "Chairman, what I want to hear is you say these products are not going to enter our shores if that's what you continue to find."

"Well, I'm happy to say that," Nord retorted.

While dismissive of the senators, the acting chairman was solicitous of the manufacturers. She "commended" the industry for its safety initiatives. A toy manufacturer reciprocated, calling Nord's agency "exemplary."

If Nord sounded a bit like a corporate fox guarding the consumer henhouse, consider her previous employers: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Corporate Counsel Association and Eastman Kodak.

Among the nuggets served up at yesterday's hearing: The CPSC's staff, once 978, is down to 401; its budget is half of what it was three decades ago, in inflation-adjusted terms; its toy-testing department consists of one man, Bob, who drops toys on the floor in his office; and its toy-testing lab is an overloaded workbench in its outmoded headquarters. "We believe the agency's leadership has failed," Sally Greenberg of Consumers Union told the panel.

These shortcomings usually wouldn't command much notice, but that changed when children's toys became deadly.

Durbin began the hearing by talking about a toy called Magnetix. "I had bought it for my grandson," the senator said. "Luckily, he's old enough not to be in danger."

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) held up a poster of colorful toys. "They have a Laugh and Learn Bunny that has a nose that comes off," he remarked. "Then, of course, you've got Thomas the train. . . . And then you have these Barbie accessories, again, with lead paint."

Klobuchar did Nelson one better: She brought two toy rail cars. "My daughter's 12," the senator said, and "she didn't care about SpongeBob," Klobuchar confessed. "But when she heard that the Barbies were recalled, she came into the kitchen and said, 'Mom, this is really getting serious.' "

"Please tell Abigail we're going to do our best to make Barbie safe," Durbin reassured her.

The toy industry representatives shrewdly supplemented their written testimony with similar tales of children. "I'm here today as the CEO of Mattel, but also as a dad," announced Bob Eckert. "My three daughters grew up playing with Barbies and American Girl. My son loved his Hot Wheels."

But Nord made no such attempt to ingratiate herself.

Eight times, Durbin asked whether the Chinese, in an agreement Nord reached with them, had changed their policy on lead. Each time, she rebuffed him, usually with a variation of "You will have to ask the Chinese."

After two rounds of questioning, Durbin gave up. "I will ask the Chinese," he said, mockingly.

Brownback got a similar response when he asked Nord, five times, if she would like her agency to have the authority to inspect Chinese manufacturing plants. Each time, she answered with a version of a non sequitur: "We don't have that authority."

"Madam Chairman, you're hearing from us a great deal of frustration," Brownback informed the reluctant witness. "Now we're looking at China selling us defective, unsafe products, and we don't know what's going on in the factory. And we're not even sure, from what you're saying, if they have any level of concern on lead."

"Sir, may I respond to that?" Nord asked when Brownback finished.

"I'd be delighted if you would," the dentist answered, wearily.

"I so appreciate hearing your sentiments," said the patient.

Somebody must have turned on the nitrous oxide.