Bill Nelson: “the White House has just announced the President has withdrawn the nomination of Michael Baroody to be the Chairman of…”

“the White House has just announced the President has withdrawn the nomination of Michael Baroody to be the Chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. I think this is a wise move on the part of the White House because of the perceived conflict of interest of Mr. Baroody--an employee of the National Association of Manufacturers being nominated to be the Chairman of the very regulatory agency that governs the regulation and the safety of the very products of the industry from which he comes. It would be like, in my former life as the elected insurance commissioner, if in a State where the Governor appointed the insurance commissioner, a regulator, the Governor would pick an executive of an insurance company to regulate the very industry he came from as the insurance commissioner. By the way, that happens with tremendous frequency in the 50 States, that they appoint the insurance commissioner, and they are usually there for less than a year. Then the revolving door turns again, and they go right back into the very industry from which they came and of which they had just been the regulator. Putting someone from the National Association of Manufacturers at the head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission is a similar kind of potential conflict of interest.”