On the recordAugust 1, 2011
First of all, Madam Chairman, thank you for the fine work on this piece of legislation, something that's truly overdue. Mr. Speaker, the difficulty we had was a number of years ago, a piece of legislation went through this Congress with all the right things attached. We wanted to address lead in children's toys. True to Washington, D.C., form, the bureaucrats carried it to the extent that no longer made any kind of a common sense. When it came to time for the regulations to be crafted, I started receiving phone calls from my motorized vehicle dealers around the State of Montana, those that sold youth motorcycles, snowmobiles and ATVs, and they were being told that they had to take those units out of their showroom, eat the inventory, and could no longer sell their parts for repairs. Why? Because there was lead in some of the repair parts or on the units themselves. Now, I don't know if there is anybody in America that allows their children to chew on battery cables and valve stems, but they were determined to be toys, and it doesn't make sense. I come from a ranching family, and on my place we allow our children the opportunity to be trained on the smaller units to herd our livestock for the specific purpose that we don't want them on the larger vehicles. Try as we might to get the administration to change their regulations, they were not willing to do that. Today we are dealing with H.R. 2715, and it addresses a very important issue, kids just want to ride.…
