MoPIRG is backing President Obama’s proposal to restart the clean-up of our country’s most contaminated sites. For over a decade the Superfund program, established to clean up these toxic sites, has been without any resources to accomplish that goal.  
 
The 2010 budget proposes to reinstate excise taxes that expired in 1995. Those taxes will collect over $1 billion to clean up these toxic sites within the Superfund program. The reinstated taxes will not begin until 2011. In Missouri, we have a number of such super-toxic sites that could start getting cleaned up under President Obama’s budget proposal.

Together with other state PIRGs, MoPIRG has long supported fixing our federal campaign finance laws to encourage candidates to raise campaign funds from small donors rather than the current big-donor dominated system. A new bill called the Fair Elections Now Act, authored by Sen. Dick Durbin (Ill.) with significant input from Lisa Gilbert, our democracy advocate in D.C., will do just that.  

Introduced in March, the 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 elected officials and candidates to be viable without the support of big donors,” said Gilbert. “That skews the democratic process.”

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 ahead of the toy industry,” said Hitchcock.

Caving into 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 appointee who opposed the new product safety law.

The new law, which passed in August 2008, requires manufacturers to test toys and infant products before they are sold and bans lead and chemicals called phthalates in toys. It also gives the CPSC the resources needed to implement and enforce its provisions.