Obama to name 2 to CPSC; boost budget

WASHINGTON, May 5 (UPI) -- President Obama said he would nominate Inez Moore Tenenbaum to lead the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and seek to boost its budget to $107 billion.

The amount to be included in Obama's budget request represents a 71 percent increase in resources since fiscal year 2007, the White House said in a news release.

The allocation in the president's budget is nearly three-quarters of the way toward meeting Obama's goal of doubling CPSC's funding, the White House said.

"It is a top priority of my administration to ensure that the products the American people depend on are safe," Obama said. "We must do more to protect the American public -- especially our nation's children -- from being harmed by unsafe products."

Tenenbaum was elected South Carolina's superintendent of education in 1998 and completed her second term in 2007, the White House said. At the end of her tenure, the journal Education Week ranked South Carolina first in the country for the quality of its academic standards, assessment and accountability systems.

Obama also said he would nominate Robert S. Adler as a CPSC commissioner. Adler is a law professor at the University of North Carolina and spent 11 years as an attorney-adviser to two commissioners at the CPSC in Washington. Adler was elected six times to the board of directors of Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports magazine.