President Barack Obama nominated former representative and tea party caucus member Ann Marie Buerkle to a seat on the Consumer Product Safety Commission last week, and as Mother Jones points out, she has a less than stellar record of protecting consumers.
During her tenure in Congress, the former representative voted to repeal energy efficiency standards and to remove protections on food, toys and drinking water, as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee notes. Buerkle also voted against protecting seniors from deceptive practices and against banning airlines from price gauging their customers.
Buerkle, who in 2010 rode a wave of tea party activism to a single term as a Republican representative in the traditionally blue 25th Congressional District in upstate New York, lost her seat in 2012. Buerkle’s nomination could possibly push forward the stalled confirmation of Martha Robinson, the Michigan trial lawyer nominated last year to fill the Democratic vacancy on the committee.
If confirmed, Buerkle will sit as a commissioner on the CPSC for a seven-year term, although she has yet to rule out running for congressional office again in 2014.
