Consumer Choice Is Not Elitist

Rep. Frank Pallone, D-New Jersey, thinks it’s fine that your new dishwasher takes more than 2 hours to complete a cycle — we think consumers should decide.

Thanks to federal efficiency regulations from the Department of Energy, dishwasher cycle times more than doubled, so the Competitive Enterprise Institute leaped into action in response to consumer complaints. We asked the Department of Energy to improve consumer choice by allowing manufacturers to sell dishwashers that clean and dry dishes in under an hour.

Last week, the DOE granted CEI’s petition and began the process of drafting a new, more consumer-friendly rule. But Pallone, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, apparently doesn’t like the idea of consumer choice and he called DOE’s decision outrageous. He called CEI “elitist” for our focus on consumer choice, and he claimed the decision would hurt innovators and consumers. These claims by Pallone are absurd, and the thousands of American citizens who supported more effective dishwashers know it.

The changes to regulations CEI proposed would not remove a single dishwasher from the marketplace. Nothing would change for existing dishwashers, and consumers who prefer to wait hours on end and run dishes for multiple cycles can continue to buy those models. Not all consumers are going to want faster dishwashers, but they should have a choice.

Read the full article at Inside Sources.