203 .

Mr . BARNARD . Excuse me . I thought you were . Mr . LEVINSON . I am the General Counsel , Mr . Chairman . Mr . BARNARD . Mr . Deppa .

Mr . DEPPA . We , to date , have not done a detailed engineering analysis . We have taken some preliminary looks at the accident data that we had in hand and the patents on the machines . But there has not been what I would characterize as detailed engineer ing analyses done .

Mr . BARNARD . Well , have you done as much work as Mr . Menkes has done on the vehicle ?

Mr . TERRENCE SCANLON . I will answer that . I would say yes , Mr . Chairman . Our work , I think , might be a little better than what I heard he had performed . We would have questions about many of the things - -

Mr . BARNARD . Who did that , Mr . Scanlon ? Mr . TERRENCE SCANLON . Pardon me ? Mr . BARNARD . Who did the study ? Mr . TERRENCE SCANLON . Which study are we talking about ?

Mr . BARNARD . The one you were just talking about . You said you have done a study that is more in detail than Mr . Menkes .

Mr . TERRENCE SCANLON . No , no . I was referring to our staff work to date ; we have had three engineers working full time on this ac tivity for 6 weeks . What I was questioning , based on the limited data that we have so far , was some of Mr . Menkes conclusions on ATV stability .

Mr . STATLER . Mr . Chairman , if I could try and put things in per spective . There is an article out this week in the National Journal that refers to the Consumer Product Safety Commission and com paring it to other regulatory agencies as the “ incredible shrinking agency . ” This agency has been cut , in the last 4 years , by 36 per cent in the way of staff and 36 percent in the way of budget . We would have been able , I believe , to detect the trends 2 years ago that we are now seeing had we had adequate staffing and adequate funding .

But we have priorities and we were focusing on those priorities . And so , because of the lack of investigators and compliance offi cers , because of the lack of epidemiologists and others that were cut back , we have not been able to do the job , the watchdog job that the American public expects us to do . And , sooner or later this was going to catch up with us .

Mr . BARNARD . Well , what problem did you address that was of more significance than this ?

Mr . TERRENCE SCANLON . Mr . Chairman , if I could respond to that . I don ' t think the budge

don ' t think the budget cuts have anything to do with what we have done or what we have not done .

Mr . BARNARD . Well , let me

Mr . TERRENCE SCANLON . Well , let me , if I may , respond to your last question - 4

Mr . BARNARD . Yes , but I don ' t want to lose my trend of thought there .

Mr . TERRENCE SCANLON . On ATV ' s . I think as soon as we became aware of the high number of incidents which you have cited that we took immediate steps , and all four members of the Commisssion