Political Quotes

“I rise today to support in the strongest possible way the Enzi-Bond amendment to the Labor-HHS appropriations bill relating to ergonomics. This amendment will save businesses, small businesses particularly, and other employers, and primarily their employees, from the ravages of OSHA's regulatory impulses running rampant. As many in this body know, I have questioned OSHA's approach to formulating an ergonomics regulation for several years. Last year, I introduced a bill, which currently has 48 cosponsors, to force OSHA to wait for the results of the study that we and the President--and the President--directed the National Academy of Sciences to conduct on whether there is sufficient scientific evidence to support this regulation. This measure is known as the Sensible Ergonomics Scientific Evidence Act, or the SENSE Act. Sadly, this issue, as administered by OSHA, has been lacking in common sense in the years that OSHA has been working on it. We were not able to move the SENSE Act last year, nor were we able to convince OSHA they needed to put some common sense into their regulatory process before going forward with the proposed rule. At this time last year, we were fearful of what OSHA might come up with because it did not look as if they were going about it in a reasonable, responsible way. When the proposed rule was finally published in November and we found out what they wanted to do, it was worse than we could have imagined.”