Political Quotes

“I think this amendment strikes the right balance. I said, in discussing a similar OSHA amendment last evening, that as a young man I worked on a construction site and I was dependent upon the people who managed that site for my safety. If they were negligent, if they had dangerous practices, I could have been injured on that site. Mr. Chairman, I think worker safety is important to all Americans. One of my colleagues recently commented that the last thing any employer in America would ever do would be to call the Federal agency charged with worker safety and invite them in to help look at a job site and improve safety on that job site. Why? Because they would be desperately afraid that that organization, OSHA, rather than working to solve the problem, rather than giving them advice on how to avoid future injuries, would simply punitively punish them for what they had done, slap fines on them, slap them on the wrist and issue a critical report. Mr. Chairman, we need a balance. Human conduct is easy to understand. We need to achieve goals with both the carrot and the stick. This is a measure to say let us give a little bit more incentives. Americans, humans respond to incentives. This says let us shift some of this money to incentives to protect workers rather than just punitive measures.”