Lateefah Simon: “I strongly support the Kennedy amendment. This bill, as it stands, is a bureaucracy builder, not a bureaucracy buster. I…”

“I strongly support the Kennedy amendment. This bill, as it stands, is a bureaucracy builder, not a bureaucracy buster. I would just point out that Business Week has an article in the July 15 issue which suggests this is adversely going to affect business as well as working men and women. But very specifically, the Kennedy amendment protects MSHA and OSHA, and protects working men and women. The Presiding Officer is from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, where there is a lot of coal mining. I am down in southern Illinois. From our home, a little community of 402 population, Makanda, the biggest big city, if I can call it that, is Carbondale, IL, which, as its name suggests, used to be a coal mining city. There are a lot of coal mines around there. I talked to too many people who have lost husbands, fathers, grandfathers in coal mine disasters. I have been at too many entrances to coal mines while people wait. I have been to eastern Kentucky. Congressman Carl Perkins asked me to go there with him after a coal mine disaster in eastern Kentucky.”