Lynn C. Woolsey

Last week Representative Woolsey introduced Protecting America's Workers Act. This bill will update OSHA penalties, strengthen whistleblower protections, and ensure that bad employers are held accountable.

It is time for OSHA to join the 21st century.

Penalties are the key enforcement mechanism under the OSH Act. They must be real.

it is probably no shock to anyone in this room that that sometimes happens--you know, it is not a bad idea to let citizens bring suit in appropriate circumstances when the government doesn't do its job.

These facts uncovered by the committee show that the last 8 years have left OSHA significantly weakened.

I can think of no more fitting tribute to workers on Workers' Memorial Day...than to dedicate ourselves to putting policies in place that would protect workers and will deter employers.

We need to form a consensus around the definition of green jobs, and we know that in the end it will be defined in partnership with the Department of Labor.

Green industry, green technology and green jobs are our future, and will play a key role in our economic recovery.

I am confident that if we stay on course and encourage American ingenuity and innovation, we can emerge from this national recession stronger than we were before.

But our President has taken bold action with the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that provides new resources and new momentum to create and maintain millions of jobs.

So if we invest in our community colleges to train people to go to work, they are going to have the opportunity to have a job, and these are probably going to be long-term, sustainable jobs.

I would hope that we would coalesce around those items upon which we can agree, and I think that we can if we work positively and cooperatively together and not cloud the issue of a clean environment and green jobs.

If it means they have to be union workers to make that happen, so be it, but I think that if we set the standard we will make it happen so that we aren't investing in a technology, a future, an industry in this country that leaves the…

You know, I shouldn't come to these hearings because it takes me back 40 years to a nightmare that I try to get behind me when I was poor and on aid for dependent children with 1-, 3-, and 5-year-old children, forced to go to work because…

CCDBG should provide the opportunity for states to develop and implement a single, comprehensive early childhood plan.

I think we would see significant results for our children throughout the United States.

In a changing workforce, I think we have got to see that the system becomes simplified. It becomes flexible. It becomes accessible and affordable.

We expect, when we emerge from this economic downturn, we will in fact emerge with a somewhat different economy than we entered it with.

We no longer live in a Leave It To Beaver time when the 1950s where, if a mom was poor, she actually got some subsidy and some help, a safety net through the welfare system.

We need to reform our defense budget so that we're not paying for Cold War-era weapons systems we don't use.

I am here today to ask for some common-sense adjustments to the budget, adjustments which the Congressional Progressive Caucus has been advocating for the last few years.

We must get Defense spending under control if we are going to turn our economy around.

The United States doesn't just lead the world in defense spending; we almost outspend the rest of the world combined.

Actually, no one can envy the job of this committee that you are faced with in this Congress, because it is going to be so hard to make a budget work with the numbers that confront us with this continuing financial crisis.

We cannot fix everything overnight but we can't give up.