Political Quotes

“Again, I rise in opposition to the amendment, but certainly with great respect for the proponent. I actually supported making this amendment in order because I have such high regard for the gentleman. However, this amendment, essentially, Madam Chair, guts the bill. The essence of this bill is to say to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, who has been studying this issue since the 1990s and has issued commonsense guidelines--that again, Ranking Member Foxx has touted as an example of how this isn't a real problem that we need to accelerate, but the fact of the matter is, we incorporate those guidelines in the underlying bill with a real deadline, 42 months. That has precedent. Congress has done this before. OSHA is an act of Congress, and we have accelerated deadlines for bloodborne pathogens back in the late 1990s, gave them a 1-year deadline or a 6-month deadline to implement a standard, again, for HIV, hepatitis B, and C, in healthcare. And thank God. We are a safer country because Congress stepped in and set a deadline for OSHA to act. We did it for hazardous waste materials. We put a deadline to make them act. Without a deadline, what we are stuck with is OSHA's atrocious record of getting rules out in a timely fashion. Beryllium, 18 years it took; silica, 19 years. If you inhale silica, you suffocate and get cancer; confined spaces in construction, working in trenches, 22 years.…”