Charles Norwood: “I cannot help but add or repeat so our Members know, the amendments that were not accepted from the Democrats had…”

“I cannot help but add or repeat so our Members know, the amendments that were not accepted from the Democrats had nothing to do with these bills. They were simply not germane, and I know that upsets them, but those are the rules of House. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this rule which provides the House an opportunity today to address four very important bills. These measures in my view are very modest reforms. They have been narrowly drafted to make needed changes in our law, actually for about 34 years, while avoiding the possibility of any reduction in the current levels of workplace protections. Now, I believe that our committee, at least most of our committee, believes that. As such, a structured rule providing for consideration of these four measures on their merits in my view is entirely appropriate. As I will detail later in the debate on these bills, we need to implement these changes because small employers ought to be devoting more of their time and attention to creating new jobs and less on dealing with government lawyers intent on manipulating legal technicalities. And that, in fact, is going on. With that, I will briefly summarize each of these bills for my colleagues. The first measure for consideration under this rule is H.R. 739, the Occupational Safety and Health Small Business Day in Court.…”