Charles Norwood: “I rise very proudly to support the amendment of gentleman from Texas, [Mr. DeLay]. I do so for two reasons: The first…”

“I rise very proudly to support the amendment of gentleman from Texas, [Mr. DeLay]. I do so for two reasons: The first reason that I support this amendment is I find it absolutely unbelievable that we allow a federal agency to absolutely disregard what this House wants done. When they sit over there and laugh at us when we say that we want a moratorium on their rules and regulations and they are just going to figure out a way to get around it, I think we need to speak to them. Ergonomics is a fancy term for designing jobs and tools to fit the physical and psychological limits of people. In general, that is a good idea. But if you look at what OSHA does, assuming they pass the new ergonomic rules and they can be adopted simply by issuing a public comment period without the messiness of having congressional approval, employers will be required to continuously survey and fix jobs deemed risky by OSHA. The list of jobs is virtually unlimited in this country. These activities can cause or aggravate more than 160 musculoskeletal and nervous system disorders from a back pain to joint pain to a neck pain to tendinitis.”