Jack Kingston: “The gentleman from Florida had mentioned OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and for years this has…”

“The gentleman from Florida had mentioned OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and for years this has been the group that was kind of the government watchdog on health and safety in the workplace. Certainly it came into being under the Nixon administration. It was a pro-worker law, but it was not an anti-business law either. It just had some common sense. And yet we are now in a situation where over 60 percent of the OSHA fines are for paperwork violations. You have to list such hazardous substances as that of the ink that you use in a Xerox machine. If you store that, you have to have a material safety and data sheet. And if you do not fill that out properly, you are fined. There have been cases of OSHA coming in and laying a heavy hand on small businesses and putting them in some cases almost out of business because of the financial crunch, litigation, and so forth. Yet in the agriculture side of our economy, there is the Soil Conservation Service which gives farmers technical assistance to prevent erosion, which is a pro-environment type agency, but giving technical assistance to farmers, which they need, a very good working relationship between soil conservation and farmers. And here you have the same type relationship between OSHA and businesses, only it is an antagonistic one.”