Mark Souder: “the Compliance Assistance Program, which I realize is only part of all the compliance efforts, is $45 million and it was…”

“the Compliance Assistance Program, which I realize is only part of all the compliance efforts, is $45 million and it was $30 million, or roughly $34 million prior to the $11 million increase. So the increases sound larger, but, in fact, the dollar amount of a smaller increase in enforcement is about two-thirds of the dollars of the increase in compliance. When we came in, in the authorizing committee and were first working with OSHA reform, we were proposing much more dramatic changes. I understand that inside this you have moved it in the right direction. Part of what this debate is about is that at one point we were talking like 75/25. Now we are talking such small, incremental changes and what we are, in effect, doing is upping that incremental change but still leaving the disproportionate balance for enforcement at almost 3 to 1, exact opposite of what we started with. This amendment in trying to respond, many of us wanted to move the dollars over to education. But if we are going to keep it in OSHA, then we think that we should have accelerated that process. We are not disagreeing on the thrust of where you and the ranking minority member were going, but we believe it should of occurred at a faster rate.”