Cass Ballenger: “small business continues to get the cold shoulder from the Clinton administration. Recently, I introduced the Small…”

“small business continues to get the cold shoulder from the Clinton administration. Recently, I introduced the Small Business OSHA Relief Act. Seventy-five of my colleagues have cosponsored the bill. The bill is entirely made up of provisions that the Clinton administration at one point or another claimed to support. And it would give some needed relief to small business from an agency which is too often unnecessarily adversarial and lacking in common sense. I wrote the Secretary of Labor on April 15 asking for his comments on the bill. I hoped that he would support it, since it is entirely taken from his and the President's statements of relief they claimed to support for small business. Well, here we are on June 5 and we still have not even received a response from the Secretary of Labor. I realize that relief for small business from OSHA's excesses does not rank very high on the priority list of the Secretary of Labor. In fact, I don't think that small business concerns are on his priority list at all. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the Secretary of Labor shows no interest and support for legislation to help small business. After all, this administration talks a good line, but does not back up its words with action.”