Cass Ballenger: “First let me acknowledge and commend the two sponsors of H.R. 4037, the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Granger) and the…”

“First let me acknowledge and commend the two sponsors of H.R. 4037, the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Granger) and the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Roemer). I appreciate the work that both of them and their staffs have done in making this a bipartisan bill and in working with everyone involved so that we can bring this bill to the House floor today. OSHA's Hazard Communication Standard is one of OSHA's most important but also most troublesome regulations. A lot of complaints that we hear about, about the paperwork burden and the nit-picky paperwork violations from OSHA are because of the Hazard Communication Standard. The idea of the standard is a good one, to make sure that employers and employees know what chemicals they are working with and how to safely handle them. But the implementation of this standard has long been a source of complaint, and OSHA has not been exactly quick to fix the problems. H.R. 4037 addresses two of the problems that have been the source of these complaints for years.”