Burgess Owens: “the war on workers and families in America will be escalated this week when the Health and Human Services and Education…”

“the war on workers and families in America will be escalated this week when the Health and Human Services and Education appropriations bill reaches the floor of the House. For all matters concerned with workplace protections, this Republican appropriations bill is not focused on appropriations. This is, instead, a stampede into radical authorizing legislation. The authorizing Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities is rendered obsolete by what the Committee on Appropriations is doing. The antiworker, antiunion Republican overlords have chosen to bypass the authorizing process and implement their war against the workers by cutting the funds for OSHA, MSHA, and NIOSH. We have also provisions which require that OSHA cannot use but two-thirds of its funds, present funds, for enforcement activities, cuts the enforcement budget by 33 percent. It also cuts out economically targeted investments. It bans the use of such funds from the pension funds for economically targeted investments. It allows 14 year olds to load bailers and compactors, although as recently as 1994 a man was killed in a compactor. It moves into such minute detail as removing the requirement that miners are not allowed to drive as part of their work. It micromanages with dollars. By micromanaging with the dollars, the Appropriations Committee will streamline and accelerate the dirty work which was begun already by the authorizing committee.”