Burgess Owens: “we are here again. We went through this marathon a year ago. We have had several sets of hearings and markups on these…”

“we are here again. We went through this marathon a year ago. We have had several sets of hearings and markups on these four bills, and one would think they are very important. They are important, but in the reverse way. They are not important to protect the health and safety of working families in America. They are important because they are trying to trivialize the whole safety component of the Department of Labor and the whole safety responsibility of the government. They want to trivialize it and make it seem insignificant and unimportant. I understand each of the four bills amending the Occupational Safety and Health Act now on the floor will be considered individually, and I would therefore save my comments on the specifics of the other three bills until the appropriate time. When you consider these four bills as an entire package, however, it becomes very clear that they will seriously erode the enforcement of U.S. safety standards, they will undermine the ability of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to enforce on-the-job safety standards, and will only add to more worker deaths and more serious injuries. {time} 1415 It will not only lead to the Department of Labor becoming more and more the department against laborers, the department against working people; by bringing these bills to the House floor, the Republican leadership shows yet again just how out of step it is with the American people.…”