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Helping Small Business On the question of new ergonomics regulations, Missouri spoke. And Senator Kit Bond listened. Bond was one of four United States Senators who jointly introduced a "Resolution of Disapproval" to strike down the largest, most expensive and burdensome regulation ever crafted by the federal bureaucracy. "This regulation is the poster child of bad regulations," said Senator Bond on the Senate floor before the vote. "It punishes employers instead of protecting employees. Congress has a responsibility to protect small businesses so they can continue to be the engines powering our nation's growth." Since the threat of this bad regulation first appeared, small business owners have faced endless confusion, fear and misunderstanding over employer responsibilities, compliance standards and potential liability. Employers who tried to understand their duties under the regulation had to wade through 600 pages of confusing regulations. Senator Bond understands the bottom line: businesses are in business to stay in business and they can only do that over the long term by retaining healthy employees. In many towns across the United States, employees are more than 'workers.' They are often friends, neighbors, or even relatives. Most employers are voluntarily working to protect their employees. And a large majority already have health and safety programs to avoid ergonomic?related injuries. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported a 25 percent drop in workplace illness and injury rates form 1994 to 1999, including declines in repetitive motion illnesses which represent just 4 percent of injuries that occurred in the workplace in 1999. The first rule at the Occupational Health and Safety Agency (OSHA) should be: any new regulation should first do no harm both to employers and to their employees. It is clear that the ergonomics rule would have violated this cardinal rule. It would have crushed many small business which barely have enough resources to survive already under today's regulatory burden. Even OSHA admitted that its ergonomics rule would be the most expensive regulation in the agency's history. And that was using OSHA's conservative estimate of $4.5 billion per year over 10 years. Experts at other agencies said the cost would be higher. For example, the Small Business Administration (SBA) estimated the true cost likely would be between 2.5 time and 15 times higher ? in other words, up to $67 billion per year. It was Senator Bond who introduced the Red Tape Reduction Act in 1996 -- also known as the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act. This is the bill that contained the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which Bond and the three Senators used earlier this month to defeat the fatally flawed Ergo Regulation. And that is exactly what the CRA was intended to do: save the American people from misguided regulations produced by unelected bureaucrats. When it came time for the Senate to deal with this bad regulation, six Democrat Senators did the right thing. Senators John Breaux (LA), Landrieu (LA), Lincoln (AR), Hollings (SC), Miller (GA) and Baucus (NM) joined all 50 Republicans to strike down the regulation. Unfortunately, Missouri's junior Senator, Jean Carnahan, voted in favor of this bill. In the House, a small number of Democrats did the right thing by joining Republicans in favor of the bill, voting 223 to 206 for passage. It is important to remember that by using the CRA to kill this bad ergonomics rule, in no way does Congress block OSHA from reissuing new ergonomics regulations. That is fine, if OSHA finally intends to issue sensible ergonomics rules. Which is precisely the exact message we wanted Congress to send last week. Stay tuned. |
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