Charlie Norwood

Mr. NORWOOD

Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. NORWOOD. If the gentleman will continue to yield, Mr. Chairman, I want to tell the gentleman, I do think OSHA has been improved. That is something we all should be proud of. Has OSHA moved far enough yet, to the point where we are doing a better job in the workplace, where most of the catastrophes occur? The answer would be no.

Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is one that is very clear- cut and very simple. We are trying to continue to fund IDEA special education. We are moving $11.25 million from OSHA into IDEA. Mr. Chairman, I want to point out that this movement of $11.25 million from OSHA does not, in effect, cut the OSHA budget, but simply retains the same funding of $325.7 million. Mr. Chairman, again, this moves funding from OSHA, but it does not cut OSHA. It maintains its funding level at the same amount, $325.7 million, for 1997. There are two reasons in my mind for this amendment. One, of course, is that special education is important. I think we all would agree that funding a program that is now 22 years old at the 12 percent level is not correct and it is wrong. The Federal law says that we have to fund special education at 40 percent, though we only do 12 percent. Mr. Chairman, funding of the special education program at 12 percent, which, thanks to the good works of the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Chairman Goodling, and others has occurred just recently, is way inadequate for a Federal program that we are supposed to fund at a 40 percent level. No one can disagree that the idea of taking children with disabilities and turning them into successful members of society is a very good thing to do. I noted the other day that one of our Members on the other side of the aisle said, ``Well, we are only funding at 12 percent, but it is not our fault. The courts made us do it.'' Well, the courts are simply using the law passed by this Congress 22 years ago and stating that the special education must be funded, but presently it is being funded by the taxpayers at home through property taxes. A Federal law that is a good law, though not funded by us, causes a great deal of concern for the local school boards, as well as local politicians who had nothing to do with it. Mr. Chairman, I do not think any of us would disagree that it is important and it is critical that we do fund special education. I doubt there is a Member in this House that would think that we should not do that. This is just one more effort for us to try to beef up the funding to that program. Now, we are taking it from OSHA. I want to make it clear that I do not view this as a discussion about safety and health. I do not think there is a Member in this room who does not consider health and safety in the workplace very, very important. The debate is not about whether we need an OSHA or not; it is not about whether we wanted a safe and healthy workplace. It is about the process of OSHA, and it is about the process of prioritizing your spending. We are giving OSHA an increase in 1998 of $11.5 million, but you cannot justify that. Nobody in their right mind can come up with any data that says, yes, they do need that much more money. Now, many people relate an increase in dollars into an increase in the objective, which is a safer workplace. But I will tell you, you cannot go by the numbers to tell that. For example, Mr. Chairman, in 1993 we spent $291 million in OSHA, and, unfortunately, that year we had 6,331 deaths. Mr. Chairman, you cannot relate the dollars spent in OSHA to workplace deaths. In 1993 we spent $291 million; we had 6,331 deaths. Interestingly enough, in 1994 we increased our spending in OSHA and we spent $297.2 million, but what happened? The death rate went up in the workplace, to 6,588. Then we go to 1995 and we funded OSHA at $312 million, and we had 6,210 deaths. But then we lowered our spending in 1996 to $305 million and the death rate came down when we lowered the spending. The only point I make there, Mr. Chairman, is it is not possible for us to simply say, looking at those numbers, that you can justify a rate increase in an agency that is not doing exactly what it ought to do, which is improve the health and the safety in the workplace. Also, tonight a number of times the death rate in 1994 was stated as 6,588. That is the number that was used a number of times. But listen to those numbers. Think about those numbers. On the 6,588 occupational fatalities reported by the BLS in 1992, 42 percent were caused by transportation accidents, and another 20 percent were caused by acts of violence, suicide, and homicide. These are not considered workplace hazards.

Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I would suggest that we ask this agency to spend no more money than it spent last year until it reworks itself. Yes, it has improved; yes, it is better than it was 2 years ago; but it is not good enough. Why are they not focusing on those 40 percent of deaths where they occur out there? That is not what we do. We have to have one-size-fits-all, and everybody gets involved. Mr. Chairman, we should focus on the areas where there are the most deaths, those industries where they occur, not across the board. Yes, we only have 900 inspectors, and you may be assured there will never be enough money in OSHA to have enough inspectors to inspect every industry. But why is that agency not focused on where the deaths and injuries are occurring? Mr. Chairman, that alone is enough reason to send another message to OSHA saying that, yes, we want you to protect health and safety in the workplace, but we want you to rework how this particular Federal agency works so we can have some positive results from it.

Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield on that one little issue?

Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I would say to the gentleman that this is not a cut. We are simply freezing it at the same level it was last year, $325.7 million.

Mr. NORWOOD. I think as I recall it came out to about $30,000, but that is not all the point.

Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. NORWOOD. It is sort of like saving money.

Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I will be very brief. We put $1 in at the time until we build it up and finally get IDEA funded. But the point here is we know what the $11.25 million would do in IDEA and we do not know what the $11.25 million would do in OSHA. There is no way for anybody in this room to say they know spending that extra $11 million next year is going to achieve a certain goal. You cannot prove it from the past numbers.

Mr. NORWOOD

Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Chairman, OSHA insists that the manual is not for educational purposes, but on enforcement of a new standard. It is widely regarded as constituting guidelines which are enforceable under the general duty clause. They are not kidding. Too many of those of us who are on the right committee and are paying attention to them; of course they are going to enforce these standards. Therefore, employers will have no choice but to comply with standards that we do not understand, nor does the medical community.

Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Chairman, yes, I do, because they made a deal saying that if we will do that for 1 year, ``The committee will refrain from any further restrictions with regard to the development, promulgation or issuance of an ergonomic standard following fiscal year 1998.'' That means it cannot be discussed again and that does not mean we will have the science. Vote for this amendment.

Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this amendment for, I think, some very clear reasons. I would remind or inform the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Obey] that OSHA is in charge of health and safety in the workplace and perhaps they ought to do a little better inspection of their own people, since they had to close down the OSHA facilities in West Virginia to Legionnaires disease. I think they may want to take care of their own offices first. Second, I would remind the gentleman from Wisconsin that I suppose being in Congress is not hazardous duty, but I can assure the gentleman that if OSHA were to come to this Capitol, come to Cannon, Longworth, or Rayburn and do the same inspection that they do in the private industry, we will be meeting on Pennsylvania Avenue, because they would have to close these buildings down. Mr. Chairman, I want to make it very clear that the process of spending money should be the prioritization of how we spend that money. Recognizing that for 40 years this body has not paid much attention to that, if they wanted to spend it, they borrowed it. But we are at a point now where we are not willing to borrow anymore, so we have to prioritize. This amendment is simply asking this: Do we want to cut spending in vocational education next year by $11 million or do we want to increase spending in OSHA next year by $11 million? Now, that is our choice here, and it is a process of prioritizing. Cutting OSHA back to last year's spending level of $325.7 million is not exactly closing it down. Are we not all pleased that the growth rate is good in this country, interest rates are down, unemployment is down, the stock market is up, things are going pretty well? Well, no small part of that was the belt tightening that working America has done over the last 10 years. Why can we never tighten our belt in Federal agencies? Why do we always insist on judging the efficiency of an agency by how many dollars we spend? The gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Goodling], our chairman in the Committee on Education and the Workforce, reported before the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Porter] that there are lots of problems in OSHA. None of that was mentioned by the gentleman from Illinois. But there are still lots of problems over there. Why can we not ask them to be more efficient and operate on the $325.7 million next year that they did last year, until they start dealing with some of the problems? And in the meantime, until they solve the problems that have been pointed out many times in oversight by the Committee on Education and the Workforce, let us spent $11 million on training young men and women in this country we need jobs. Now, if my colleagues believe that everything is just hunky-dory at OSHA, then I want to make a few points. In its latest move to get out an ergonomic standard, OSHA has plans to put the Ergonomics Technical Assistance Manual on the Internet. OSHA's ergonomic guidelines would require employers to take extreme steps to prevent repetitive motion injuries. Well, that may be a good idea, except we do not understand repetitive motion injuries. And what I mean by that, we could have two Americans, same sex, same age, doing the same job, working side by side, and one has a repetitive motion injury and the other does not. The medical community does not understand that. Mr. Chairman, all we are asking for OSHA to do is just be calm until they get the right science and then we can deal with this. If we put the ergonomic standard on the Internet, employers are going to be required not only to have written plans to prevent these injuries that they do not understand, but also to redesign work areas in hopes that it will help, not that we know it will help. We do not have the science. They will be asked to slow assembly lines and potentially pay for medical bills. Private industry, for example, estimates that a similar rule proposed by the California OSHA would cost $3.1 billion annually just in California. Other sources estimate the Federal rule would cost $21 billion to implement. That is with nine zeros.

Mr. NORWOOD. I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.

Mr. NORWOOD. No. What I favor is repealing the law and not having us fund it at 40 percent or change the law or either fund it.

Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I just want to say to the gentleman from New York, this is not an assault on anybody. I, for one, am sort of sick and tired of hearing it. Not one of us in this room has any clue how the $325.7 million was spent last year, whether it saved one life, how efficiently it was used; and we do not have a clue whether they need another $11 million. We do know we need another $11 million in vocational education. This is not an assault on anybody.

Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I say to the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Obey] let me make my statement, and if there is time left, I will be glad to yield. Mr. Chairman, I rise to support the McIntosh amendment for, I think, some very clear reasons. IDEA is good. We have had it in this country for 22 years now. The idea here is to educate our disabled children and make them useful members of society. Who could disagree with that? But in addition to that, the law also says that the Federal Government will fund their portion of that at 40 percent. Well, we are up to 12 percent now after 22 years, and my friend from the other side of the aisle implied that why do we not go ahead and fund it? We are in charge; why has it been just 12 percent? Why do we take it away from something else in the Education or Labor Department and fund IDEA? My question is, why have the Democrats not funded it over the last 20 years? Why have we forced this unfunded mandate down on the States and, in effect, have raised taxes on the people in the States without them really realizing it? I think $4.3 million is a large amount of money. I hope people watching this debate understand some of us realize it has six zeros on it. We think that at $10,000 per district it is at least a step in the right direction. Though we are only funding what the law calls for, 40 percent at 12 percent, we are trying to correct that situation, and I encourage all of my colleagues to support this amendment, support the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. McIntosh], and maybe we will have some more amendments before the day is out to continue to try to fund what is a good program and what does help our children.

Mr. NORWOOD. Reclaiming my time, I simply say that this is a step in many steps for which we can finally get the Federal Government to do what it said it wanted to do, fund IDEA at 40 percent levels. It is not comprehensible to me that we have simply passed that law and simply not done what we said we will do. We very seldom pass a law and allow people at home not to follow that law. Why can we not fund it? And if we can only get $10,000 per district in this amendment, then we can keep trying until we get up to the correct funding level.

Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I yield briefly to the gentleman from Oklahoma [Mr. Coburn], my colleague.

Mr. NORWOOD. I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.

Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I now yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Obey].

Mr. NORWOOD

Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Speaker, on a recent trip to foster environmental partnerships, Vice President Al Gore visited China. This is a nation that burns more than a billion tons of coal a year--one-third more than it did just a decade ago. As coal burns, it sends millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, where the chemical traps heat and warms the earth. We Americans, though, are in a poor position to cast blame. For every year, the average U.S. resident breathes a portion of the 1,442 million metric tons of carbon the United States emits. Because there are no boundaries in the atmosphere, we breath the same air into which we casually spill carbon, sulfur dioxide, and other gases. Carbon dioxide invades the air like a filthy pall that blankets the Nation's urban pockets and others throughout the world. But there is a technology that makes clean air entirely effortless-- one that Americans take for granted because its merits too often go unnoted. It is nuclear generation of electricity. Nuclear energy already supplies 20 percent of the Nation's electricity. And in at least seven States, unplugging that power would darken the majority of the States' homes, industries, and office buildings without a readily available backup supply. We live in a world where one-third of the world's inhabitants cook, clean, and work without electricity. Within the next two decades, they will seek to change their cycle of energy poverty. A 1996 report by the International Nuclear Societies Council projects that increased energy demand in developing nations will be three times the 1990 level in 2020 and about six times greater than that level by 2050. It is no surprise that the need will be greatest in the developing world. The cheapest power option is fossil fuel. And who will convince leaders in developing countries that the byproducts of fossil fuels could cause more harm to the environment than good derived from an energy supply that would fuel economic growth? Each year, U.S. nuclear power plants prevent the discharge of 146 million metric tons of carbon. The power generated by one nuclear plant keeps 1.4 million metric tons of carbon out of our air. Imagine how clean our air would be if nuclear power provided more electricity. Nuclear power alone isn't the answer. But it is part of an essential mix of energy sources in countries that must assume the responsibility for others that will not or cannot protect our air. My purpose today is simple, Mr. Speaker. I want to urge action on H.R. 1270, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1997. This legislation, through its used nuclear fuel management program, would ensure that we can continue to produce energy cleanly at nuclear power plants--many of which are running out of storage capacity for used reactor fuel. This legislation would make us guardians of a cleaner planet. Supporting H.R. 1270 is the right thing to do.

Mr. NORWOOD

Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. I just want us to also recognize and ask the American consumer to recognize, do you want Mexican peanuts or do you want American peanuts? None of us disagree totally with some of the things they are saying. I say to my friend from Pennsylvania, we do not want your derned subsidy. But you should have done that in 1950. You forced this program on us for 60 years. Give them a chance to get out from under it. That is all they are asking to do. Vote against this silly amendment.

Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Mr. Chairman, I will tell the Members quick what is nuts. What is nuts is people from Delaware and people from Wisconsin getting up here and talking about something they do not know the first thing about. My good friend, the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Neumann] actually saw a peanut plant one time. Mr. Chairman, I have lived in a family who grew peanuts. They hated the Government regulations. They wanted to get away from them, but we made them do it. Now give them a chance over the next 7 years to live with this no-cost program to the taxpayers, and undo what we have done to them for the last 50 years. Get off the back of the peanut farmer.