Egged
on by well heeled lobbyists hired by American business interests, the
Republican Luddites in the House have pushed through relatively unnoticed HR
4078 – a 92 page bill that threatens to grind to a screeching halt all the
progress of the last 25 years in enhancing the safety of the jobs we go to, the
cars we drive, the toys our children play with, the medicine we take, the food
we eat, the water we drink, and even the air we breathe. Euphemistically entitled
the “Red Tape Reduction and Small Business Job Creation Act,” the legislation
bars all federal regulatory agencies from promulgating any significant new safety
rules from the date of passage until the Secretary of Labor certifies that unemployment is below 6.0%. This has to be one of the most stupid bills ever
passed by either house of Congress.
Although
economists of every stripe have long since debunked the notion that federal safety
rules hamper job creation, Republican politicians cling to that mantra. Truth
is, Congress is powerless to eliminate the social costs of safety. All Congress
can do – and this bill does it in spades – is shift those costs from a few
pennies each paid by every citizen back to the shoulders of those few and
nearly invisible families affected by the tragedy of hundreds of thousands or
even millions of dollars in medical bills, lost income, and often permanent
disability suffered when unsafe jobs, cars, toys, medicine, food or water
sicken, injure or kill a family member. Republicans want, for reasons known
only to the lobbyists from whom they receive their campaign donations, to take
us back to the days at the beginning of the industrial revolution when it was a
worker’s tough luck if an on the job injury cost him or her an arm, leg, lung
or paralysis, and left his or her family destitute as a result. They would
rather have a citizenry of amputees, invalids and cripples on the public dole than
an additional 2% of able bodied unemployed workers.
If
this legislation makes sense, it is only the political sense of pandering to a
business constituency at the expense of Americans of all stations in life.
There is not a shred of economic sense, social justice sense, or even common
sense in this bill. Each and every one of us has benefitted from the advances
in the safety and healthfulness of our jobs, cars, toys, medicines, food, water
and air produced by the last quarter century or more of federal safety rules. The
only ones who would benefit from passage of this horrible bill in the Senate
are Republicans who collect huge campaign funds and Super Pac donations from
special interest business lobbyists when they vote in favor of this law.
Pray
for us all that the Senate leaves this piece of miserable and misery inducing
legislation on the table in a darkened committee room where it belongs. Pray
even harder that President Obama has the guts to veto it if it should ever
reach the Oval Office.
