Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission Efficiency Act of 2005

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

(Mr. OWENS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Madam Speaker, 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.

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. In this case, the House Republican leadership is backing four bills to weaken OSHA at the very time that the American public is demanding the exact opposite be done.

According to a recent poll sponsored by the Wall Street Journal, eight out of every ten Americans believe Congress should be passing legislation to ensure greater health and safety in the workplace. Let me repeat that: The Wall Street Journal, which is hardly a liberal publication, they sponsored a poll in April 2005 revealing that 84 percent of those surveyed want lawmakers to pass bills ensuring safer workplaces in America. That is 84 percent.

Parade Magazine, another mainstream publication, tells us the same story. An article published in the April 10 issue of Parade Magazine assessed our national priorities based on 2005 dollar allocations for government programs. The article juxtaposed business versus safety, pointing out that this year's funding for the Securities and Exchange Commission is $888 million and the Small Business Administration, which is $580 million, far exceeds that for OSHA, which is $464 million, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission which is $63 million. The amount dedicated to business, Parade Magazine concludes, is close to $1 billion more than that dedicated to safety in this simple comparison.

The OSHA bills being voted on today will only serve to exacerbate this huge divide between Federal investments in business versus safety. One of the bills, H.R. 742, will even require OSHA to spend part of its meager budget rewarding certain employers who are repeat safety violators. This bill would reimburse firms that are repeat safety offenders for attorneys' fees whenever OSHA citations are downgraded on a technicality during administrative or court proceedings.

The American people are serious about seeing tougher laws enacted to improve safety on the job, and their concerns are well founded. In a hearing last month, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board underscored the fact that chemical dust explosions represent a serious industrial hazard in this country. Since 1980, 200-plus explosions and dust fires in U.S. plants caused the deaths of 100 workers and significant injuries to 600 others. Even though the Chemical Safety Board chair stresses that these

industrial explosions are clearly preventable, no comprehensive Federal effort has yet been established to address these clearly preventable explosions.

As recent headlines about worker deaths in Texas, New York and Ohio have revealed, American workers are far too often killed or severely injured as a result of safety violations by employers who have lengthy histories of similar offenses.

In March 2005, 15 workers were killed and more than a hundred injured in a massive British Petroleum refinery blast. A preliminary Chemical Safety Board investigation indicates that faulty equipment was a key factor in this terrible explosion which also destroyed buildings and cars. Yet OSHA had already fined the same British Petroleum plant $100,000 in September 2004 for safety violations that at that time had killed two workers. In fact, OSHA had previously cited and issued a fine of $63,000 in March 2004 to that British Petroleum plant for 14 safety violations.

Even though the Texas City British Petroleum Plant is clearly a repeat safety offender, OSHA routinely reduces penalties and downgrades violation findings as a means of encouraging correction of the problem. I suppose that is what is alluded to by this voluntary compliance. They are going to voluntarily comply one day, but in the meantime, many more workers will be killed.

A newly released analysis of 2,500 inspections of New York construction sites reveal similar patterns of serious and frequent violations of OSHA safety standards. Nearly two-thirds of all violations in 2003 involved faulty scaffoldings and/or the failure to provide fall protection equipment. Scaffolding collapses and falls are the most common cause of construction worker hospitalizations and deaths of three or more workers. Sponsored by the New York Committee on Safety and Health, this report recommended more vigorous OSHA enforcement and the hiring of more OSHA inspection officers, among other remedies. Under its current staffing, it would take OSHA 108 years to inspect all of the workplaces in the United States.

Yet this administration has proposed that we hire 41 new auditors to audit organized labor records. If we have the money for 41 new auditors to audit the petty cash records of labor unions, surely we ought to be able to find the money to hire more inspectors and have those inspectors be inspectors not on a voluntary compliance basis but on a serious basis to save lives and injuries.

OSHA also lacks adequate safety standards to cope with globalization. Four ironworkers killed last year by a massive crane collapse near Toledo, Ohio, were working for a contractor with a history of repeated safety violations.

Moreover, OSHA has yet to release a standard an advisory committee drafted a year ago to govern inspection of cranes manufactured in Europe, as the crane in the Ohio fatalities had been.

In closing, the American people are watching us. By an overwhelming majority, the public wants to pass bills to strengthen OSHA, not to weaken OSHA. They want safer workplaces in America. The bills before us now do just the opposite. I urge my colleagues to join me in voting ``no'' on these bills.

Madam Speaker, I include for the Record letters from the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters, the UAW, AFSCME, as well the United Steelworkers in opposition to these bills.

American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial

Organizations,

Washington, DC, July 11, 2005.

Dear Representative: I am writing to express the strong

opposition of the AFL-CIO to H.R. 739, H.R. 740, H.R. 741 and

H.R. 742, four bills that would erode worker protections

under the Occupational Safety and Health Act. These bills,

which are scheduled for a floor vote the week of July 11,

2005, would change established law and procedures to benefit

employers and stifle OSHA enforcement. They would do nothing

to enhance workers' safety and health protection, while

weakening the OSHAct. We are particularly concerned about

H.R. 742 and H.R. 741, because these two bills would

significantly undermine OSHA's ability to carry out its core

mission.

H.R. 742. Occupational Safety and Health Small Employer

Access to Justice Act--This bill requires taxpayers to pay

the legal costs of small employers who prevail in any

administrative or enforcement case brought by OSHA regardless

of whether the action was substantially justified.

The language expands provisions of the current Equal Access

to Justice Act, which already permits small businesses to

recover litigation costs where the government position was

not substantially justified. H.R. 742 will have a chilling

effect on both OSHA enforcement and OSHA standard setting.

OSHA will be hesitant to cite employers for violations of the

OSHAct unless there is absolute certainty that the

enforcement action will not be challenged, will be upheld or

there will be no modification in the terms of action.

Similarly, unless OSHA is certain that a standard will not be

challenged (which they are routinely for any number of

reasons), it would not dare begin the rulemaking process on

any hazard no matter how grave the threat of the hazard to

workers. No rational public policy would be furthered by

discouraging OSHA from issuing citations that are

substantially justified, but as to which the government

ultimately is unable to carry its burden of proof. Rather,

the inevitable result of such a rule, which would penalize

the government every time it loses, would be to chill the

issuance of meritorious citations in close cases on behalf of

employees exposed to unsafe working conditions. This bill

would further weaken OSHA enforcement efforts and standard

setting to the detriment of American workers.

Across all industries, establishments with fewer than 100

employees (which in 2000 made up 97.7 percent of all private

sector establishments) have a higher rate of fatal

occupational injury than do establishments with 100 or more

workers. Effectively hampering OSHA's enforcement ability in

these establishments would be devastating to workers,

resulting in even higher rates of worker fatalities, injury

and illness.

The number of OSHA enforcement actions that involve

contested adjudications is fairly small, the penalties are

generally modest, and the substantive and procedural

standards already accommodate the interests of small-business

litigants. To be clear, there is no evidence that this

legislation is necessary. The result of H.R. 742 will be a

skewed set of enforcement priorities and a risk of injury,

illness and even death to workers.

H.R. 741. Occupational Safety and Health Independent Review

of OSHA Citations Act--This bill would change the Act to give

deference to the Commission regarding the interpretation of

OSHA standards. The bill seeks to overturn a 1991 decision by

the Supreme Court that found that deference should be given

to the Secretary of Labor as the official responsible for

enforcing the OSHAct.

The Secretary of Labor has much greater experience and

expertise regarding the interpretation of safety and health

standards and regulations than the Commission. The Secretary

develops the rules and is responsible for their broad

application. In contrast, the Commission only reviews the

application of standards in those few cases that are

contested and come before the Commission. Giving deference to

the Commission would create an incentive for challenges to

the Secretary's rules and interpretations, undermining the

Secretary's policymaking and enforcement functions.

H.R. 740. Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission

Efficiency Act--The bill requires that the number of members

on the Commission be increased from three to five and that

all members must be attorneys. It also seeks to allow members

whose terms have expired to continue serving on the

Commission for an additional 365 days in cases where no

successor has been confirmed by the Senate.

The Review Commission has operated with three Commissioners

since it was first formed in 1970. Increasing the size of the

Commission from three to five members is not necessary and

would enable the Bush Administration to stack the review

commission with business-friendly appointees. The requirement

that the Commissioners be lawyers would exclude a large pool

of talented persons from service. Allowing members whose

terms have expired to continue serving on the Commission for

an additional 365 days unless a new appointee is confirmed by

the Senate may mean a sitting member could have a de facto

seven year term, dending on the political makeup of the

Senate and White House. The current requirement that a member

step down at the expiration of his or her term is appropriate

and maintains pressure on all parties to work together to

select a qualified person for the Commission. Under this

legislation, rather than having two members for a working

quorum, three will be needed. However due to the way the

language is crafted a minority of the Commission and fewer

than a quorum could take action. This makes no sense and

opens the door to abuses of power. Moreover, there is not

enough enforcement activity at OSHA to warrant five

commissioners.

H.R. 739. Occupational Safety and Health Small Business Day

in Court Act--This bill seeks to excuse employers who miss

the fifteen-day timeframe to contest citations and failure to

abate notices. Its practical effect would be to make numerous

excuses into legal reasons for missing the fifteen-day

timeframe in which employers currently must respond to

OSHA citations. This action will only encourage more

litigation. The idea of the fifteen-day requirement is to

give all parties a reasonable timeframe in which to take

action, and to ensure that the case is moved along as

quickly as possible so the

hazards cited will be addressed in as timely a manner as

is possible. The Commission should be able to review any

missed deadlines on a case-by-case basis, as is currently

the practice. The one case being held up to demonstrate an

insurmountable obstacle for employers is just that--one

case. No legitimate reason has been presented as to the

need for this bill.

As demonstrated above, these bills undermine the intent of

the Congress when it enacted the OSHAct more than 30 years

ago. Generally speaking, these policies and procedures have

been serving workers well for over 30 years. American workers

deserve a safe and healthy workplace and the full protection

the OSHAct can offer. These bills would surely diminish the

protections provided to workers by the OSHAct. For these

reasons, the AFL-CIO opposes these four bills, and we

strongly urge you to vote against each of them.

Sincerely,

William Samuel,

Director, Department of Legislation.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey).

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

H.R. 739 specifically creates a legal loophole for bypassing the obligation on an employer's part to meet a 15-day deadline for contesting OSHA citations. As such, the bill promotes increased litigation. Given that the OSHA commission already has the authority to review any missed deadlines on a case-by-case basis, such litigation is completely unnecessary. That bears repeating. At present, the OSHA commission relies on its longstanding practice of reviewing, on a case- by-case basis, any missed deadlines. So what is the rationale for this bill?

H.R. 739 is not only superfluous and offers nothing productive that is positive and new; it also negatively serves to delay the timely correction of workplace safety violations and hazards. The 15-business- day timeline for an employer's response was set to encourage speedy removal of work site hazards as well as the expeditious handling of cases. It establishes a reasonable time frame for protecting all the parties. It protects the employers as well as the workers. By contrast, H.R. 739 will needlessly place some workers at greater risk of on-the- job injuries or fatalities.

Let me give you a few concrete examples to illustrate the risk. In March 2003, OSHA began an inspection of Strack, Incorporated, a pipeline company in Atlanta, Georgia. OSHA inspectors had seen Strack employees working in a trench that was up to 12 feet deep. Yet a trench box, designed to protect workers, had been left on higher ground and more than 100 feet away from the site. In May 2003, OSHA issued Strack, Inc. a willful citation with a proposed fine of $44,000 for failure to use a trench box. Fortunately in this case, the hazards were corrected before anyone was killed. As an OSHA inspector put it, cave-ins occur quickly and without warning; and then it is too late to protect workers.

When it comes to trenching, failure to correct hazards in the 15-day required period can have fatal consequences. As Jeffrey Walters of Cincinnati, Ohio, testified before me last year, his only son Patrick died in a cave-in on June 14, 2002, only weeks after OSHA cited the firm Patrick worked for, which is Moeves Plumbing, for willful trenching violations. In fact, Moeves Plumbing had been inspected by OSHA 13 times before Patrick's death. Moreover, another worker had died while digging trenches for the same plumbing company several years before Patrick died in the same way.

All of this is to say that speedy correction of work site hazards cited by OSHA can often mean the difference between life and death. Thus, when OSHA finds a safety violation, it clearly merits immediate attention. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this bill again.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews).

(Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Bishop).

Madam Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt).

(Mr. HOLT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, I would like to just say that when we say the Republican majority is trying to trivialize the role of OSHA and the role of safety in the workplace, there is good foundation for this. When this administration took power, the present administration in the White House, one of the first acts that they perpetrated was the repeal of ergonomic standards at the urging of, of course, Republican Members of Congress. They repealed the ergonomic standards that had been in process with a lot of bipartisan development and support over a long period of years.

When the Secretary of Labor was Elizabeth Dole, great steps were made; and slowly we reached a point where we had ergonomic standards to pass. The current Bush Administration's first act was to repeal ergonomic standards, to toss them aside and to send a message that workers in the workplace are not that important, working families are really not important, working conditions in America are not important. The history of OSHA is that step by step they have saved thousands and thousands of lives.

One of the worst industries for safety before OSHA came into existence was the construction industry. The construction industry is still one of the most unsafe industries, but it has made tremendous strides in terms of saving lives as a result of being forced to follow certain kinds of standards by OSHA.

I think we need more light thrown on this subject, and for that reason we have prepared some information for each member of the committee by district, and they can get familiar with the problem in their district with this information that we have compiled.

For example, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2003, there were 200 worker deaths in the State of Illinois. But in the 13th Congressional District of Illinois, 69.5 percent of all the state's deaths took place. I think the Member of Congress from the 13th district ought to know that and take a look at what has happened in that district.

This packet that we want to prepare for each Member includes a chart detailing the statistics. The chart also lists the worker deaths according to the industry the person worked in and also the type of incident that was responsible for their death: was it a fall, contact with equipment, et cetera. The information is also broken down between government workers and those working in the private industry. This packet also includes a census report for each one of the districts showing how it relates to the surrounding areas, et cetera.

We will prepare this for each Member to just let them know how serious a matter this is in terms of their own immediate districts. We think working families in America should not be treated as if they lived in a Third World country, and a lot of Third World countries mores are being attempted by certain U.S. industries.

Particularly the construction industry, the construction industry looks for the most vulnerable people, immigrants. Illegal immigrants are employed in large numbers in the construction industry. And I come from a city where 40 percent of all male blacks are unemployed, according to two studies, two studies that confirm that 40 percent of all male blacks are unemployed. Yet there is a tremendous amount of construction going on, and if we go around the construction sites, we will find that the workers doing the manual labor, unskilled labor, are immigrants; and in many cases there are tremendous accidents, and these people are shuffled off and frightened and intimidated to the point where they never even report it. They do not have any workman's compensation, let alone feel that they have the right to be protected under the OSHA laws.

A review of more than 2,500 OSHA construction site inspection records in New York State from the year 2003 found that nearly one third of all OSHA construction violations in the State were of scaffolding or fall protection requirement violations, more than any other standard. The organizations involved in the analysis also said the results of this study as well as a separate review reveal troubling data about the plight of immigrant workers in the construction industry.

Their analysis, titled ``Lives in the Balance--Immigrants and Workers at Elevated Heights at Greatest Risk in Construction,'' was prepared by the New York State Trial Lawyers Association and issued by the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, called ACORN. Two other organizations Make the Road by Walking, and the New York Immigration Coalition, also sponsored the study.

The study reviewed all construction site OSHA inspections conducted in the State during 2003. Now, personally, I know and I have related on this floor, the total accidents that have taken place since then in New York City. Five immigrant workers lost their lives in a trench that was being constructed without proper safeguards.

I want to repeat that there is a class problem developing in America. There is a class problem. Those in power are insensitive to the needs of those who are out there working on the front lines, whether it is in domestic service or in dangerous jobs like construction, trucking and a number of chemical plants. These are dangerous jobs, but they have to be done. Our industries cannot survive without people who work in those dangerous jobs. They deserve all the protection we can give them. Just as the soldiers on the front lines in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else always deserve the best that we can give them. Every soldier is automatically a hero when he goes out to fight for his country, because for every one who goes out to fight, there are a few hundred thousand left behind who will never be called. We should recognize and honor those who go out to fight. Therefore, the best armor protection, the best bullet-proof vests, all of

the things that are available to protect an individual's life should be available to those who go out to fight.

What we have found in this present war in Iraq is that people on the top, with their class-conscious sentiments at work, did not provide at first the kind of protection that should have been provided to the soldiers on the front lines out there. The soldiers come from the same working families. I cannot stress enough the need for all Americans to recognize that we are all in this together.

We have a governor of New York State now whose son was in the National Guard in a program that required that, once he came out, he had certain duties and obligations. This governor's son now is asking for a waiver. He does not want to go to Iraq; he wants a waiver. What kind of a message is that sending to all of the mothers and fathers of young men and women who have gone off to fight in Iraq in terms of our society? The person with the power does not want to make a sacrifice of his son.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the ranking member of the committee, the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey).

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews).

(Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I want to sum up and repeat, because I think it deserves repeating. First and most importantly, no one has really shown a need to increase the size of the commission from three to five members. We find it very unusual that the majority party with great emphasis on saving dollars on education and a number of much needed programs, wants to waste a little money on two additional members, create a little bit more of a bureaucracy by having two more members to make a decision. Instead of five people, three people can make this decision.

They have been functioning with three members since the creation in 1970. Why should it be any different now?

Given the enormous deficit spending promoted by this Republican majority, there is no real purpose in adding members and swelling the ranks.

Last but not least, I find it quite ironic also that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to tack on the requirement that the commission members have legal training. I think you have heard the expression that our colleague, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood), often makes about the government being over burdened with lawyers. So I am surprised to hear that the leaning of this bill as we read it would certainly require more appointment of lawyers or somebody similar to lawyers. There is no demonstrated need for such a requirement. There is no demonstrated need for this particular addition to the bill.

The capacity of OSHA to produce cases is steadily shrinking as a result of the steady chip-away strategy of the Republican majority. They have chipped away at the budget every year. OSHA is far smaller and far less effective than it was when the Republican

majority took power in the House. Certainly that was accelerated when the Republicans took control of the White House as well as the House.

So OSHA is under attack in a way which produces less work for such a commission. Why should we increase the size of the commission when there is less work for it? It is part of the pattern to chip away in every little way and trivialize what OSHA is all about. At the same time, the only parts of the Department of Labor that are being increased are those parts that are aimed at attacking organized labor, the organizations that represent working families. We happen to know there is a great push on to drive the unions into the ground with trivial audits, financial audits mostly, of petty cash, the receipts for cab fare and receipts for lunch. Various efforts are underway at this point to force labor unions to defend themselves from bookkeeping errors.

The same kind of zeal needs to be expressed in the way that OSHA is staffed and manned to provide the basic necessities to keep our workplace safe for our workers.

Let us just discuss for a moment the 2,578 OSHA violations in Georgia in 2002. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration in 2002 issued an average of seven citations a day to Georgia businesses that year. OSHA found 2,578 violations of its rules during 1,481 inspections of companies operating in Georgia and documented more than 50 workplace deaths in that year.

In 2001, OSHA issued 2,962 citations, more than eight a day, and 1,596 inspections in Georgia. So 2002 had improved a bit from 2001. But I think it would be good if Members got in touch with what is happening in their States and in their districts.

The Atlanta Business Chronicle documented this information in an article published March 23, 2003. At that time, the Atlanta Business Chronicle had documented safety concerns in three of Georgia's largest companies, the Home Depot Incorporated, the Georgia Pacific Corporation, and United Parcel Service Incorporated. But as OSHA records show, safety is a widespread concern among many Georgia companies.

On February 24, OSHA issued a list of 14,200 U.S. facilities that had accident and illness rates at twice the national average. The national average is about three illnesses or injuries for every 100 workers that are serious enough to cause employees to lose time from work. Included in OSHA's list were 563 workplaces in Georgia, and more than 200 of them were in the Atlanta metropolitan area. Wal-Mart stores, the Nation's largest retailer, had the largest single number of Georgia facilities on the list, 11. Of the companies based in Georgia, United Parcel Service had the most facilities on the list with 174 nationwide.

Out of all the Georgia companies during 2003, Durango-Georgia Paper Company in St. Mary's was fined the most by OSHA. OSHA assessed Durango-Georgia $258,000 after an August 19 boiler explosion that killed two workers and injured one. OSHA found 48 violations during an investigation of that accident. In addition to the safety violations that contributed to that explosion, OSHA cited the company for allowing employees to work at heights of up to 50 feet without fall protection and for requiring employees to stand on a conveyor belt to remove jammed logs without adequate protection against being caught in a machine.

It was not the first large fine against that paper manufacturer. OSHA fined the company $157,000 after an accident had resulted in the double amputation of a worker. In 2000, the company had paid $220,250 for 12 citations. The pattern goes on and on.

The American workplace is not a safe place. It becomes more complicated all the time. The new chemicals, new machines, and new challenges, the building of houses, buildings and facilities at higher heights, for example all lead to complications. We talk about small businesses, and it is true that a large number of construction businesses are small businesses. That does not make the work that their workers do any less dangerous. The fact that they are a small business does not remove the fact that their workers must use scaffolding. Small business workers have trenches that they dig. They are doing work that is very dirty and very dangerous. The workers in small constructin firms deserve protection.

Small contractors are also the ones who are most likely to disobey immigration laws and have large numbers of people who are illegal immigrants working in their facilities. And therefore, I have noted before we have a noticeable large number of deaths of immigrants in the construction industry. And this is not confined to Georgia or any one State. This spreads right across the country.

The employers of construction companies know that they can save money by disobeying the law and using illegal immigrants. So it has become a major problem. Again, the working families of America deserve better.

We have come to the point where our economy is compared to other economies in our global partnerships around the world. We compare ourselves and say, Oh, it is awful that we cannot compete better with China. Well, China was organized as a country which has dictatorship of the proletariat. Dictatorship of the proletariat meant workers were going to be charge. All of the unions in China are collapsing to the government. China produces a large part of its consumer goods in prisons. They produce a large part of their consumer goods in factories where workers are paid less than a dollar a day.

It is not useful for us to invoke the third world countries, the developing countries and China--I do not know what China would be categorized as--with exploiting companies and decide that we ought to be more like that so we can be more competitive. Some allege that one way we can be more competitive is to make the workplace less safe, by providing employers with a situation where they do not have to worry about workers' safety. China--as a dictatorship--can do what they want to with their workers. They can continue, as I pointed out, pay workers the lowest possible wages, and they can also not spend any money on guaranteeing worker safety.

So given the fact that we are on the floor for the second time in 2 years with these four bills, it is an opportunity for us to educate our colleagues as to the seriousness of the current situation in the American workplace today. We must be more sensitive to the fact that our working families are out there suffering. Our health care situation does not get any better. We need to come to the rescue of private enterprise in terms of their pension funds collapsing. And their health care systems are so expensive that they are now calling for help from the government.

All of this is part of a threatening and more intimidating atmosphere that mushrooms all the time against the interests of working families. And the attack on OSHA, which is consistent, the harassment of OSHA, the downgrading of OSHA, the chip-away erosive effect of OSHA is all part of that pattern.

A Department of Labor which declares it has no money to really have an OSHA that functions appropriately is the Department of Labor which has managed to spend a great deal of money on the faith-based initiative. We noticed that large amounts of money from the Department of Labor have gone to faith-based initiatives over the last few years, and that is a great mystery as to how that money was doled out, under what criteria was it given to certain faith-based organizations. I think one got more than $1 million. It was on the front page of the New York Times. The Department of Labor had given a grant to one faith- based group for more than $1 million, and we do not know what it is the DOL is doing here. This all happened right before the November 2004 election. So the Department of Labor is being used for some good purpose for some group or some persons, but it is certainly not being used as the advocate for working families. And today's exercise is just one more example of how the drum beat goes on. The effort continues to minimize and trivialize that which is most important for working families in this country.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from California (Mr. Baca).

(Mr. BACA asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The two speakers prior to me have raised the question of outsourcing, and other people have challenged the relevancy of that topic to this particular set of bills. Every statement I read from industry complaining about the competitive edge that other nations have mentioned the fact that our environmental laws and our safety laws and our minimum wage, that combination, puts them at a disadvantage. So it is logical to conclude that part of the exercise today is to take away one of those disadvantages, to the degree it can be accomplished. And if you have

to chip away at it with bills like this and remove worker safety as an expense that has to be undertaken. This civilized nation was built by workers and the workers deserve to have a fair break. But those that want to reduce us to the level of Third World nations or want to imitate China are going to pursue the kinds of bills that we have before us today.

So I want to just conclude with another section from the report of the AFL-CIO, their annual report on worker safety. I just want to read a few excerpts, which I think are excerpts that are important to educate our Members.

More than 306,706 workers can now say their lives have been saved since the passage of the OSHA Act in 1970. Unfortunately, too many workers remain at risk. On average, 15 workers were fatally injured and more than 12,000 workers were injured or made ill each day of 2003. These statistics do not include deaths from occupational diseases, which claim the lives of an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 workers each year.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 5,559 workplace deaths due to traumatic injuries in 2003, which was a slight increase from the number of deaths in 2002, when 5,534 workplace deaths were reported. Wyoming, of all places, led the country with the highest fatality rate, 13.9 people per 100,000. The lowest State for the fatality rate was 1.5 per 100,000, which was reported in Delaware.

The construction sector had the largest, as I said before, the construction sector had the largest number of fatal work injuries, 1,126 in 2003; followed by transportation and warehousing, which had 805 injuries; and agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting, which had 707 injuries. Industry sectors with the highest fatality rates were agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting, 31.2 per 100,000 in hunting. Mining had 26.9 per 100,000. And transportation and warehousing, 17.5 per 100,000.

So you can see we are not here just to talk in support of the blue States, the urban States, the Rust Belt States; but the rural areas are suffering quite a bit also. The workers there--the rural areas--suffer in terms of the large number of fatalities in the workplace.

Transportation and material-moving occupations had the highest number of fatalities, 1,388, followed by construction and extraction occupations, with 1,033 fatal injuries. The occupations of greatest risk of work-related fatalities based on the number of fatalities per 100,000 employed were logging workers. Their occupation had 131.6 fatalities per 100,000; fishers and related fishing occupations had 115 deaths per 100,000; and aircraft pilots and flight engineers, 97.4 deaths per 100,000 employed.

Very interesting that simple guys out there, fishers and logging workers, are in the same category as aircraft test pilots and flight engineers in terms of deaths and injuries. So our concern is universal, and the mission of OSHA is important and should not be denigrated or trivialized by this kind of legislation.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 351 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

The resolution before us is the rule for the consideration of a package of four bills, H.R. 739, 740, 741, and 742. They are pieces of legislation which passed with a significant bipartisan majority in the 108th Congress and are once again being brought to the floor today to help reduce the impact of unduly burdensome regulations for American small businesses and thereby enhancing American competitiveness, and to restore fairness in applying workplace safety regulations to small business.

The rule before us, House Resolution 351, provides for the separate consideration of each of these four bills. Under the rule, each bill will have its own debate time and the opportunity to be thoroughly debated and voted on by this body.

Finally, the rule also provides that at the close of consideration of these measures, the Clerk of the House will be directed to combine the text of each of these bills that do pass the House under this rule as one engrossed bill, and send that bill to our friends on the other side of this Capitol, where they will have a better opportunity this time to be both deliberative and, hopefully, active at the same time.

While this may seem to be a complicated rule, the effect is quite simple. The bills brought up for consideration under this rule will allow small businesses to focus more of their energy on competing in the marketplace, providing their customers with better goods and better services and creating new jobs across America, rather than spending their time paying questionable fines, wrangling with regulators, worrying about the uncertainties created by an inadequate dispute process, created by staffing shortages, or having to pay for lawyers' fees to help fight a just cause with occasionally insensitive, but most often distant, Federal bureaucracy in Washington, D.C.

The gentleman from Ohio (Chairman Boehner) and the subcommittee chairman, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood), as well as the hard work by both Republican and Democratic Members of this committee, are to be commended in bringing a well-balanced small business fairness package to the floor today.

The first of these four bills, 739, which is the Occupational Safety and Health for Small Businesses Day in Court Act, tries to provide flexibility to employers filing responses to OSHA citations.

We currently have a hard and very arbitrary standard of 15 days to respond to an OSHA citation, even though in the 1980s, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure granted employer relief to file a late notice if there was a mistake, inadvertence, a surprise, or excusable neglect.

This bill simply codifies this commonsense practice. Hard and fast deadlines in instances sometimes work an injustice, but in any case they provide only a safe standard for the bureaucrats, but lack the common sense to help small businesses which were clearly recognized in the Federal Rules on Civil Procedure.

There is no good reason why we should not codify for all what is occasionally given to some and allow for some discretion in granting relief to innocent employers for, as the law says, mistake, inadvertence, surprise or excusable neglect. There should be no controversy over this commonsense bill.

The second bill, H.R. 740, the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission Efficiency Act of 2005, provides for the addition of two additional members to the review commission, and the additional human resources will allow it to complete its work in a timely fashion for the benefit of both employers and employees. For two-thirds of the life span of the review commission's existence, the commission has frequently been paralyzed by vacancies that have resulted in several critical and well-documented inefficiencies and rendered the entire regulatory scheme devised by Congress to resolve OSHA disputes as unworkable. The byproduct of this breakdown delays final adjudication. It harms real business. It hinders real job creation. There is a simple and easy way to resolve this particular problem.

The third bill, H.R. 741, the independent review of OSHA citations, by legislative history and practice, OSHA was designed to be responsible for rule-making, enforcement and adjudication. But Congress also established a review commission. Its intention was to give an independent review of OSHA functions as a check on prosecutorial excesses by OSHA.

A 1984 court decision extended the concept of administrative deference to the agency and subsequent court decision which have been conflicting, have compounded the problem, and conflicted the process of checks and balances Congress intended. This bill simply restores responsible checks and balances to the current system by making it clear that it is the commission's legal interpretation that should be given proper judicial deference.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, the fourth bill, H.R. 742, deals with small employers' access to justice. This simply provides for a small employer to have payment of attorney fees when that small employer prevails in litigation that was prompted by the issuance of a citation by OSHA. The legislation is simple in its rationale: Small business people should not be intimidated into blindly following mandates because they do not think they can afford to fight a case in court in which they would otherwise prevail. This levels the playing

field so that small businessmen and businesswomen have an equal chance with powerful government bureaucracies that have virtually unlimited legal resources of the Federal Government behind them. This bill helps the mom-and-pop businesses to be able to have the courage to speak up for themselves when they are right.

Small businesses still provide a majority of the jobs in this country, and they feel the economic pressure brought by government regulations and taxes every day. It is only fair that through these four bills in these very specific areas that we take care to remove any economic incentives for the fostering of an insensitive Federal regulatory bureaucracy.

Mr. Speaker, these are four commonsense good bills which, once again, enjoyed a bipartisan majority of Members' support in the 108th Congress.

Our country has had 35 years of experience with OSHA. As documented in testimony before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, modest improvements are needed to restore balance to the regulatory scheme through these bills as they relate to small business. Last year, the Office of Management and Budget reported to the Congress the annual cost of major Federal regulations for the decade from 1992 to 2002 was somewhere between $38 and $44 billion which means that, for every dollar we spend for regulation, we also as a government spend $1.50 for compliance costs and the private sector spends $45 in compliance costs.

The over-regulation of business puts us at a competitive disadvantage with the rest of the world, places unlimited, unnecessary limits on our economy and harms the consumer.

I am proud the congressional leadership is continuing to look at ways to pare back the overwhelming growth in regulation and bureaucracy, and I urge my colleagues to support the rule for these four bills to keep American businesses competitive in a global marketplace, to keep jobs here in America. I urge my colleagues to support this rule and the underlying bills.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I am appreciative of being able to talk about the four bills dealing with regulatory reform, all of which have had full debate in the committee this year, as well as full debate in the committee last year. And the Committee on Rules did approve every amendment that was germane. Unfortunately, of the three amendments that were present, none of them were germane to the topic of regulatory reform.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 7 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood), the subcommittee chairman, to address this rule.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to note that, though I appreciate the very articulate remarks of the gentleman from California about the issue at hand, which is a significant issue we should somehow debate, I remind him that we are talking here about reform of a regulatory process of OSHA. The gentleman's comments are not germane to this particular bill. There will be a point in time for that discussion, but we should not cloud what this bill is actually doing.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Davis) to hopefully clarify this.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, once again, I have enjoyed the articulate and emotional discussion that has gone forward on this rule so far. Eventually, we may actually have a bill that meets the debate.

I would remind my colleagues that these four packages are how we help small business negotiate through the stream of Federal regulation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Chairman Boehner) to once again reemphasize that point.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood), subcommittee chairman.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, last term, when I was a freshman here, having had some State legislative experience, I remember sitting back there by the rail talking to some other freshmen saying one of the things we need to do desperately in this body is have the rule that there should be one bill and one issue. If we did that, it would create better transparency and actually better legislation that people would understand.

I think our discussions today illustrate that point. I have a great deal of empathy for the gentleman from Texas who spoke a few moments ago, a good friend, a good legislator, and he said, the bills we have before us would not solve the problem that he introduced. He was totally accurate, because the topic of his amendment is not the same as the topic of the bills we have before us today, which is why they were ruled nongermane and not put in on the rule itself.

I think we have had some fascinating words that I have enjoyed. I am going to call it fascinating rhetoric today, not really debate, because like ships passing in the night that never touch, so has our discussion from both sides of the aisle gone forward, but never really discussed the same topic at the same particular time.

The four bills we have before us are very narrow in their approach, and they are very good bills, because they help small businessmen and small business women to try and negotiate the rule process with OSHA. They deserve our support, as they deserve the support they got last year when they were discussed in committee; last year when we passed them with bipartisan support on the floor; this year, once again, as they were discussed in committee, because the goal of those bills is to eliminate the conflict between the Federal Government and small business and, instead, to enhance cooperation. And that enhanced cooperation will make a better atmosphere for the business community in America and make a better country for all of us. That is the point of these four very good, very narrow and very specific bills.

I urge the Members to support this rule. It is a fair rule. I urge the Members to support the four underlying bills. They are good bills.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the previous speaker. I know he is really busy today and had to go ``no'' on all four bills, but maybe I can refocus us just a little bit and explain that we are on one bill right now, and it is a very simple bill. It is H.R. 740, the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission Efficiency Act of 2005. Maybe we can concentrate just on this bill now for this hour and understand that this is a badly-needed change in OSHA unless you do not believe OSHA ought to work, unless you do not believe that the OSHA Commission should be in place.

This legislation is especially timely. In April, the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission's term expired, placing the Commission in the same position it has been in for almost two-thirds of its existence; now, listen to me: almost two-thirds of its existence for the last 34 years undermanned and unable to function properly. Well, why is that important? It is not. It is only important to someone who has a citation hanging over their business, hanging over their head, and you cannot get the review commission to operate. It is clearly, after 34 years: No, we understand it does not work. Half of the time they cannot do business.

H.R. 740, the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission Efficiency Act, increases the size of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission from three members to five. My goodness. We really need to spend a lot of time debating this.

We are actually going to change this commission, like most commissions in the Federal Government, and change it to five members so it finally can do the job that the Congress in 1970 wrote into the law they wanted it to do. What an extreme bill this is.

The bill changes the quorum requirements from two members to three members, and allows the President to consider legal training, in addition to education and experience, as criteria in selecting an individual to serve on the board.

Finally, H.R. 740 allows a confirmed member of the commission to continue to serve for up to 365 days to prevent the breaks in service that occur when a Senate confirmation is not concluded in a timely manner. Does that mean every time somebody retires this commission goes out of business, because we cannot get the Senate to do its job? That does not matter to anybody except the small business who has a citation hanging over their head that the government will not deal with.

The committee heard testimony in the 108th Congress that because of the vacancies, the commission has been nonfunctioning for two-thirds of 30-plus years of its existence. Now, listen to that, for pity sakes. The commission that you are trying to protect has been nonfunctioning for two-thirds of the 30 years of its existence. Why in the world would you want to protect the present-day system?

Given that the creation of the commission was the catalyst for the passage of the OSH Act in 1970, there never would have been an OSHA had not this particular provision been in this review commission. And now you do not want it to work. We are trying to change that.

I believe it is important to prevent the commission from being stalled and unable to rule on cases when there is a gap in appointees. That does not serve employees or small employers well at all.

Let me make one final point. My colleagues on the other side have been very critical of the inclusion of legal training as a qualification for commissioners, criticism that I cannot understand.

Mr. Speaker, OSHRC is an adjudicative body. Legal training is therefore important because the commission writes opinions that will be reviewed by the courts if a finding is challenged. I would certainly think our Democratic lawyers would agree and understand that. But I would note that legal training is but one of three criteria the President could review before appointing a commissioner, that would mean a Democratic President or a Republican President.

Nothing in this bill suggests or requires that every member of the commission be a lawyer. The simple fact of the matter is this: when the commission is unable to rule on cases, resolution does not occur in a timely manner. That is unfair and that is wrong.

This is unfair to all parties and drastically undermined congressional intent from 1970. In the 108th Congress this bill passed the full House with bipartisan support by 228 to 199.

I urge passage again this year. And I will say, if you live in a district where there are no small businesses in that district, then I would vote ``no'' on this. But if I had any small businesses in my district, I would give it some serious consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. I would just like to mention to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) that this bill is not about death. It is simply about making OSHA work, making the commission work. It is as simple as that.

If you want to be against making OSHA actually work, and the review commission doing the job that the Democratic Congress wrote in the bill in 1970, then vote ``no.''

Mr. Speaker I yield 3 minutes to my good friend, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Price).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews), my good friend, and believe me he is, I want him to be well aware that I am not certainly trying to hire two lawyers. You can be certain of that.

But we do think some legalese is advisable on the commission. But being a lawyer is only one of three criteria. I know that you know that. The other part that I just want to mention to you is that when we changed this commission to have five members so it actually will work, if you have got a better idea how to make a commission work that is totally useless right now, with three members, of course I have always been open to hear that, but we think five may well do it; but it will take three members to form a quorum, not two.

That is for sure. I appreciate you bringing that up so I can clarify that.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, how much time do we have left on each side?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Tiahrt).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

I do wish my friend, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens), would get the AFL-CIO to send him talking points just on this bill. That is what we have this hour for, to discuss this one bill, where we actually are trying to make OSHA work.

Now, I will go over it again. This is about an agency called OSHA that has a review commission made up of three people. This review commission was written into the law in 1970, written into the law by a Democrat House and Senate that simply said OSHA did not get to be the judge and jury. They do have the right to set the standards. They can write the regulations and enforce the regulations, but they are not to be the final judge and jury. OSHRC is. The review commission is.

Now, what we find is the commission is not working. It does seem to me that some people do not want it to work. I am not sure I know why, but to stay with a bill that is 34 years old and just like it is, thinking it is perfect, when we absolutely know that it is not. For more than two-thirds of its existence, this commission has been paralyzed by frequent vacancies and often been unable to act. Two- thirds of the time in 34 years this commission has been unable to act. For more than half of its existence, it has had two or fewer members. For 20 percent of that time it lacked even a quorum of two.

Now, why does the AFL-CIO or the labor bosses not want this to change? I do not know, but you misread it if you say working families do not want this kind of change. Because most working families in this country are in small business. And tell you the truth, many labor union members also have small businesses with their wives and sometimes themselves as a second job.

You take it on yourself to tell us what the majority party wants. Well, this is simple what we want in this bill: We want a review commission at OSHA that works. It is just that simple. We do not want any more or any less. That is all this bill is about. We believe having five commissioners will help aid that process.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all our Members to just simply come to the floor and remember what this is about. This is a small tweak in a 34-year-old bill that is not working, and it does not help anybody. It does not help workers, and it does not help employers to not pass this little thing to help this agency work.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop) for the time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong opposition to this closed rule and all four of the underlying pieces of legislation that it encompasses. For those who did not hear me the first time, I said four pieces of legislation under one closed rule.

This is a quadruple coupon day in the House of Representatives, Mr. Speaker. Four opportunities to shut off democracy for the price of one. What is perhaps most offensive about the rule is the fact that not one amendment was made in order for any of the four bills. Let me repeat that: Not one amendment was made in order for any of the four underlying bills.

Closed rules are an affront to our democracy. We should stop it now. My outrage and the outrage of all on this side of the aisle is as much about process as it is about policy. Pure partisan politics never produces sound public policy. And patronizing corporate interests to pad one's campaign coffers has no place in the people's House. Yet, that is all the majority seems interested in doing.

The political score Republicans are seeking to settle with their barrage of anti-working-class legislation is not going to be fulfilled by stifling debate and blocking Democrats out of the process. Republicans are calling this the OSHA fairness package. Fair for who? There are only losers with these bills, Mr. Speaker, and the biggest victim is the American worker. All four of the underlying pieces of legislation represent a buffet of rollbacks in our laws governing working conditions.

Mr. Speaker, do we have an overwhelming epidemic in this country of ridiculous and overzealous workplace lawsuits that I do not know about? The judicial process for violations and workplace health and safety standards has been in place for nearly 30 years. It is fair, and most importantly, it protects the rights of workers. Yet, two of the underlying bills affecting OSHA standards are coming as a direct result of recent court rulings that Republicans and their corporate friends do not agree with. The other two are aimed at stacking the OSHA commission with anti-worker commissioners and creating a system where only those who can afford legal representation will be permitted to file a complaint with the Workplace Safety and Health Board.

Mr. Speaker, I do not like the new policy of this Congress which can best be described as ``when the courts rule against you, legislate against the courts.''

Why are we stifling Members from offering thoughtful amendments? Just one example, if I may. The ranking Democrat on the Committee on Education and the Workforce, my good friend, the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), a man who served in this body for 30 years and is known throughout the country as a champion for working- class Americans, Republicans denied him the opportunity to offer a substitute to one of the underlying bills that came out of his committee.

Had the majority made the Miller substitute in order, the House could have done something today that would have actually benefited working- class Americans. We could have had a real debate about increasing the minimum wage to a meager $7.25 an hour.

Realize, this is an amount that while above the current level of $5.15 is significantly below the much needed living wage that is needed to pull someone making the minimum wage 40 hours a week above the poverty line. In blocking the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) from offering his amendment, Republicans are again proving that they are anything but the people's party. Perhaps the majority is blocking what it knows it cannot defeat, or better yet, perhaps the majority is just protecting its members from taking a vote that will show their true colors. Shame on them and shame on this body if it allows this assault on American workers to continue. None of us in this body would want to live on $5.15 an hour. None of us would want to work three jobs just to make ends meet. None of us would want to work three jobs and still have no health care. Yet, that is what we are asking, no, requiring millions of our fellow citizens to do.

When the opportunity to increase the minimum wage presents itself, Republicans blocked House Members from voting on it. At least in the other body, while the leadership opposed an increase in the minimum wage, they at least permitted a vote. Protecting the rights of those most in need is the cornerstone of our great democracy. I refuse to remain silent while those on the other side of the aisle seek to dismiss this cardinal American value.

I urge my colleagues to reject the closed rule and oppose the underlying pieces of legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), a champion of worker rights.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens).

(Mr. OWENS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I kind of question whether a closed rule is fair, but I hear the chairman.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gene Green).

(Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott).

(Mr. McDERMOTT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Solis).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

First, I heard several times that the matter of the minimum wage is not germane to the four measures included in this one rule. The simple fact of the matter is that an amendment was offered at the Committee on Rules last night and that amendment was voted down on a party-line vote. So at least a discussion during the period of the rule allows the germaneness of the question having to do with the minimum wage, not so much of the substance of the base bill.

I will be asking Members to vote ``no'' on the previous question, Mr. Speaker, so I can amend the rule and allow the House to vote on the Miller-Owens bill to increase the Federal minimum wage. This amendment was offered in the Committee on Rules, as I just said, last night, but was defeated on a straight party-line vote.

My amendment to the rule would provide that immediately after the House adopts this rule, it will bring H.R. 2429 to the House floor for an up-or-down vote. This bill will gradually increase the minimum wage for Americans from the current level of $5.15 an hour to $7.25 an hour after about 2 years.

Mr. Speaker, it is time we in the House started helping American workers instead of taking away their rights as the four underlying bills in this rule do. I think one of the best things we can do to help working families is to increase the minimum wage. It has been nearly 10 years since this Congress has voted to increase the minimum wage, an increase that was signed into law by President Clinton in August of 1996. Since that time, the value of that increase has eroded by 20 percent. A full-time minimum wage earner is working 40 hours a week, makes about $10,700 annually, an amount that is $5,000 below the poverty line for a family of three.

Clearly we are way overdue for another increase. Somehow we have had time to implement numerous tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, but we have turned our backs on those who work the hardest and are paid the least, those who struggle to make ends meet every day.

I think it is time this Congress developed a conscience and started helping those who need help the most.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members of this body to vote ``no'' on the previous question so we can help these 7.5 million American workers who directly benefit from an increase in the minimum wage.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the grounds that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.