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   (Mr. BALLENGER asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute.)

   Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, just when we thought the Clinton-Gore administration could not sink any lower, they always figure out another way. I recently learned that OSHA paid for 35 posthearing comments for the record on its proposed ergonomics rule. In effect, OSHA bureaucrats paid for what they wanted the public to hear and did not allow real public comments to stand. To make matters worse, OSHA paid for these comments with taxpayers dollars.

   This disregard for the mandated public comment period tells a story of the Clinton-Gore-AFL-CIO Labor Department. Mr. Speaker, this outrage bears repeating. Instead of independent reaction from the public at large, OSHA filled the ergonomics public records with comments from its own paid witnesses. If you can believe it, the story gets worse.

   When the public comment period was closed, OSHA allowed the ever-biased National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, NIOSH, to submit over 3 years of scientific literature more than 6 weeks after the deadline. This, again, shows OSHA is hearing what it wants to hear, not what small businesses and the average American wants it to say. I strongly urge OSHA to stop this corrupt ergonomics rule-making and start over with a clean, fair, and objective rule-making process.

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