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The House in Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union had under consideration the bill (H.R. 987) to require the Secretary of Labor to wait for completion of a National Academy of Sciences study before promulgating a study or guideline on ergonomics:

• Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of the Workplace Preservation Act and in support of American small business. All we're asking is for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to delay implementation of a new workplace ergonomics rule until the National Academy of Science finishes a study of the effects of workplace ergonomics.

• The rule that OSHA wants to implement is conservatively estimated to cost Americans $3.5 billion a year. As a small business owner, I am very concerned about how federal regulations affect people and their jobs. Too often the people who suffer are not only the small business owners, but also their employees. And the regulation being discussed by OSHA is indeed large. It could have harmful effects on the economies of the small towns that dot my district where there are not many choices of where to work. Often in Central, Southern, and Eastern Oregon, if you lose your job at the local tire store or construction company, there are no other employment choices.

• The federal government has already played a role in driving the unemployment rate in Grant County to almost 17% in April of this year by halting access to the federal lands that dominate the landscape of Oregon. Now it wants to micro-manage small business? I believe that before the federal government implements a drastic increase in its interference in America's small businesses, it needs all the information it can get on ergonomics. It is not too much to ask OSHA to wait to implement its rule until we have a chance to examine the ergonomics study being performed by NAS at the request of Congress.

• Mr. Chairman, I join the small business owners of America in thanking my friend from Missouri, Mr. Blunt, for his leadership on this important issue. I urge my colleagues to support this reasonable and pro small-business bill.

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