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   Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I need to address a slightly different issue at this point, to again explain why we are where we are. I began in June with regular speeches about how we were going to wind up in this position: The other side of the aisle was objecting to motions to proceed to appropriations bills and the extended debate we had to have on whether we could debate put the Senate in a situation where we had to do all of our negotiations with the White House, instead of, as the Constitution says, where the Senate will determine in conjunction with the House the expenditures of this Nation.

   That is exactly what has happened. There has been delay after delay after delay that has pushed the appropriations process to this point. Yesterday, the President vetoed the Treasury-Postal bill. Through a quote from Congress Daily, we learn a top administration official confirmed Wednesday that the President will sign it; we didn't need to make changes to it.

   There is a lot of speculation why this was vetoed. The President said yesterday there was nothing really wrong with the Treasury-Postal bill, but he just didn't think we ought to have that bill signed until we complete the few other remaining bills. He arbitrarily vetoed the bill after a top administration official said the President would sign it and after the Democratic leadership in Congress had agreed to it.

   The President keeps moving the goalposts in an attempt to provoke a confrontation with Congress. As a result, it has made negotiations next to impossible. How can you negotiate when the commitments aren't kept, when the rules aren't followed?

   One most important to me is the ergonomics amendment. That is an amendment passed in the Senate on a bipartisan vote. The exact same amendment was passed on the House side by a bipartisan vote. Labor-HHS has some monetary items that are different between the two sides but not that amendment. A conference committee was formed and they met. The White House said, we don't like the amendment on ergonomics. Both sides of the conference committee said that is not conferenceable. It was the same on both sides.

   Now, because we get in this little bit of a jam and the President gets a little more leverage in his negotiations, we are now at a point where some of the leadership had said, OK, we won't make it a year's delay before more work can be done on OSHA with ergonomics; it will only be until March 1st. In the last minutes, that goalpost was moved again. The President said, no, I want to be able to put it into effect, and they can take it out of effect if there is a new administration next year.

   Let me state how difficult a procedure that would be. It

   would be next to impossible to remove an absolutely ridiculous rule that is landsliding through this place by an agency out of control, that has known what it wanted to do from the very first day that it wrote the rule. It has done every single thing it can to make sure that rule comes into effect. They don't care who doesn't like it.

   Our ergonomics amendment, which delays it one year, is not about whether we should have an ergonomics rule. It is not a prohibition against an ergonomics rule. It is most definitely not a dispute about the importance of safety for American workers. We need to have safety for American workers, but we need to do it the right way.

   This amendment was passed in a bipartisan way. It is imperative that Congress insists there be a reasonable amount of time on this rule. The rule was only published a year ago. They are anticipating that maybe they can even squeak by before there is agreement and get this rule finalized and approved. That will be quicker than OSHA has done a rule. That would be record time.

   They mention this was brought up about 12 or 13 years ago. There has not been agreement on it since that time. It never got published until a year ago. There has been no official action until a year ago.

   Let me state why we ought to be concerned about this rule and why the delay occurred, in a bipartisan way, for a year. People didn't approve of the way OSHA was handling it, the way they were going about it. OSHA paid over 70 contractors a total of $1.75 million to help with the ergonomics rule. They paid 28 contractors $10,000 each to testify at the public rulemaking hearings. They didn't only pay the witnesses to testify; they didn't notify the public, and then they assisted the witnesses with the preparation of their testimony. Then they brought them in for practice runs for the hearing. Then they paid them to tear apart the testimony of the opposition. That is not the way we do things around here.

   That resulted in people on both sides of the aisle being extremely upset with the way it was handled. The way that OSHA has handled this gives every indication that the way they wrote it is the way it has to be; that they are not going to pay attention to any of the comments or the additional testimony. They knew they were right when they

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   It is interesting to note the Bureau of Labor Statistics says, without the rule, United States employers reduced ergonomic injuries by 29 percent. What do the hearing records show? With the ergonomics rule they would get zero percent the first year and 7 percent the second year. American business is doing better than that without the rule. How are they doing it? Somebody is helping them to figure out what they need to do.

   Small business in this country has trouble handling the OSHA rules. They have over 12,000 pages of regulations they have to digest. If you are a small employer, you cannot read 12,000 pages in a year. Any time they get help on knowing what they can do to provide safety in the business, they do it. It is shown time and time again on every kind of injury there is. So we put in the motion to slow down OSHA a little bit, to make sure they took the necessary time to look at the rule and to get rid of this perception that their first idea was the only idea and the right idea and going to be the final idea. Somehow, they have to work past that perception.

   The amendment is a reasonable 1-year delay. It will ensure that OSHA takes the time to evaluate all 7,000 comments it has received and try to resolve the problems with the rule. It also gives Congress the time to perform its appropriate oversight function.

   So there is a reason for a delay. Rules in OSHA have been extremely permanent. Any one that has ever passed has had court trials and a number of them have been reversed. But if they make it through the court trial, did you know they have not been revised in the time that OSHA has been around? Do you think technology has changed a little bit? Do you think there is any reason we ought to look at rules that are 29 years old? We probably ought to. Instead, we are rushing into an area here that not only provides a rule without sufficient oversight, but it provides a rule that gets into workers comp. Yes, it gets into workers comp. In its preamble, OSHA specifically prohibits any right to impose on workers comp, and there is good reason for that. Workers comp has been around a long time. There are precedents that have been developed. They are important precedents.

   Here is the biggest problem with it. You can get paid twice for the same injury. It is kind of a rule of mine: If I can make more by not working than I can working, don't expect me to show up. That is going to cause some major problems for business in this country. It is something that needs to be revised. Again, there is no indication at all it would be revised.

   So the House folks and the Senate folks--not just the House folks, as has been written up in some of the papers--have been incensed the President is insisting this rule be allowed to go into force but not to be enforced until next year. That is not the way we do it. That is one of the things that is

   keeping Labor-HHS from being approved now. It should not be the major crux of an appropriations bill, but it is a very important point that we need ensure that any changes made in rules that work on the worker get the proper amount of oversight.

   That is all we are asking for, an opportunity to do the proper oversight on it and to get an indication of some sort from OSHA that they are going to pay attention to any of the 7,000 comments they received.

   We are at a point where we need to wrap up this session. We are at a point where we need to get the work done. But that is one item I will stay around here for until next year, if I have to, to be sure we do the job right and not in a hurry. We do not need to rush things.

   I thank the Senator from Iowa, and I yield the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.

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