The [vinyl chloride standard would be the] tip of an enormous regulatory iceberg….If government allows workers to be exposed to the gas, some of them may die. If it eliminates all exposure a valuable industry may disappear.
It is unreasonable to assume that existing bureaucratic lassitude will be corrected by establishing another layer of bureaucracy.
It is our belief that consumers will not be effectively served by establishing an expensive new bureaucracy to assume the Congressional function of overseeing the existing agencies.
‘Consumer interest’ is an amorphous concept, made up of many competing elements, and the CPA [Consumer Protection Agency], time and again, will be called upon to make paternalistic judgments as to what is best for 200 million American consumers.
Everyone is affected by its [OSHA’s] pervasive coverage, orientation toward imposing penalties and its incredibly complex regulations and standards.…However, OSHA standards are complex and often require expert interpretation. For smaller businesses, the cost of deciphering which regulations apply to them and then determining if they conform can be excessive.
Employers do not deliberately allow work conditions to exist which cause injury or illness. Safety is good business… The goal is to have meaningless standards eliminated and achieve a law which recognizes business efforts to provide safe work places and provides fair treatment for all.
One month [after the law took effect] a special edition of the Federal Register was published containing close to 250 pages of safety and health standards. Businessmen were given three months to familiarize themselves with these standards before the majority of them were to be effective.
There are bureaucrats in Washington who believe their judgment is superior to yours, as a consumer. So they want to “protect” you by insuring that the only choices open to you are those meeting with their approval. They are really a warmhearted bunch. Just a little conceited, that’s all.
To remove jurisdiction of thermal discharges to the higher Federal level offers no evident benefits in the public interest, and on the contrary our experience has shown that it will lead to decisionmaking[sic] on the basis of arbitrary formulas without giving proper weight to the local conditions that do affect public interest.
Proposed new subsection 10(k) in section 4 of the bill (page 43, line 8), would prohibit the Federal Government from entering into contracts with, or providing financial assistance to, any person whose facilities are not in compliance with water quality standards…..This provision, as written, seems unwieldy. It could not be faithfully carried out without generating a tremendous amount of unnecessary paperwork and inconvenience for all concerned—Federal and State agencies, as well as industry.
