Quotes

The Cry Wolf Quote Bank chronicles the false predictions and hyperbole by opponents of these laws and protections.  While the issues and specific policies change over time, the rhetoric and themes remained the same.  You can search the Quote Bank for what opponents said to prevent these laws from passing. Using the drop down menus on the right their statements by issue, by specific law, by who said it and by the core themes they evoke.   Elsewhere on the site, you can find articles, studies, and other material that debunks their claims. 

E.g., 2024-03-29
E.g., 2024-03-29

Adding another layer of government regulations onto these federal programs which provide substantially similar protection to employees and the public as those proposed in the bill is wasteful, inflationary and unnecessary.

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Robert Vogel, chief regulatory counsel of the Rohm and Haas Company.
10/07/1980 | Full Details

To me it is just damned incompetent to consider legislation without knowing what the cost is going to be. In business we couldn’t do this. We couldn’t have jobs if we ran our business that kind of way.

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Russell Hurst, president of VIZ Manufacturing Company. President of the W.N. Stevenson Company and representative of the Northeastern Chemical Distributors Council.
10/07/1980 | Full Details

The restrictions make us waste oil every time we make gasoline [thus forcing costs up].

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Werner T. Meyer, president of the Lead Industries Association. The Los Angeles Times.
01/01/1980 | Full Details

All of us pay for OSHA’s failures. We pay as consumers when the goods we buy cost more in the marketplace. We pay as taxpayers with more and more whittled from our paychecks to fund an agency that is heavy on expenses but lean on results.

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Chamber of Commerce staff report. 1979.
01/01/1979 | Full Details

Under these inflationary pressures many of the industries and small businesses employing marginally trained or unskilled workers will be forced to cut back on the number of those employees or go out of business. The very worker that the Federal minimum wage was intended to aid will find himself out of work.

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Mickey Edwards (R-OK), Congressional Record.
04/26/1977 | Full Details

Because of our guilt—and because of the media’s espousement (sic) of the movement—laws were passed which asked industry and the American consumer for the impossible. The members [of Congress] admitted they did not know what could actually be done to clean up our environment, how long it would take or how much it would cost. But they went ahead anyway in the spirit of political expediency to ramrod through measures that would affect millions of people and billions of dollars…

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Gary D. Knight, Associate Director for Environment, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Chamber of Commerce Public Presentations
12/04/1975 | Full Details

Unless we're able to weed that crop with the short-handled hoe, we are going to have to disk the crop up. It will cost a fortune if we are stopped from using the short-handled hoe. If you ban this tool, through your hasty action, you will bankrupt California's largest industry.

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Salinas Valley lettuce grower Tom Merrill’s testimony, California Industrial Safety Board (ISB) hearing.
03/27/1975 | Full Details

It would cost us more to produce high octane, unleaded fuel; it would cost the consumer more to buy it; and it would cost the country more in terms of its overall consumption of crude oil.

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Leo McReynolds, research director for Phillips. The Los Angeles Times.
12/30/1974 | Full Details

Welfare money in the pockets of strikers is money out of the hands of the truly needy. But the needy must still be provided for. How? By increasing taxes.

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Chamber of Commerce Newsletter. June, 1973.
06/01/1973 | Full Details

Clean air, land and water are vital to all of us. But so are jobs, food, clothing and housing. We have to weigh the total impact on the environment along with the economic and social costs in order to clean up.

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Chamber of Commerce Executive Vice President Arch Booth, Chamber of Commerce Newsletter, May 1973.
05/01/1973 | Full Details

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