Bush Verses Science

Now let's move beyond the deficit and start talking about the consequences of President Bush's other domestic policies. When President Bush took office, new federal safety guidelines protecting workers from repetitive stress injuries were about to become law. These regulations had been under developement for 10 years; President Bush, with help from Congressional Republicans, killed them almost immediately. Molly Ivin's pointed out the particular foolishness in these actions.

business can be counted upon to threaten to shut down or move to Taiwan if forced to do anything to protect workers' health or safety.

But remember the key question: "How much does it cost not to do it?'' The labor unions were claiming that repetitive stress costs up to $9 billion a year. So, as Jonathan Alter reported in Newsweek, the Republicans commissioned a study to refute this absurd claim from the prestigious National Academy of Sciences. The NAS report came out in January, and it says that repetitive stress costs $50 billion a year in lost wages and productivity.

So it costs significantly more to deal with the consequences of a preventable workplace injury than it does to fix it. Not to mention (and who would?) the human misery involved. But the business community decided to call in its campaign contribution chips to kill the measure anyway. Go figure.

The science on repetative stress injuries is pretty cut and dry to any reputable scientist. And these regulations would made millions of workers lives less painful. Oh well.