Last night, the Barton Amendment to the Labor-HHS Appropriations Bill was defeated by a vote of 181-249. All the Democrats, along with 19 Republicans, voted against the amendment. If it had been enacted, it would have resulted in a cut of more than 20% of NIOSHâs budget, and would have killed the National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA) program.
Thanks for this victory goes to the labor movement, which mobilized quickly to oppose the amendment, and to Rep. David Obey and his Appropriations Committee staff.
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That one will show up as a 1-liner on commercials; probably just an amendment for Berman anyway
great to hear though
That may be true but the 20% saved gives us 100% of NORA so the raspberry go's to the one liner and the amendment.
There may be a larger story here. Barton (R-TX) is a member of the Republican Study Committee, which carries the torch of the right wing of the party that gave us the Contract On America in the 90s. In 2006, the RSC also published the Contract for America-Renewed, which served as a proposal for the 2007 budget. Among many other right-wing wet dreams, the Renewed Contract proposed the outright elimination of NIOSH. Barton's amendment may have been the back door entrance to eliminating NIOSH.
While NORA accounts for 20+% of the NIOSH budget, it represents nearly all of the funds available for conducting research, as the agency no longer has any significant amount of discretionary funding for research. If NORA had been cut off, NIOSH researchers would have no funds to conduct research - period.
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