[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 73 (Wednesday, May 22, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H5383-H5384]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           COSTUME PRESIDENT

  (Mr. BALLENGER asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, if we needed another example of how this 
President changes characters faster than Rich Little, here it is:
  A year ago President Clinton put on his regulatory reform-er costume. 
He said that he wanted to give small businesses a break against 
agencies like OSHA, which were more interested in

[[Page H5384]]

collecting penalties than in getting things fixed. In fact these are 
his words exactly, when he dressed up like someone sympathetic to small 
business:

       Enforcers will be given authority to waive up to 100 
     percent of punitive fines for small businesses so that a 
     business person who acts in good faith can put his energy 
     into fixing the problem, not fighting with the regulator. In 
     other words, if they want to spend the fine money fixing the 
     problem, better they should keep it and fix the problem than 
     give it to the Government.

  But now the President is wearing another costume. It's his reelection 
costume, and it's paid for by people who don't want regulatory reform 
and who could care less bout small business. And now the President has 
not only forgotten what he said when he was wearing that regulatory 
reform-er costume, he's actually opposing what he said.
  Take a look at what the Clinton administration is saying on the small 
business OSHA reform bill. We put his regulatory reforms for small 
business into a bill, House Report 3234, and now the administration is 
getting ready to oppose the very proposals it made when the President 
was wearing the small business costume.
  Mr. Speaker, costume changers are great entertainment. But we don't 
need any more of a costume President.

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