Congress

President Joe Biden has nominated former Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) member Amanda Wood Laihow to return to the board, months after she quietly stepped down in April at the conclusion of her first term -- leaving OSHRC with just a single Senate-confirmed member, short of the two-person quorum it needs to do business.

Republican and Democratic leaders on the Senate’s environment and homeland security committees are floating a bill to reauthorize the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program into 2028 with no statutory changes, drawing support from industry groups who have urged Congress to act quickly before the program expires on July 27.

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers is questioning the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on implementation of the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program, including a long-discussed overhaul of its governing rules, as they weigh reauthorizing CFATS before it expires on July 27.

The just-released fiscal year 2023 omnibus spending bill includes a $20 million funding increase for OSHA, with nearly all of its programs in line to receive at least a small boost, though the overall increase is far below the nearly $90 million the Biden administration sought.

Democrats are poised to release their own proposed “omnibus” fiscal year 2023 spending bill for OSHA and other agencies on Dec. 12, signaling a possible impasse in negotiations with Republicans on a deal amid a GOP push to cut non-defense spending following Democrats’ passage of a massive party-line spending bill earlier this year.

Republicans on the House labor panel offered a preview of their potential agenda as the incoming majority during a recent workforce protection hearing, as top GOP members accused Democrats of using safety concerns as an excuse to expand union membership while decrying the Biden OSHA’s focus on regulation over compliance assistance as “authoritarian.”

Leaders of the Chemical Sector Coordinating Council (CSCC), an industry coalition that works with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), are urging Congress to swiftly reauthorize the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program before it expires in 2023, emphasizing what they say has been valuable public-private collaboration and successful work preventing cybersecurity and other chemical incidents.

Leaders on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) appear likely to support President Joe Biden’s latest nominees to the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), after lawmakers on both sides of the aisle appeared to praise their qualifications and welcomed their promises to focus on hiring at the short-staffed agency.

Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee are proposing a $68 million fiscal year 2023 funding increase for OSHA in hopes of restarting long-stalled talks with the GOP on spending legislation, just as the chamber’s leaders are embracing a deal with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) on a reconciliation bill that appears to exclude long-sought boosts to OSH Act penalties.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced it is directly investigating workplace safety concerns and “related issues” at multiple Amazon warehouses, in the wake of a worker death at one of the company’s New Jersey facilities -- a step one Democratic lawmaker says is “exceptionally rare” and justifies a strict OSHA response as well.