As the federal budget clock ticks down and legislators race to push their favored appropriations bills through committee, it can often seem to outsiders that the larger picture is being ignored by representatives eager to dot all the i 's and cross all the t 's. Paradoxically, the larger picture is in the details. Take my version of the Business and Labor Appropriations Bill. It's dense with detail, details that this Congress has sweated over for the past six months. But it's those details that are going to ensure the best possible balance of funding and policy between what is good for employers in this country and what is good for employees.
Details are everything.
And the support I'm seeing in the House backs me up on that. It's a schizophrenic hodgepodge of contradictory measures that gives with one hand and takes away with the other. It maps out a clear route to the economic strengthening of this great nation. Rep. Dimes's bill is similar to Rep. Starsnye's in many respects. However, sharp differences in ideology are clear from such provisions in the Dimes bill as the complete privatization of the Postal Service, the slashing of both railroad worker and miner pensions, the downsizing of the Mine Health and Safety Administration, elimination of federal food inspections, the abolition of the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, cutting funding for the Small Business Administration, and the scaling back of the Americans with Disabilities Act.