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Floor Speech

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Mr. KAINE. Madam President, shortly, I will ask for unanimous consent to confirm Mark G. Eskenazi and Amanda Wood Laihow to serve as members on the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.

Just a word about the Commission. The Commission is an independent Agency that plays a vital role in ensuring safe and healthy workplaces and working conditions for American workers.

What the Commission does is it provides fair and timely adjudication of workplace safety and health disputes between employers, employees, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. So this independent body adjudicates claims between the Federal OSHA employers and employees.

However, the three-member Commission has lacked a quorum since April 2023, which means that for 18 months, they have been unable to adjudicate these claims between employers and employees in OSHA.

Amanda Wood Laihow is a reappointment. She first served on the Commission from January 2020 until April of 2023, when her term expired. Mark Eskenazi was nominated a few months ago in June of 2024. They both received very strong bipartisan support in the HELP Committee, on which I sit, for their nominations, and I urge my colleagues to join me in confirming these well-qualified candidates by enabling this important adjudicatory body to have a quorum so that they can take up claims by workers and employers.

374 and 785; that the Senate vote on the nominations en bloc without intervening action or debate; that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

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Mr. KAINE. Madam President, let me just say I do not believe it is President-elect Trump who is being hamstrung by stopping these nominations; it is workers and employers. Unless the President-elect has a current claim pending before the Committee, he is not being hamstrung by creating a quorum. The absence of a quorum is hurting American workers, and I regret that my colleague objects.

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