Taking The Hill
by Stephen B. McDonald "The price of greatness is responsibility." --Winston Churchill Senate Hearing
The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, chaired by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), held a hearing to examine the danger that air bags may hold for children and small adults. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) officials recently disclosed that 34 children and 20 small women have been killed by the explosive deployment of air bags since 1991. NHTSA Administrator Ricardo Martinez said the agency estimates that air bags have deployed more than 800,000 times in crashes and have saved approximately 1,664 lives as of November 1996. Recently, NHTSA issued several proposed and final regulations that would mandate warning labels and would allow for depowerment and deactivation of air bags. Sen. Dirk Kempthorne (R-Idaho) demanded that the agency end a requirement that air bags be designed with the assumption that people will not be wearing seat belts. That rule has led car companies to install bags that explode at up to 200 miles an hour and can hurt children.President Clinton Inaugurated
President Bill Clinton took the oath of office for a second term in the last presidential inauguration of the 20th century. In his inaugural address, the president called for a new government, "humble enough not to try and solve all our problems for us, but strong enough to give us the tools to solve our problems for ourselves ..." Details were spelled out in his State of the Union address and balanced budget plan.Clean Air Legislation
Legislation has been introduced in the House that would amend the Clean Air Act to provide for the reclassification of downwind non-attainment areas. The bill would require the <"http://www.epa.gov">Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to consider the downwind transportation of air pollution when determining a region's air quality compliance. In 1990, Congress amended the Clean Air Act to base the smog control requirements for each area on the severity of the area's pollution problem as indicated by the non-attainment area classification. The EPA has established five such classifications: marginal, moderate, serious, severe or extreme. Under current law, non-attainment status is determined without addressing air pollution transported from upwind areas.Balanced Budget Amendment
The Senate Judiciary Committee voted to approve a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. The amendment would require a balanced budget by 2002 or two years after ratification by three-fourths of the states, whichever occurs later. A three-fifths majority of the House and Senate would be needed to waive the balanced-budget requirement.The committee rejected changes that would block Social Security trust fund surpluses from being used in deficit calculations, permit a separate capital budget, drop a requirement for the three-fifths vote in Congress to raise the debt ceiling and waive the amendment if Congress declared a national economic emergency.
Comp Time
Rep. Cass Ballenger (R-N.C.) has introduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives that would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to provide compensatory time for employees in the private sector. The measure would change provisions of the law that have required employers to pay overtime wages to hourly workers for any hours beyond a typical work week. H.R. 1, the Working Families Flexibility Act, includes protections to ensure that employees could not be pressured into choosing compensatory time over cash wages. Under the bill, employees could accrue up to 240 hours of compensatory time within a 12-month period. The legislation would require the employer to annually cash-out any unused, compensatory time accrued by the employee.Health Insurance Deduction
A bill introduced by Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.) would amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to increase to 100 percent the amount of the deduction for the health insurance costs of self-employed individuals. Under legislation signed by President Clinton last year, the deductibility of health insurance for the self-employed was raised to 80 percent over 10 years. The deductibility provision was included in the law allowing workers to maintain continuous health insurance coverage when they change or lose their job.
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AutoInc. Magazine ®, Vol. XLV No. 3, March 1997