In a letter sent to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) last week, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn) blasted the agency for failing to complete its review of OSHA’s proposed crystalline silica standard and other regulatory items within the legally mandated time frame.

Congressional opponents of public protections spent much of 2012 attempting to increase the procedural hurdles to establishing new rules that would implement federal laws and standards according to the regulatory watchdog group OMB Watch. Efforts to attack the scientific evidence employed by agencies continued.

A government watchdog group says that anti-regulation lawmakers used procedural hurdles and attacks on science to block new federal laws standards in 2012  - and that they're likely to continue that strategy in the coming year. "Both efforts are likely to re-emerge next year,” predicts OMB Watch, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization that monitors actions by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

At least one advocacy group is hoping that, with the presidential election out of the way, the Obama administration will move to strengthen health, safety, and environmental protections that got stalled during the administration’s first term.

Shortly after taking office, the head of the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) acknowledged the troubling slow pace at which new worker safety regulations are put in place. 

Extending a review of OSHA's proposed crystalline silica standard allows certain industry groups to attempt to "short circuit" the existing process -- and makes it vulnerable to political influence, according to the American Industrial Hygiene Association® (AIHA).