Denny Rehberg, GOP Congressman And Senate Hopeful, Blasts Child Labor Regulations

[Galraedia]

WASHINGTON -- In a speech expounding on the rift between rural America and Washington D.C., Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) vowed Thursday to use his funding powers to stop the Obama administration from implementing new child-labor rules pertaining to agricultural work, accusing the "urban" Labor Department of meddling in a "rural" industry it doesn't understand.

"This is one of those situations where I think the Department of Labor is overstepping its boundaries, its knowledge base, and frankly I think you're sitting around watching reruns of "Blazing Saddles" and that's your interpretation of what goes on in the West," Rehberg, who holds the Labor Department's purse strings for the House of Representatives, said as he lectured a labor official during a hearing Thursday. "And it's not anymore."

Last year, the Labor Department proposed new rules governing what kinds of potentially dangerous tasks minors can and cannot perform on farms and in grain facilities. Although child and worker advocates said the new rules were long overdue, the proposals created an uproar among farmers and agricultural trade groups, who argued that the rules could hurt family-farming traditions.

Although the original proposals largely exempted family farms, the Labor Department bowed yesterday to the farming industry, further widening the exemptions it had already put forward. But that didn't stop Rehberg and GOP members of the House agriculture subcommittee from piling on the department Thursday, using the hearing as an opportunity to put forth their rural bona fides.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/02/denny-rehberg-child-labor_n_1250207.html

[freshwest]

1. It'll last until he gets in office and his backbone's removed. They'll go all Mortal Kombat on him,

If he holds out against destroying the last shred of civilization in the country. I hold no hope for anyone with that party label getting in the Senate to do one single thing right for this people of this country or the planet.

They'll run faux reformers to pull the wool over the eyes of the public again. If the Democrats will lose the majority, the GOP will further entrench the nation into their patrician theocracy.

[Galraedia]

7. I call it the Republican "Back in Time" project.

First women, then children, then minorities...etc.

[Initech]

2. Keep talking asswipes.

How is this bullshit even slightly passing muster? 10 years ago the mere thought of repealing child labor would be political suicide. WTF!!!

[PVnRT]

3. How many family farmers have enough employees to garner Labor oversight?

Serious question, there's usually a threshold for this kind of thing.

[Tx4obama]

4. K & R n/t

[DesertRat]

5. Another family values Republican

[MadHound]

6. They are called "family farms" for a reason.

The entire family works them in order to make a go of them, and yes, there are still lots of them around. Many, if not most, of them are bringing you your organic beef and potatoes, your free range chicken and pork. Not to mention that in rural areas, where there is little other summer work for teens, bucking hay bales and such are the only employment around, money they use to go to college and such.

I milked cows(by machine), drove pickups cross country, took care of goats, all before I was fourteen. I bucked hay, cut firewood, and drove a tractor before I was sixteen, along with lots of other farm chores. It was, and is part of farm and rural life. Hell, last winter if it weren't for the fourteen year old neighbor kid with his dad's tractor(the one with six foot diameter dual tires on the rear) nobody on my end of the road would have gotten out of their driveways for a week.

Are there changes that could be made, certainly. But blanket bans of things like this are not good, and Obama needs to take the nuances of rural and farm life into consideration.