Trump Threatens Workers Lives With New Chemical Safety Cuts

The White House is calling for allocating $0 for the Chemical Safety Board that reviews industrial accidents to determine the cause and how to prevent it in the future. They're investigators is what they are and the corporations who these people have to go investigate, they like these people. But Trump doesn't seem to like smart people or smart ideas so the administration is calling for it not to be funded and to be disbanded.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

So the White House is calling for allocating $0 for a Chemical Safety Board that reviews industrial accidents. Interestingly, they have no ability to fine. Their purpose is purely to determine the cause and how to prevent it in the future. The Trump administration is calling for it not to be funded and to be disbanded.

Right. This is one of those programs that flies under the radar, basically. They don't suck up hardly any of the budget. Their yearly budget is $14.4 million. So very small organization, no enforcement action. What they do is when you have a factory and something in the factory blows up, something in the factory fails and workers get injured or killed, this very small group of people, they go in and they determine what failed. They will look at every piece of machinery and get right down to the heart of it. They're investigators is what they are, and that's their only duty. And the corporations who these people have to go investigate, they like these people. They like that this is happening because it, one, can save them some liability in the future. So they don't get sued when all their workers die.

And two, they know, okay, we can fix problems before we face a massive fine from the rest of the federal government. So even the industry you would think would love this, they hate it. They say, no, we actually like these people. We like not killing workers and being sued to hell and back every couple of months. That's good for business when you're not sued every other day. And Trump says, okay, I can't actually kill it. So your budget is now $0 a year. That's what they're starting to do all across the government because they can't effectively get rid of some departments, but they can change the budget to zero, effectively killing them.

And the interesting thing about this specific department is it's only 40 staff. It's a very small organization within the government, as you said, $14.4 million. This is primarily to the benefit of medium and small companies who couldn't afford the technology that this organization has and the wherewithal and the education to come in and determine root cause analysis. They have some great things on YouTube where they animate disasters so you can see the chain of events, the cascade of failure as it were, to prevent it at other plants, medium and small size that may not have the resources. When I was doing research for today's show, he tried to scrap this in his first administration. So I found it very interesting that this little group has drawn his ire twice, obviously not near the power that he had the first time as he does now.

And in the first reporting that we have from the 2016 term, the United Steel Workers Union said, this is one of the best bargains in Washington. If it has prevented even one accident, it has saved more money than it's budget history over its entire history. The University School of Medicine says the CSB does excellent work. Other countries admire this agency. So of course the Trump administration is targeting it now for some unknown reason because even industries are coming out and saying, we want this. Union folks are coming out, this protects workers. If it saves one life, it's worth it. The Trump administration says, no, you get nothing.

And it is a really weird thing too, because this isn't something that Trump is going to benefit from. It's not like his businesses are out there with these cascading failures, killing workers. That's not even happening at his businesses. So what is your motivation here? And the only thing I can think of, and this is probably way off, but is just this continued attack on academia.