BUDGET | OSHA

Congress Effectively Cuts OSHA Budget

ByJordan Barab
MAR 10, 2022

The House of Representatives finally passed its FY 2022 budget late last night, only 5-1/2 months after FY 2021 ended. Although the Senate still has to act, the budget for OSHA contained in the House bill will likely remain the same — unfortunately.

OSHA will receive $625 million for FY 2022, a small and very disappointing 3.4% increase over FY 2021, and 8% less than the President’s budget request. Given the current inflation rate (7.9% in February and rising), even my rudimentary math skills can tell that a 3.4% “increase” is a budget cut in real terms.

The House had originally proposed $692 million, but clearly that number was never going to make it through a closely divided House and an evenly-divided Senate where 60 votes are needed to pass the budget. (Full budget tables below.)

The most disappointing part of the budget was the paltry $1.5 million (8%) increase in OSHA’s “Standards and Guidance” line item, which comes to 33% less than the President requested. That brings the standards budget up to only $19.5 million, half a million dollars lower than the standard budget at the end of the Obama administration before Trump cut it by 10%. While much of the agency’s COVID and infectious disease standards work is funded by the American Rescue Plan (see below), there is still a lot of resource-intensive work that needs to be done to move forward on OSHA’s Workplace Violence, Heat and Process Safety Management standards. ... The OSHA Whistleblower budget received the biggest increase, 12.8%, bringing it to $21.5 million. And the Susan Harwood Training Program budget remained flat at $11,787 million.

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