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Washington — The White House is seeking a nearly 7.5% budget cut for OSHA, which includes another attempt to eliminate the Susan Harwood Training Grant program, and is trying again to shutter the Chemical Safety Board.
Congress, of course, will have the final say on agency budgets and has refused to cut the Harwood program or CSB in five previous appropriations bills over the two Trump administrations.
In the Department of Labor’s budget in brief released April 3, OSHA’s proposed budget is about $582.4 million for fiscal year 2027, which begins Oct. 1. The agency’s FY 2026 budget is around $629.3 million.
Of the nearly $47 million in proposed cuts, around $12.8 million would come from the elimination of the Harwood grants. The White House wrote in its budget request that the program, under prior administrations, was “weaponized to fund questionable activities such as ‘workers’ rights training’ for migrant farmworkers, as opposed to occupational safety training, and funded woke organizations like the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, Farmworker Justice, Laborers International Union of North America, Asian Immigrant Women Advocates, Brazilian Worker Center Inc., Legal Aid Justice Center, and Latino Worker Safety Center.”
Additionally, funding for federal enforcement would be cut by around $33 million, for a total of about $210 million. Meanwhile, the White House, proposes to increase the federal compliance assistance budget to a little more than $89.3 million from $78.3 million in FY 2026. The line item “safety and health statistics” would get a $5 million bump, to $40.5 million.
“The budget shifts funds into federal assistance, to encourage compliance safety and health officers to conduct worksite assistance during inspections,” the budget in brief states. “Additionally, $6,544,000 is directed into safety and health statistics for artificial intelligence and data analytics.
“The budget proposes to shift $5,540,000 and staff from whistleblower enforcement to the DOL Office of Civil Rights for enforcement of non-[Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970] whistleblower provisions. Lastly, the budget includes a legislative proposal to allow electronic delivery for citations and notifications of penalty.”
MSHA
The budget proposal would cut the Mine Safety and Health Administration’s budget by roughly 10%, to $348.2 million from $387.8 million.
The White House is also seeking to eliminate the Brookwood-Sago Mine Safety Grant program, as well as realign “similar functions under consolidated budget activities to reduce redundancy and create a more efficiently managed agency.”
Line items listed as “standards development,” “assessments,” “educational policy and development,” and “program evaluation and information resources” are slated to receive no funding.
DOL, meanwhile, would shift at least some of that money into “education and training” ($21.3 million) and “regulatory and data analysis” ($6.6 million). “Program administration” would get a budget increase of about $12.5 million, to $28.5 million total.
“Mine safety and health enforcement” would receive nearly $13.5 million less under the proposal, to $252.3 million from $265.8 million.
“The reduced funding reflects savings from staff attrition and the elimination of funding for the Brookwood-Sago Mine Safety Grant program,” the budget in brief states. “The administration looks forward to working with Congress to make the necessary changes to the MINER Act to eliminate the Brookwood-Sago grant program.”
Chemical Safety Board
The White House’s justification for its latest attempt to shutter CSB:
“CSB duplicates more than adequate capabilities in the Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration to investigate chemical-related mishaps. CSB generates unprompted studies of the chemical industry and proposes regulations they have no authority to create or enforce. This function should reside within agencies that have the authorities to issue regulations in accordance with applicable legal standards.”
The White House proposes to give zero dollars to the agency, which has a budget of $14 million in FY 2026. In the administration’s previous budget request, CSB was slated to use its emergency fund of $844,145 to cover the cost of closing the agency.
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Original article published by Safety+Health an NSC publication