WASHINGTON - H1N1 has hit the Hill.
The first congressman came down with swine flu this past week. Rep. Greg Walden, a sixth-term Republican from rural Oregon, announced via Twitter that the virus had nailed him.
"Just diagnosed with likely H1N1. Ugh. Off to seclusion for awhile(cq)," the lawmaker, 52, tweeted Tuesday.
Rep. Melissa Bean, D-Ill., missed a key debate Tuesday, and earlier had been forced to cancel a swine-flu prevention event in suburban Chicago, after her daughter and then her husband were stricken by the bug, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Rep. Joe "You Lie" Wilson, R-S.C., says his wife, Roxanne, has it.
And 10 of the 63 House of Representatives pages -- high-school youths who serve as congressional go-fers -- have come down with symptoms and been isolated.
H1N1 vaccine arrived Wednesday in the Office of the Attending Physician in the U.S. Capitol, where lawmakers will be able to get the shot. Some might have to wait because the office says it is following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's list of those with priority -- health-care workers, pregnant women, children, young adults 18 through 24 years old, and adults between 25 and 65 years old with underlying medical conditions -- before providing the immunization to House and Senate members not in those categories.
Each congressional office has received a "preparedness" package, which includes digital thermometers and surgical masks. More than 400 hand-sanitizer dispensers have been stationed in the Capitol and House and Senate office buildings.
Highway construction workers have a tough enough job, but hair-splitting regulators have made it even more so.
In 2004, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued what it calls a "letter of interpretation" to advise employers that those toiling in roadway work zones must wear reflective vests to help them avoid getting hit by passing vehicles.
OSHA said it based that guidance on a clause in the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, specifically section 5 (a)(1).
But two years later, the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission wagged its collective finger at the agency, ruling that OSHA was wrong in claiming said section 5 (a)(1) as its justification. The commissioners deemed that OSHA's letter, in fact, had only required workers covered by the Federal Highway Administration's Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, or MUCTD, to wear high-visibility garments. (Apparently, all highway workers aren't covered by said manual.)
Now, after five years of wrangling, OSHA has taken the bold stand of issuing a new letter, and this one says, MUCTD or no MUCTD, all road workers must wear the reflective vests.
Footnote: Between 2003 and 2007, there were 425 road construction work zone fatalities, OSHA reported.
The Obama administration is scrambling to avoid a Halloween horror when it stages its high-profile Oct. 30 unveiling of a list of jobs being created by $150 billion-plus in economic recovery funds doled out around the country.
A recent preliminary dump of data to recovery.gov -- the administration's portal through which project-by-project details will be publicly available and the emblem of the government "transparency" the president has pledged -- was a mess, according to several government-spending watchdog groups.
The information was reported and posted on the site's spreadsheets in inconsistent ways, which makes comparison unworkable and conclusions unreliable, the groups said. The site also was unwieldy, requiring more than 100 downloads to access the information.
Vet groups are hailing a new measure President Barack Obama signed into law this week that allows Congress to approve funding of veterans' medical services a year in advance. That removes the annual uncertainty of budgeting created when Congress is late adopting a Veterans Administration budget. That's been the case for 20 of the last 23 years, hampering the hiring of new staff and purchase of equipment.
(SHNS correspondent Lee Bowman contributed to this column. E-mail Lisa Hoffman at hoffmanl(at)shns.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
Washington Calling
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