ProPublica: Government & Politics

Fun With Numbers: Critiques Question the Government’s Boasts About Workplace Safety

2008-08-27T13:22:00-05:00

by Robert Lewis

It's been a rough year for Edwin Foulke.

The assistant secretary of labor in charge of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has been on the defensive in the news far more than an agency chief might want.

There was the Georgia sugar refinery that blew up in February, killing 14 workers, and the ensuing outcry over the agency's lack of combustible dust standards -- standards that labor activists and even the head of the company now say could help prevent such tragedies.

There was the Charlotte Observer series that investigated rampant underreporting of injuries and illnesses, questioning the administration's assertion that rates are falling.

Then last month, the Washington Post broke the story that the Department of Labor was quietly pushing through a rule that would make it harder to regulate workplace toxins.

In all of those cases the empowered Democrats -- often led by California Rep. George Miller's House Committee on Education and Labor -- blasted the Bush administration with hearings and proposed legislation.

So there must have been a collective sigh of relief in the halls of OSHA and its parent agency, the Labor Department, when news outlets (including the New York Times) reported last week that workplace fatalities are at an all-time low.

U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao issued this statement: "This is continued evidence that the initiatives and programs to protect workers' safety and health, designed by and implemented in this administration, are indeed working. In addition to a decline in the overall number of fatalities, the rate for 2007 declined to 3.7 fatalities per 100,000 workers. This is the lowest fatality rate in recorded OSHA history."

Not so fast.

"Look at the data," said Bob Whitmore, OSHA's head of recordkeeping who has been on leave since July 2007. "What you see isn't what you get."

Whitmore has been on disciplinary leave since July 2007 after a complaint that he created a hostile work environment. Known for his outspokenness as well as his expertise, Whitmore has been critical of the agency and recently testified before Miller's committee that illnesses and injuries are underreported.

Yes, the figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show there were 5,488 fatal work injuries in 2007 as compared with 5,840 the prior year. And yes, the rate of fatalities also appears to have gone down, from 4.0 per 100,000 workers in 2006 to 3.7 last year. Both are all-time lows. (That is, since the BLS switched to a more comprehensive census methodology in 1992.)

But it's important to understand that those numbers include two special categories: deaths involving transportation and violent acts. Both often fall under the purview of other agencies -- transportation departments, for example, in the case of a salesman who dies in a car accident, or local police departments in the case of a convenience store clerk shot in a robbery.

"What are the real things OSHA has something to do with?" asked Celeste Monforton, a researcher at the George Washington University School of Public Health. There is little the agency could have done to prevent some of those deaths, Monforton said.

The better indicator of workplace safety -- at least as far as OSHA is concerned -- might be the aggregate number of falls, workers who died after getting hit by something heavy, deaths related to hazardous substances and fatalities from fires and explosions. Subtracting transportation- and violence-related deaths, the picture that emerges is less impressive.

There were 2,415 such deaths in 2007, according to BLS data, which is not the lowest total on record. The low was 2,309 such deaths in both 2002 and 2003. There were 2,417 in 2000.

Because the economy tends to add workers every year, total deaths is not necessarily the most telling statistic. If there are more workers, it's safe to assume there will be more work-related deaths. So a better gauge is the rate.

It does appear that the 2007 rate, excluding transportation- and violence-related deaths, was the lowest -- but not by much. There were 1.64 deaths per 100,000 workers in 2007, which bests the previous low of 1.66 per 100,000 in 2003.

Some of the most dangerous jobs in the U.S. economy -- manufacturing -- have continued to move overseas. This is a point Whitmore and labor activists, highlighting the growing service sector, glom onto when critiquing the numbers.

"Your rate of fatalities is going to drop because you're adding toy store workers instead of construction workers or steelworkers," Whitmore said.

A spokeswoman for OSHA chief Foulke declined to respond to criticism of how the agency interprets fatality data and said her boss stands behind Secretary Chao's statement.

About a year ago, when the BLS released fatality data for 2006, OSHA issued a statement saying: "The fatality rate declined to its lowest level since BLS began collecting data in 1992."

It turned out not to be true.

The BLS normally releases preliminary data in August, then revises the numbers the following April. So in August 2007, BLS reported 5,703 fatal workplace injuries in 2006, or slightly fewer than the 5,734 a year earlier. The fatality rate fell from 4.0 per 100,000 workers to 3.9.

In revising the following spring, however, the agency said deaths jumped to 5,840 and the rate went back up to 4.0.

The point?

It's great to think workers are safe on the job and that more Americans are coming home to their families and loved ones every night. Whether that's actually the case depends on how you count.

After Acquittal, U.S. Resident Now Faces Deportation

2008-08-27T12:07:00-05:00

by Eric Umansky

Remember the alleged plot two summers ago to blow up the Sears Tower? Seven men from an obscure religious sect in Miami, the Seas of David, were indicted. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales trumpeted the charges at a press conference, saying, "Individuals here in America made plans to hurt Americans."

But the evidence turned out to be less than overwhelming. The men had no connections to terrorist groups and what little plotting there was had been urged on by an FBI informant.

The case has so far ended in two mistrials, and one of the defendants, Lyglenson Lemorin, was acquitted in December 2007. (Lemorin had left the sect months before the arrests and moved to Atlanta with his family after expressing qualms about the group.)

But Lemorin wasn't freed. Instead, Lemorin was transferred to detention and told he was going to be deported to Haiti, where he last lived as a child. Born in Haiti, the 33-year-old Lemorin has been in the U.S. legally for the past 20 years. The deportation orders were based on essentially the same charges Lemorin was acquitted of: supporting terrorism. (Because immigration issues such as deportations are a civil matter, double jeopardy isn't an issue.)

After eight months in detention, Lemorin's deportation trial began this week. As the Miami Herald notes, the burden of proof at such immigration hearings is lower than at criminal trials ("Clear and convincing evidence" rather than "beyond a reasonable doubt").

So far, there's been no ruling. The government's lawyers pointed out that Lemorin took part in an "oath" of allegiance to al-Qaida. Lemorin's lawyers have countered that the oath was conceived of and administered by an FBI informant and that more importantly, Lemorin objected and fled the group shortly after. "As soon as it became clear what was going on, he bolted," Lemorin's lawyer told the Herald.

The circumstances of the case appear to be unprecedented. "If he's deported," writes the Herald, "Lemorin could be the only legal resident acquitted of terrorism charges and with no prior record to be booted out of the country."

The judge has set aside two weeks for the trial.

Meanwhile, the criminal case against the other six defendants goes on, after two trials ended in hung juries. A third trial is scheduled for January.

When Off-the-Record Sources Lie

2008-08-26T12:30:00-05:00

by Eric Umansky

Earlier this month, Raleigh News & Observer Executive Editor John Drescher wrote that when allegations of John Edwards' affair first surfaced last October, Edwards called Drescher and told him off-the-record that the affair hadn't happened. We talked to Drescher about anonymous sources and what journalists should do when off-the-record sources lie.

You spoke with Edwards in October, when the first Enquirer story came, correct?

That's right. He sought me out. He had been asked on the campaign trail about the National Enquirer report, and he had emphatically denied it. We were trying to figure out what to do with that -- the report was based on one source and it didn't even name the woman. And the Edwards campaign knew that we were trying to figure out what to do with it. One of their people had called to talk with me about it -- off-the-record. And then he said, Edwards wants to talk with you. And then we had the off-the-record conversation that I ended up writing about.

Your paper had a chilly relationship with Edwards?

We had almost no relationship with Edwards. He became a national player and then just didn't have a need to talk to the News & Observer anymore. I don't think Edwards knew who I was that night, and he probably still doesn't know who I am.

So what exactly happened in that surprise call?

It was a brief talk. You could hear airport sounds in the background. He just said that the allegations weren't true. He started talking about how the News & Observer was important to him as his hometown paper, the one that landed on his doorstep every day. He urged me not to run the story and pointed out how painful it would be to Elizabeth, who was sick. That was the extent of the conversation. It was probably two to three minutes.

Fast forward to Edwards acknowledging he lied. Was it an obvious decision to out him?

I thought it was a clear decision, but I wanted to check myself. So I ran it by a few people here, who thought I should report the conversation. And really, I felt compelled to report it. In my view, the Edwards conversation didn't influence my decisions, but I thought I was obligated to tell our readers that Edwards had called me and lobbied not to run the story.

Is this something you've ever dealt with before?

No. My guess is that people have talked to me off-the-record and misled me or in my opinion lied to me. But in previous cases that may have been a debatable point. In this case, there was no debate about it. Edwards had admitted he had lied. There's no gray area here. He had lied about that and had admitted he had lied about that.

Do you feel like a rule of thumb can be applied here? If an anonymous source lies to you, can you out them?

I'm just not sure that the situation will duplicate itself. [But] I feel like "off-the-record" is an unwritten contract where the source -- and he's the one who has to go off-the-record -- says, "I have truth I want to tell you, but I have my reasons for not wanting to attach my name to it, so can we go off the record." And I feel like that contract was broken in this case.

Isn't Edwards an easy mark to make such a call on? I mean, Edwards' power is diminished, and frankly if you piss him off at this point, that doesn't cost you a lot.

I was conscious when I was writing that column about hitting a guy when he was down. But the bottom line is if I'm trying to explain our coverage and the principal player in our coverage has called me about the story and given me bad information, I feel like I had an obligation. So I was aware that Edwards is an easy target to pick on. That didn't stop me from picking on him.

I had a journalism professor who raised the issue of whether it was appropriate to reveal my discussion with Edwards. But I haven't had a single working journalist question the decision.

After White House Pressure, Agency Scales Back Whales Protection Rule

2008-08-26T12:10:00-05:00

by Paul Kiel

The Bush administration has not been shy in questioning the conclusions of government scientists. Years-long rulemaking processes have been shunted by White House questions and objections, reports and congressional testimony heavily edited, and in some cases troublesome scientists entirely removed from areas of responsibility. In one survey, nearly half of EPA scientists who responded complained of political interference.

Here is another episode. Yesterday, the National Marine Fisheries Service issued new proposed guidelines for the protection of North Atlantic right whales. According to the new rules, ships will have to slow to 10 nautical miles per hour within 23 miles of certain ports at certain times of year. While a significant measure to protect the whales, of which only about 300 remain, prior guidelines had extended the protected zone to about 34.5 miles from shore.

The reason for the restriction was pretty straightforward: fast moving ships had killed about 20 whales in the past 20 years, government scientists found (PDF). The whales, in fact, earned the name "right whales" because they were such an easy quarry for whalers.

For four years, government scientists studied right whale deaths in order to develop rules to protect them. But when they finally presented the White House with a proposed rule in 2007, they found the administration unimpressed. According (PDF) to correspondence produced by House oversight committee Chair Henry Waxman (D-CA), the vice president's office in particular had been a particularly harsh critic, complaining that scientists had no "hard data" to support the guidelines. Officials in the White House Council of Economic Advisors had apparently crunched their own numbers on right whale collisions, and their conclusions jibed with those reached by the shipping industry (PDF).

Agency scientists responded that their findings were clear and reliable. But with a nod to the shipping industry, the new rules propose a scaled back protection area. A spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the parent agency for the fisheries service, told the Washington Post that "time is money in shipping" and that the agency had sought to address "a concern about the increased cost to carriers" by reducing the speed zones.

There's no indication as yet whether the White House is satisfied with the compromise. The shipping industry is not, still objecting to the speed limit.

Biden’s Cozy Relations With Bank Industry

2008-08-25T11:36:00-05:00

by Eric Umansky

With Sen. Joe Biden joining the Democratic ticket, there's renewed scrutiny of Biden's connections to the credit card industry. Biden has been particularly cozy with MBNA, a financial services company from Delaware, and now a subsidiary of Bank of America.

Over the past 20 years, MBNA has been Biden's single largest contributor. And as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal note, Biden's son Hunter was hired out of law school by MBNA and later worked as a lobbyist for the company.

The Times also details just how helpful Biden has been to MBNA and the credit card industry. The senator was a key supporter of an industry-favorite bill -- the "Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005" -- that actually made it harder for consumers to get protection under bankruptcy.

As the Times notes, Biden was one of the first Democratic supporters of the bill and voted for it four times until it finally passed in March 2005. A spokesman for Sen. Obama told the Times, "Senator Biden took on entrenched interests and succeeded in improving the bill for low-income workers, women and children."

Yet the Times actually looked at the legislative record and paints a different picture:

[Biden] was one of five Democrats in March 2005 who voted against a proposal to require credit card companies to provide more effective warnings to consumers about the consequences of paying only the minimum amount due each month. Mr. Obama voted for it.

Mr. Biden also went against Mr. Obama to help defeat amendments aimed at strengthening protections for people forced into bankruptcy who have large medical debts or are in the military; Mr. Biden argued that the amendments were unnecessary because the legislation already carved out exemptions for those debtors. And he was one of four Democrats who sided with Republicans to defeat an effort, supported by Mr. Obama, to shift responsibility in certain cases from debtors to the predatory lenders who helped push them into bankruptcy.

The Washington Post's David Broder detailed other industry-friendly aspects of the bill back in 2005. One proposed amendment to the bill would have stopped corporations from "judge-shopping" and going to the most-friendly venues for their bankruptcy cases. The amendment was introduced by Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas and appeared to have wide bipartisan support. But it never passed. Broder writes that Biden helped kill it.

Partying Under Adversity

2008-08-25T09:49:00-05:00

by Paul Kiel

It depends on how you look at it. This week's Democratic National Convention (and in September, the Republican convention) is a week-long orgy for special interest money, same as it ever was. Alternatively, what was once the quadrennial triumph for corporations and lobbying firms, the Olympics for influence peddling, has been ruined by a litany of new ethics rules; those brave enough to even put on an event are doing so in an atmosphere of fear.

It's no surprise that government watchdogs (PDF) take the former view and lobbyists the latter.

This year's conventions are the first to occur under the 2007 lobbying ethics and reform bill, which among other things, further limited what gifts a lawmaker could receive and what sort of events they could attend. Free meals are out, but hors d'oeuvres are OK -- the so-called "toothpick rule." And lobbyists and corporations can no longer sponsor events to honor particular lawmakers (quite popular at the 2004 conventions), but events that honor a group of lawmakers are, according (PDF) to the House ethics committee, OK.

Confronted by sometimes contradictory rules (the Senate ethics committee prohibits the group loophole), some lobbying firms and ethics lawyers have thrown up their hands and decided against sponsoring any events at all. Rather than parse just what sort of food can be offered (meatballs but not steak, continental breakfasts but no eggs, cheese quesadillas but not chicken or beef quesadillas), they've decided it's not worth it. One exasperated lawyer complained to the New York Times, "We are having to decide if a group is a cover band, a string quartet, or a name band." (The Minnesota Agri-Growth Council has decided to give lawmakers the option of paying $25 to hear Styx during its event at the Republican convention just in case.)

But while the new rules have certainly made the way more difficult, they have by no means eradicated corporate or lobbyist money from the conventions. The Democratic National Convention has been made possible with $40 million in private money (about $58 million for the Republican convention), most from corporations. Those donors are no political neophytes. In total, according to the Campaign Finance Institute, the 173 organizational donors have spent about $1.5 billion in campaign contributions and lobbying since 2005.

And while some lobbyists and corporations may have opted to stay home, there will still be plenty of places for lawmakers to stab their toothpicks. At its Party Time Web site, the Sunlight Foundation has created a searchable database of parties at the convention. There are at least 370. As the Wall Street Journal reported, it sounds like there will still be some fun to be had (links to the invitations are posted at Party Time):

When the Democratic Party holds its convention…, members of Congress will be able to hear singer Kanye West at an all-expenses paid party sponsored by the recording industry.

They can play in a poker tournament with Ben Affleck, courtesy of the poker industry. They can try to hit a home run at Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies, thanks to AT&T Corp. Free drinks and cigars will be on offer at a bash thrown by the liquor industry.

As the Journal notes, gift rules mean that the cigars will simply have to be "lower-grade" than in past years. Oh well.

GAO Investigating Medicare Auditors

2008-08-22T15:15:00-05:00

by Sharona Coutts

We wrote yesterday about the new Medicare fraud scandal, and how agency officials allegedly pressured their private auditors to use questionable accounting methods, resulting in figures that greatly underestimated the extent of false and unsupported claims for medical equipment.

The information comes from a draft inspector general's report detailed in the New York Times.

While the report focused on just medical equipment fraud, the company that did the audits, AdvanceMed, actually has many more contracts with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), for similar projects to do with tracking down false and undocumented medical claims.

The Government Accountability Office told us they've begun investigating one of those other projects.

The Medicare Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) program, which "employs private companies on a contingent-fee basis to identify and recover improper over and under-payments of Medicare funds," started as a pilot in 2003 and was extended in 2006.

The program ran into difficulties since contractors hired to detect fraud were allegedly using unqualified personnel and inconsistent methods. In mid-July, five congressmen wrote to the GAO complaining about the program and requesting an investigation.

GAO spokeswoman Kathy King told us few details about the inquiry are available at this stage because it is so new, but that the investigation will look at "the changes that CMS has implemented from the pilot program to the permanent program."

AdvanceMed was not one of the primary RAC contractors, but they did work as "validation contractors" on the project. Neither the GAO, nor the offices of the congressmen who requested the GAO report knew exactly what that role entailed, and AdvanceMed's Kaye would not comment.

AdvanceMed calls itself "one of the most successful companies in the Medicare Integrity Program," and it won last year's "Investigation of the Year Award" from the national Health Care Anti-Fraud Association.

In promoting the award, the company wrote: "Identifying and combating fraud, waste and abuse in the nation’s Medicare program is necessary in protecting our elderly population from unscrupulous health care providers who deliberately endanger patients’ lives to cheat the system."

AdvanceMed's Web site lists six projects on Medicare fraud, operating in 23 states. CMS is their most important client, according to AdvanceMed's head of operations, Phyllis Kaye.

Kaye wouldn't comment on the GAO investigation, nor on the allegations that CMS ordered her company to use incorrect accounting methods. (According to the Times, the inspector general's report said such an order might violate the law.)

"We are asked by CMS to refer all requests to them," she told ProPublica. "When you get a request from your client, that's what you do."

Medicare Scandal: Who Audits the Auditor?

2008-08-21T17:49:00-05:00

by Sharona Coutts

The New York Times got its hands on a draft inspector general's report that purportedly says Medicare officials pressured the agency's private sector auditors to ignore government accounting rules in a way that masked billions of dollars in potential fraud.

The fraud and unsupported spending relate to false claims for expensive medical equipment, like motored wheelchairs, which were delivered to some people who didn't need them and didn't ask for them, and whose doctors didn't request them.

Every time a manufacturer delivers a powered wheelchair, they can bill Medicare $2,500 and pocket the money. All those wheelchairs and other medical gadgets added up to $2.8 billion in taxpayer money that couldn't be properly accounted for, according to the Times.

One puzzling aspect of the story surrounds Medicare's private contractor, AdvanceMed, and why its auditors allegedly buckled to bureaucratic pressure. Though the firm estimated only about 7.5 percent of equipment claims might be fraudulent, the IG said nearly a third were tainted.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, said Congress might now investigate AdvanceMed.

Well, we've done a little investigating ourselves.

Turns out that AdvanceMed is a wholly owned subsidiary of technology giant, Computer Sciences Corporation. The company won last year's "Large Business of the Year" award from the Treasury Department.

CSC is a major government contractor: During the last five years, the company won $16 billion worth of federal work. In many contracts, there is either limited or no competitive bidding, according to USASpending.gov, which tracks federal spending.

AdvanceMed has received scant media scrutiny, despite being a major player in the government's bid to clean up fraud in the $456 billion Medicare program. Here's a link to the company's Web site, where you'll see that it has projects in more than 20 states.

AdvanceMed says it "performs a wide range of forensic functions in an effort to assure that taxpayer dollars are protected and that the Medicare and Medicaid programs maintain the highest degree of integrity."

Congress has tried to crack down on Medicare fraud for years with mixed results. In 2003, it launched a pilot program in five states "to detect and correct improper payments." One state was California, where doctors complained that the government's auditor -- not AdvanceMed -- used unqualified personnel and inconsistent standards.

Nevertheless, in 2006, Congress made the program permanent and ordered it extended to all 50 states by 2010.

We've put in calls to AdvanceMed's media office, and we'll let you know if and when we hear back.

Iraq Fibs on Reconstruction Spending

2008-08-21T11:49:00-05:00

by Eric Umansky

It seems the U.S. and Iraq are nearing a deal for American forces in Iraq. Whether the GIs are staying or going home ($) in the next few years isn't clear (and anyway, these are "aspirational timetables," as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice put it). But security agreements aside, one thing that's increasingly clear is that Iraq isn't exactly mustering its full financial resources to reconstruct the country.

A GAO report released earlier this month concluded that Iraq was basically rolling in the dough. Benefitting from record oil prices, Iraq's budget surplus is estimated to reach near $80 billion by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, Iraq's spending on reconstruction projects, the report concluded, has been miserly by comparison. In 2007, the report said, Iraq only actually spent 28 percent of its $12 billion reconstruction budget.

The report must have raised some hackles in Baghdad. Iraqi officials did some math and offered their own numbers to the New York Times. As the Times explains today:

Iraqi Finance Ministry officials provided the new figures to The New York Times in the hope of countering that criticism, saying they spent 57 percent of their annual reconstruction budget in the first half of 2008 -- a clear sign of improvement.

There's just one problem. Well, actually, there are many. The numbers are basically bogus and based on a series of quite creative accounting moves. For example, the Times points out "Iraqi officials define money they intend to spend as money already spent." There is also the slight problem that "the Iraqi math appears to be incorrect."

The Times re-crunched the numbers and concluded that Iraq's spending on reconstruction is "less than a third of the rate claimed by Iraqi officials." Once the Times stripped away all the flim-flam, it estimated that the Iraqi government has actually spent just under nine percent of its budget this year on reconstruction.

And even that might overstate the help. "Is there any evidence that they're actually providing public goods?" one reconstruction expert told the Times. "Because expenditures by themselves, or the stated financial tables, don't tell you that."

Iraqi officials don't seem overly disturbed by the latest criticisms or the notion that they should be spending more of their budget surplus. The needs are just too big. "We have a shortage in housing, at least two million units," said Iraq's finance minister. "What is $20 billion? It's nothing."

Highway Safety Admin. Calls for Seat Belts on Buses

2008-08-21T10:49:00-05:00

by Tim Bella

Following a fatal bus crash earlier this month in Texas that killed 17 people, the head of a federal government oversight agency for highway traffic safety said that now is the time all charter buses should have seat belts.

The bus involved in the crash in Sherman, Texas was being operated illegally by a rogue company. It was carrying a group of Vietnamese tourists to a religious festival before it rolled over, leaving everyone on board either dead or injured. According to a survivor from the Aug. 8 crash, the bus was not equipped with seat belts. During the past decade, 20 to 30 people have died annually from charter bus accidents.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Administrator Nicole Nason told ProPublica that rather than a regulation, it might be easier to get a voluntary agreement among the major charter bus manufacturers. But the industry has been reluctant.

"My response was and is, sure, there are a lot of difficulties and challenges involved, but it's time to put seat belts on motor coaches," she said.

Nason's stance comes 40 years after the National Transportation Safety Board made its first recommendation concerning seat belts in charter buses in 1968 (PDF) with the follow-up recommendations in 1971.

Former NTSB chair Jim Hall has been adamant about having seat belts on charter buses, recently saying that not implementing seat belts is almost criminal. He said little has been done since his sweeping 1999 recommendation to NHTSA concerning charter bus safety and that although Nason's comments are welcome, it's "too little too late."

"No one has been saying one size fits all in terms of seat belts and safety," he said, "but the recommendation has been that motor coach safety has been an orphan at the Department of Transportation and it hasn't been addressed and now we are seeing enough deaths on the highways in which it's getting their attention. The sad part is there would have been a lot of lives saved in a timely fashion if they moved forward on it 40 years ago."

Other fatal charter bus crashes such as the 2000 crash in a Nevada desert and the 2007 crash in Atlanta involving the Bluffton University baseball team have been cited for their lack of seat belts. Another one, the 2003 Valentine's Day crash near Waco, Texas, even led to a court ruling favoring the victims and citing the bus as being dangerous for lacking seat belts. A bill (PDF) introduced in the Senate last year would require passenger buses to have seat belts, but so far the legislation hasn't come up for a full vote. It has been opposed by industry-related groups such as the American Bus Association (ABA) which argues that the current safety measures are adequate.

Making the seat belt issue a voluntary agreement among the major manufacturers is an idea that needs more time and resources in order for it to even be considered, said Eron Shosteck, a senior vice president of communications for ABA.

"It's premature to even speculate about that until we have scientific data," he said. "Remember, you have to do this right the first time. We're talking about human lives."

A similar sentiment was expressed by NHTSA spokesman Rae Tyson last week, saying change in federal regulation will not be proposed until there is enough evidence to prove that implementing seat belts will improve safety.

"The industry has had 40 years to do research," Hall said.