We documented OSHA's utter failure to meet even short-term benchmarks for action in our latest report, The Bush Regulatory Record: A Pattern of Failure. Reporters at BNA's Daily Report for Executives have documented the failures that continue: since June 28, according to their report, OSHA flubbed more deadlines that were scheduled for September--

• a request for information on ionizing radiation (rescheduled, in the June agenda, to be completed by July),
• a proposed rule updating OSHA standards based on national consensus standards (scheduled for September), and
• a final rule on the standards improvement project.

--according to Ellen Byerrum, "OSHA Completes Eight Regulatory Actions, Including Hexavalent Chromium Rule, Since June," Daily Report for Executives, Oct. 6, 2004, at A-17 (not available on-line). Doesn't every agency do this all the time? Maybe so, maybe not. The problem is that OSHA has abandoned work on long-identified problems facing America's working men and women while the agency has also failed to identify significant initiatives to replace what it has abandoned. And it can't even meet its own short-term deadlines. The agency charged with protecting Americans who have to work for a living just doesn't seem to be . . . working.