General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: President Obama said that he is “in a lot of ways” less liberal than Republican President Nixon [View all]onenote
(46,128 posts)By enacting the Occupational Safety and Health Act in late 1970. OSHA was formed pursuant to that Act in April 1971. Nixon did issue an executive order a couple of months later directing each governmental agency to have an Occupational Safety and Health officer, but that EO didn't create OSHA, which already existed.
Nixon did "create" the EPA by issuing an executive order reorganizing various existing government offices into a single agency.
As far as being proof that Nixon was more liberal than Obama, that's nonsense. Obama has not sought to scale back these agencies -- if anything he has pushed for them to be able to do more. There can be no doubt that Nixon, who impounded a significant portion of EPA's funds and vetoed the Clean Water Act, would not have supported many of the environmental initiatives supported by the Obama administration (even if some of those initiatives do not go as far as some of us might like).