Date: 2004-09-13
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. I rise today to draw attention to an impending pay cut to middle class families. As my colleagues here in the Congress know. the House voted last week on a bipartisan basis to stop a new policy that President Bush has hut in place to change the definition of who qualifies for overtime pay. For years it has been clear that in certain types of work you would earn time and a half pay for every additional hour you work if it is more than 40 hours in 1 week. Overtime pay is not a minor thing to these families. It often accounts for more than 25 percent of middle class families paychecks. It helps foremen. assistant managers. journalists. registered nurses. and workers who perform relatively small amounts of supervisory or administrative work. It helps salespeople who perform some amount of work outside the office. chefs. nursery school teachers. workers in the financial services industry. insurance claim adjusters. funeral directors and embalmers. law enforcement officers. athletic trainers and many others from all different parts of the workforce. But the Bush administration has changed all of that and 6 million middle class families are now at risk of losing their overtime pay. Democrats in Congress have been leading the fight to stop the President and to stop the pay cut. but the leaders in Congress and the White House are doing everything in their power to see that we do not win. The whole issue is a very curious thing. The President looked out at our economy. at the mounting job losses. at the declining real wages and the risipg costs of health care and college tuition. and he saw trouble. He believed that the threat to the middle classes was that they were earning too much overtime pay. and he ordered the Department of Labor to devise a scheme that would allow employers to force their employees to work the overtime hours but not receive the overtime pay. It was not a popular plan. The Department of Labor received tens of thousands of comments from the public opposing it. Lawmakers received calls and letters and emails from our constituents opposing the plan. In fact. the department had to revise its proposed changes to try and. quote. make it fairer. Their first plan would have taken overtime pay away from 8 million families. This plan takes it away from 6 million. It still is not fair and it is not the answer to what ails our economy. But even though the plan was unpopular. the President knew he could count on his friends in Congress to withstand the public opposition. Late last year. the Senate. in a bipartisan vote. voted to stop the Presidents plan. and the House cast a procedural vote to support the Senates provision. But when the final bill made it out of Congress and went to the President. the Republican leadership in the House and the Senate had stripped the bill of the amendment that would have blocked the Presidents overtime pay cut. That is where we are again. Last week. on a bipartisan basis. the House voted to stop the Presidents overtime pay cut. which went into effect on August 23. It was a pretty big vote for a controversial issue: 223 voted against the President. including 22 Republicans. and 193 voted for the Presidents plan. all Republicans. Now the Senate is going to take up the issue. But already aides to House leaders like Majority Leader TOM DELAY have indicated publicly that they will not let this amendment stay in the final bill that goes to the President for signature. Even though the majority of the House voted to stop the Presidents overtime pay cut. the Presidents allies are here to prevent the majority will of the House from prevailing. Mr. Speaker. what is wrong with the current leadership in this Congress? They do not respect the will of the majority. You know. sometimes it works just the other way. Take the vote on Medicare last year. one of the most controversial pieces of legislation to come before this body. The Presidents plan was crafted and designed for the drug companies and the insurance companies. even though it was supposed to be for seniors to help them pay for the high cost of valuable prescription drugs. But the Medicare bill does nothing to slow the rising prices of prescription drugs for seniors. When the bill was brought to the House floor in November last year. those of us who opposed the bill were winning. When the clock ran out and the time was up for the vote to be ended. we were winning. The Medicare bill was going to be defeated. But the Republicans had another idea. They refused to bring the vote to a close. Twenty minutes went by. a normal time for a vote. We were winning. An hour went by. we were winning. Two hours went by. we were still winning. By this time. early in the morning. the President had been woken up to make phone calls. to help in the feverish effort to twist congressional arms. One Congressman said afterwards that he had been offered a bribe by a congressional leader for his vote. a matter that is still under investigation by the FBI and the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. Finally. after nearly 3 hours. one of the longest votes to be held in the history of Congress. the Presidents allies turned enough votes. and they proceeded to* pass the drug companies Medicare bill by a slim majority. And that bill is now law. Whether it is protecting overtime pay of the middle -class or protecting seniors from the drug companies Medicare law. or countless other issues. the current leaders in Congress do not respect or honor the majority here in the Congress who support these measures. They will not respect the will of the