[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 122 (Monday, September 9, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H10109-H10110]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE DOLE NEEDS TO LEARN A FEW NEW TRICKS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor today because this 
weekend reminded me of several things. First of all, there is an old 
saying about you cannot teach an old dog new tricks. Having a very old 
dog named Woofie myself, I know that is true. But this weekend we found 
a new saying that also fits. That is, you cannot teach an old Dole new 
tricks. We saw Presidential candidate Dole go out

[[Page H10110]]

and slamdunk family leave. He made all sorts of statements about how 
family leave was antibusiness, and he was opposed to it.
  I would like to set the record straight. As one of the authors of 
family leave and one who worked 9 years to get that brought into law, I 
want to point out that his criticisms did not come to pass. When that 
bill passed in 1993, there was a lot of dissent, and there were many 
people very concerned about it. It obviously had taken 9 years to get 
it signed into law. It had been vetoed, all sorts of things had 
happened.
  So when President Clinton signed it, there was a commission 
appointed, a bipartisan commission of Republicans and Democrats, that 
studied the application of the act and came forward with this very 
weighty document on what family medical leave really did in this 
country.
  I certainly hope that Presidential candidate Dole gets a copy of it. 
It was immediately sent to his colleague, Senator Kassebaum, and it was 
distributed all over to Senators and Congressmen when it came out. It 
was a report to the Congress on family and medical leave, and it came 
out showing 90 percent of America's businesses now support family 
leave. Why?
  Do Members know what they found out? They found out that when people 
know they can have job-protected leave if there is an immediate medical 
crisis in their family, or upon the birth or adoption of a child, they 
are a whole lot more focused at work. They are not constantly worried 
at work about what am I going to do, where I am going to turn? They are 
more focused at work. They are much better employees.
  Now that we have 12 million American families that this applies to, I 
think they are going to be very troubled by these weekend statements, 
because everyone else is talking about--because it has worked so well, 
because we had these hearings this report talked about, because we went 
all over the United States, and our doors were opened to anybody who 
wanted to talk about family leave and its application, and did it hurt 
or did it not hurt, we want to move forward, not roll it back, as Dole 
wants to do.
  It is so easy to talk family values, but when you get all done, 
nobody really wants to help young families. When you have the most 
pressure on young families is in the families where both members had 
have, have to be in the workplace, or a single-parent family, where 
clearly they have to be in the workplace. When you have these crises 
appearing, you clearly need this job-protected leave.
  Even with this bill, we are way behind what every other Western 
country has done. Now the President would like to expand the bill a bit 
by allowing people 24 hours off a year to participate in their child's 
school, or different community things. Again, this is unpaid job-
protected leave, but it allows families to invest in their community, 
invest in their children, and so forth.
  Mr. Speaker, I do not know what to say except that it shows the very 
bright line that is continuing to be drawn in this presidential race. 
Today I understand presidential candidate Dole is going to be in St. 
Petersburg, FL, talking about these issues.
  Eight years ago I went to St. Petersburg, FL, with Dr. Barry 
Brazelton, the pediatrician from Harvard, with Gary David Goldberg, the 
producer of ``Family Ties,'' with his wife, Diana Meehan. We were 
traveling around with the Great American Family tour. St. Petersburg 
was one of the places we listened to the American people, where they 
told us how desperately they wanted a bill like the family leave bill 
that happened.
  So it is going to be very interesting to see what candidate Dole 
hears in St. Petersburg today, and whether the people who came to his 
listening events are real people, or they are all preselected, 
prescripted, and it is all kind of an act.
  But I do think that Americans are very tired of rhetoric about family 
policies, and want real protections for their family. We know we cannot 
roll back progress, we cannot change it. We are going to have to live 
in this global economy. Let us hope family leave is here to stay, Mr. 
Dole. I am going to send him another copy of the book, and I hope he 
finds time to read it, so this old Dole can get some new tricks.

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