[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 74 (Tuesday, June 3, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5220-S5235]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     FAMILY FRIENDLY WORKPLACE ACT

  The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, are we on the legislation so I can offer 
an amendment?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Yes, we are; pending is S. 4.


                           Amendment No. 253

 (Purpose: To provide protections in bankruptcy proceedings for claims 
   relating to compensatory time off and flexible work credit hours)

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, under the unanimous-consent agreement my 
amendment on bankruptcy to this legislation has been filed. I would 
like to take that amendment up at this point. If it is necessary to 
read the amendment, I would like to have it read.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Iowa [Mr. Grassley] proposes an amendment 
     numbered 253.

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of 
the amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:
       On page 28, after line 16, insert the following:
       (d) Protections for Claims Relating to Compensatory Time 
     Off and Flexible Credit Hours in Bankruptcy Proceedings.--
     Section 507(a)(3) of title 11, United States Code, is 
     amended--
       (1) by striking ``$4,000'' and inserting ``$6,000'';
       (2) by striking ``for--'' and inserting the following: 
     ``provided that all accrued compensatory time (as defined in 
     section 7 of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (29 U.S.C. 
     207) or accrued flexible credit hours (as defined in section 
     13(A) of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938) shall be 
     deemed to have been earned within 90 days before the date of 
     the filing of the petition or the date of the cessation of 
     the debtor's business, whichever occurs first, for--''; and
       (3) in subparagraph (A), by inserting before the semicolon 
     the following: ``or the value of unused, accrued compensatory 
     time (as defined in section 7 of the Fair Labor Standards Act 
     of 1938 (29 U.S.C. 207)) or the value of unused, accrued 
     flexible credit hours (as defined in section 13A of the Fair 
     Labor Standards Act of 1938)''.

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I rise today to offer a bankruptcy 
amendment to resolve an important question which has been raised 
regarding S. 4. This is a bill which will provide America's working 
families with some much-needed relief from the demands of balancing 
family and work. But some have questioned whether workers' rights to be 
paid by companies that declare bankruptcy might inadvertently be 
affected by S. 4. My amendment will make sure that this will not happen 
and that workers will be fully protected.
  S. 4 is a very important bill. We all know the story. Over the past 
decade or so, wages have been flat and the tax burden seems to just 
grow and grow. As both mothers and fathers around the country have had 
to work outside the home and have had to work longer and longer hours, 
they have less time to spend with each other and with their families. 
This leads to a decrease in the quality of family life.
  And with all the assaults we have on families these days--increased 
drug use by teens, excessive violence and sex coming from Hollywood to 
name a few--Congress needs to give serious consideration to finding 
ways to protect and stabilize families. The Senator from Missouri is to 
be commended for taking such a progressive stance on this important 
issue.
  S. 4 will give employers the chance to offer families the choice of 
working harder and earning overtime pay or getting some time off in 
exchange for working more. That makes good common sense and will expand 
the range of choices that working families can make.
  Now, I chair the Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the 
Courts, which has primary responsibility for bankruptcy policy in the 
Senate. I am offering an amendment today to make sure that unused 
comptime and unused flexible credit time will be protected when an 
employer declares bankruptcy. Under current law, unpaid wages up to 
$4,000 are given a preferred status if earned within 90 days prior to a 
company declaring bankruptucy. Under the Bankruptcy Code, secured 
creditors are paid and then the costs of administering the bankruptcy 
estate will be paid. After that--ahead of all the other creditors--
workers' wages will be paid subject to those limitations I just 
described.
  I believe that comptime and flexible credit time should be protected 
in the same way as unpaid wages because unused comptime and unused 
flexible credit time are essentially unpaid wages.

  So, my amendment does two things. First, my amendment provides that 
all unused comptime and unused flexible credit time will be deemed to 
have been earned within 90 days prior to the employer filing for 
bankruptcy. This will prevent a dishonest employer who wants to cheat 
workers from arguing that he doesn't have to pay the value of unused 
comptime or unused flexible credit time because they might have been 
earned over a period of a year or even longer. In other words, by 
having the law deem all unused comptime and unused flexible credit time 
as having been earned within 90 days prior to the employer's 
bankruptcy, the worker's right to be paid will be protected. That's 
pro-worker and pro-family and it's just plain fair.
  The second thing that my amendment will do is insert comptime and 
flexible credit time in the list of preferred debts alongside unpaid 
wages. That means that unused comptime and unused flexible credit time 
will have the same preferred status as unpaid wages.
  Mr. President, I hope that every Member of this body will support my 
amendment. It is pro-worker and it makes sure that the promise of 
comptime and flexible credit time will not turn into an empty promise. 
As we all know, most employers are honest and law abiding and will go 
into bankruptcy only as a last resort. But when a company has to go 
into bankruptcy, we should take extra care here in Congress to see to 
it that workers are treated fairly. We should also make sure that 
workers are protected from the small number of dishonest companies that 
might try to use a loophole to cheat workers out of what they've 
earned.
  My amendment simply ensures that unused comptime and unused flexible 
credit time will be as protected as unpaid wages. Workers who choose to 
take the time to be with their families should not be disadvantaged 
should their company have to declare bankruptcy.
  Mr. President, I hope this amendment passes overwhelmingly.
  I would like to also suggest that as a concession to the Members of 
the other side of the aisle, I have also raised the dollar amount 
referred to earlier from $4,000 up to $6,000 as well.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Will the Senator from Iowa yield for a question?
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Yes.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. I am very pleased to have the Senator come to the floor 
and offer this amendment. I would like to clarify the intent of my 
colleague. I think I understand it.
  If the comptime accumulated earnings, which might either be paid off 
at the end of the year as comptime that gets cashed out or might be 
taken as comptime, as time off--if that is older than 90 days old, 
under the current law it might not have all the protections in 
bankruptcy that normal wages would have; is that correct?
  Mr. GRASSLEY. The Senator from Missouri has the existing law correct. 
That is right.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. So what the Senator is doing is making sure that 
everything that would be in a comptime or flextime bank in terms of 
hours would be protected at the highest level of protection as recently 
earned wages under the bankruptcy law?
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Yes.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. I think that is a clear improvement to this measure, in 
terms of protecting the interests of workers. I thank the Senator from

[[Page S5221]]

Iowa for his insight and his expertise in this area, which obviously 
reflects his experience with the bankruptcy laws and his experience in 
matters of this character.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Is it appropriate to urge the adoption? It is not 
appropriate? We have not had the minority people speak to it yet.
  I ask unanimous consent to lay this amendment aside for the 
consideration of a second amendment that I have already filed.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Amendment No. 256

    (Purpose: To apply to Congress the same provisions relating to 
  compensatory time off, biweekly work programs, flexible credit hour 
programs, and exemptions of certain professionals from the minimum wage 
    and overtime requirements as apply to private sector employees)

  Mr. GRASSLEY. This amendment is amendment 256. It has been filed.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Iowa [Mr. Grassley] proposes an amendment 
     numbered 256.

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of 
the amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       At the end of the bill, add the following:

     SEC. 4. APPLICATION OF LAWS TO LEGISLATIVE BRANCH.

       (a) Definitions.--In this section, the terms ``Board'', 
     ``covered employee'', and ``employing office'' have the 
     meanings given the terms in sections 101 and 203 of Public 
     Law 104-1.
       (b) Biweekly Work Programs; Flexible Credit Hour Programs; 
     Exemptions.--
       (1) In general.--The rights and protections established by 
     sections 13(m) and 13A of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 
     1938, as added by section 3, shall apply to covered 
     employees.
       (2) Remedy.--The remedy for a violation of paragraph (1) 
     shall be such remedy, including liquidated damages, as would 
     be appropriate if awarded under section 16(b) of the Fair 
     Labor Standards Act of 1938 (29 U.S.C. 216(b)), and (in the 
     case of a violation concerning section 13A(d) of such Act), 
     section 16(g)(1) of such Act (29 U.S.C. 216(g)(1)).
       (3) Administration.--The Office of Compliance shall 
     exercise the same authorities and perform the same duties 
     with respect to the rights and protections described in 
     paragraph (1) as the Office exercises and performs under 
     title III of Public Law 104-1 with respect to the rights and 
     protections described in section 203 of such law.
       (4) Procedures.--Title IV and section 225 of Public Law 
     104-1 shall apply with respect to violations of paragraph 
     (1).
       (5) Regulations.--
       (A) In general.--The Board shall, pursuant to section 304 
     of Public Law 104-1, issue regulations to implement this 
     subsection.
       (B) Agency regulations.--The regulations issued under 
     subparagraph (A) shall be the same as substantive regulations 
     promulgated by the Secretary of Labor to implement the 
     statutory provisions referred to in paragraph (1) except 
     insofar as the Board may determine, for good cause shown and 
     stated together with the regulation, that a modification of 
     the regulations would be more effective for the 
     implementation of the rights and protections under this 
     subsection.
       (c) Compensatory Time Off.--
       (1) Regulations.--The Board shall, pursuant to paragraphs 
     (1) and (2) of section 203(c), and section 304, of Public Law 
     104-1, issue regulations to implement section 203 of such law 
     with respect to section 7(r) of the Fair Labor Standards Act 
     of 1938 (29 U.S.C. 207(r)), as added by section 3(a).
       (2) Remedy.--The remedy for a violation of section 203(a) 
     of Public Law 104-1 shall be such remedy, including 
     liquidated damages, as would be appropriate if awarded under 
     section 16(b) of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (29 
     U.S.C. 216(b)), and (in the case of a violation concerning 
     section 7(r)(6)(A) of such Act (29 U.S.C. 7(r)(6)(A))), 
     section 16(f)(1) of such Act (29 U.S.C. 216(f)(1)).
       (3) Effective date.--Subsection (a)(3), and paragraphs (3) 
     and (4) of subsection (c), of section 203 of Public Law 104-1 
     cease to be effective on the date of enactment of this Act.
       (d) Rules of Application.--For purposes of the application 
     under this section of sections 7(r) and 13A of the Fair Labor 
     Standards Act of 1938 to covered employees of an employing 
     office, a reference in such sections--
       (1) to a statement of an employee that is made, kept, and 
     preserved in accordance with section 11(c) of such Act shall 
     be considered to be a reference to a statement that is made, 
     kept in the records of the employing office, and preserved 
     until 1 year after the last day on which--
       (A) the employing office has a policy offering compensatory 
     time off, a biweekly work program, or a flexible credit hour 
     program in effect under section 7(r) or 13A of such Act, as 
     appropriate; and
       (B) the employee is subject to an agreement described in 
     section 7(r)(3) of such Act or subsection (b)(2)(A) or 
     (c)(2)(A) of section 13A of such Act, as appropriate; and
       (2) to section 9(a) of the National Labor Relations Act (29 
     U.S.C. 159(a)) shall be considered to be a reference to 
     subchapter II of chapter 71 of title 5, United States Code.
       (e) Effective Date.--
       (1) In general.--This section shall take effect, with 
     respect to the application of section 7(r), 13(m), or 13A of 
     the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to covered employees, on 
     the earlier of--
       (A) the effective date of regulations promulgated by the 
     Secretary of Labor to implement such section; and
       (B) the effective date of regulations issued by the Board 
     as described in subsection (b)(5) or (c)(1) to implement such 
     section.
       (2) Construction.--A regulation promulgated by the 
     Secretary of Labor to implement section 7(r), 13(m), or 13A 
     of such Act shall be considered to be the most relevant 
     substantive executive agency regulation promulgated to 
     implement such section, for purposes of carrying out section 
     411 of Public Law 104-1.

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I rise today to offer a very important 
amendment. This amendment applies the provisions of this bill, S. 4, to 
Congress.
  As most Senators know, I pushed for the adoption of the original 
Congressional Accountability Act for many years before it was enacted. 
Finally, in the last Congress, with my sponsorship, we enacted the 
Congressional Accountability Act into law. With this act we said that 
we in Congress are no better than the business men and women in our 
States. We are not different and we, too, must live under the laws that 
we pass. We no longer sit in Washington and look down upon the people 
and tell them how to run their businesses. This is a democracy, and 
therefore we make laws for the people, and we, too, are the people.
  This amendment is offered for the same purpose. It is a continuation 
of the spirit and intent of the Congressional Accountability Act.
  In the Federalist Papers, Federalist 57, James Madison wrote that:

       [Members of Congress] can make no law which will not have 
     its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well 
     as on the great mass of society . . . it creates between them 
     that communion of interests and sympathy of sentiments of 
     which few governments have furnished examples, but without 
     which every government degenerates into tyranny.

  The bill before us gives important options to the private workplace 
that Government--with exceptions including Congress--has enjoyed for 
years. It is only fair that if these options--compensatory time, bi-
weekly schedules and flextime--apply to the private sector, then they 
must also apply to Congress. A rationale of the Congressional 
Accountability Act was that by requiring us to live under the same laws 
as the private sector, we will understand the challenges created by the 
laws that we pass. If we apply compensatory time, bi-weekly schedules 
and flextime to the private sector, we must also apply it to Congress. 
Otherwise, we will not get an accurate understanding of what our labor 
laws do to our businesses and workers.
  The language in this amendment is carefully crafted to complement the 
Congressional Accountability Act. The drafting of this language was a 
long and careful process. I drafted it in consultation with the Office 
of Compliance and the Senate Employment Counsel. I thank both of these 
offices for their efforts to craft this language and make it the most 
effective and fair language possible.
  I ask my colleagues to support this amendment and to join me once 
again in saying that we are not above the laws that we make.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.


                           Amendment No. 265

(Purpose: To prohibit coercion by employers of certain public employees 
    who are eligible for compensatory time off under the Fair Labor 
Standards Act of 1938 and provide for additional remedies in a case of 
             coercion by such employers of such employees)

  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the current 
amendment be laid aside and call up amendment No. 265.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The clerk 
will report the amendment.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Washington [Mr. Gorton] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 265.

  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further 
reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

[[Page S5222]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       Beginning on page 10, strike line 8 and all that follows 
     through page 10, line 16 and insert the following: 
     ``subsection (o)(8).''.
       (4) Application of the coercion and remedies provisions to 
     employees of state agencies.--Section 7(o) of the Fair Labor 
     Standards Act of 1938 (29 U.S.C. 207(o)) is amended--
       (A) in paragraph (7), by striking ``(7) For'' and inserting 
     ``(8) For''; and
       (B) by inserting after paragraph (6), the following:
       ``(7)(A) The provisions relating to the prohibition of 
     coercion under subsection (r)(6)(A) shall apply to an 
     employee and employer described in this subsection to the 
     same extent the provisions apply to an employee and employer 
     described in subsection (r).
       ``(B)(i) Except as provided in clause (ii), the remedies 
     under section 16(f) shall be made available to an employee 
     described in this subsection to the same extent that remedies 
     are made available to an employee described in subsection 
     (r).
       ``(ii) In calculating the amount an employer described in 
     this subsection would be liable for under section 16(f) to an 
     employee described in this subsection, the Secretary shall, 
     in lieu of applying the rate of compensation in the formula 
     described in section 16(f), apply the rate of compensation 
     described in paragraph (3)(B).''.
       (5) Notice of employees.--Not later than 30 days after the 
     date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Labor shall 
     revise the materials the Secretary provides, under 
     regulations contained in section 516.4 of title 29, Code of 
     Federal Regulations, to employers for purposes of a notice 
     explaining the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to employees 
     so that the notice reflects the amendments made to the Act by 
     this subsection.

  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I send a second-degree amendment to 
amendment No. 265 to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator does not have the right to amend 
his own amendment at this point.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be granted that 
right.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mrs. MURRAY. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from Washington has the floor.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I ask, what is the order of the business of 
the Senate?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The pending question is amendment No. 265.
  Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment 
be laid aside temporarily so I may make a statement in support of this 
bill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GRAMS. Thank you very much.
  Mr. President, I have come to the floor this afternoon to express my 
support for the Family Friendly Workplace Act introduced by my 
colleague from Missouri, Senator John Ashcroft. I join with the 
Nation's working men and women in thanking my friend for his leadership 
in bringing this legislation to the floor and giving us an opportunity 
to focus on what has become the single most precious commodity for 
working families in the 1990's, and that is time.
  Trapped between less time and greater demands, the American people 
are calling for more choices and flexibility in setting their work 
schedules. They want help in balancing the competing demands for time 
between their families and their jobs. When surveyed in March by Money 
magazine, 64 percent of the American public--and 68 percent of working 
women--said they would prefer time off instead of extra pay for 
overtime, if the law permitted such a choice.
  Unfortunately, the law does not allow such choices, even though 
dramatic changes have taken place in America since 1938, when Congress 
wrote the basic law governing U.S. workplaces. Six decades ago, most 
laborers were employed in industrial plants or on farms. Fewer than 16 
percent of married women with children in school were employed outside 
the home. Today, service jobs are a key part of the economy where more 
than 75 percent of married women with school-age children now work 
outside the home.
  Many parents are under tremendous stress, often holding down more 
than one job while trying to raise their children. The strain can be 
even more pronounced in single-parent households or two-parent families 
where both spouses work. Is it any surprise that today's parents are 
spending 40 percent less time with their children than parents did just 
three decades ago? It seems there are not enough hours in the day 
anymore to always fulfill the demands of family and of work.
  Twenty years ago, Congress overwhelmingly approved relief for federal 
workers by enacting flexible work options for government employees. 
During House consideration of the bill, then-Representative Geraldine 
Ferraro said, ``Flexible schedules have helped reduce the conflicts 
between work and personal needs, particularly for working women and 
others with household responsibilities.'' Also, Representative Patricia 
Schroeder added, ``Flextime increases employee morale and 
productivity.''
  Even though federal workers have enjoyed these benefits for years, 
the rules governing the workplace and working hours for the private 
sector remain frozen back in 1938. Predictably, this has created 
unintended burdens for millions of workers.
  For example, under today's law, a worker who wants to put in 45 hours 
one workweek in exchange for 35 hours the next--in order to attend a 
child's soccer game, parent-teacher conference, or doctor's 
appointment--must first have an employer who is willing to pay five 
hours of overtime pay for the 45-hour week. Because many employers 
cannot afford additional overtime expenses, working parents are left 
with two choices: One is lose five hours of pay in order to be with a 
child, or miss the soccer game, school award, or doctor's appointment. 
That is an unfair choice parents should not be forced to make.
  Employers who try to extend a helping hand to employees with flexible 
scheduling do so at the risk of fines and penalties from the Department 
of Labor. It is the law--you are not allowed to work 45 hours now in 
return for 35 hours in another week and still keep a full paycheck.
  President Clinton has said he understands this problem and has 
proposed expanding unpaid time off under the Family and Medical Leave 
Act. Unfortunately, his plan only allows leave without pay. It was 
designed for periods of extended leave, not for the flexibility needed 
to meet the daily challenges of modern family and working life. Working 
parents would still have to take a pay cut to be with their children.
  Mr. President, I firmly believe the time has come to bring our 
employment laws into the 1990's, and so I have proudly signed on as an 
original cosponsor of the Family Friendly Workplace Act. Our bill would 
create flexible scheduling options for working Americans, benefiting 
millions of hard-working women and men.
  First, workers under this legislation would have paid flexible leave. 
To create time for their families, employees could choose to work 
additional hours in one week, to fill in a shorter week later. 
Employees could bank up to 50 hours of flexible leave that can be taken 
with pay.
  Also second, employees could set 2-week schedules totaling 80 hours 
in any combination. For example, an employee might want every other 
Friday off, compensating for the day off by working 80 hours over the 
course of 9 days. This system has worked well for Federal employees.
  Third, employees could take time and one-half off, instead of 
overtime pay. Employees would have the option of cashing out these comp 
time hours for overtime pay, if they wished. It is important to note 
that these options are entirely voluntary and any action must be set 
into motion by the employee, not the employer. Your employer can't 
force you to take comp time if you prefer the overtime. The bill, in 
fact, sets stiff penalties for coercive or abusive actions by 
employers.

[[Page S5223]]

  While I believe the bill affords employees the necessary protections, 
should there be reports of widespread abuse under this legislation, I 
will be among the first to call for its repeal.
  Mr. President, an editorial published in the April 7, 1997, edition 
of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune raised some of these same concerns--
concerns I believe have been satisfied--and the newspaper found the 
premise behind the bill to be solid. The newspaper wrote:

       This is pretty appealing to busy Americans, many of whom 
     would happily forgo $60 in overtime pay for the chance to 
     spend Friday with their kids or a string of walleyes. And it 
     is an efficient form of time management for employers who see 
     their offices swamped with work one week but becalmed the 
     next.

  The editorial concluded by saying that

       Clinton and Congress' Republican leadership should find a 
     way to accommodate the needs of business and American workers 
     in a changing economy . . . After all, the whole point is 
     flexibility.

  Mr. President, I trust working parents with that flexibility because 
only they know what is best for their families. The flexibility is 
especially meaningful for the Nation's working women as well. Both 
Working Women and Working Mother magazines have endorsed the flextime 
and comptime measures in the Family Friendly Workplace Act, recognizing 
that 28.8 million working women stand to gain from this proposal.
  Times have changed dramatically since 1938, and change is long 
overdue. In fairness to workers and their families, and in the interest 
of the productivity of our economy, it is time to modernize our labor 
laws and give all workers the choice of flexible work options. So Mr. 
President, in concluding, I would like to say that the Family Friendly 
Workplace Act offers much-needed help for Americans striving to meet 
all the needs of their families. I urge the support of my colleagues, 
and once again I want to thank the Senator from Missouri for his 
leadership in bringing this bill before the Senate.
  Thank you very much, Mr. President.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, today the Senate is 
debating an aptly titled bill, the Family Friendly Workplace Act. The 
working families of today face more challenges than their parents and 
grandparents could have imagined. In addition to providing for their 
children, parents want to balance the other demands on their time--
parent-teacher conferences, little league games, doctor appointments, 
car pools--but have little flexibility.
  The family friendly workplace will give employees the opportunity to 
adjust their work hours to take advantage of paid time off during the 
workday. It is a short, simple bill that would extend to the private 
sector the same benefits already enjoyed by public employees for almost 
20 years. First, it will allow hourly workers the ability to bank extra 
time which could be taken as paid time off. Second, the measure will 
give employees and employers the ability to work out a flexible 
scheduling arrangement. Sound simple enough? Surprisingly, these 
common-sense practices are now prohibited under current law.
  The only explanation I can find for the opposition to this proposal 
is the flurry of misinformation that surrounds this debate. For 
instance, I have received a few letters in my office from Washington 
labor organizations, which reveal their unfortunate misunderstanding of 
this bill. One letter states, ``S. 4 contains no penalty to punish 
employers who force workers to take compensatory time off if the 
workers want, instead, to receive premium pay at the time-and-a-half 
rate, after they work in excess of 40 hours during a week.'' This claim 
is false. Not only are these options 100 percent voluntary for the 
employee, but, in addition to protections that already exist under the 
Fair Labor Standards Act [FLSA], S. 4 establishes further prohibitions 
against employee coercion in the voluntary acceptance of comptime. 
Intimidation is outlawed. Another letter I received argues that ``the 
enactment of a less effective FLSA would jeopardize worker safety and 
health as employees are forced to accept excessively long and hazardous 
overtime assignments without pay fearing loss of future employment 
opportunities * * *'' This claim is untrue. Let me repeat--these 
options are 100 percent voluntary for the employee.
  I am also confused by arguments my colleagues have made against this 
measure. One amendment the opponents may offer would expand the Family 
and Medical Leave Act to grant workers up to 24 hours of unpaid leave 
to participate in their child's school activities. They point to a poll 
that found that 86 percent of the American public favor legislation 
that would allow workers unpaid leave to attend parent-teacher 
conferences. Did the poll ask Americans if they would like paid leave 
for these educational purposes? I also find this amendment puzzling 
since the first argument I hear from labor groups is that workers 
cannot afford to take compensatory time off since they rely on their 
overtime pay. I agree that many workers would not take the comptime 
option because they prefer additional pay. But if extra pay is their 
first priority, why would they be so anxious to take unpaid leave?
  Furthermore, opponents cite the position of various women's 
organizations in Washington who have come out against this bill. Like 
many inside-the-beltway groups, they seem to have fallen out of step 
with the average working woman, since several studies contradict their 
opposition. For example, a study conducted by the Employment Policy 
Foundation reveals that women are far more eager to trade income for 
leisure--among women earning $750 a week, women are more than twice as 
likely as men to choose ``fewer hours for less pay.'' Second, a recent 
poll by Money magazine found that 66 percent of the American people 
would rather have their overtime in the form of time off, rather than 
cash wages, and 82 percent said they support the Republican-backed 
comptime bills. Also worth noting is the endorsement of the Family 
Friendly Workplace Act by Working Woman and Working Mother magazines.
  Even more perplexing is the President's failure to recognize the 
special needs of working women by refusing to allow comptime in 
exchange for overtime pay. While overtime pay is invaluable to many 
workers, nearly three out of four workers reporting overtime pay are 
men. In fact, overtime pay is most commonly reported in industries 
which are heavily dominated by men--manufacturing (73%), mining and 
construction (95%), and transportation (88%). Of the small number of 
women who work in mining and construction, only 5 percent worked 
overtime in 1996, while 95 percent of men did. The President's 
commitment to defeating this proposal will disproportionately harm 
women.
  While these polls and statistics are helpful and revealing, I need go 
no further than my home State to be convinced of the value of the 
Family Friendly Workplace Act. One engineering firm in New Hampshire, 
for instance, uses a complicated formula to allow employees every other 
Friday off. But the complexity of their current system is exactly why 
they would prefer the passage of S. 4. If there is any doubt that this 
flextime is appealing to employees, this company, like many in the 
highly competitive technology industry, advertises their existing 
flexible week as an incentive when seeking out technical expertise. Any 
Senator who represents an area like the Northeast, which has a large 
technology presence, can understand how competitive the recruiting can 
be. The flex week is so appealing to potential employees, firms 
highlight it in their ads in an effort to outbid their competitors.
  Because of the false claims, inconsistency, and bias against women, I 
reject the arguments against the Family Friendly Workplace Act. It is 
time that these options are enjoyed by all American workers, not just 
Federal employees. I hope my colleagues will join me in support of this 
commonsense legislation, and vote to invoke cloture.
  Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, I would like to briefly respond to some of the 
discussion that deals with S. 4, which is egregiously entitled the 
``Family Friendly Workplace Act.'' But I also want to say to my 
colleagues that I am going to spend a little bit of time talking about 
disaster relief and the failure of the House

[[Page S5224]]

of Representatives to move forward with this legislation because I 
think that takes priority over all of our business here.
  Mr. President, I will agree with my colleagues, starting with Senator 
Ashcroft, whom I enjoy as a colleague, that this piece of legislation 
deals with a very important question. And the question is how people 
balance their commitments to work with their commitments to family. I 
think that is a very important question.
  But I would like to just repeat one more time for my colleague from 
Missouri and other colleagues who want to see some kind of positive, 
constructive legislation passed, this piece of legislation in its 
present form is going nowhere. And it should not go anywhere.
  Mr. President, first of all, there are two features that are 
automatic nonstarters. My colleague from Minnesota, whom I enjoy 
working with, talked about a couple of women's organizations that 
support this bill. My understanding is there are huge numbers of 
women's organizations who are in opposition, for good reason.
  First of all, we have the Fair Labor Standards Act which was hallmark 
legislation. The idea here was the 40-hour week. If you worked overtime 
you get overtime pay. That is very important. There are a whole lot of 
families with incomes below $20,000, $25,000 a year for whom overtime 
pay is key.
  What we are doing with this legislation, which has this sort of 
happy-face title, the ``Family Friendly Workplace Act,'' is we are now 
moving from a 40-hour week, we are abolishing it and we are going to an 
80-hour 2-week period whereby an employee could work 50 or 60 hours one 
week, 30 or 20 hours the next week and not get paid any overtime.
  If you think that the reality is in the workplaces throughout this 
country that employees are equal partners in this decisionmaking in all 
these workplaces, then you might not worry about that. But the fact of 
the matter is, the vast majority of people, the vast majority of women 
and women's organizations, understanding the threat to the 40-hour 
week, will not accept this. This provision is not in the House bill 
that passed, and it should not be in this bill. It is one of the 
reasons this bill will go nowhere.

  Mr. President, in addition, there is another feature that deals with 
flextime which essentially says you can work overtime and then you can 
take that hour off or however many hours you worked, but you do not get 
an hour and a half off for an hour overtime so it becomes a cut in pay. 
Again, you have two features in this bill that are in direct 
contradiction to the Fair Labor Standards Act and, therefore, going 
nowhere.
  Now, the third point I want to make is that there has to be some 
guarantee, some way that we protect people for whom being able to work 
and working overtime and being paid overtime is critical to their 
family's income. In a huge percentage of families with incomes under 
$20,000 a year, the household head works overtime. So what you do not 
want to have happen is a situation where an employer is only going to 
give the overtime to those people who take comptime as opposed to 
people who want to have time-and-a-half pay. Again, so far, we have not 
seen any willingness to sit down and negotiate and compromise on some 
of these questions.
  Mr. President, in committee Senator Murray talked about an extension 
of the Family and Medical Leave Act which was terribly important. The 
Senator may, while she is here, raise a question with me about this, 
and I am pleased to do a colloquy with her on that. In addition, I had 
an amendment in committee which said if there is a situation dealing 
with Family and Medical Leave Act considerations where there is 
sickness in the family or whatever and you banked 20 or 40 hours, you 
should be able to take that time off; you do not need to ask for 
permission.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I am happy to yield to the Senator.
  Mrs. MURRAY. The Senator from Minnesota is correct that during the 
debate on this bill I have talked consistently about the fact that 
women do want flexibility in the workplace in order to make sure they 
can take care of their children when they need to.
  The concerns we have continuously raised about the bill we are 
debating is who decides when that woman or man, father or mother, gets 
to take that time--whether the employer decides or they do.
  When it is your child's conference time at school, your employer 
cannot say, or probably will not say to you, ``You can take your 
conference time next week.'' You need to go to them as an employee and 
say, ``My child's conference is next Thursday at 10 o'clock. I need to 
take an hour to go visit with my child's teacher.''
  Let me ask the Senator from Minnesota, the option that I am offering 
that allows 24 hours off a year for parents to participate with their 
child, in your opinion, would that give employees the ability to have 
some control over their time and their ability to participate with 
their families?
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, in responding to the question that the 
Senator from Washington has raised, that is really what is at issue 
here. There is an alternative that Senator Baucus and others have 
presented which really does give the employees the flexibility, if that 
is what this is about. We have to make sure that employees have the 
flexibility so that if they need to take the time off--time, I might 
make the point, time that they banked--if they need their comptime 
because they want to go to school and visit with the teacher or because 
they have an elderly parent that is ill, they ought to be able to do 
it. If we really want to give them flexibility, we should give them 
flexibility. That is not in this piece of legislation.
  I also say to the Senator from Washington that, in addition, we have 
a very serious problem here. Sometimes I think here in the Senate we 
lose sight of the reality of the circumstances of many families in our 
country. We have a paradoxical situation where we have this impressive 
abundance, an affluence and good macroeconomic indicators, but at the 
same time, we have large numbers of families that are struggling to 
earn a decent living and raise their children successfully. People are 
still feeling the economic squeeze, and one of the ways people are able 
to put food on the table and support their families is to be able to 
get that overtime pay for working overtime. We are not going to abandon 
that principle.

  This legislation in its present form will be defeated again tomorrow. 
People gave their sweat and their tears for fair labor standards and 
for a 40-hour week and for the idea that if you work overtime you get 
overtime pay. Now, if we want to really give employees the flexibility, 
we should do so. But you do not have a cut in pay with flextime, you do 
not have a cut in pay by abolishing the 40-hour week and going to an 
80-hour 2-week framework. You make sure that employees, in fact, if 
they bank that extra time, that flextime, are able to take it off, time 
and a half for every hour worked overtime to be with their child or to 
be at a doctor's office with their parent. They get to do it. They do 
not have to ask for permission. You certainly make sure that you do not 
have any discrimination whereby this becomes too good a deal in its 
present form for too many employers, and the only people, I say to my 
colleague from Washington, that they give any overtime to are those 
people who will not ask for overtime pay, who will only ask for 
comptime. That is what is at issue here.
  I agree with the question, which is this is all about working 
families. This is all about how people balance commitment to work with 
balancing a commitment to family. But this piece of legislation does 
not give employees the flexibility, and this piece of legislation does 
not give people the guarantee that they will not be discriminated 
against and no longer able to obtain overtime pay for overtime work 
which is so important to so many families that are barely able to make 
ends meet. This piece of legislation takes the Fair Labor Standards Act 
and it turns it on its head. It literally overturns 50 or 60 years of 
people's history. It is too bad, because we could pass a piece of 
legislation.
  My colleague from Missouri has a good idea, at least in the goal of 
giving employees the flexibility. But in its present form, this piece 
of legislation will go nowhere.

[[Page S5225]]

  Mr. President, now, I understand I have not looked at some of the 
amendments--Senator Grassley's amendment. We also, in committee, were 
talking about the whole problem of bankruptcy and what happens to 
people who have earned this time. I think maybe the ceiling is too low 
and we have to have a higher threshold. Maybe something can be worked 
out on that, but then I hear there is another amendment that wants to 
apply this piece of legislation to the Congress, to staff, the people 
who work here.
  Well, Mr. President, I think that most of the people who work here--I 
have to look at all of the specifics, but I would think that a lot of 
people who work here might say, well, we would rather go forward and 
not backward. Right now, I think, people would be kind of worried about 
losing some of their fair labor standard protection or they would be 
worried about not being able to work overtime and get overtime pay. I 
do not think people want to see that. I also think employees here 
working with us want to make sure that if they bank the time, they will 
be able to take it off when they need to take it off to be with their 
families.
  So, again, Mr. President, you cannot take a piece of legislation that 
is flawed, I say with some regret, badly flawed for the vast majority 
of families in this country, and now apply it to people who work here, 
which just compounds the problem. Make this a good piece of 
legislation, and then, I say to my colleague from Iowa, and then we 
should apply it. I am all for that.


                            Disaster Relief

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I want to mention to some of my 
colleagues that with some regret, at least for a while this afternoon 
while I have the floor, there probably will not be a lot of discussion 
about this important piece of legislation, because I am now at the 
point, as a Senator from Minnesota, where I could not have any more 
patience for the political process here.
  We have had people in our States, and the Chair, I know, would feel 
the same, and I believe my colleague from Missouri would feel the same 
way, who have been through an absolute nightmare. We have communities 
where everybody had to evacuate--total devastation. We have one 
community in Minnesota, East Grand Forks, across the Red River from 
Grand Forks, and everybody had to leave and the people are still 
waiting for the Congress to provide them with relief. And the House of 
Representatives had the nerve to go into recess without providing that 
assistance.

  Well, Mr. President, for a while this afternoon the only point of 
discussion while I have the floor is going to be about the problems 
that we are facing in States that have been flooded, in States that are 
waiting for this disaster relief, because I think this ought to be the 
priority for the Congress. Whatever I know about this political 
process, whatever leverage I have as a Senator, I am going to use it. I 
will slow up whatever I can slow up. I will stop whatever I can stop. I 
will do it this week, and I will do it next week and I will do it as 
many weeks as I need to, until that disaster relief bill is passed. I 
do not know what else to do. I do not know what else to do.
  Mr. President, let me just talk a little bit about what is going on 
here. What we have is a situation where some people are playing 
politics with the emergency supplemental as opposed to getting this 
relief out to people who are trying to rebuild their lives.
  Can you imagine, I say to the Chair and my colleague from Missouri, 
can you imagine how people in Idaho and Missouri would feel when their 
homes have been destroyed? We worked together in a bipartisan fashion, 
and Senator Stevens was a big part of that. We came up with not only 
the funding for FEMA, but most important of all is some small business 
loans we came up with in what is called Community Development Block 
Grants, moneys which would enable people to move forward with buyouts 
for people who live in the floodplain, enable people to have assistance 
to rebuild their homes. That was the good news part. We were on our 
way.
  And then we had a disagreement. We had a disagreement over something 
called the CR. Frankly, people back in the Dakotas and Minnesota do not 
know that much about a CR and they do not really care too much. They 
just thought we would have the elementary decency of providing them 
with some help in their hour of need. But we got a debate about the CR.
  We have another debate about roads and public parks and maybe a 
couple of other matters as well. I would have thought that my 
colleagues--and I think some Republicans agree with me, so I do not 
think this is really so much a partisan issue; I know that in our 
States, Republicans agree--I would have thought that my colleagues 
would have had the elementary decency, the elementary decency before 
they went into recess, and we were going to stop them, and I cannot 
even remember the technical maneuver, but we were going to try and 
force a vote on adjournment, I guess it was, but they did not call it 
adjournment. We were in recess. So, theoretically, every 2 or 3 days, 
we were in session, but we really were not. Then people in the House of 
Representatives could then vote against adjournment and feel good about 
it, knowing that nothing had been done.
  I could not believe it. The leadership in the House of 
Representatives--I do not even call it leadership when people in our 
States are in such need, waiting for some final assurance that relief 
is going to be forthcoming--goes into recess.
  They don't even have the elementary decency to put aside what 
differences we have and just go forward--make sure that people know 
that they are going to be able to rebuild their homes, make sure that 
people know they are going to be able to move back into their homes, 
and make sure that people know that they are going to be able to go on 
with their lives. But no.
  I am Jewish. I throw my hands around here. I am sorry, my colleagues.
  But, no. They go into recess. And I am supposed to try to explain to 
people in Minnesota and North Dakota and South Dakota how we can play 
these kind of games here? People can't believe it.
  To all of my colleagues, to all of the people who are here today, no 
wonder so many Americans sour on our political process. You have floods 
the likes of which haven't been seen for 400 or 500 years. You have 
total devastation. The hospitals are destroyed, schools are destroyed, 
and everybody in the town are all leaving. You have flooding. You have 
hail. You have snow. You have fire. And, in spite of all of that, the 
goodness of people comes out. They support each other, they love each 
other, and they try to get back with their lives. But they know they 
need help. And the House of Representatives goes into recess. It is 
unbelievable.
  Now we are back here, and it is Tuesday. We hear that maybe this week 
this disaster relief bill will not be passed. Or maybe, people say, 
``Well, play a game and we will put on a continuing resolution.'' What 
does a continuing resolution have to do with the budget or have to do 
with getting disaster relief for people? It is called disaster relief 
because it is disaster. It is called an emergency supplemental bill 
because it is an emergency. Stop playing political games with people's 
lives.
  So, Mr. President, now we have a situation where some people are 
thinking, OK, what we will do is put a continuing resolution on this 
bill; it has nothing to do with emergency supplemental assistance; we 
will send it to the President; then he has already said he will veto 
it; and then it will come back here. And I don't know what they will do 
next.
  Why are they sending it to the President when you know he is going to 
veto it? If you want to debate the budget, let's debate the budget. If 
you want to debate the parks and the other issues, fine. But can't we 
just put aside our differences and please get the supplemental 
assistance to people? This is really a huge issue.
  Mr. President, there are families and business owners in Grand Forks, 
ND. My colleague from North Dakota talked about this, and East Grand 
Forks. They need to know whether they are going to be part of the 
floodplain buyout. But they do not know. They do not know whether or 
not there is going to be a buyout. They do not know whether they should 
move. They do not know whether they should try to come back to their 
homes. They don't know whether there is going to be any assistance at 
all. The State does

[[Page S5226]]

not know whether it should go forward. The mayors do not know what they 
can say to the citizens because they do not know what we are going to 
do because people have been waiting and waiting and waiting.
  Some of my colleagues today are going to wait because I am going to 
talk on the floor of the Senate for a while as well because it is just 
simply unconscionable and it is simply indefensible that we just do not 
get on with the business of providing people with this assistance right 
now.
  Mr. President, we have another problem. If we are going to start 
rebuilding--I think maybe in Idaho and less in Missouri. But in Idaho I 
think this is a bit of an issue as well. We have to get going because 
our building season is over come mid to late October.
  So, if we do not get the approved funding now and we don't started 
with the construction we are not going to get it done. Minnesota is a 
cold weather State. It is without a doubt the best State in the 
country. But it is a cold State. We have to get the funding right now, 
or we are not going to get the construction work done.
  Colleagues, there are very good, very wonderful, very strong, very 
loving people in Minnesota and the Dakotas, and others States as well 
are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. They are trying somehow 
to rebuild their lives. They have been through a living hell. You would 
not wish it on anyone. They have been waiting and waiting for us to 
have the decency to please get the assistance to them. And we are still 
playing political games here.
  Mr. President, the supplemental contains $500 million in CDBG funding 
for flood assistance. This program is one of the oldest Federal block 
grant programs in existence. This gives the States the most 
flexibility, or it could be the most flexibility for local communities.
  Let me explain what we are talking about here. Whether we are talking 
about floods in the Midwest, or hurricanes in the South, or earthquakes 
in the West, this CDBG money is critical because it fills in the 
cracks.
  In other words, what happens is FEMA money is good for public 
infrastructure and some help for homeowners and the small business 
money in loans. But the problem is many people can't cash flow any more 
loans. They can't get their businesses going. They can't rebuild their 
homes unless they get this community development block grant money. We 
have to task--thank you, Republicans, and, thank you, Democrats. We 
work together. That was the right thing to do. But now--for the last 13 
or 14 days, whatever it has been--people back in Minnesota cannot 
believe what they are seeing here. They don't understand these games. 
They don't understand why it is we just do not provide them with the 
assistance that they need.
  Mr. President, we have seen homes destroyed. We have seen city blocks 
immersed in water. And our communities, Ada, Warren, East Grand Forks, 
and others are in tremendous amount of need. They are in hurt. And they 
have the task of rebuilding their neighborhoods block by block and home 
by home.
  I would like to thank FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency 
for their work, and its Director James Lee Witt for his leadership. He 
has been great. I would like to thank all of the FEMA people who are 
out in Minnesota. They have been great. They are real heroes and real 
heroines. They are doing everything they can to help people. They are 
working with our community. And they are thinking about again buyouts 
and relocation plans.
  They are thinking about how to enable people to move back into their 
homes, and how people can rebuild their businesses. But we need to get 
the funding to our States now. We need to begin the process of 
rebuilding our communities.
  Mr. President, I don't know any other way to say it. I would say to 
my colleagues: Quit playing political football with the lives of 
disaster victims. Quit playing political football with the lives of 
disaster victims.
  I don't know anything else to do. I mean, I apologize to my 
colleagues. I am going to continue to talk for a while--not all day and 
all night and all day tomorrow. But I do want to speak for a while 
about this.
  Really, every opportunity I get as a Senator I am going to continue 
to come out and hold the floor. And I think just about every other 
Senator will do the same thing from our States. This is going to go on. 
Any Senator would do it, Democrat, or Republican. What else are you 
supposed to do?
  I mean the first thing you do is you try to appeal to the common 
sense of some of your colleagues. You say, look, we have some 
differences here. So why don't we just put those differences aside and 
just get the assistance to people because we don't differ on that.
  This is an emergency. Let's get the emergency assistance to people 
now. We tried to make that appeal. That didn't work. Then you try and 
appeal to the goodness of people. You say, look, people are hurting. 
People need some certainty. People need to have some confidence that we 
are going to provide some assistance to people. Please, 
Representatives; please Senators--I think even more Representatives now 
that I think about it on the House side--please. Can't you just put 
aside the differences? Can't we just go forward with what we agree on 
and get this disaster relief to people?

  That doesn't work.
  Then you try another appeal. You say, look, Senator, if it was your 
State, you would want to get that assistance out to the people. You 
would have a tough time going home and looking at people in the eye and 
having them look at you and try to explain what in the world is going 
on here.
  So you try to appeal to colleagues, and you say, ``Look, I have 
always been there for you when you needed help in Missouri, or you 
needed help in Idaho, or whatever State, which is true. I remember the 
flooding and what they went through just a few years ago. Now we need 
help. Please, won't you help us get this through?
  And that doesn't work.
  So, since none of that works, there is only one thing to do. And that 
is just use the Senate rules and figure out your leverage and just do 
not let the U.S. Congress--in particular the House of Representatives 
which has this held up--go on with business as usual. We are going to 
talk about what is going on in Minnesota, the Dakotas, Missouri, and 
California, and a variety of other States.
  Mr. President, I have here a letter from the mayor of East Grand 
Forks, MN, Lynn Stauss.
  I tell you. My colleague, Representative Collin Peterson, made a very 
good point this morning. Lynn Stauss is a part-time mayor. He makes 
about $5,300 a year. He is coming back out here tomorrow, and the mayor 
of Grand Forks, ND, as well. They shouldn't have to keep coming out 
here. But they have to keep coming out here to keep saying to people: 
``Please, Senators and Representatives, don't make the people in our 
communities an abstraction.'' We are talking about real men, real 
women, and their children.
  I don't know how the mayor has done it. He has been incredibly 
courageous. He has given people a lot of hope under some very difficult 
conditions, I say to a former mayor, Mr. President. But I know it gets 
hard after a while. People start to run out of hope when we don't come 
through here in the Congress.
  So this is a letter dated May 20, 1997. I should have brought my 
glasses knowing that I was going to be on the floor for a while.
  Do you have any glasses? [Laughter.]
  These glasses are too conservative. I thank my colleague from 
Missouri. I have never understood how such a good person could have 
such bad ideas. [Laughter.]

       Dear Senator Dorgan: We understand that there are currently 
     proposals to dispose of the five hundred million in CDBG 
     grants for disaster aid in two separate payments. Because of 
     the magnitude of destruction of the record setting flood of 
     1997 and the ice storm preceding the flood on April 4, 1997 
     throughout the Red River Valley, especially to the 
     communities of Grand Forks, North Dakota and East Grand 
     Forks, Minnesota, it is imperative that the total amount of 
     five hundred million be released to our communities without 
     delay. The people of our communities have suffered the loss 
     of income, homes and businesses. In addition, our streets, 
     water system, electrical system and sanitation system have 
     been severely damaged and require immediate attention. The 
     public facilities as we once knew them are virtually non-
     existent. We are now a community without a city hall, a 
     library, several schools, fire hall and senior citizens 
     center.
       Our number one priority is the acquisition of over 600 
     homes and businesses from the

[[Page S5227]]

     floodway. Immediate acquisition and relocation is the only 
     preventive measure in relieving stress and allowing our 
     citizens an opportunity to rebuild in our communities. 
     Because of our short window of construction, if we do not act 
     now our businesses and residents will have no alternative but 
     to relocate in other communities.
       We enclose for your information a copy of a proposal from 
     Wynne Consultants which clearly depicts the aftermath and 
     total devastation left by the flood and ice storm. We believe 
     the report will provide you with a comprehensive 
     understanding of our urgent, basic needs. The five hundred 
     million in CDBG grants must be released to our communities to 
     allow us the flexibility to rebuild and move forward with our 
     lives.

  Mr. President, this is from the mayor, and I just want to emphasize 
the importance of the words ``to rebuild and move forward with our 
lives.'' Again, Mr. President, I am sorry to inconvenience colleagues, 
but I feel as if people in Minnesota have been inconvenienced, and I 
think it is important to focus on this because I think we should pass 
this before we do anything else.
  An emergency supplemental is an emergency supplemental. That does not 
mean messing around, playing all sorts of political games. And disaster 
relief is disaster relief. It seems to me to be patently unfair and 
insensitive and unconscionable for the House of Representatives to go 
into recess and not pass this disaster relief bill or for this week all 
of us in the Congress to mess around and mess around and mess around 
and not do this work. If there is one thing we should do this week, it 
should be to pass this disaster relief bill. This should come before 
anything else. This disaster relief bill should come before, I say to 
my colleague--I know how much work he has put into this, and I still 
think there is a possibility of passing a good piece of legislation 
when we get down to really give-and-take discussion and work together. 
I do not think this bill will pass in its present form. I do not think 
it should.
  (Mr. KEMPTHORNE assumed the chair.)
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I do not think this piece of 
legislation takes first priority. I do not think some of the amendments 
that are on the floor right now take first priority. I am not speaking 
about those amendments. There is not anybody who is going to speak on 
those amendments for a while. I do not think those amendments should 
take priority. I do not think the budget, if we get to the budget 
sometime this week, should take priority. I do not think there is 
anything we could do this week that would be as important as providing 
people, families, who have been through just total devastation with a 
helping hand. Can't we do that? Can't we just provide people a helping 
hand? Can't we give people some confidence they are going to have some 
assistance so they can move back into their homes? Is that too much to 
ask? Can't we give some small businesses some confidence that there is 
going to be some access to capital and some assistance so they can 
start up their businesses again?
  I want to tell you something. Maybe some people think some of this is 
funny, but I want to tell you something. A whole lot of these people, 
these homeowners and these business people, are leaving. They are not 
going to be able to stay in these communities, I say to the majority 
leader, who has helped us, who has done a good job, and I thank him. 
These people are not going to be able to move back into their 
communities. A lot of these people are going to leave. That is what we 
are now here on.
  So, Mr. President, I think it is appropriate that I take the floor 
and speak about this because I am hearing this from people in my State. 
And I know other Senators are hearing this as well.
  Mr. President, this is a letter from the mayor of East Grant Forks, 
Lynn Stauss, again, who has just done a yeoman job, to members of the 
task force, the Minnesota Recovery Task Force:

       Please accept the following information as our preliminary 
     application to the Minnesota Recovery Disaster Task Force. We 
     hope the data we have included will assist you in assessing 
     the level of damage in East Grand Forks and allow us to 
     receive early consideration in the coming discussion on 
     recovery activity in our State. We consider our position to 
     be worthy of a serious share of the Federal and State funding 
     that will come to Minnesota. I know that you have been 
     apprised of our damage situation throughout the Nation and 
     statewide media over the hours of this disaster. Our city 
     staff would welcome the opportunity to answer your questions 
     at any time. Thank you for your time and consideration.
       Lynn Stauss, Mayor, East Grand Forks.

  Now, Mr. President, what I have here--and it will take me a little 
bit of time to read this application--is the application from the 
mayor. I want to emphasize one more time--and, Mr. President, I would 
like to apologize to some citizens who have come here today who are 
here during our proceeding. Normally we have debate on amendments, and 
when I start reading from some of this I fear that for some people here 
that will not be--without knowing the ins and outs of all of this, it 
may not be relevant, but I want to just make it clear one more time I 
once in a while come to the floor of the Senate and do this, but not 
very often, and I think those of us, whether we are Democrats or 
Republicans, don't come to the floor of the Senate and do this and hold 
the floor unless we really feel strongly about something.

  But, Mr. President, I do feel strongly about this. Time is not 
neutral. Time rushes on. There are too many people who are hurting. 
They have asked for assistance, and we have got people who are playing 
games here. There is no other order of business that should come before 
our passing this emergency supplemental bill that provides disaster 
relief to people who have been through hell. They deserve our help, and 
they should not have to wait. They should not have to be out there 
twisting in the wind. They should not have to wonder what in the world 
is the matter with us. This bill ought to pass this week. This bill 
ought to pass today. I would be proud or pleased to leave the floor 
right now if I only thought something was going to be done.
  Mr. President, let me go on and read from this application. This is 
just from East Grand Forks, really not talking about--I was in Ada, MN. 
In Ada, MN, it was just devastating. The school was completely flooded, 
much of it destroyed. They are going to be able to renovate the school, 
but can you imagine this? Here you have the school completely 
destroyed. It is going to be rebuilt, but somehow those students and 
the teachers and the support staff and the superintendent and the 
parents and the neighbors all banded together, and other schools will 
take in those kids and those kids are now finishing school and they are 
going to graduate. That is inspiring.
  I will tell you something, Mr. President. What is not inspiring is 
this Congress. What is not inspiring is the House of Representatives. 
What is not inspiring is the Representatives or Senators who put 
extraneous measures onto this piece of legislation and are not willing 
to get the assistance to people who need it now. That is not inspiring. 
We do not set a very good model for young people when we cannot stop 
playing games and just provide assistance to people who need that 
assistance.
  In Ada, as well, their hospital was just, again, devastated. They had 
to, in the dark of night, I think it was late at night, 10, 11, 12 
o'clock, they had to take elderly people out of the nursing home, had 
to evacuate them. It was just unbelievable what people went through. 
Can you imagine a hospital destroyed, the community center destroyed, 
the school destroyed? And can you imagine what it would be like to, 
first of all, be flooded out and then you are faced with a blizzard and 
people do not have any heat? People go through all of this and they 
continue to flourish, and the churches or the synagogues all come 
together and people help one another and somehow people make it 
through, although there is a lot of hurt and there is a lot of pain and 
probably some people are going to have to go through a fair amount of 
counseling to get through all this. But at the very minimum couldn't 
this Congress--I say this now to the majority party--pass this 
emergency supplemental bill now?
  Doesn't emergency mean emergency? Could not we provide this 
assistance to people now? Is that too much to ask? Is that too much for 
the people of Grand Forks, ND, to ask? Is that too much for the people 
of East Grand Forks to ask? Is that too much for the people of Warren, 
MN, to ask? Is that too much for the people of Ada, MN, to ask?
  I heard my colleague from North Dakota, Senator Conrad, this morning. 
I

[[Page S5228]]

thought he was eloquent. He said something like how many more days do 
people have to wait? I think that is an important question. How many 
more days, how many more weeks do people have to wait for help? How 
many more days do the people in our communities who are trying to 
rebuild their schools or hospitals have to wait? How many more days do 
the people who are trying to find out whether they are going to be 
moving or whether they are going to be staying or whether they are 
going to have money to rebuild their homes or to rebuild their 
businesses, how much longer do they have to wait? How much longer do 
senior citizens, many elderly people--a very high percentage of our 
smaller towns and communities really are comprised of elderly citizens. 
How much longer do they have to wait to know whether they are going to 
be able to live there?

  The answer will be determined by what we do or what we do not do. I 
am determined as a Senator from Minnesota to do everything I can to 
make as many of my colleagues as uncomfortable as possible until we 
take action.
  Let me repeat that. Whatever I can do to make those who are 
responsible for this delay uncomfortable, whatever I can do to focus 
attention on their irresponsibility, to focus attention on their 
insensitivity, to focus attention on their callousness, whatever I can 
do to make it clear to the leadership of the House of Representatives 
it is time to get serious, it is time, as my children would have said 
when they were younger, to get real I will do.
  Mr. President, this application form--let me read from this form:

       The flooding of April 1997 caused hundreds of millions of 
     dollars in damages to private properties, infrastructure and 
     businesses in the city of East Grand Forks.

  Mr. President, I think what I am going to do is actually read this 
slowly because right now time will move on slowly on the floor of the 
Senate:

       Damage to housing ranged from complete destruction of the 
     properties to severely damaged basements, electrical systems, 
     and heating systems.

  By the way, built into this disaster relief bill--and I thank my 
colleagues, both Republicans and Democrats--is some assistance in the 
low-income home energy assistance program, the LIHEAP program--Senator 
Stevens helped us on that--which will enable people, for example, to 
buy new furnaces, which will be a big help. Again, it will not happen, 
it will not happen until this disaster relief bill is passed:

       The vast majority of single family and multifamily dwelling 
     units sustained damage. Similar damages to privately owned 
     commercial properties occurred. Beyond the costs of the 
     physical damage, these businesses have also been forced to 
     deal with the economic loss associated with being unable to 
     operate. Many have been unable to reopen and those that have 
     to deal with having lost employees.

  That is another issue, Mr. President. I know that when I went to 
Breckenridge, it was just really poignant because there I met with all 
of these small business people. It was not a meeting that had been 
arranged. I just came up to look at the flooding. And as soon as I came 
into the community, all of these small business people came up to me--
and I am not putting them down at all, you understand--and they were 
absolutely desperate. I mean, there was just desperation and fear; they 
were really so frightened. And they were saying, look, we can't make 
this unless we get some assistance. And, Senator Wellstone, if you just 
give us loans, we can't cash flow those loans and we are not only 
worried about ourselves, we also are worried about our employees. Well, 
you know what? All the time I hear speeches given about small 
businesses, ``Oh, we love small businesses. They are just like family 
farmers.'' We love them in the abstract.

  You know what? We have a lot of small businesses in Minnesota and the 
Dakotas that have been flooded out. We have a lot of small businesses 
that want to rebuild their businesses. We have a lot of towns that 
depend on those small businesses.
  I hear my colleagues always say they are for the small businesses. 
You know what? The best way you can be for small businesses this week 
is to do something concrete, which is to stop playing games with this 
disaster relief bill, pass this piece of legislation, and get the 
assistance to people so they can start their businesses up again, so 
they can at least begin the process of rebuilding.
  The mayor goes on to say:

       The magnitude of the loss has forced the city to move 
     forward on the implementation of measures to minimize the 
     future possibility of a similar event occurring. At a time 
     when the city is forced to deal with the enormous expense of 
     reconstruction, it is also faced with considering the huge 
     expense of future mitigation.

  This is going to be a much bigger part of what we do in the future, 
which is mitigation, which is to try to figure out how to prevent this 
from happening in the first place. So people who are living in a 100-
year floodplain are not necessarily going to live there. We are going 
to relocate some people. We are going to relocate some businesses. We 
are going to do that in lots of parts of this country. That is going to 
be a bigger part of what FEMA and other agencies do as well.

       The city is currently in the process of planning the 
     construction of a dike-levee system which will ultimately 
     result in the need to relocate households residing on the 
     ``west side'' of the dikes. At this time, the final dike 
     alignment has not been established. However, it is evident 
     that at least 300 households will have to be initially 
     relocated and ultimately 650 to 700 households need to be 
     relocated. Businesses located in the immediate downtown also 
     will need to relocate, probably 10 to 15 commercial 
     properties.

  Mr. President, I have here somewhere a document where Kit Hadley, who 
heads up the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency, said the other day that 
this was one of the worst housing disasters in the history of our 
country. It is true. I mean, when whole towns evacuate, when people 
become refugees, when so many people are still homeless, people who 
worked hard all their lives, that is a housing disaster. It is a 
housing disaster, I say to my colleagues in the House and I say to my 
colleagues in the Senate, but especially in the House. It is time to 
get on with the work. It is time to provide some relief to people. It 
is time to provide people with some assistance.

       Businesses located in the immediate downtown also will need 
     to relocate, probably 10 to 15 commercial properties. 
     Planning is underway to establish sites to which the 
     business, primarily commercial and residential, relocations 
     will occur. Several potential sites for residential 
     relocation are currently being considered. Although no final 
     decision has been made on the business relocations, the B-N 
     triangle, a parcel situated immediately to the east of the 
     current downtown district, is being considered. At each site 
     to which the relocations will ultimately occur the 
     establishment of essential infrastructure will be necessary--
     sewer, sanitary and storm water, and streets. Damage to 
     infrastructure was citywide and included all of the major 
     infrastructural systems.

  Can you imagine this? Damage to the sanitary sewer, to the storm 
sewer, to the water system and the streets--all of that damage took 
place.

       Other public facilities, such as public buildings, were 
     also damaged, several beyond repair, including the city hall 
     and the fire department. Damages to park and recreation 
     facilities and buildings were severe and widespread. Among 
     the public structures which were destroyed were three 
     schools.

  Mr. President, this reminds me of a poignant moment. My colleague 
from the 7th Congressional District, Congressman Peterson, Collin 
Peterson, spoke at graduation--I heard about this--to the students of 
East Grand Forks who had been flooded out, whose school had been 
destroyed. He said to the students, ``You know, as much agony as you 
and your families have gone through, you have probably learned more 
than you could have ever learned in school''--and I think that is 
true--``about yourselves and, really, about your community.''
  I would add to Congressman Peterson that I think people in our 
communities have learned about all of the heroes and heroines that 
there are. Someday--as long as I am on the floor here for a while--I am 
going to write a book. Maybe I can get my colleague from Missouri to 
coauthor it. Because this would cut across all parties and all 
ideology, and he is like this in terms of what he believes in. What it 
would be, there was a book written years ago that should be immortal, 
by James Agee, Walter Evans was the photographer, and the name of the 
book was, ``Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.'' It's a long story. Forbes 
magazine had commissioned James Agee back in the 1940's to go, I think, 
back to Alabama to write about the pathology of poor

[[Page S5229]]

sharecroppers and tenant farmers. And he went there and lived with 
people. Mr. President, he, as opposed to his impression before he was 
there, and his thesis, he thought to himself, ``It's amazing that under 
these conditions, people are able to survive or even flourish. They 
should be famous.'' So he wrote a very different kind of book with 
wonderful, powerful photographs.
  We could do a book. The Chair is like this as well. Three of us could 
write this book, and we could title it, ``Let Us Now Praise Famous Men 
or Women.'' It wouldn't matter whether they were Democrats or 
Republicans. What it would be, it would be about men and women in 
communities who do wonderful things in their community. You know what I 
mean? I mean, it wouldn't be cynical; it would be uplifting. It would 
be about all the people in our country who do really wonderful work in 
their communities. No one knows them. They are not nationally famous or 
internationally famous. They don't do it for that. But they should be 
famous.
  Mr. President, only because I don't want to yield the floor, I would 
ask my colleague whether he would consider doing it with me, but then I 
would lose my floor privilege. But I am telling you, this would be a 
good book. There would be more Democrats profiled in the book than 
Republicans. But, you know, it would be more or less balanced. More or 
less.
  To be more serious, it wouldn't have anything to do with parties. But 
there are a lot of great people in this country. And there are a lot of 
people who are unsung heroes and heroines. There were a lot of people 
in East Grand Forks and Granite Falls and Montevideo and Warren and Ada 
and Grand Forks who are heroes and heroines. Boy, I don't know how--I 
say to a former mayor--I don't know how the mayors have been able to do 
this. But we have had Mayor Owens and Mayor Stauss. They have been just 
unbelievable. Pat Owens has been--people have seen her. She didn't want 
it. I know that it would have been her prayer to have never had this 
opportunity to be such a national spokesperson, because she would never 
have wanted for this to happen in her community. But she has so 
inspired people, she has, over and over again, called on people not to 
give up and called on people to have hope, and has said we can rebuild 
our communities.
  And now the big missing ingredient is our support, our assistance. We 
pass disaster relief bills when there are disasters. And this is a 
disaster. We pass emergency supplemental pieces of legislation when 
there is an emergency. I really think that we are doing one heck of a 
job in this Congress of souring people toward our political process by 
our failure to live up to just the sort of basic standard of decency.
  Look, I don't like to say this. I should not say it because, I don't 
know, maybe I am giving ground here. But, you know, if some of my 
colleagues, some of my colleagues on the other side, if they want to 
have a continuing resolution and they are going to put it on this 
disaster relief bill because it gives them leverage--you do have 
leverage. You do have leverage. When people are desperate, it gives you 
leverage. If that is what they want to do and send it to the President, 
playing the game, knowing he is going to veto it, do it. Do it today. 
Get it done. Send it to the President, he vetoes it, it comes back 
here, then take it off. Everybody can claim victory. Whatever you want 
to do. Just get it done and just get this disaster relief bill passed.

  This assistance from the Congress is not going to make people whole. 
It is not going to be enough. The only thing this does, it gets people 
at least a chance, at least a chance. Can we at least do that?
  Mr. President, this is one of many articles I see here. Maybe there 
will be an opportunity while I am on the floor. I know there were 
also--I am looking for the author of this. It was in the Star Tribune. 
I also know the Pioneer Press--I read of the work of Nick Coleman in 
the Pioneer Press, which was very, very powerful. I may want to read 
from that, either this afternoon or tonight or tomorrow. I will not be 
on the floor all day and night. But I will be on the floor a lot over 
the next couple of days, over the next couple of weeks--who knows, over 
the next couple of months. I would think we will get this done.
  But, you know what, my expectations are pretty low. I could not 
believe it, Mr. President. We had a press conference last week. I guess 
it was right before we went into recess. I said at this press 
conference--I guess it was Thursday, because we went into recess that 
Friday. I said that the House not sending us back something to work 
with, it was probably the worst--it was, for me--the lowest or most 
disappointing or worst time I had in the Senate. Because I thought that 
in the end, the goodness of people would come through. And even though 
people disagreed on the continuing resolution and whatnot, people would 
at least agree to agree on what we agreed on and get the disaster 
relief to people who were in such need.
  There was someone at this press conference, a journalist. There was 
some laughter. I said, ``Wait a minute. You know, I don't think I am 
being naive. I don't think this is naive at all to believe in the 
goodness of people, including my colleagues.''
  I love being a Senator. I get goose bumps when I have a chance to be 
on the floor of the Senate. I do. I never thought I would have a chance 
to be here. It is a huge honor, and every day you hope you will do your 
job well. You make plenty of mistakes, but you do your very best. It's 
a huge honor.
  I was a teacher for 20 years. I want young people to be interested in 
public service. I like the people I work with. I enjoy people here in 
the Senate and I enjoy people in the House, agree or disagree. But 
there comes a certain point in time where, you know, the indignation 
just kind of takes over. And I have just run out of patience.

  This is outrageous. This is outrageous. Frankly, I would say to 
people in the House of Representatives, who went into recess without 
sending that disaster relief bill over here and getting the job done, 
shame on you. Shame on you. Shame on you. Shame on you. It is not too 
much to expect for you to get some help, some assistance to people in 
our States who are in such pain and really need the help now.
  They really do. Time is not neutral for them. Time rushes on. I mean, 
if they do not get the help, people are going to leave or families are 
going to just be under such pressure and without any hope, who knows 
what happens? But I will tell you one thing--I will tell you one thing, 
Mr. President--I do not want to go back to East Grand Forks and some of 
the other communities and look at people and try to explain to them why 
in the world this Congress did not take any action. I just cannot 
explain it. And the one thing I do know is, even if I inconvenience 
some of my colleagues, the one thing I do know is there isn't going to 
be anybody in Minnesota that is going to be able to say I did not fight 
for this, win or lose.
  So I get to speak on the floor of the Senate now. And I will continue 
to speak on the floor of the Senate for a while. And then I just want 
to put my colleagues on notice: Everything you bring on the floor of 
the Senate, everything you bring this week and next week, I will look 
for leverage, I will somehow get to the floor, and I will do everything 
I can to put the focus back on getting emergency assistance to people 
in Minnesota and the Dakotas and our other States as well.
  You know, we have some distorted priorities here when people want to 
play games with the lives of people who are in such pain, in such 
agony.
  This is an article from the Star Tribune, Minnesota Star Tribune. It 
is called ``Stains of Pain.'' Mr. President, the top of it reads, ``The 
people at ground zero of the Red River flood want desperately to get on 
with their lives. But how do they do that when they are adrift in such 
wreckage?''

       The people at ground zero of the Red River flood want 
     desperately to get on with their lives. But how do they do 
     that when they are adrift in such wreckage?
       Grand Forks, N.D.--On Belmont Road, a fading sign propped 
     against a sagging mound of clothes, furniture and appliances 
     proclaims, ``We are not what we own.''
       At the Darbyshire house on Polk Street, a battered house 
     knocked off its foundation, a pink ``condemned'' notice is 
     taped on the front door. Look down from the notice and you 
     look into what was the Darbyshires' basement.
       In north Grand Forks, in the Riverside neighborhood, a 
     bright yellow house is stained dull brown to the eaves. The 
     Riverside Park swimming pool is a sewage lagoon.

[[Page S5230]]

       Across the Red River, on the northwestern edge of East 
     Grand Forks, a girl plays by the street, listless and 
     unsmiling. She tosses a scrap of something into the air, 
     watches it fall, then tosses it again.

  I am going to read that again. ``Across the Red River, on the 
northwestern edge of East Grand Forks, a girl plays by the street, 
listless and unsmiling.''
  Mr. President, you are talking about a little girl listless and 
unsmiling. I guess so, given what she and her family have been through.
  Maybe what we need to do is we need to understand that these words or 
these articles, this is not just a distraction, this is not just 
statistics, we are talking about people's lives.
  This little girl, Mr. President, listless and unsmiling, should not 
have to stay listless and unsmiling. Little children should be smiling. 
Little children should be happy. Little children should be looking for 
their future. We ought to give this little girl and her family, Mr. 
President, some reason to expect that will happen. And yet we cannot 
provide disaster relief for people who have been flooded out of their 
homes? We cannot provide support for little children? Sounds kind of 
melodramatic, Mr. President.

  Mr. President, I do not want to lose my floor privilege.
  Mr. President, ask unanimous consent that my colleague from Kansas be 
able to give a tribute to Senator Strom Thurmond, after which I then 
would retain my right to the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is 
so ordered.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair.
  I wonder if I could ask my colleague how long he might want to speak. 
It is fine for me however long he wants.
  Mr. ROBERTS. I would tell the distinguished Senator from Minnesota 
that I do not intend to speak more than about 10 minutes.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank my colleague. Whatever time he needs. I just 
wanted to know how much time.
  Mr. ROBERTS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas.
  Mr. ROBERTS. First, I want to thank my colleague from Minnesota for 
letting me have this time. I know that he feels very strongly about 
this debate and wanted to make so many pertinent comments.
  (By unanimous consent, the remarks of Mr. Roberts are printed in 
today's edition of the Record under ``Tribute to Senator Strom 
Thurmond.'')
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from 
Minnesota has the floor.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, let me, before entertaining a question 
from my colleague, a request from my colleague, let me read from an 
article. And I see my colleague from North Dakota, Senator Dorgan, is 
on the floor. Let me read from an article, ``Stains of Pain,'' dealing 
with Grand Forks, ND. This was May 25, 1997.

       It has been five weeks since the river swamped these towns. 
     The river is back in its banks now, officially below flood 
     stage, far from homes and businesses and children at play.
       But the water marks remain everywhere.

  Mr. President, I was just thinking, I know some of my colleagues want 
to speak, but I also see my colleague here from North Dakota. I wonder 
whether it would be possible, Mr. President, I want to read this 
article, and then if there are some requests about speaking, perhaps we 
could do that, although I then want to make it clear that on unanimous 
consent, my resumption on the floor not be counted as a second speech.
  Now, I want to make it clear to my colleagues if they put in that 
request, that would be part of my unanimous-consent agreement. I also 
make a request, I know my colleagues want to speak about some other 
things, but, for certain, if colleagues want to speak about Senator 
Strom Thurmond, I do not want to interrupt that in any way, shape or 
form. If colleagues want to speak about Senator Thurmond, fine.
  Otherwise, I know there are things a few people want to cover. What 
we are doing here today is saying we want to focus on this and this 
will be it. This is the issue. This is the action that should be taken.
  Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I am happy to yield to the Senator.
  Mr. DORGAN. I would like to come and speak for a bit. I understand, I 
think the Senator from Massachusetts does wish to speak a tribute to 
Senator Thurmond. I suspect the Senator from Missouri wishes to pose 
some comments on the debate today on the bill on the floor. Perhaps we 
can find a way to do that. I will come back and discuss the disaster 
supplemental bill at an appropriate time, probably in the next 30 
minutes or so.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I say to my colleague from North Dakota, that would be 
fine. I would like to finish reading this article and then accommodate 
colleagues, but I also ask unanimous consent I maintain my floor 
privilege. If I could finish this, let me go on with this article.

       On Polk Street, a block off Lincoln Drive, Paul Dilling 
     stands in the front yard of his ruined house, which was 
     submerged to the rafters. He stands by his water mark: A U.S. 
     flag, muddy and torn, which he salvaged from the muck and 
     stuck on a stick.
       But it has been five weeks of misery for Dilling.

  That is really the point I am trying to make. It has been 5 weeks of 
misery. People have been through misery. They have been devastated, and 
now they wait for this Congress to pass the disaster relief bill. That 
is why I am saying this should be the first item of business for us.
  It is interesting, there is a St. Paul Pioneer Press editorial of May 
23, with a headline ``Congress Can't Resist Political Gamesmanship.''

       Congress has breezed out of town, leaving Washington for a 
     long holiday recess. Despite evidence to the contrary, 
     congressional bigwigs figured satisfying their political egos 
     was more important than expediting flood relief legislation 
     that would aid, among other backwaters, Minnesota and the 
     Dakotas.

  I know that my colleagues may want to have some floor time now, so I 
will be very brief. But let me just for a moment develop this point, 
and then I will keep my floor privileges. This is from the St. Paul 
Pioneer Press.
  Now, I have not always agreed with the editorial positions of the St. 
Paul Pioneer Press. Sometimes I have, sometimes I have not. That is 
beside the point. Sometimes the St. Paul Pioneer Press will take 
editorial positions closer to the positions of the distinguished Chair 
or my colleague from Missouri. It is an interesting paper, and they, 
like any good editorial page, have their own integrity and they say 
what they think is right. But I just want to make it clear that this is 
not some sort of editorial written by Democrats trying to figure out a 
way to criticize Republicans.

              Congress Can't Resist Political Gamesmanship

       Congress has breezed out of town, leaving Washington for a 
     long holiday recess [right before Memorial Day recess]. 
     Despite evidence to the contrary, congressional bigwigs 
     figured satisfying their political egos was more important 
     than expediting flood relief legislation that would aid, 
     among other backwaters, Minnesota and the Dakotas.

  We have had enough of this political gamesmanship. We have had enough 
of it. We have people in our States that are hurting. We have children 
that are homeless. We have children that have had to live through this 
devastation. We have families under duress. We have families under 
pressure. And the people in Minnesota and the people in the Dakotas and 
the people in some of the other States have every right to believe that 
the goodness of the Congress would come through and we would provide 
them with the assistance they so badly need to rebuild their lives.
  You have people in the House of Representatives that go on vacation 
as opposed to providing this assistance. That is why I am on the floor 
today. That is why I am staying on the floor. And now I hear that this 
week we may not pass this. This is outrageous.
  One more time: If you want to have a debate about a continuing 
resolution budget, debate it. If you want to have a debate about parks 
and environmental legislation, debate it. But do not put it on a 
disaster relief bill. Do not hold good people that deserve our support 
hostage to your grand political strategy.
  Today, it is an inconvenience. We have a bill on the floor. It is a 
slight inconvenience. People wanted to have a discussion on amendments, 
and we are not doing that today. It is not a major inconvenience. But 
you know what? I actually think, and I do not

[[Page S5231]]

mean this in an arrogant way, I think I am doing some of the leadership 
in the House of Representatives a favor, because if, in my own small 
way, I can put any pressure on them to do the right thing, they will be 
better off, because they look terrible. They look terrible. You could 
do a poll in Missouri, Massachusetts, Minnesota, anywhere in the 
country, and 99.9 percent of the people in the country would say this 
is outrageous. Can't you people at least provide help to people when 
they need it? That is what this is all about.
  I say to the St. Paul Pioneer Press, I am actually being a pretty 
good politician. I say first to the Star Tribune, both newspapers, this 
is a very good article, and there are many others. This editorial of 
the St. Paul Pioneer Press is right on the mark.
  Now, this hurts. ``Despite evidence to the contrary, congressional 
bigwigs * * * ''--I hate to hear that. But you know something, it is 
too easy to do. Mr. President, I do not like it when my colleagues are 
called congressional bigwigs.
  I tell you something, you are bringing it on yourselves. I actually 
do not know if I should use the word ``leadership'' in the House, 
because I think it is hard to say there is any leadership when you 
cannot move forward on a disaster relief bill.
  But I tell you something, here is a headline in the Star Tribune, 
``Flood Relief''--and I say to my colleague from Massachusetts, I will 
finish up in a moment--``Flood relief, a political football, takes 
another bounce in D.C.''

       Congressional skirmishing delayed consideration of flood 
     relief legislation Thursday, and the $5.5 billion aid package 
     will not be approved until Congress returns from the Memorial 
     Day recess early next month.

  That is from Washington bureau chief Tom Hamburger, Star Tribune.
  Well, Mr. President, I have plenty of articles to read from. I have 
applications from some of our cities that have been devastated. I will 
have time to continue to talk about what has happened, but I will tell 
you that if my being on the floor of the Senate at least for a while, 
at least for the rest of the afternoon, and then, as I say, all week 
and the weeks to come, every time I can come out here, any leverage I 
have to come out here and talk about this, I will keep pressing and 
pressing and pressing and pressing and pressing.
  My colleagues are going to hear about people in East Grand Forks and 
Ada and so many towns, they will get tired of hearing about it. But you 
know what? I do not really care, because this is just outrageous.
  I have some very good people I work with that are on the floor now, 
representing a broad spectrum of political opinion, Senator Kennedy and 
Senator Ashcroft, but I tell you something, this is not a great moment 
for the Congress, and I think it is outrageous what the House of 
Representatives did. This disaster relief bill has to get passed, and 
it has to get passed this week. The only way I know to try and do 
everything I can, there is no guarantee, is just to raise a lot of 
heck--I did say heck--on the floor of the U.S. Senate. I will continue 
to do so.
  Now, I have other points I want to make, but I see the Senator from 
Massachusetts. I wonder if the Senator may have an inquiry he would 
like to make. I still have the floor, Mr. President, and I want to make 
it clear that if I do take any question from the Senator or give the 
Senator any time, I ask unanimous consent if the Senator wants to 
speak, either Senator, I ask unanimous consent my resumption on the 
floor not be counted as a second speech.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Reserving the right to object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator reserves the right to object. The 
objection is heard.
  The Senator from Minnesota has the floor, and the Senator from 
Minnesota is recognized.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I am pleased to yield for a question, and, Mr. 
President, let me say before yielding, I do not understand the 
objection, but I would like to let colleagues speak about Senator 
Thurmond and cover some other matters, and I am pleased to do that as 
long, again, as I get unanimous consent resumption on the floor not 
being counted as a second speech.
  My colleague has objected, I guess, for now.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, what I would like to propose, and ask the 
Senator if he would agree, is that I be recognized for a period of no 
more than 15 minutes. I will try to make it closer to 10 minutes. And, 
subsequently, I see Senator Ashcroft, who is the principal sponsor of 
the underlying legislation which we are debating, and I know he has 
been here longer than I have and has some comments and also some 
requests in terms of perfecting amendments, I hope he would be offered 
time to be able to do that, and, subsequently, the Senator from 
Minnesota would be recognized and that there would be no objection to 
his speaking at that time.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Is this a question?
  Mr. KENNEDY. Just trying to work this out in a way that is 
accommodating. I do not know whether the Senator from Missouri wanted 
to be included in the time.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I construe this as a question from my 
colleague from Massachusetts. And I have said before that I would be 
willing to enable the Senate to have the Senator speak and topics but 
that I want to do it within this time limit, and if the Senator from 
Missouri wants to speak as well but only with the unanimous-consent 
agreement that my resumption on the floor not be counted as a second 
speech.
  Is the Senator asking a question?
  Mr. KENNEDY. If the Senator will yield further, pending the 
agreement, which I hope would take place between the Senator from 
Minnesota and the Senator from Missouri, I would like to be able to ask 
consent to speak for not more than 15 minutes, and at the time I finish 
the Senator from Minnesota be recognized.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I will 
not object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. I would like to just clarify where we are 
right now.
  Only the Senator from Minnesota has the floor.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. That is correct.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. And only the Senator from Minnesota may make a 
unanimous-consent request.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair.
  I ask unanimous consent that my colleagues at a minimum be allowed to 
speak in testimonial to Senator Strom Thurmond and about Senator Strom 
Thurmond as long as my resumption on the floor not be counted as a 
second speech.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Objection.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from Minnesota has the floor.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, that is fine. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator yield for a question? He can yield for 
a question.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I am pleased to yield for a question in one moment.
  Let me make it clear--and I will yield for a question in a moment--
what has happened here. I just want my colleagues to know that I am out 
here for very good reason. They would be out here if it were their 
States. The Senator from North Dakota is going to join me.
  But, Mr. President, I have been willing to ask unanimous consent that 
Senators who want to speak--at least, the Senator from Massachusetts 
wanted to cover something else as well--but at least speak about Strom 
Thurmond be able to do so, who has served for so many decades in the 
Senate, and as long as my resumption on the floor not be counted as a 
second speech.
  It is a reasonable unanimous consent. My colleague from my Missouri 
has not agreed to do that. I just want Senators to understand what is 
going on here.
  I am pleased to go on and speak. I just think it is a shame that 
Senators who want to speak at least about Senator Thurmond are not able 
to do so.
  Mr. President, I will go on. I believe my colleague has a question.
  Mr. KENNEDY. I just want to apologize, if the Senator will yield.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I am pleased to yield for a question.
  Mr. KENNEDY. If the Senator would not share my regret to Senator 
Thurmond for being unable to make these comments, I was unable to 
because of Senate business on the floor earlier

[[Page S5232]]

today and intended to make these comments this afternoon. I hope he 
would understand that they are included in the Record, and I regret 
that I am denied the opportunity to make them here on the floor. It is 
a very unusual process of procedure in terms of senatorial courtesy. 
But if that is the way that is going to be, so be it.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. President, let me continue.
  Mr. President, let me now return for a while. We will get back to the 
disaster relief. Let me now turn to S. 4. I will speak some about S. 4.
  Mr. President, let me also say to Senator Thurmond, before I do so, 
that I would like----
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I would like to call the Senate to order 
under the Pastore rule.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota will confine his 
debate to the specific question pending before the Senate.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I will be pleased to talk about S. 4, 
and will do so.
  Mr. President, we have here what is called the Family Friendly 
Workplace Act. Mr. President, in all due respect, it is hardly friendly 
to families.
  Mr. President, as I have mentioned earlier, we have to approach 
legislation sometime in the sense of history. There was once an 
exchange I had on the floor of the Senate with my colleague from 
Missouri where we talked about a song, ``Which Side Are You On?'' 
Florence Reese actually wrote it. Florence Reese was a great troubadour 
for working people and for unions, especially mine workers.
  Mr. President, when we were able to pass the Fair Labor Standards Act 
in the 1930's, that was an enormous step forward for working people.
  This piece of legislation, Mr. President, essentially wipes out 
almost 60 years of people's history.
  Mr. President, for those who are watching this debate, since we are 
going to talk about this bill for a while before we again talk about 
disaster relief by the rules that I am now under, for those people that 
are watching this debate, one of the things that was most important 
about the Fair Labor Standards Act was the idea of the 40-hour week. 
The idea was that if you worked overtime you would get overtime pay.
  Mr. President, I am speaking without notes. So I don't remember the 
exact figures. But I believe somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 
percent of those households with incomes under $20,000 a year depend on 
overtime pay.
  So, Mr. President, one of the things which is a dear principle here 
is that there is no way as a Senator from Minnesota, which is a State 
that believes in economic justice, that I am going to let any piece of 
legislation, or at least to the best of my ability I am going to try to 
prevent it from overturning the Fair Labor Standards Act.
  So, Mr. President, if you work overtime, you ought to get overtime 
pay. That is a cherished principle. This piece of legislation wipes 
that out. And it is called the Family Friendly Workplace Act?
  Well, Mr. President, let me just make it clear that if you have a 
situation where you now have a piece of legislation that says that if 
people work 50 hours or 60 hours or even theoretically 70 hours a week, 
yes, they might only work 20 hours the next week under this 
legislation, or 30 hours, or whatever but they don't get any time and a 
half off. So it becomes a pay cut.
  That is what it is all about. This isn't the Family Friendly 
Workplace Act. This is the Paycheck Cut Act.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I actually won't yield for a question right now.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. So this piece of legislation, Mr. President, which is 
supposed to be friendly to families establishes a new framework. It is 
not the 40-hour week.
  Second of all, you have a flextime provision which says that you work 
overtime and then you can take some time off but it is hour for hour. 
You don't get time and a half off.
  Mr. President, that hardly represents a family friendly workplace.
  Mr. President, I regret what I just said to my colleague. He asked me 
to yield for a question. I certainly will. I got caught up a little bit 
in sort of the, you know, kind of anger from a couple of minutes ago. I 
am not being at all gracious.
  Mr. President, I will continue to speak, but if my colleague has a 
question, I think he did, I will be pleased to respond.
  Mr. ASHCROFT addressed the Chair.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Did my colleague ask me to yield for a question?
  Mr. ASHCROFT. I did ask him to yield for a question.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I am pleased to yield for a question.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri is recognized for a 
question.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. I ask the Senator from Minnesota, Mr. President, if he 
is aware of the fact that under the bill that the only way you can be 
working more than 40 hours a week without overtime compensation is to 
do so as a result of a voluntary agreement similar to the voluntary 
agreement which is entered into now by Federal employees with their 
employers, whereby you can schedule a 40-hour week to average over a 2-
week period.
  Such agreements, in the Federal system for example, provide the basis 
for people to work 45 hours in the first week and 35 hours in the 
second week, and have every other Friday off. And absent that kind of 
voluntary written agreement scheduled in advance, no one can be asked 
to work more than 40 hours in a week without being paid overtime.
  As a matter of fact, absent a specific voluntary agreement, all 
work--all work--is conducted under the bill as if it were conducted 
without the bill's existence; that only with voluntary agreements is 
there any change in the way the bill is done. And the voluntary 
agreement regarding overtime work when it provides for more than 40 
hours in 1 week is pursuant to the flexible schedule that is now 
allowed as a benefit for Federal employees.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, let me respond to my colleague's 
question.
  Let me first of all just say that I have spent enough time as a 
community organizer, and I have spent enough time with working people, 
many of whom are nonunion workplaces. One big difference, of course, is 
that with Federal employees and public employees that a much larger 
percentage of the work force are unionized and that I know that what in 
theory can look voluntary and look like a partnership isn't always the 
case.
  Whereas, in theory it would look like an employer couldn't say to an 
employee, ``Look. You know, here is my proposition. I want you to work 
50 hours this week, and, yes, that is 10 hours overtime, but you get 30 
hours off next week. That is what I want you to do.'' In theory, the 
employee doesn't have to do it. But anybody who knows anything about 
the reality of many people in terms of what they deal with at the 
workplace knows that they don't exactly have a lot of power, and they 
are not exactly in a position to say no, especially when that job might 
be the only job there and they have to put food on the table for their 
kids.
  People put up with a lot.
  Mr. President, lest anyone think that I am some sort of devoted to 
class warfare, let me just examine the facts.
  Last year the Department of Labor found violations of current 
overtime law in 13,687 cases involving 170,000 workers. They awarded 
over $100 million in back pay. The Department's Wage and Hour Division 
has a current backlog of approximately 40 percent of annual complaints.
  In the garment industry, an investigatory survey conducted by the 
Department in Los Angeles last year revealed noncompliance with current 
overtime law in 55 percent of our shops.
  In our subcommittee we watched the videotape feature from CBS news 
which chronicled a ``Battle Against Overtime,'' apparently conducted 
systematically by one of the country's largest supermarket chains. The 
news item reported on the company's alleged practice of coercing 
employees to perform work off the clock; that is, without any pay in 
order to avoid paying overtime.

  Mr. President, these practices may not be the norm for most employers 
but they do demonstrate the need to protect against a bill which will 
provide employers with a tool which they could use to avoid paying 
overtime.

[[Page S5233]]

  So I have no doubt that my colleague means exactly what he says. 
There isn't anybody that believes anything other than that about it. He 
means what he says. But, what looks good in theory doesn't work in 
practice. That is the problem.
  That is why, Mr. President, in the House of Representatives in the 
piece of legislation that they passed the only thing you have is the 
comptime. With comptime you get an hour and a half off for the hour 
that you worked overtime, or you get an hour and a half in pay.
  That is why this piece of legislation has been called, even by some 
of the people in the House that supported that bill, too extreme. And 
it is. Because, Mr. President, what you are going to have here when you 
do away with a 40-hour week and you get into this 80-hour-week 
framework is all sorts of potential for abuses of power.
  Mr. President, if we didn't have the record that I just read to you 
about some of the existing abuses, and the way in which there is forced 
overtime right now, I wouldn't worry about it. But, Mr. President, that 
is the reality. That is the reality. That is one of the problems.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I would be pleased to yield for a question.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator yields for a question.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. The Senator cites 13,000 cases that were resolved or 
filed in the last year. It seems to me, that demonstrates that there is 
an enforcement mechanism in place, and that when there are abuses that 
are undertaken, either under the current law, which obviously isn't 
perfect, or else there wouldn't be any abuses, you know, I think that 
is really a wrong statement because you have abuses even under the best 
laws. The key is whether you have enforcement. Given the fact that you 
have enforcement and that you have double penalties under the law that 
has been proposed so that you double the risk for the employer, given 
the fact that the law talks about the fact that it shall be against the 
law to have either direct or indirect coercion or intimidation, and 
given the fact that when you define what coercion is in the bill, you 
find out that it is to intimidate, threaten, coerce, includes promising 
to confer or conferring any benefit such as appointment, promotion or 
compensation, or affecting or threatening to affect any reprisal such 
as deprivation of appointment, promotion or compensation, don't you 
think that the measures in the bill provide a safeguard, and that if 
there are violations they could be pursued just as aggressively under 
the new framework, which is a framework that is already shared by the 
Federal Government employees? Could not the enforcement personnel also 
enforce this kind of law, especially with elevated penalties and the 
increased description of coercion?

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I say to my colleague, he raises a 
couple of important questions and good questions. The fact that the law 
does not work so well now does not mean that we now make the existing 
law even weaker with the hope that somehow it will work better.
  That is my first point. My second point, Mr. President, is that we 
have a backlog. We have a significant backlog of cases, and my 
understanding is that another problem with the bill is that not only 
does the bill not exclude certain categories of workers, like people in 
the garment industry that should be excluded given the existing record, 
but you don't have the existing woman- and man-power enforcement. We 
are going to need more of that.
  Third, I say to my colleague, I think what he is talking about would 
be helpful especially if we wanted to pass a piece of legislation and 
one of the areas where we would really have to toughen this up is we 
have to make sure that there is not any discrimination here.
  I talked about this earlier. What I was talking about earlier is what 
many people as they now come to find out--at first I think people 
really liked the bill when they first heard about it. They liked the 
bill because my colleague is on to something important and he is trying 
to do something I think important. And that is, people were saying 
look, you know, if there is a way that we could have more flexibility 
and could be able to spend more time at home and we could have the 
flexibility to get the comptime and time-and-a-half off instead of 
time-and-a-half wages, we would like to have that option.
  But what people are deathly afraid of, and for good reason, is what's 
going to happen is that in the absence of some sort of protection here 
against discrimination, there is going to be no guarantee that all too 
many employers are going to basically say, well, Senator Ashcroft and 
Brian Ahlberg and Paul Wellstone, there are three of you. Now, Brian 
Ahlberg and Senator Ashcroft, you two folks, you want overtime work and 
you are willing to take time-and-a-half off but not time-and-a-half 
pay. We will give you the overtime work because, as an employer, as a 
company, I don't want to give you the time-and-a-half pay.
  That is a huge problem. If we do not have some sort of a way in which 
we can guarantee that you will not have that discrimination, then a 
whole lot of families that are struggling to make ends meet may not be 
able to get that overtime pay that they depend upon.
  So, Mr. President, let me just make it crystal clear that the bill's 
penalties right now for coercion do not cover the discrimination that 
we are worried about. And I would just make it clear that one of the 
things we might want to do is accept the Kennedy amendment which was 
turned down in committee that deals with discrimination.
  The bill's penalties now apply to this kind of discrimination, and we 
are making progress. But, Mr. President, I am puzzled--I see my 
colleague on his feet, and I am pleased to take another question if he 
has one, but let me just say to my colleague that I am puzzled by the 
current approach we are taking.
  It doesn't trouble me because I am able to speak about what I think 
should be the priority of this Congress, which is getting disaster 
relief to people in communities in Minnesota and the Dakotas, and I 
will be back on that at 5:20 or whenever I can, but I would say to my 
colleague, I am puzzled with the approach taken here because this bill 
is not going to pass, and yet my colleague is really--I mean, the last 
thing I want to do is say something that is going to offend him. I 
mean, I will in terms of different debate, but I am not going to do it 
personally, because he is for real. He believes in what he is doing.

  It seems to me there is a way you could really get the flexibility 
for the employees and you could really accomplish the goals of that, 
but I do not get to say that because he is the author. He probably 
feels he knows best. But I am telling you right now, if you do away 
with the 40-hour week, you are not going to get the bill passed.
  You have this 80-hour, 2-week framework which we do not have in the 
House--their bill is more moderate--you are not going to get this bill 
passed. You have the flextime where you only get 1 hour off for 1 hour 
overtime, you are not going to get this bill passed. And if the 
penalties that my colleague talked about for coercion do not cover this 
kind of discrimination, then you are not going to get this bill passed.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. May I ask the Senator a question.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I would be pleased to yield for a question.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. May I ask the Senator, does he think the Senators on 
his side of the aisle intend to offer amendments that we can begin to 
process providing the kind of relief to the private sector that people 
in the Government area have in terms of these flex benefits? We have 
flextime benefits. We have comptime benefits. Flexible time, in 
particular, is available to governmental employees. In the 1996 survey 
conducted by the Census Bureau, only 6.6 percent of all hourly paid 
women, for example, got overtime pay in a typical work period, and if 
we are only going to deal with comptime, we are dealing with a very, 
very small number.
  Now, when you talk about Federal Government employees and their 
ability to have flexible working arrangements, we are talking about a 
broad population, because flextime applies to those who do not normally 
get overtime work. Are there any--does the Senator know of any Senators 
on his side of the aisle who will be offering amendments to get that 
done?
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, a couple of points I would like to make

[[Page S5234]]

to my colleague. The first one is, we will get to some of those 
amendments. We filed amendments. But I have to say to my colleague that 
we are not likely to get to those amendments until we pass a disaster 
relief bill. So the first answer to his question is just that; I do not 
think we are going to get to these amendments until we pass the 
disaster relief bill.
  The second point I would make to my colleague is that I will be very 
interested in all of these figures. I do know that in, roughly 
speaking, 60 percent of the cases of families with incomes under 
$20,000 a year, you have a worker who depends upon overtime pay. And 
whether or not we are talking about women or men, it seems to me this 
is terribly important. Of women who work overtime, 38 percent of hourly 
workers earning overtime pay are women--38 percent. And 11.6 million 
women work over 40 hours each week.
  Let me repeat that--11.6 million women work over 40 hours each week. 
This is 22 percent of the working women in this country. And 6.2 
million women work over 48 hours each week. This is 12 percent of 
working women. And 2.3 million women work over 59 hours each week. This 
is the 4 percent of working women. So let me just----
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Will the Senator yield for a question.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Let me just make the point if I could, Mr. President, 
it is really quite astounding, and it says something very fundamental 
about where we are in this debate. Thirty-eight percent of hourly 
workers earning overtime pay are women; 11.6 million women work over 40 
hours each week. This is 22 percent of working women.
  Mr. President, this is not surprising. This is not surprising at all 
because we have got in our country--let me just make this clear. In our 
country we have a paradox. On the one hand, we have this affluence 
which we are grateful for, but on the other hand, we have many families 
who are still unable to make a decent living and raise their children 
successfully, and many women are working full-time and many women are 
working overtime.

  You have an alternative bill, if we wanted to have some give-and-take 
discussion, you have an alternative bill of Senator Baucus, Senator 
Kerrey, and others which makes it clear that what we do is take in part 
what the Senator from Missouri has done, but we extend it and we say, 
look, there are going to be penalties and we are going to have some 
protection against discrimination so that an employer cannot say to a 
woman who is working, or, for that matter, a man, look, we will give 
you overtime if you take comptime but we will not give you overtime 
pay.
  That is unacceptable. It is just simply unacceptable. And, Mr. 
President, that is where we say, if you will, in the words of Florence 
Reese, which side are you on? That is where we draw the line.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. May I answer that question.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I would be pleased to take a question in one second. 
Let me just finish this. Let me just finish it real quickly.
  I have to go back to this case of whose side are you on. We are on 
the side of working families when we make it clear that the 40-hour 
week is protected. And if you work overtime, you are entitled to time-
and-a-half pay. We are on the side of working families when we make it 
clear that if you want to get some time off to be with your families 
and you have worked overtime, you should get time and a half. We are on 
the side of working families when we have a piece of legislation that 
makes it crystal clear that no employer can discriminate and put people 
in a position where the only kind of overtime work they are going to 
get is if it is your comptime and not overtime pay.
  We are on the side of working families when we make it clear that for 
family and medical leave reasons, if you have banked your time and you 
have 30 hours of banked time and now you have a child sick or you have 
a parent that is ill, you can take that time off. You do not have to 
ask for permission.
  None of those features are in this legislation right now, and 
therefore this legislation in its present form will go nowhere. And, 
yes, there will be amendments on the floor of the Senate, and, yes, 
there will be efforts to improve this bill. But as long as I have the 
floor, there are not going to be any amendments until we get to the 
disaster relief bill.
  Now, I am not going to be able to stay on the floor forever, but that 
is going to be the point.
  Now, Mr. President, I want to make it clear I can only yield for 
questions. So I cannot yield--I think the Senator mentioned he wanted 
to answer, he wanted to answer what I have said, and I would ask the 
Chair, am I correct, the Senator--I think he may have meant it 
differently. The Senator said I would like to answer the question. Am I 
correct I can't let the Senator answer any question; I can only yield 
to a question? So, Mr. President, I would be pleased only to yield for 
a question from my colleague.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct. Does the Senator from 
Missouri have a question?
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Yes, I do. I will try to phrase this in the form of a 
question. When the Senator from Minnesota asks whose side am I on, he 
indicated that 38 percent of the hourly workers, overtime pay workers 
were women. That really means that 62 percent are men. Almost twice as 
many men in the equation are overtime workers as are women and that 
really does not talk about the number of women generally who are 
workers that rely on overtime or have the chance to get overtime.
  My question is, for the vast majority of workers that do not get 
overtime at all, and especially for women who are outranked about 2 to 
1 by men in terms of the privilege of getting overtime, setting all 
those aside, you are doing something for the people who get overtime, 
and it is true that your proposal addresses those people and there are 
two men in that group for every woman in that group. That is what your 
own statistics basically show. So you are doing something for mostly 
men who get overtime. But for the people who do not get overtime and 
still have sick kids and still have families that have trouble and 
still need to have flexibility in their workplace, what are you 
proposing for those individuals? And are there going to be amendments 
to this legislation that propose to do something to give them 
flexibility?

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Let me just respond to my colleague in two different 
ways.
  First of all, a pay cut where people are no longer able to get 
overtime pay or may be put in a position that they do not get overtime, 
time off for overtime worked doesn't help anyone. It does not help 
working women. It does not help working men. And it does not help 
working families. It is, if you will, elementary.
  Second of all, as a matter of fact, if you look at the alternative--
this is what puzzled me about my colleague here. If you look at the 
alternative that is being presented by Senators Baucus and Kerrey and 
other Democrats, and I would assume there would be Republican support, 
as a matter of fact, that is exactly what we are talking about, which 
is what you have in this alternative. You have comptime--that is what 
it is about. It does not abolish the 40-hour week. It does not amount 
to a pay cut. It is time-and-a-half off for every hour you have worked 
overtime. It provides the protection against the discrimination so 
employers are not able to only give overtime to people who take 
comptime as opposed to people who need the overtime pay. It makes sure 
that you get the flexibility that we say the employees want.
  That is part of it. The other part of it is, in all due respect to 
some of the employers in our country, not all of them --there are, of 
course, many great employers--the fact is--and in the subcommittee we 
heard testimony to this effect.
  The fact of the matter is, right now there are all sorts of 
opportunities for flexibility. You don't have to overturn the Fair 
Labor Standards Act. People can work 4 10-hour days and then take a 
Friday off or a Monday off; they can work 9-hour days and work half a 
day Friday or take every other Friday off; people can come in at 7 and 
leave at 3; they can come in at 10 and leave at 6. There are employers 
right now that provide employees with that flexibility.
  The real problem is that a lot of employers don't give employees that 
flexibility. So, all of a sudden I become a

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little skeptical, as a Senator from Minnesota, where we put a real 
value on economic justice and work and families, when the very people 
who do not give the employees the flexibility they could right now, 
come in and testify to the need for this bill. I remember we had 
testimony from a representative of the National Federation of 
Independent Businesses saying, ``Look, we need to do this because we 
can't afford to pay overtime.'' All of a sudden I am saying to myself, 
``My gosh, this is not family friendly. This is going to lead to the 
functional equivalent of pay cuts. This is not about giving people the 
choice and flexibility they need.''
  Mr. President, we had an amendment in subcommittee. It was turned 
down. It's part of the alternative. It works like this: If you bank 
comptime and, for example, you have 20 hours that you have earned, it's 
your time. Now, if you have to go to your child's school, if you need 
to go visit with the principal or a teacher, or you need to take care 
of a family member, you can use your accumulated comptime to get that 
time off. We could do that. Then we would have real employee 
flexibility.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be able to yield for 
the Chair to make an appointment and that I not lose my right to the 
floor and that my resumption on the floor not be counted as a second 
speech.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Roberts). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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