[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 122 (Monday, September 8, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11173-S11174]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               RECOGNITION OF THE ACTING MINORITY LEADER

  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The assistant minority leader.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, my friend from Wyoming is absolutely 
correct. We will not agree to setting aside any amendments. As I 
announced last week, we on this side want to move this bill. Last 
Tuesday, when we started after the August break, we said we would like 
to have a day where we could have a vote on overtime. We said last 
Tuesday we thought the best time would be Tuesday, a week from that 
day. We spoke to the majority leader. Of course, we spoke to Senator 
Specter on many occasions about that. We do not want anyone to think we 
are scheduling the Senate's business around four Democratic Senators 
who are running for President. Since the Presidential process started, 
we never asked any special favors. We thought we were doing everyone a 
favor here by telling--in fact, telegramming them--when we thought that 
vote should take place.
  It is possible there can be an effort made to table the Harkin 
amendment on overtime. This is an important piece of legislation. This 
one appropriations bill is, I think, about $30-odd billion. It deals 
with issues of extreme importance.
  We want to move this legislation. But also for the men and women of 
this country, we feel it is so important to have an up-or-down vote on 
overtime. The President has made a decision that he wants to change the 
way overtime is paid to the men and women in this country. It is only 
the American way that we would simply have a vote as to whether or not 
the President is right.
  We believe people of good will will vote with us. It is clear the 
reason we have suddenly not been able to have a vote is because the 
majority leader recognizes they will lose and we will win, but that 
shouldn't be a cause to bring down a whole bill. But in fairness, we 
believe we should have a vote on this issue.

  I am only speaking for myself. It is hard for me personally to 
comprehend. These bills go to conference. There will be a conference 
with the House. Of course, if we don't like what comes out

[[Page S11174]]

of conference, we will see what happens.
  But this is a very important bill. I think people will have to look 
very closely at what they want to do once this bill comes out of 
conference.
  I understand why they are not allowing us to vote on that. It is 
simply because they don't have the votes. But you can't win everything 
around here. We are entitled to win once in a while. Don't simply take 
away our ability to vote. That, in effect, is what is happening. It is 
really too bad. I hope when the conference is held with Republican 
Senators, they will see that.
  We should be able to vote tomorrow. We contemplated finishing this 
bill tomorrow, Tuesday. That is what we had contemplated. We have a lot 
of amendments. The managers could agree to some of those. Some of them 
simply won't come up. Of course, one of the reasons there are a lot of 
amendments by both sides, if they offer them, is in effect to protect 
their sides in case something comes up they don't understand.
  I believed we could finish this bill tomorrow. Having gotten nothing 
done on Friday, and now nothing today, it is really too bad. I don't 
believe we will be able to finish the bill on Tuesday.
  Senator Domenici and I have worked on the Energy and water bill for 
many years. We have a good idea how quickly that bill will move along. 
It is certainly not as big dollarwise as this bill, but it is $25-plus 
billion. It deals with issues that are important. The difference 
between our bill and the Labor-HHS bill is that all of the money we 
have in our bill is discretionary spending.
  I hope we can get to that, move along and get the appropriations 
bills done. I hope we don't have a situation where we have nine bills 
in an omnibus bill. We tried that. It wasn't the best way to go. We had 
11 bills in the omnibus bill. We have nine bills we still have to 
approve.
  I am disappointed the majority leader has taken this tack. I hope 
after meeting with colleagues this evening there will be a change.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, speaking purely on my own behalf but 
hopefully reflecting some of the feelings of the leader, we are 
terribly disappointed that until the time is set exactly as the time 
the Presidential candidates want to have the vote, no other business 
can happen in this Chamber. That isn't how this ought to work. We ought 
to be proceeding on other amendments. We ought to be wrapping this 
thing up and getting down to what evidently could be the last vote. It 
needs to happen.
  I am terribly disappointed the overtime rule has been made into such 
a political hot issue. It is a proposed rule. The way rules work around 
here is they get published so there can be comments. There have been 
80,000 comments. This amendment doesn't stop the rule. At this point, 
it stops the review of those comments. The Secretary of Labor can't 
even look at the 80,000 comments to see if she made a mistake in the 
rule.
  It appears there are some concerns about the rule and the way it is 
written. But it can't even be rewritten, if this amendment passes. This 
amendment takes away the right of the Secretary to review those 80,000 
comments so changes can be made, if needed, to the rule. That is how we 
do rules around here.
  To take the money away and stop that process I don't think is the 
right way to do it. We have a process in place. We even have a process 
for overcoming the process. That is the Congressional Review Act. If 
the Secretary does not pay the attention needed to it, we have the 
right to overturn the rule. In fact, we have the obligation to overturn 
rules. That is why we did a Congressional Review Act.
  I hope we will let her go ahead and read the 80,000 concerns and see 
what changes need to be made, see what people are thinking about the 
rule. Obviously, there are people with concerns. I hope the rule can be 
revised to take care of those concerns. It has not been revised in 50 
years. Tell me that business has not changed in 50 years. Tell me that 
employment has not changed in 50 years. It has.
  One of the provisions of this is raising the amount you have to be 
covered by overtime from $8,600 to $22,000. That needs to be done. 
People make a lot more money now than in 1950.
  I hope we can go ahead with the rule. I hope we can go ahead with 
other amendments as we have been doing for the last week, setting aside 
amendments so we can debate amendments. All the amendments are still in 
a queue and we still have to take care of those amendments. It does not 
keep them from being voted on but keeps them just from being voted on 
in that necessary order, although you can call for regular order and 
put it right back in the queue in the same place. It is possible to get 
votes. In fact, it is impossible to avoid votes around here.
  As stated, if there were a motion to table, it could be brought up 
again. There will be a vote. Now, whether the leader gets to set the 
exact time for the vote or whether the minority sets the exact time for 
the vote evidently is the question for debate. I hope we can get past 
this little rift and move on and cover some more amendments. I was 
hoping we could have some votes today so tomorrow we could finish up. 
If we were going to finish anyway tomorrow, we could finish early 
tomorrow so we could move on to the other bills. I hope that wedge will 
not remain in there and we can make some progress.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I know the Chair wants to report the bill, 
but let me say we did not want an exact time. We put something in the 
proposed unanimous consent agreement. We just said Tuesday. We thought 
it would be better to do it after the party conferences. Anytime 
Tuesday would be fine with us.
  I certainly understand the Congressional Review Act. Senator Nickles 
and I wrote that. That is our legislation now in the law. It has been 
passed and used several times, and it will be used this week, also, on 
the TV ownership. It is an important piece of legislation and one of 
the things I am very proud I have been able to work on during my tenure 
as a Member of Congress.
  I say to my friend, for whom I have the greatest respect, the Senator 
from Wyoming, we have worked together on a number of issues on a 
bipartisan basis. We recognize overtime has been paid by virtue of a 
statute in this country for more than 50 years. We think that is 
appropriate.
  If the President wants to change this, he should change it by asking 
the committees of Congress to do that. We could have hearings and go 
forward on that basis. To have the President act as if he is the king 
of this country and just set rules any way he wants, we do not agree 
with that. That is why the men and women of this country are really 
upset and why we had 80,000 comments.
  The Senator from Wyoming and I are not going to make that decision. 
We are not in a position to do that. We are here representing others. I 
appreciate the courtesy of the Senator from Wyoming this afternoon, as 
always.

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