[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 16]
[Senate]
[Pages 21442-21447]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




  DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION, AND 
               RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2004

  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
resume consideration of H.R. 2660, which the clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (H.R. 2660) making appropriations for the 
     Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and 
     Education, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending 
     September 30, 2004, and for other purposes.

  Pending:

       Specter amendment No. 1542, in the nature of a substitute.
       Byrd amendment No. 1543 (to amendment No. 1542), to provide 
     additional funding for education for the disadvantaged.
       Akaka amendment No. 1544 (to amendment No. 1542), to 
     provide funding for the Excellence in Economic Education Act 
     of 2001.
       Mikulski amendment No. 1552 (to amendment No. 1542), to 
     increase funding for programs under the Nurse Reinvestment 
     Act and other nursing workforce development programs.
       Kohl amendment No. 1558 (to amendment No. 1542), to provide 
     additional funding for the ombudsman program for the 
     protection of vulnerable older Americans.
       Kennedy amendment No. 1566 (to amendment No. 1542), to 
     increase student financial aid by an amount that matches the 
     increase in low- and middle-income family college costs.
       Dodd amendment No. 1572 (to amendment No. 1542), to provide 
     additional funding for grants to States under part B of the 
     Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
       DeWine amendment No. 1561 (to amendment No. 1542), to 
     provide funds to support graduate medical education programs 
     in children's hospitals.
       DeWine amendment No. 1560 (to amendment No. 1542), to 
     provide funds to support poison control centers.
       DeWine amendment No. 1578 (to amendment No. 1542), to 
     provide funding for the Underground Railroad Education and 
     Cultural Program.
       Harkin amendment No. 1580 (to amendment No. 1542), to 
     protect the rights of employees to receive overtime 
     compensation.

  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Enzi). The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REID. 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. REID. Mr. President, last week the Labor Department announced we 
had lost almost 100,000 more jobs in the month of August. Almost 9 
million American people are unemployed. Almost 2 million of these 
people have been out of work for more than 6 months. As bad as these 
numbers are, the real story is even worse. These figures don't include 
1.7 million people who want work but have given up looking for it and 
are no longer counted in

[[Page 21443]]

the unemployed listed by the Labor Department. They don't qualify.
  The problem is especially frightening among minority groups. 
Unemployment among African Americans is double the rate for whites. It 
is much harder for Hispanic and Asian Americans to find jobs.
  Some may have heard the economy in Nevada is booming. We are so 
fortunate. It isn't as bad as it is in some places. But ``booming'' is 
not the proper term for it. People in Nevada, as good as it is, are 
having a lot of problems. We have more than 90,000 people out of work. 
These numbers are grim, and they don't even begin to tell the story.
  Every time we lose a job, it threatens another family's American 
dream--the dream of owning a home, building a strong community, giving 
children a good education.
  Some have said the economy is recovering. But is it recovering when 
we are still losing jobs to the tune of 100,000 a month? We know job 
loss is not a normal function of the business cycle. Job loss reflects 
more serious underlying problems with our economy such as the alarming 
loss of manufacturing jobs. In the last 3 years, we lost 16 percent of 
our manufacturing jobs. This is serious, and we need to take it 
seriously. We need a plan to create more jobs.
  Unfortunately, the administration's only plan seems to be more of the 
same. Since January of 2001, we have lost more than 3 million jobs. 
This is the first administration since Herbert Hoover to lose jobs, and 
our President says more of the same.
  We have to do something different. Instead of a continual program of 
tax breaks for those who have the most, we have to create jobs for 
those who want to work. We can create jobs by building new schools, 
roads, bridges, by rebuilding our decaying sewer systems, and by 
replacing broken water pipes. Any State in the Union qualifies for new 
schools, new roads, new bridges, and, of course, rebuilding our 
decaying sewer systems and replacing broken water pipes.
  All over America there are plans no longer on the drawing boards. 
They are ready to be executed. They just need the money. We can create 
jobs. For every billion dollars we spend on a public works project, we 
create 47,000 high-paying jobs. We can also create jobs by promoting 
new technology to produce energy, and we can do this by having a view 
that we should do more with renewable, nonpolluting sources. This will 
not only create jobs, it will benefit our environment and help us 
achieve energy independence.
  We can save existing jobs by helping our financially burdened States 
so they do not have to raise taxes on working families and small 
businesses. We can reverse this trend. We can save the jobs we have and 
help create new ones. We have to be innovative.
  I hope the President will consider joining with this Senator and 
others who want to push what we call the American Marshall Plan; that 
is, have the Federal Government spend money to create jobs. These jobs 
are not Government jobs; they are private sector jobs.
  I repeat, for every $1 billion we spend, there are 47,000 high-paying 
jobs, and the spinoff from those jobs is unbelievably large. That is 
what we need to do. America needs it. We need it to create jobs, but we 
also need it to make America a better place to live with better roads, 
bridges, dams, cleaner water, and able to adequately dispose of our 
sewer problems.
  Mr. President, I hope we can do some of these activities in the 
immediate future, and I hope we are joined by the administration.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Amendment No. 1580

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, last week I offered an amendment to the 
pending appropriations bill that would prevent the administration from 
implementing a new regulation that could result in millions of American 
workers losing their overtime pay protection.
  My amendment is very straightforward. It would allow the 
administration to increase overtime pay protection for working 
Americans but not take it away from those who currently have that 
protection.
  I was quite surprised, as a matter of fact, to come to work yesterday 
and find that on Friday, after we had debated this appropriations 
bill--we adopted a couple of amendments on the appropriations bill last 
Friday, and, we all know, at the end of the day, the leader always has 
unanimous consent requests agreed to that have been worked out on both 
sides. I was quite surprised to see that last Friday, the Senate passed 
unanimously, by consent, a sense-of-the-Senate resolution supporting a 
balance between work and personal life being in the best interest of 
national worker productivity and families.
  S. Res. 210 was adopted last Friday. It is sponsored by Mr. Hatch, 
Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Dodd, Mr. Alexander, and I assume others. It expresses 
the sense of the Senate that supporting a balance between work and 
personal life is in the best interest of national worker productivity 
and that the President should issue a proclamation designating October 
as ``National Work and Family Month.''
  I will read a few of the clauses that we all voted for last Friday:

       Whereas the quality of workers' jobs and the supportiveness 
     of their workplaces are key predictors of job productivity, 
     job satisfaction, commitment to employers and retention. . . 
     .
       Whereas employees who feel overworked tend to feel less 
     successful in their relationships with their spouses, 
     children, and friends, and tend to neglect themselves, feel 
     less healthy, and feel more stress;
       Whereas 85 percent of U.S. wage and salaried workers have 
     immediate, day-to-day family responsibilities off the job;
       Whereas 46 percent of wage and salaried workers are parents 
     with children under the age of 18 who live with them at least 
     half-time;
       Whereas job flexibility allows parents to be more involved 
     in their children's lives, and parental involvement is 
     associated with children's higher achievement in language and 
     mathematics, improved behavior, greater academic persistence, 
     and lower dropout rates. . . .
       Whereas nearly all working adults are concerned about 
     spending more time with their immediate family. . . .
       Resolved, That--
       (1) it is the sense of the Senate that--
       (A) reducing the conflict between work and family life 
     should be a national priority; and
       (B) the month of October should be designated as ``National 
     Work and Family Month'';
       (2) the Senate requests that the President issue a 
     proclamation calling upon the people of the United States to 
     observe ``National Work and Family Month'' with appropriate 
     ceremonies and activities.

  We adopted this resolution last Friday, unanimously. Maybe some did 
not know about it. I did not know about it either, but I support it. It 
sounds very good: It is the sense of the Senate that reducing the 
conflict between work and family life should be a national priority.
  We have this resolution, and now we have the proposal by the 
administration, rolled out this spring under cover of darkness--there 
was not one public hearing anywhere in the Nation--which changes rules 
and regulations that will affect overtime protection for over 8 million 
American workers and their families.
  It is interesting that the administration did not ask us to change 
the law. No, they just want to do it by rules and regulations.
  We cannot have it both ways. We cannot have a sense-of-the-Senate 
resolution saying--we all say--we have to reduce the conflict between 
work and family life, and it ought to be a national priority; that 
people need to spend more time with their families, and then let the 
administration implement these changes in rules and regulations which 
mean that people will have to work longer hours with less pay. That is 
exactly what it means: longer hours with less pay.
  I found it so interesting that we have been debating my amendment--it 
came up last week. I guess we talked about it a couple of times during 
the week. We

[[Page 21444]]

talked about it at length on Thursday. We spoke about it on Friday, and 
yet on the very same day we adopt a sense-of-the-Senate resolution 
unanimously saying we want to reduce stress on families. We want to 
recognize that workers need more time with their families. Well, OK, 
here is a chance to not just have a sense-of-the-Senate resolution but 
to take concrete action to make sure that happens by telling the 
administration that we are not going to permit these changes in rules 
and regulations that would take away overtime protection for up to 8 
million people.
  Again, a quick summary of the Bush administration's proposal is 
simply this: Eliminate the 40-hour workweek by allowing employers to 
deny millions of workers overtime pay, workers who are currently 
guaranteed overtime pay protections under the Fair Labor Standards Act 
passed in 1938. This proposal is antiworker. It is antifamily. It is 
the antithesis, the total opposite, of what we passed on Friday as a 
sense-of-the-Senate resolution. It is an attack on America's middle and 
lower income workers. It will not create one job. In fact, just the 
opposite; it will kill a lot of jobs.
  Why do I say that? Because employers right now know that if workers 
work more than 40 hours a week, they have to pay time and a half 
overtime. So in many cases, they might find it better to go ahead and 
hire someone new, hire another person, rather than paying that kind of 
overtime pay.
  Let's say one changes the rules of the game. No longer is one 
protected by time and a half. That means their employer can say they 
need them to work 43 hours this week, 44 hours, 45, but guess what. 
They do not get any more money. They get the same salary they had 
before. They just do not get any more money.
  Now, what is an employer going to do? Why, here is a new pool of 
labor that is not going to cost him a cent. So why would they go hire 
someone new to work when they can take an existing person and say work 
longer at no extra pay?
  Employers will have a financial disincentive to hire new workers if 
they can force current workers to work these longer hours without pay.
  Who are we talking about? We are talking about nurses--again, we have 
a nursing shortage right now and we are trying to get more nurses--
police officers, firefighters, retail managers, insurance claim 
adjustors, journalists, medical technicians, paralegals, surveyors, 
secretaries, and so on. For most of those men and women, the overtime 
pay they earn is not spare change. It is not for frivolous spending. 
Sometimes it is essential to help pay the mortgage, feed the children, 
pay for college, and save for retirement.
  In fact, I have a recent letter from the National Association of 
Police Organizations which represents thousands of law enforcement 
officers from across the country. They oppose the administration's 
proposal because, as they said:

       Under such regulations, America's State and local law 
     enforcement officers, already strained by countless overtime 
     hours ensuring community safety from terrorist threats, could 
     lose their basic benefit accorded to them for their efforts.

  A few days ago President Bush was asked a question about my 
amendment. He said that basically I was wrong. He said that the 
proposal would increase overtime coverage for low-income workers.
  Interestingly enough, part of the proposal does raise the income 
threshold, and I will get into that in a minute. So he says it is going 
to cover more people. The other part of the proposal, though, in 
changing the rules, would result in up to 8 million people losing 
overtime pay protection.
  By raising this income threshold, most of the people who are already 
getting overtime pay are already over that threshold so they are going 
to be covered anyway. They are covered now. They are going to be 
covered then. So it is really not going to increase the number of 
people paid overtime pay because they are already getting it. But do 
not take my word for it. This is what industry and their consultants 
had to say about it from Hewitt Associates. On their Web they say their 
clients include half of the companies on the Fortune 500 list. This is 
what Hewitt Associates said:

       These proposed changes likely will open the door for 
     employers to reclassify a large number of previously 
     nonexempt employees as exempt--

  Meaning exempt from overtime pay.

       The resulting effect on compensation and morale could be 
     detrimental, as employees previously accustomed to earning, 
     in some cases, significant amounts of overtime would suddenly 
     lose that opportunity.

  The administration argues the proposal they are putting out is simply 
to update and clarify current regulations under the Fair Labor 
Standards Act. Again, the Society for Human Resource Management, which 
touts itself on its Web site as the world's largest association devoted 
to human resource management, said the following:

       This is going to affect every workplace, every employee and 
     every professional.

  I will explain a little bit about how some of these rules work right 
now. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, hourly workers are 
generally guaranteed overtime pay when they work more than 40 hours a 
week. Many salaried workers are also eligible for overtime pay under 
this law. The administration's proposal will make it much easier for 
employers to deny salaried workers overtime pay protection. The result: 
Millions of salaried workers earning more than $22,100 a year would be 
denied overtime under the proposed changes. This proposal would keep 
workers from spending time with their families without compensation.
  Now, we said last week we want workers to spend more time with their 
families. One of the ways to do that is if they have guaranteed 
overtime.
  Maybe the employer says, well, I do not need an employee to work 
overtime because I have to pay time and a half. Well, now if I do not 
have to pay them time and a half, they can work 44, 48 hours a week and 
I do not have to pay anything extra.
  I have always thought at least--and I think it has sort of been 
generally accepted as a kind of a social contract in this country--that 
we wanted people to spend more time with their families, but if an 
employer needed someone to work overtime, that they would be 
compensated for that at more than just their regular pay because we 
were taking away the time they could spend with their family that would 
be beyond their normal workweek, and therefore we paid time and a half, 
or on Sundays sometimes double time, for that kind of overtime.
  Right now, American workers already work longer hours than any 
industrialized country and nearly all Third World countries. This is a 
chart that shows that. U.S. work hours increase, over the years, while 
those in other industrialized nations decrease. Here is the change in 
annual average hours worked from 1979 to 2000. We see in the United 
States it went up 32 hours. In Japan, it has fallen 386 hours; Germany, 
fallen 489 hours; France, fallen 244 hours; Italy, 88; United Kingdom, 
107 hours; Canada, minus 31 hours; Australia, minus 44 hours. This is 
from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2001.
  Already, our workers are working more than their counterparts in all 
of these countries, from Japan to Australia to the United Kingdom, 
France, and Germany. They have made a decision in those countries that 
one can still have high productivity and still give workers time off to 
be with their families, and they have a better social system and 
stronger families because of it, and because workers are not working so 
much they are more productive in the time they do work. In America we 
just keep on working people more and more, longer hours all the time. 
So already American workers are working longer hours.
  Under this proposal put out by the Bush administration to take away 
overtime protection, in a few years this number is going to be 
skyrocketing. As I said before, it is not enough that we export all of 
our manufacturing jobs out of this country to Third World countries; 
now we are importing Third World labor standards into this country: No 
labor protections and no overtime protection, just work however

[[Page 21445]]

long your employer wants you to work without overtime pay protection.
  Major women's organizations, including the National Partnership for 
Women and Families and the American Association of University Women, 
oppose the administration's proposal because they fear an increase in 
mandatory overtime would take time away from families and disrupt the 
schedules of working parents as well as impose additional childcare and 
other expenses.
  I said last week that the first wave of people who will be hit, if 
this proposed change goes through, will be women. This charts show what 
I mean and why it will be women who will be hit first and hardest. I am 
not saying men won't be hit; they will be. But I am saying the first 
wave of people hit the hardest by taking away overtime pay protection 
will be women.
  If we look at the labor force participation rate for men and women 
from 1948 until today, we see participation of women has climbed 
dramatically. Women's participation in the labor force climbed from 
slightly over 30 percent to over 60 percent, and participation rates 
for men consequently have declined from about 88 percent to about 74 or 
75 percent. So it is women who have come into the workforce in the last 
30 or 40 years.
  We see some other statistics here. We find that 61.3 percent of 
married couples with children were dual earners in 2002.
  In 1975, 47.3 percent of women with children were in the labor force. 
In 2002, it was 71.8 percent.
  Women with children under 3--in 1975, only 34 percent of women with 
children under age 3 were in the workforce. Now it is over 60 percent 
of women with children under 3 who are in the workforce. And 66 percent 
of women with children worked 40 hours or more in 2002.
  Who are these women? Bookkeepers, paralegals, clerks, nurses, 
physical therapists, social workers, et cetera, those who are really 
doing the nitty-gritty hard work to keep our society together. These 
are the facts right here. Now we are going to tell these women: Sorry, 
we know you have children in daycare, we know you have to pay a lot for 
childcare, but we need you to work longer hours per week.
  Maybe in the past, if these women had worked longer hours, they got 
time and a half for overtime, but now they will not; they will get the 
same salary rate. Now they will have to continue to pay for more 
childcare. Yet they will not get 1 cent more for their labors.
  This chart also shows what is happening with middle-income families. 
Remember last week we passed a sense-of-the-Senate resolution saying it 
is the sense of the Senate that reducing the conflict between work and 
family life should be a national priority? We recognized:

       Whereas nearly all working adults are concerned about 
     spending more time with their immediate family;
       Whereas 85 percent of U.S. wage and salaried workers have 
     immediate day-to-day family responsibilities off the job;
       Whereas employees who feel overworked tend to feel less 
     successful in their relationships with their spouses, 
     children, and friends. . . .

  That is what we said last week on the Senate floor.
  Here is what is happening with our middle-income families. Average 
weeks worked per year by middle-income families with children: In 1969, 
the number of average weeks worked per year by middle-income families 
with children was 78.2. Look at it now, 97.9 weeks per year, average, 
for a middle-income family in America with children. That is why I 
showed this first chart, where you see the United States is going up in 
hours worked and all the other countries are going down. And you wonder 
why American workers and their families are stressed out, why we are 
having family strife in this country, why families are breaking up, why 
the divorce rate gets higher, why our kids don't have parents around 
after school to help nurture them. We wonder why we are having such 
trouble in our society. Because we are not letting our working parents 
spend more time with their families.
  Columnist Bob Herbert recently wrote in the New York Times:

       You would think that an administration that has presided 
     over the loss of millions of jobs might want to strengthen 
     the protections of workers fortunate enough to still be 
     employed. But that's not what the Administration is about.

  Since the Senate overwhelmingly supported the Hatch resolution last 
Friday, which I just quoted from--passed unanimously--I would think it 
would be a no-brainer to support my amendment saying the administration 
cannot take away overtime pay protection for millions of Americans. But 
I don't know what the situation is right now with the leadership. We 
wanted to vote on it today. We wanted to vote on it today, but I guess 
the leadership on that side, on the majority side--I don't know what 
they are deciding right now, whether or not we can vote on it today or 
not.
  But we are all here.
  The Senator from Pennsylvania earlier mentioned something about 
Democratic Presidential candidates being gone. That is true. They are 
running for President. The Senator from Pennsylvania sought the 
Presidency himself once. So did this Senator from Iowa. You know what 
it is like when you have to be out there on the campaign trail and 
attend to your duties here. But it just so happens everyone seems to be 
here today. So why don't we vote today? Why is there an empty Chamber? 
Why don't we move ahead and vote--now, later, I don't care when--and we 
can wrap up this bill by tonight.
  Again, I don't know why we would want to make it easier to deny 
American workers overtime pay. Why would we want to make it easier? It 
seems to me we would want to make it tougher. If we want people to 
spend more time with their families, reduce that kind of stress, you 
would think we would want to make it tougher, harder to deny American 
workers overtime pay. But the proposed regulations of the Bush 
administration would make it easier. I don't know. Why would we want to 
do that? How would this help the economy? How does it strengthen 
families? How does it help people who need to work overtime for extra 
pay?
  I read into the Record last Friday a statement by a worker--I forget 
what State she was from--who had a disabled child, and she was saying 
she needed the overtime pay for her upkeep and to keep her child home 
and she relied on her overtime pay.
  Here it is. Michael Farrar, from Jacksonville, FL. He and his wife 
need overtime pay to support their 21-year-old disabled son Andy who 
lives with them. Michael Farrar said:

       When I took this job, it was clear that I was expected to 
     work more than 40 hours per week. And I agreed to it because 
     I knew I'd need the money. We'd be devastated without the 
     overtime now--we have no more corners to cut.
       When I took this job it was clear that I was expected to 
     work more than 40 hours a week. And I agreed to it because I 
     knew I would need the money.

  Michael Farrar of Jacksonville, FL.
  Sheila Perez of Bremerton, WA said:

       I began my career as a supply clerk earning $3.10 an hour 
     in 1976.
       I entered an upward mobility program and received training 
     to become an engineer technician with a career ladder that 
     gave me a yearly boost of income. It seemed though that even 
     with a decent raise each year I really relied on overtime 
     income to help make ends meet. There are many more single 
     parents today with the same problem. How does one pay for the 
     car that broke down or the braces for the children's teeth?
       When I as a working mother leave my 8-hour day job and go 
     home, my second shift begins. There is dinner to cook, dishes 
     to wash, laundry, and all the other house work that must be 
     done which adds another 3 to 4 hours to your workday. When 
     one has to put in extra hours at work, it takes away from the 
     time needed to take care of our personal needs. It seems only 
     fair that one should be compensated for that extra effort.

  These are not my words. These are the words of Sheila Perez of 
Bremerton, WA.

       It seems only fair that one should be compensated for that 
     extra effort. Overtime is a sacrifice of one's time, energy 
     and physical and mental well-being. Compensation should be 
     commensurate in the form of premium pay as it is a premium of 
     one's personal time, energy and expertise that is being used. 
     It has been a crime that many engineers and technicians were 
     paid less than even their straight time for overtime worked. 
     It has never made sense to me that

[[Page 21446]]

     the hours I work past my normal 8 are of a lesser value when 
     those additional hours are a cost of my personal time.

  What do we say to Sheila Perez? What do we say to Michael Farrar? I 
think what we say to them is that we understand. We passed a sense-of-
the-Senate resolution last Friday. That is what we did. We passed a 
sense-of-the-Senate resolution expressing the sense of the Senate that 
workers are over-stressed and overworked. They are concerned about 
spending more time with their families. We said it is the sense of the 
Senate that reducing the conflict between work and family life should 
be a national priority. Yes, Michael Farrar, that is what we said. Yes, 
Sheila Perez, we said that on your behalf last Friday. But, Michael 
Farrar; but, Sheila Perez, today, on Tuesday, the week after, we are 
not going to do one single thing to stop the Bush administration from 
changing rules and regulations that will take away your overtime pay 
protection.
  It is not what we do, Ms. Perez or Mr. Farrar, that is important 
around here. It is what we say that is important. We said: We are on 
your side. We understand your problems. Gosh, we think it should be a 
national priority. But don't count on our votes to make it happen. 
Listen to what we say but don't watch what we do around this place.
  It is time for us to stand and be counted and to put into form what 
we said last week the facts are. These are all nice words on a piece of 
paper. This is what we believe without actions to back up our beliefs.
  What I am asking is the Senate now back up those nice words that we 
said last Friday in this sense-of-the-Senate resolution--back them up 
with a strong vote saying that we are going to protect overtime pay 
protection. We are not going to permit overtime pay protection to be 
taken away. If you do not to strengthen it, or if you want to extend 
overtime pay protection for more workers, that is fine. But don't take 
it away from the workers who now have it.
  That is what this amendment that I have offered is all about. I am 
hopeful we can get to a vote on it today. We are here to vote. It is 
Tuesday. It is already 11:30. We haven't had one vote today. Why not? 
Why don't we vote on this? It is the pending amendment. I don't know 
why we can't vote on it. But evidently, for some reason, the Republican 
majority doesn't want to vote on my amendment. The majority, for some 
reason, doesn't want to bring it up for a vote. Why, I don't know. 
After all, Republicans, as well as Democrats, voted unanimously last 
Friday saying that it is the sense of the Senate that reducing the 
conflict between work and family life should be a national priority. 
Why we don't want to vote on this today, for the life of me, I can't 
understand.
  I end my comments now, but I will be back to talk more about this 
overtime issue because it is a national issue. It is one that strikes 
at the very heart of the middle-income and middle-class families in 
this country. It is an issue that strikes at the very heart of our 
productivity as a country. It is an issue that strikes at the very 
heart of what kind of society we want to be and to become. It strikes 
at the very heart of working women who have children and who want some 
time, as Ms. Sheila Perez said, to attend to personal needs and to a 
second shift at home with their kids and family. That is what it 
strikes.
  It is time for us to do our duty, to do our job, to stand up for 
working families and to stand up for the men and women of this country 
who are now being overworked and underpaid. If this proposed change in 
regulations goes through, it will mean more overwork and more underpay. 
That is the wrong direction for our country. It is time for the Senate 
to say no to these changes in regulations that would take away overtime 
pay protection for millions of middle-income Americans.
  I yield the floor. 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. FEINGOLD. 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. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, the Department of Labor overtime 
proposal is the latest in a series of assaults on working Americans 
that began in the early days of this administration. Right out of the 
gate, the President made it his first legislative priority to overturn 
a Federal ergonomics standard that was more than 10 years in the 
making. I am also concerned about the approach this administration has 
taken on the collective bargaining process through its use of the 
Railway Labor Act and the Taft-Hartley Act. We have also seen the 
reintroduction in Congress of so-called ``family friendly'' workplace 
bills that we all know really seek to rob working families of vital 
overtime pay.
  In March of this year, the Department of Labor proposed a regulation 
that builds upon these efforts to tear down worker protections by 
denying millions of Americans vital overtime pay. This proposed rule 
would change the three tests that must be met to declare a worker 
exempt from the wage and hour protections of the Fair Labor Standards 
Act, thus opening the door to denial of overtime benefits to more than 
8 million workers who currently are entitled to this extra pay for 
working more than 40 hours per week.
  Under current law, a worker must meet each of three tests to be 
declared exempt from overtime protections. First, workers earning less 
than a certain level each week cannot be exempted. Second, workers must 
be paid a set salary, not an hourly rate, in order to be exempt. 
Finally, only workers whose job responsibilities are primarily 
classified as administrative, professional, or executive can be exempt 
from overtime protections. The proposed rule would reduce the 
educational levels required to be classified as a professional or 
administrative employee, thus allowing employers to substitute as 
little as 2 years of work experience for education when considering 
whether an employee should be entitled to overtime protections.
  I am deeply concerned that the administration continues to 
characterize these changes to overtime protections as ``small'' or 
``insignificant.'' During an August 31 interview with National Public 
Radio, the Secretary of Labor said of the proposed rule, ``it's not an 
overtime regulation. We have many, many overtime regulations. This is 
not one of the major ones. This is a small part of the Fair Labor 
Standards Act that pertains to white collar workers. So it's got 
nothing to do with blue collar workers.''
  The wage and hour protections of the FLSA are intended to protect all 
workers from being forced to work excessive hours without additional 
compensation. The Secretary's attempt to differentiate between white 
collar and blue collar workers in such a way as to imply that only blue 
collar workers are protected by the FLSA is troubling.
  According to the Economic Policy Institute, EPI:

       The revised regulations--would dramatically increase the 
     number of workers whose jobs are classified as professional, 
     administrative, or executive and therefore ineligible for 
     overtime pay. The blurring of the lines between managerial 
     and hourly staff, coupled with a downgrading of the 
     educational standards required to exempt employees from 
     overtime pay, will give employers a powerful incentive to 
     switch millions of workers from hourly to salaried status in 
     order to reap the benefit of a newly created pool of unpaid 
     overtime hours.

  In essence, this rule would create a larger force of employees who 
can be required to work longer hours for less pay. This could also mean 
fewer opportunities for paid overtime for the workers who would remain 
eligible for it.
  The administration has claimed that they are trying simply to update 
and clarify the FLSA as it applies to white collar employees. According 
to the Secretary:

       ``[W]hat we are trying to do is clarify a regulation that 
     has not been modernized in well over 50 years. And the 
     ambiguity in the regulation is impeding the Department's 
     ability to enforce the law so that we cannot protect workers 
     who need protection. So what we are trying to do is to 
     guarantee vulnerable, low-wage workers the overtime that they 
     deserve, and we also want to provide clarity so that business 
     people know what they're supposed to be doing.


[[Page 21447]]


  It seems to me that the FLSA is abundantly clear: if a worker who is 
covered by the act works more than 40 hours per week, he or she is 
entitled to time-and-a-half pay for each extra hour worked.
  According to the EPI, the administration's proposed changes go far 
beyond simple clarifications. ``It is troubling that such dramatic 
losses in overtime protection are being proposed as a means of bringing 
clarity to the regulations and reducing litigation. As [our report] has 
shown--the proposed rule is rife with ambiguity and new terms--that 
will spawn new litigation.''
  The Secretary's contention that the FLSA has not been updated in 50 
years is just plain false. Congress has amended and revised the FLSA 
numerous times since its enactment in 1938, most recently just 3 years 
ago. I regret that this administration continues to characterize 
Federal labor protections as ``outdated'' and claims that it seeks to 
``update'' them for the new century, when, in fact, many of its 
proposals would roll back protections for workers around the country.
  Who are the 8 million workers who will be affected by this proposed 
rule change? According to EPI, 257 ``white collar'' occupational groups 
could be impacted. EPI did a detailed analysis of the effect of this 
rule on 78 of those occupational groups and found that 2.5 million 
salaried employees and 5.5 million hourly workers would lose their 
overtime protections under the proposed rule. And that is less than 
half of the occupational groups that would be covered by this rule 
change.
  By broadening the FLSA wage and hour exemptions, the Department of 
Labor is seeking to deny overtime benefits to a wide range of workers, 
including police officers, firefighters, and other first responders, 
nurses and other health care workers, postmasters, preschool teachers, 
and social workers, just to name a few.
  I am deeply troubled that the administration would propose a rule 
that would deny overtime benefits to the people who put their lives on 
the line each and every day to protect our communities and those who 
work in health care professions, which, of course, as we know, already 
are facing severe staffing shortages. I am also disappointed that the 
Office of Management and Budget issued a ``Statement of Administration 
Policy'' document on this bill that states that the President's 
advisers would recommend that he veto this important appropriations 
bill if the Harkin amendment is adopted. I think it is irresponsible to 
threaten to veto a bill that includes crucial funding for labor, 
health, and education programs because the administration, apparently, 
is digging in its heels about a proposal that would deny millions of 
Americans overtime pay. I regret that this administration is so 
determined to undermine labor protections for American workers that it 
would actually threaten to deny funding for schools, health care, job 
training, and other programs that it regularly claims are a priority.
  I urge my colleagues to support working families by supporting the 
Harkin amendment.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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