[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 13]
[House]
[Pages 18142-18143]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




      NEW OVERTIME RULES THREATEN PAY CUT TO MIDDLE CLASS FAMILIES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 20, 2004, the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to draw 
attention to an impending pay cut to middle class families. As my 
colleagues here in the Congress know, the House voted last week on a 
bipartisan basis to stop a new policy that President Bush has put in 
place to change the definition of who qualifies for overtime pay.
  For years it has been clear that in certain types of work you would 
earn time and a half pay for every additional hour you work if it is 
more than 40 hours in 1 week.
  Overtime pay is not a minor thing to these families. It often 
accounts for more than 25 percent of middle class families' paychecks.
  It helps foremen, assistant managers, journalists, registered nurses, 
and workers who perform relatively small amounts of supervisory or 
administrative work. It helps salespeople who perform some amount of 
work outside the office, chefs, nursery school teachers, workers in the 
financial services industry, insurance claim adjusters, funeral 
directors and embalmers, law enforcement officers, athletic trainers 
and many others from all different parts of the workforce.
  But the Bush administration has changed all of that and 6 million 
middle class families are now at risk of losing their overtime pay.
  Democrats in Congress have been leading the fight to stop the 
President and to stop the pay cut, but the leaders in Congress and the 
White House are doing everything in their power to see that we do not 
win.
  The whole issue is a very curious thing.
  The President looked out at our economy, at the mounting job losses, 
at the declining real wages and the rising costs of health care and 
college tuition, and he saw trouble. He believed that the threat to the 
middle classes was that they were earning too much overtime pay, and he 
ordered the Department of Labor to devise a scheme that would allow 
employers to force their employees to work the overtime hours but not 
receive the overtime pay.
  It was not a popular plan. The Department of Labor received tens of 
thousands of comments from the public opposing it. Lawmakers received 
calls and letters and e-mails from our constituents opposing the plan. 
In fact, the department had to revise its proposed changes to try and, 
quote, make it fairer. Their first plan would have taken overtime pay 
away from 8 million families. This plan takes it away from 6 million. 
It still is not fair and it is not the answer to what ails our economy.
  But even though the plan was unpopular, the President knew he could 
count on his friends in Congress to withstand the public opposition.
  Late last year, the Senate, in a bipartisan vote, voted to stop the 
President's plan, and the House cast a procedural vote to support the 
Senate's provision. But when the final bill made it out of Congress and 
went to the President, the Republican leadership in the House and the 
Senate had stripped the bill of the amendment that would have blocked 
the President's overtime pay cut.
  That is where we are again.
  Last week, on a bipartisan basis, the House voted to stop the 
President's overtime pay cut, which went into effect on August 23. It 
was a pretty big vote for a controversial issue: 223 voted against the 
President, including 22 Republicans, and 193 voted for the President's 
plan, all Republicans. Now the Senate is going to take up the issue.
  But already aides to House leaders like Majority Leader Tom DeLay 
have indicated publicly that they will not let this amendment stay in 
the final bill that goes to the President for signature. Even though 
the majority of the House voted to stop the President's overtime pay 
cut, the President's allies are here to prevent the majority will of 
the House from prevailing.
  Mr. Speaker, what is wrong with the current leadership in this 
Congress? They do not respect the will of the majority.
  You know, sometimes it works just the other way. Take the vote on 
Medicare last year, one of the most controversial pieces of legislation 
to come before this body. The President's plan was crafted and designed 
for the drug companies and the insurance companies, even though it was 
supposed to be for seniors to help them pay for the high cost of 
valuable prescription

[[Page 18143]]

drugs. But the Medicare bill does nothing to slow the rising prices of 
prescription drugs for seniors.
  When the bill was brought to the House floor in November last year, 
those of us who opposed the bill were winning. When the clock ran out 
and the time was up for the vote to be ended, we were winning. The 
Medicare bill was going to be defeated. But the Republicans had another 
idea.

                              {time}  1245

  They refused to bring the vote to a close. Twenty minutes went by, a 
normal time for a vote. We were winning. An hour went by; we were 
winning. Two hours went by; we were still winning. By this time, early 
in the morning, the President had been woken up to make phone calls, to 
help in the feverish effort to twist congressional arms. One 
Congressman said afterwards that he had been offered a bribe by a 
congressional leader for his vote, a matter that is still under 
investigation by the FBI and the House Committee on Standards of 
Official Conduct.
  Finally, after nearly 3 hours, one of the longest votes to be held in 
the history of Congress, the President's allies turned enough votes; 
and they proceeded to pass the drug companies' Medicare bill by a slim 
majority. And that bill is now law.
  Whether it is protecting overtime pay of the middle class or 
protecting seniors from the drug companies' Medicare law, or countless 
other issues, the current leaders in Congress do not respect or honor 
the majority here in the Congress who support these measures. They will 
not respect the will of the majority of Americans who are represented 
by those Members of Congress, over half of the country expressing their 
view that they do not want that law to go into effect, whether it is to 
cut overtime pay or whether it is the phony prescription drug bill that 
does not provide the benefits that our seniors need and have come to 
expect.
  This is one of the many things that is wrong with the way the House 
of Representatives is being run under the current leadership, and it is 
one of the things that must change come this November.
  The House and Senate should respect the will of the majority of its 
Members on these issues of overtime pay and middle-class prescription 
drug benefits.

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