Darrell Issa: “I appreciate the majority providing us reference to the 2006 House Compensation Study that shows even with other…”

“I appreciate the majority providing us reference to the 2006 House Compensation Study that shows even with other people's money, and perhaps no guidance on how to spend it, about 20 percent of the House offices offer little or no, or actually offer no paid leave. The amazing thing to me is we are here today talking about a new paid leave. I just want to explain for a moment, when congressional offices choose to do paid leave, they do so out of a fixed budget. The majority would have you believe here that we are going to do this out of some fixed budget. We are not. This is going to run up the cost of every office that does everything, from post offices to the Secret Service to the IRS. It is going to run up the cost of these Federal employees. It is going to run it up by quite a bit. With all due respect to my colleague from California, I am not implying that having foster families is bad; just the opposite, it's good. The question is if you have an active foster parent family and they are being given 4 weeks of paid leave, who is to assume that they won't take it. I believe they will. That will mean for every 12 people doing it, you will have basically the need for an additional Federal worker with all the compensation and benefits that go with it. That is the reality we have here today.”