George Miller: “do not use this amendment to suggest that we can dramatically change their educational experience. Do not do that. Stand…”

“do not use this amendment to suggest that we can dramatically change their educational experience. Do not do that. Stand up and say what it is really about. It is about the undermining of the wage enforcement, hours enforcement, of hard-working Americans. It is about those field officers in L.A., in Tucson, in New York, in Miami, who are out there trying to enforce the wage and hour laws of this country. We ought to understand that, and this Congress ought to be committed for its reauthorization. I see the chairman of my subcommittee sitting there, the reauthorization on a unanimous basis. Why did you not strip the mandate out of 40 percent then? Why did you not increase it then? Because you know what? You know the Federal Government is trying to do the best we can under the budget we have been given. But the answer is not to strip American workers of their protections. It simply cannot be. We cannot use these children for that effort. This is thinly veiled, if veiled at all, because when the gentleman got up to speak the second time on his amendment, he made it very clear that this is about provisions of the wage and hour laws that he disagrees with. This is about provisions that he wishes this Congress had not passed, but this Congress did pass; and those are the laws of the land and the people of this Nation, the workers in this Nation, are entitled to have those laws enforced.”