Mike Levin: “I heard the colloquy between the gentleman from Florida and the gentleman from Missouri, and I just want the record to…”

“I heard the colloquy between the gentleman from Florida and the gentleman from Missouri, and I just want the record to be clear. They are attempting to write a bill through a colloquy and you cannot do that. The reference to 1988 is very mistaken. It was a very different bill. It was not a broad welfare-to-work bill as we are now implementing. I worked hard on the 1993 legislation, and no one can get up here and simply give their gloss on it and expect that to become law. But most importantly, the effort in this House by the majority to exclude people who would be classified as employees under FLSA and other Federal laws from those protections was specifically rejected in the conference committee. It is not in this bill. No colloquy can erase that. People who move from welfare to work have the dignity of the protection of Federal law if they are employees.”