Mike Levin: “I speak as someone who supported the reform of AFDC and I very much continue to support it. Let me address two issues.…”

“I speak as someone who supported the reform of AFDC and I very much continue to support it. Let me address two issues. The Fair Labor Standards Act. I favor moving people off of welfare to work. They should not be treated as second-class citizens, and you do that. You take away the protection of the Fair Labor Standards Act, and then you go back in, the States must pay a minimum wage. They do not have the protection of Federal law. There is no clear enforcement, and you take away the protection against sexual harassment. Why? What do you do that for? People should move from welfare to work. They should not be second-class citizens. Period. In fact, our hope is the opposite, to maintain the dignity and the integrity of work. Legal immigrants; look, we did not offer the President's proposal. We offered something that built on that. It was turned down by one vote, even though there was the money there to pay for it. The gentlewoman from Washington said, well, everybody should play by the same rules. No, you are asking people who were here August of 1996, who became injured after that, to play by different rules. They are out in the cold. That is an irrational, inhumane line. We should not be drawing it. I am going to vote against this bill in part because I am hoping that we will indeed have Mr. Shaw, whom I very much respect, in a bipartisan effort to work out these problems in conference committee.”