Xavier Becerra: “Mr. Chairman, we have been debating for quite some time amendments that would try to protect children from all sorts of…”

“Mr. Chairman, we have been debating for quite some time amendments that would try to protect children from all sorts of calamity that may result from this unfunded mandate legislation unless we exempt certain laws and regulations from this particular bill's enforcement. My amendments merely do the following: They would exempt laws that we currently have on our books that are there to protect our children who work right now. They are there to protect our labor laws that protect children from aggressive employers who would work them beyond the 8 hours. It is to protect them against employers who would have them working under conditions that would amount to what many would consider slave conditions. It is an effort to keep us from going back to the bad old days when we saw children doing the work of adults, not going to school, not having an opportunity to learn, and ultimately not being productive members of society once they became adults. This is an effort to make sure that in passing reasonable unfunded mandates legislation, that we do protect our children from enforcement of a law that I do not believe has the intention of denying children basic rights of protection.”