Xavier Becerra: “Let me explain my amendment briefly. We have entered into a debate through the amendment by my colleague and friend from…”

“Let me explain my amendment briefly. We have entered into a debate through the amendment by my colleague and friend from California (Mr. Waxman) on the issue of what happens when a particular bill or a piece of legislation has the effect of weakening protections for the environment or public health and safety, and we had some discussion on that amendment. If my colleagues look at the legislation that we are discussing now and we now relate that same type of debate or discussion on the issue of civil rights, what we find is that this legislation actually would permit, permit, this Congress to establish laws that will weaken our current civil rights protections that we provide to the American public. Let me give my colleagues a quick example of what I mean. In both fair employment and housing law, there are exemptions made for small businesses. A small business is defined as having fewer than 15 employees. If we have legislation which attempted to broaden the definition of a small business to, say, 50 employees, in other words, something more than 15 employees, what we would do is we would now be excluding from civil rights laws and protections a whole array, many, many more businesses that now have up to 50 employees.”