Jack Kingston: “a couple of years ago I made the difficult decision to fly home a little bit early from Washington to return to…”

“a couple of years ago I made the difficult decision to fly home a little bit early from Washington to return to Savannah, GA, to see my 5-year-old's kindergarten graduation. I got on what can only be described as the flight from hell. I left Washington, flew to Atlanta, and then usually it is about a 30-minute flight to Savannah. We went to Augusta, could not get into Savannah, we ended up trying to get into Jacksonville, could not get into Jacksonville, went to Tampa, spent the night, and the next day went back to Atlanta, then tried again to get into Savannah. We could not. As a consequence of all this hopping around and so forth and the weather, I missed my son's school event. It broke my heart. But do Members know what? As a Federal employee, at least I had the option of going home to see his play. In the private sector today, the Federal Government laws deny employees that option. They cannot take off work to go see somebody, to take them to the doctor or go see a school play or something. But with this new legislation we are passing today, employees for the first time in the private sector will be able to work extra and take comptime off. They can go ahead and work the 40-hour workweek, and then take time off needed for those very important and irreplaceable family functions. I hope we can pass comp time today.”