Paul Coverdell: “for the next 15 minutes or so, since we are talking about vetoes, I would like to talk about the Family Friendly…”

“for the next 15 minutes or so, since we are talking about vetoes, I would like to talk about the Family Friendly Workplace Act, S. 4. This is a piece of legislation that has been authored by the good Senator from Missouri, Senator Ashcroft, myself, and others. It is designed to make the workplace a friendlier place, a more flexible place. Lo and behold, in the middle of the debate, the President has announced to the country he would have to veto this bill, which is as puzzling as his veto of this emergency relief. He has said he would have to veto the act. We have had a filibuster underway on this Family Friendly Workplace Act. We have tried to break the filibuster twice and have failed to do so because of the supporters of the President on the other side of the aisle. If you want to know what the American public thinks about this kind of legislation, you just need to go talk to them. In a survey for Money magazine in May of this year, 64 percent of the public and 68 percent of women would prefer time off to overtime pay if they had the choice, which they do not. The Federal workers, since 1978, have had this choice, but not these hourly laborers. If they had the choice, they would prefer time off to overtime pay. That is what the Family Friendly Workplace Act is about. It is about giving employees and their employers the voluntary--underscore voluntary--option to design programs to meet this desire.”