Tom Harkin: “Well, the Senator is right. Again, this is mind-boggling. I will say this--and again to be as fair as possible--there…”

“Well, the Senator is right. Again, this is mind-boggling. I will say this--and again to be as fair as possible--there was one part of the proposal that was good, which was to raise the low-income base from about $8,000 to about $21,000. That means that right now, no matter who you are in this country, if your pay is less than $8,000 a year, you are guaranteed overtime regardless of what you do. Well, that needed to be raised for some time. Nobody argues that. They wanted to raise it to $21,000. We agree with that. But in doing so, they issued advice to employers on how to get around it. They said we are going to raise the base to $21,000, but here is advice on how to get around it. No. 1, what you do is simply work your people longer and you build that into their base pay. So you work them longer, but you don't have to pay them any more. Secondly, they said if they are near $21,000--let's say $20,500--you may want to raise their pay to $21,000 and then they are exempt and you save by not paying overtime. There is gimmick after gimmick on how they can basically get around it. I said this on the floor. This is like the IRS issuing advice to tax cheats on how to cheat on their income taxes.”