Virginia Foxx: “As my colleague from California and my colleague from Illinois know, I respect both of them greatly, and I would have…”

“As my colleague from California and my colleague from Illinois know, I respect both of them greatly, and I would have thought that they would have come up with an amendment that would have helped us understand this issue before we pass such a bill instead of after we pass it. As I understand it, this amendment requires the GAO to report on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's ability to investigate and process age discrimination cases after H.R. 1230 unnecessarily reduces the burden of proof in these cases and nullifies decades of Supreme Court precedent. This amendment is not needed. The EEOC already reports on its workload management and ability to respond to age discrimination charges in the agency's annual budget request and recurring strategic plans. We should not mandate that GAO waste resources on an unnecessary, redundant report. {time} 1430 In addition, assuming this GAO report discovers new information, such information would be useful before the House votes to expand liability in four employment statutes. The new law will be in place, and the horse will have already left the barn by the time we receive the information. We all agree, American workers should be protected from discrimination in the workplace in every form possible. It is already against the law to discriminate based on a workers' age, as it should be.…”