Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise first to say thank you to the Senator from Tennessee for leading this vote of disapproval on what is really a terrible rule. It is a solution looking for a problem. I spent 31 years running a manufacturing plant. It has been my experience that I have never had somebody in my operation ask to go from salary to hourly. I remember in 2004 when they tightened the rules and a number of people who worked for me were forced into hourly. None of them wanted to go. By the way, none of them received higher wages or a higher salary; they just lost flexibility--and that is exactly what is going to happen. Being an accountant, I would like to kind of go through the numbers. These are the Department of Labor's own calculations. They claim there would be $1.2 billion more wages paid to workers. That is what they claim the benefit is going to be, but they also admit that there will be $678 million in compliance costs to businesses just trying to figure out the rule, trying to implement it. What they are missing is, if wages--and I think that is a big ``if'' because I think what will end up happening is--you know, employers are competing in a global economy, and you can't just increase costs. So my guess, basically, is what is going to happen--and happened to my business in 2004--is they will just adjust. The workers won't get any more money. But let's just say $1.2 billion in wages is paid to workers. Well, that will be a cost to businesses.…”