Jay Inslee: “last night while I was enjoying sumptuous airline fare on the red-eye to come out here to vote on this, the lady sitting…”

“last night while I was enjoying sumptuous airline fare on the red-eye to come out here to vote on this, the lady sitting next to me was reading a book called ``Nickel and Dimed.'' It is a book about people who are struggling; who are employed, but who are struggling to keep their souls and their families together in today's economically challenged times. And nobody, nobody who has read this book would vote for this rule. The reason is that we can quote all the rosy statistics that we can, but the fact of the matter is if we leave this floor and go out to the food banks in our districts, in every district in America, the food banks are jammed, the lines are long, people are still having problems feeding their children. As I was talking to a business owner the other day in Seattle, he says, I hear these statistics, but I do not see the customers. The fact of the matter is, we still have people in pain, and this rule keeps them in that economically devastated condition. There are two reasons it does this: one, it guts the effort we had on a bipartisan basis in the Senate and at least a little bit here on this floor when, in a democratic process, we voted with the majority to stop the President of the United States from stealing people's time with their families by gutting overtime protection. Over 8 million Americans are going to lose the right to overtime, and, more importantly, lose the right to control their own time with their families if this rule passes.”