Mike Enzi: “I will go through the GOP alternatives again. They ought to be bipartisan alternatives. I am afraid in previous…”

“I will go through the GOP alternatives again. They ought to be bipartisan alternatives. I am afraid in previous discussions they got polarized in spite of changes to the extent that some god policy initiatives that deserve bipartisan support will never have support from the other side. That would be a tragedy. When the opposition says that my amendment does not have a minimum wage increase, I wonder what bill he is looking at. My bill has a $1.10 increase over the same period of time as his, although I think he is going to make a small change to his bill because there is a slight paperwork problem--but since it is the first-time paperwork problem it probably ought to be forgiven, just like my proposal would forgive small business first-time paperwork errors. What we are talking about is six provisions that soften the blow of the increased mandate on small businesses. First, permit family flextime for workers. Employees have the option of flexing their schedules over a 2-week period so they can work more hours 1 week and take hours off the next. The argument we have heard is that we are cutting overtime pay. If flextime is a pay cut, then Senator Kennedy and many of the Senate Democrats have voted to inflict pay cuts on workers.…”