Mr. Gregg: I thank the Senator from Wyoming. I think it's a thoughtful, especially for single moms in the workplace, issue they have today-- issues which aren't addressed by the Kennedy amendment. You know, whether it's $1.10 or $2.05, that's an important debate because it will have an effect on the impact on job creation, and jobs are what we're talking about here. If you start losing jobs because you raise minimum wage too quickly, too fast that small employers can't afford it, that's going to have an effect on peoples' opportunity to work.

So I think the Senator from Wyoming has put forward a much more balanced approach as to the number the minimum wage should be raised by, but that's really not what will make the workplace a more tolerable event and a more acceptable event for the single mother, who has kids at home.

What would help a lot in this area is additional language which is in the Enzi proposal which is called "family time." And it's resisted aggressively by the other side of the aisle. I don't understand it. You know, we just heard an impassioned plea from the Senator from Connecticut about working moms, single mothers, especially single mothers in low-paying jobs who have a very difficult time maintaining the quality of their household and taking care of their kids, and yet they resist a proposal which all federal employees have had the right to since 1978, which is called family time. They stiff-arm the working mother in this country.

Now, this may have been acceptable because the unions demanded they do this back in the 1950's and 1960's when there weren't that many single mothers working in the workplace, but today there is a huge participation in the workplace of single mothers. Back in 1940, only 28% of the workplace were women. Today 60% of the workplace are women, and you've got almost 7.3 million single mothers in the workplace raising a family and trying to take care of their kids' needs at home.

The Enzi proposal says to those mothers, if you want to, you can work out an agreement with an employer, and the employer can't demand that you do it. It's entirely up to you to sign on to that agreement. It's your discretion. You can't be compelled to participate in this. One week you can work up to ten extra hours, and the next week you work ten less hours. Why is that important, especially to a single mother? Because they may have a child who is going to have to have some sort of an operation, or they may have a child that's got some sporting event that goes on for a period of days or has a rehearsal or just a period in their life when that child needs their mother at home for a greater period of time.

This doesn't just apply to single mothers. It applies to working families, husbands and wives, but it's a really important right to the single mother who is in the workplace. And it's so important, in fact, that we gave it to the federal employees back in 1978. And yet year in and year out the concept of family time has been resisted by the other side of the aisle. And they come forward with these statements of compassion, which are very compelling and which are well delivered, especially by the Senator from Connecticut, who I have great regard for, but if they truly believed in that they would have incorporated in their bill the flextime proposal which Senator Enzi has put in his proposal because that's where real compassion is that's really going to affect a lot of people. Literally millions and millions of working parents will be positively impacted if the Enzi bill passes.

Sure the minimum wage is important, but there are a lot more people that are going to be affected by the family time language in this bill and improve their quality of life and their ability to raise their children well than by the increase in the minimum wage because the family time will apply to everybody who works in the workplace, well, everybody who works on a fixed hour, 40-hour week. So if you want to look at the essence of what will really help an American family and especially a single person working, single mother specifically, if you really want to look at what will really help that family, you have to look at the Enzi bill and the family time language.

Let me begin to explain what it does. It says over a two-week period, at the discretion of the working mother or the working father, or if they're both working, if they're together and they're both working, they can reach an agreement with their employer which says, one week I can work up to an extra ten hours. In exchange the next week I can work ten less hours. The impact of that is just huge on a family. It's not necessary that they do it. They can continue their 40-hour week if they wish. But there are a lot of events that occur in the raising of children where you do need those extra hours to be at home, where you do need those extra hours to take your child on something that's really important to them, a trip or an event that maybe involves a number of days, a three-day baseball tournament or recital event or maybe just a situation where you need that extra day to be at home and make sure your children have you there.

The opportunity in this benefit, which we make available to all federal employees, should clearly be available to people who aren't in the federal government. So Senator Enzi has in a very reasonable way put this language in his bill. I actually think this is much more important than the issue of this fight between $1.10 and $2.05 because it's going to impact so many more people. And just on this issue alone, you should vote for the Enzi bill because if you really want to improve the quality of the workplace, especially for the single mother, this bill will do it through the family time language that he's put in here.

And so I congratulate the Senator from Wyoming for bringing this package forward, and I think his package, just because this language is in there, is dramatically better, dramatically more compassionate -- we hear a lot of language about compassion, dramatically more attentive to the needs of children in this country and proper parenting of children in this country than the package that's been brought forward from the other side. Why they don't include this on the other side we know. We know why they don't because the labor unions are against it. It's a knee-jerk reaction on the part of organized big labor to this language. But we shouldn't allow that sort of knee-jerk reaction to control our ability to give working mothers and families the opportunity to have a -- have this sort of benefit which will clearly improve the ability of those people to take care of their children and to raise their children and to be good parents and to do what they want to do in order to make sure that they're available when their kids need them. So I congratulate the Senator from Wyoming, and I think he's put together an excellent package. I hope everyone will support it.