Senate Votes to Override Veto of Family Leave Bill

The Senate, taking a political swipe at President Bush, voted 68 to 31 Thursday to override his veto of the family leave bill--the first time in Bush’s 3 1/2-year term that Democrats in the chamber have been able to muster the necessary two-thirds majority for an override.

Fourteen Republicans voted in favor of the override, and Democrats immediately boasted that the bipartisan action showed that Bush was “isolated” on the question. They said he had lost his credibility for using family values as an issue in the presidential campaign.

But the Democrats’ victory is likely to be short-lived, since the House is expected to sustain the President’s veto when it takes up the override question Wednesday. Support of two-thirds of both houses is needed to overturn a veto.

The family leave bill has been turned into a political football as Democrats, who revived the bill in late summer to counter Bush’s then-new emphasis on the family values issue, have sought to embarrass the President over his opposition to the legislation.

The measure is one of about half a dozen pieces of social legislation that Democratic congressional leaders have targeted for possible override votes in the midst of the fall campaign. Others include the cable television bill and abortion rights legislation.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Al Gore, a Tennessee senator, who stayed in Washington for the late-morning vote before heading out on the campaign trail again, said the balloting demonstrated “that this country is ready for new leadership with new ideas.”

“It is impossible for President Bush to talk about family values and veto the Family Leave Act,” he said. “Those who voted with the Bush-Quayle position chose to say, ‘Read our lip-service to family values.’ ”

The bill, which Bush vetoed Tuesday night, would require companies with 50 or more employees to grant their workers up to 12 weeks of leave either for medical reasons or so they can care for a newborn baby, a newly adopted child or a sick family member. While companies would not be required to pay a worker’s salary during the period, they would be required to maintain health benefits.

Bush proposed an alternative plan that would provide tax credits of up to $1,200 an employee for businesses that give workers time off for family emergencies, but Democrats contended that the proposal would be inadequate and said their own legislation was needed.

As they have in the past, California’s two senators split along party lines. Democrat Alan Cranston supported the override, and Republican John Seymour, who was in California campaigning, did not vote. A spokesman said Seymour would have opposed any override.

It was not immediately clear how close the House might come to mustering the needed two-thirds majority. Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) told reporters that the override effort would be difficult but insisted that House members “are going to have a vote.”

The House fell well short of the two-thirds majority needed to overturn a veto when it approved the legislation initially last November, and House leaders are not expected to persuade enough members to change their votes to make up the difference. The vote that day was 253 to 177.

Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.), a major sponsor of the family leave legislation in the House, said proponents were seeking to delay the vote until next week in hopes that they could muster more support “if we have a little more breathing space.”

Both sides began intensifying their efforts to line up more votes in the House. Gore said Thursday that he already had spoken to House Democrats who were considering switching to support the bill. Bush was expected to telephone lawmakers to seek their support.

The House has mustered a two-thirds majority on four of the nine separate pieces of legislation on which it has attempted an override, but it always has been thwarted by the Senate, which until Thursday’s action had voted consistently to sustain the President’s vetoes.

As they have on previous occasions, Republicans reiterated Bush’s longstanding argument that the measure would increase costs for employers--because of the continued medical benefits--and as a result was likely to impede the already sluggish economic recovery.

“We’re not voting on whether family leave is a good idea--we all support family leave,” Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) told the chamber. “We’re voting on whether the government should mandate it.”

But supporters contended that studies showed that businesses that had granted extended leaves to workers found it less expensive to allow them to take time off than it would be to fire current employees and train their replacements.

Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.), one of the Republicans who supported the override effort, told the chamber that the legislation was “the right thing to do--and it works.”