‘Comp Time’ Bill Still on Veto List

Aiming to trump Republicans in paycheck politics, President Clinton reiterated his threat to veto a GOP bill that would let workers choose between overtime pay and time off.

The GOP’s “comp time” bill, narrowly passed by the House last week, could lead to coercion and rob workers of due pay, Clinton contended.

“There are no effective safeguards to stop an employer from telling an employee who needs a paycheck more than family time that he or she has no choice,” Clinton said Saturday in his weekly radio address, his sole order of business for the day.

The president, who returned from the U.S.-Russian summit in Finland late Friday and is still recovering from knee surgery, planned nothing but private time at the White House during the weekend.

Clinton supports a Democratic alternative to the bill, which addresses labor unions’ fears of coercion by management. He also wants an expansion of the Family and Medical Leave Act to give workers three unpaid days off a year for family obligations.

He warned House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) of his veto intent in a letter last week and reiterated Saturday: “I will have to veto any legislation that fails to guarantee real choice for employees [and] real protection against employer abuse.” The president vetoed a similar bill when it crossed his desk last year.

In the GOP response to Clinton’s address, the president was encouraged by a Florida lawmaker to show the country he was “honestly misled” last year, when he vetoed a bill that would have outlawed a late-term abortion procedure that abortion foes refer to as “partial-birth abortion.”

“No matter your position on abortion, no one can defend this grisly, barbarian procedure in a civilized society,” Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said.

Earlier this week, the House passed a bill identical to the one Clinton vetoed last April.

The measure now goes before the Senate, where Ros-Lehtinen predicted it also will pass. Once it passes, she said, Clinton should lend his support to the bill as well.

“We believe he will sign it this time because the public debate was very misleading last year,” she said, referring to the recent admission by abortion-rights activist Ron Fitzsimmons that he lied when he testified that the procedure was rare and used only to save a woman’s life.