Rss@dailykos.com (laura Clawson) · Thursday, May 19, 2016, 4:42 pm
Add House Speaker Paul Ryan to the list of Republicans outraged that President Obama is extending overtime eligibility to millions, effectively eliminating a way that employers exploit workers. Ryan is “committed to fighting this rule and the many others that would be an absolute disaster for our economy,” based, of course, on a load of nonsense:
“This regulation hurts the very people it alleges to help. Who is hurt most? Students, non-profit employees, and people starting a new career. By mandating overtime pay at a much higher salary threshold, many small businesses and non-profits will simply be unable to afford skilled workers and be forced to eliminate salaried positions, complete with benefits, altogether. For the sake of his own political legacy, President Obama is rushing through regulations—like the overtime rule—that will cause people to lose their livelihoods.
This makes zero sense if you think about it. Businesses won’t be able to make salaried employees work for 70 hours a week at $25,000 a year, and therefore will eliminate those jobs altogether? If they can’t afford to pay overtime, they just can’t make people work more than 40 hours a week. Maybe businesses will hire another person to work at regular pay. Maybe they’ll miraculously find the money for overtime. Maybe they’ll figure out how to work more efficiently. The options abound.
As Bryce Covert points out, the same Paul Ryan who thinks it’s awful and terrifying for people to get time and a half if they work more than 40 hours a week is the Paul Ryan who said this just last fall:
“Here’s the problem. They’re working hard. They’re paying a lot. They are trying to do right by their families. And they are going nowhere fast,” he said. “They never get a raise. They never get a break… They are working harder than ever to get ahead. Yet they are falling further behind.”
And now he’s “committed to fighting” an effort to make sure that people get a raise, get a break, don’t have to work harder than ever to get ahead. What a surprise—Paul Ryan not meaning what he says when he’s expressing support for working people.
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