WASHINGTON (AP) — It seems like a simple proposition: give employees who work more than 40 hours a week the option of taking paid time off instead of overtime pay.

The choice already exists in the public sector. Federal and state workers can save earned time off and use it weeks or even months later to attend a parent-teacher conference, care for an elderly parent or deal with home repairs.

Republicans in Congress are pushing legislation that would extend that option to the private sector. They say that would bring more flexibility to the workplace and help workers better balance family and career.

The push is part of a broader Republican agenda undertaken by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., to expand the party’s political appeal to working families. The House is expected to vote on the measure this week, but the Democratic-controlled Senate isn’t likely to take it up.

“For some people, time is more valuable than the cash that would be accrued in overtime,” said Rep. Martha Roby, R-Ala., the bill’s chief sponsor. “Why should public-sector employees be given a benefit and the private sector be left out?”

But the idea Republicans promote as “pro-worker” is vigorously opposed by worker advocacy groups, labor unions and most Democrats. These opponents claim it’s really a backdoor way for businesses to skimp on overtime pay.

Judith Lichtman, senior adviser to the National Partnership for Women and Families, contends the measure would open the door for employers to pressure workers into taking compensatory time off instead of overtime pay.

The program was created in the public sector in 1985 to save federal, state and local governments money, not to give workers greater flexibility, Lichtman said. Many workers in federal and state government are unionized or have civil service protections that give them more leverage in dealing with supervisors, she added. Those safeguards don’t always exist in the private sector, where only about 6.6 percent of employees are union members.

Republicans and business groups have tried to pass the plan in some form since the 1990s.

Democrats say the bill provides no guarantee that workers would be able to take the time off when they want. The bill gives employers discretion over whether to grant a specific request to use comp time. Opponents also complain that banking leave time essentially gives employers an interest-free loan from workers.

h/t: TPM

President Obama is calling out Fox News and Rush Limbaugh by name for creating a toxic environment that makes bipartisanship impossible.

In an interview with The New Republic, Obama brought up the role of right wing media in killing bipartisanship.

One of the biggest factors is going to be how the media shapes debates. If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News or by Rush Limbaugh for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you’ll see more of them doing it.

I think John Boehner genuinely wanted to get a deal done, but it was hard to do in part because his caucus is more conservative probably than most Republican leaders are, and partly because he is vulnerable to attack for compromising Republican principles and working with Obama.

The same dynamic happens on the Democratic side. I think the difference is just that the more left-leaning media outlets recognize that compromise is not a dirty word. And I think at least leaders like myself—and I include Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in this—are willing to buck the more absolutist-wing elements in our party to try to get stuff done.

The odds of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh not punishing Republicans who work with Obama are exactly zero, because Fox and Rush make their money by keeping a large segment of the Republican base outraged. They have a financial incentive to keep the partisanship high, and the national discourse toxic.

Congressional Republicans are paying the price for the decision to allow the most powerful members of the right wing media establishment to fill their party’s leadership vacuum. It doesn’t seem to matter to these Republicans that Limbaugh and Fox News have little impact on elections. 

They are afraid of the wrath of Rush and Fox, so many of the members of the Republican majority in the House rigidly toe the conservative media line.

A secondary issue is that much like their base many congressional Republicans are grossly misinformed because they rely on Fox News, talk radio, and right wing websites for their information. It is nearly impossible to forge a bipartisan consensus on any issue when a segment of the legislative branch is getting their information from an alternate universe where any and all facts that are not partisan talking points are questioned.

The president was dead on about the difference between liberal and conservative media. The vast majority of the left understands compromise. There is a segment of the left that like the right makes their living off of fanning the flames of perpetual outrage, but the difference is that the professionally outraged left isn’t running the Democratic Party. (In fact, one of the reasons why they have gotten so angry is that many of the white male progressives who used to be viewed as the voices of the left have been replaced by less white and less male Obama Democrats.)

H/T: PoliticusUSA

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) on Tuesday acknowledged Congress’ dismal approval ratings, but the Minnesota Congresswoman and one-time presidential aspirant said the lion’s share of the blame should be directed at one legislative body in particular.

Appearing on Fox News Channel, Bachmann argued that she and her House Republican colleagues have done their part.  It’s the Senate, controlled by Democrats, that has let voters down, she said.

Shut up, Michelle! It’s YOUR party that’s causing the low Congressional approval ratings!

h/t: Tom Kludt at TPM LiveWire

A group of House Democrats filed a friend-of-the-court brief asking a federal appeals court to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, according to Buzzfeed’s Chris Geidner.

However, 60 Democrats — including 15 who had co-sponsored a bill repealing the DOMA — chose not to sign on to Tuesday’s brief to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The case hinges on DOMA’s ability to prevent same-sex spouses from receiving federal benefits, which was declared unconstitutional in February 2012 by a U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

The brief, filed by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and 131 other Democrats, argues that the law was motivated by “the desire to disapprove of and disadvantage gay and lesbian couples.” Pelosi and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) have consistently opposed the law as part of the House Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG), which, under Republican leadership, has been defending it in court since the Obama administration’s withdrawal of support for the law last year.

The House Democrats’ brief then argues that DOMA is unconstitutional because Congress hastily passed it in 1996 for political reasons and because the law undercuts Congress’ interest in protecting families and respecting state sovereignty.

H/T: Arturo Garcia at The Raw Story

President Obama appeared on a White House conference call Monday to urge Americans to pressure their Senators into supporting the Paycheck Fairness Act currently before the Senate. Women are a key constituency for Obama in the general election fight, and working for greater pay equity between men and women has been a central component of the president’s administration. Republicans view the act as political posturing, claiming the pay equity problem had been solved with the Lily Ledbetter Act, the first bill Obama signed into law upon becoming president.

h/t: Evan McMorris-Santoro at TPM

As Newt Gingrich looks to complete his improbable political comeback, his opponents won’t let him (or the electorate) forget about the scandal that ended the first act of his political career—a string of 84 ethics complaints in the House that culminated in a $300,000 sanction. The pro-Romney super-PAC Restore Our Future hammered home the message in a recent Iowa television ad, citing the fine as evidence that “Newt has a ton of baggage.”

The former speaker of the House has a handy response for those taking aim at his past. “All of the substantive issues, we were ultimately told we were right,” Gingrich told the Des Moines Register editorial board on Thursday. “It’s truly one of the most frustrating things of my career.” He blamed his congressional downfall on bad lawyering and on the zealotry of the House ethics committee (although half of the members were Republican).

Lost in the campaign trail barbs about Gingrich’s ethical lapses, however, is any sense of what Gingrich actually did, either allegedly or as a matter of record. In short, he used a network of consulting firms, educational institutions, and even a charity for inner-city teens to promote a set of clearly partisan political goals designed to sweep Republicans into power in Washington. Gingrich’s web of interconnected organizations formed the early prototype for the multimillion-dollar public and private network he established after leaving public office, known now as “Newt Inc.”

Here’s how it worked:

Step 1: The Vehicle. Gingrich’s political machine took advantage of a number of institutions that actually predated his congressional tenure, the most significant of which which was GOPAC, a political action committee founded by former Delaware Gov. Pierre S. du Pont. GOPAC had not distinguished itself particularly in its early years, but things began to change in 1986 when Gingrich, an ambitious back-bench congressman from Georgia, took control of the group. He instilled in it a sense of purpose—namely, his vision of a Republican majority in Washington by 1996. GOPAC, in turn, became a fundraising machine, raking in $15 million on Gingrich’s watch. As Connie Bruck later reported in The New Yorker, it also skirted Federal Election Commission disclosure requirements by distributing fundraising dollars without ever actually handling the money itself. In some cases, it effectively served as a matchmaker, pairing candidates with like-minded donors.

The committee’s plan was to change the very language of politics and recast the terms of the debate entirely; Gingrich would, like the professor he once was, educate rising conservative politicians to “speak like Newt.” One way to do that was to issue buzzword-packed cassette tapes to aspiring Republican lawmakers.

The other method Gingrich conceived of was to hold nationally televised seminars. In 1990, he developed a program, the American Opportunities Workshop, in which he offered his—and by extension, GOPAC’s—vision for the future and outlined steps to organize activists on cable television. Gingrich specifically avoided linking the program to the Republican Party by name, lest he scare off political novices. But winning elections was, by all accounts, the intent. As the House ethics committee noted in 1997, “While the program was educational, the citizens’ movement was also considered a tool to recruit non-voters and people who were apolitical to the Republican Party.”

Step 2: The Shell Charity. Running a national political movement without the formal backing of the party was resource intensive. So to save money, Gingrich and his allies tried something new. They replaced the American Opportunities Workshop with an almost identical program with a different name, American Citizens’ Television. And they turned over the operations to the Abraham Lincoln Opportunity Foundation (ALOF), a tiny Denver-based charity founded and controlled by GOPAC ally Bo Callaway, a former Colorado congressman and Army secretary.

According to papers filed with the IRS in 1984, ALOF was designed to instill a sense of civic virtue in inner-city kids by sponsoring “Land of Opportunity Speaking Competition Contests” in Colorado public schools. The charity’s leadership was nearly identical to the leadership of the Colorado Republican Party (in fact, it was the state GOP that had come up with the idea for the contest in the first place).

If the contest helped nudge teenagers toward the Republican party and further the GOP’s minority-outreach efforts, well, that was all well and good; the first winner, a Vietnamese immigrant, earned a $2,500 scholarship and delivered the opening Pledge of Allegiance at the 1984 Republican National Convention.

By 1987, Colorado Republicans had lost interest in speech competitions, the contests had stopped, and ALOF had gone dormant. It had just $486.08 in its bank account—but it did have one thing of much greater value: 501(c)(3) status from the IRS, meaning all donations to the group were tax exempt. Control of the charity remained in the hands of Callaway.

Step 3: Doubling Your Money. Gingrich brought the Abraham Lincoln Opportunity Foundation back to life in 1990—albeit in a dramatically different role. Instead of fostering a love of capitalism and civic virtues in inner-city kids, it was paying for Gingrich to teach conservative activists how to elect Republicans. Internal memos placed a premium on airing the program in specific congressional districts.

The strategy was clear—by giving money to a tax-exempt organization, donors could effectively double their buying power because they could write it all off as a tax deduction (meaning it was that much less they had to pay to Uncle Sam). Not that there was much of a difference between ALOF and GOPAC. It was a matter of paperwork and little else; the two organizations shared a DC office, and many of the same employees. They even shared money—while the Abraham Lincoln Opportunity Foundation was nominally operating Gingrich’s television program, GOPAC loaned the group $45,000; the Los Angeles Times reported that in 1990, GOPAC donors gave the former inner-city charity at least $150,000.

In 1997 Gingrich was ultimately slapped with a $300,000 fine by the House ethics committee for his “reckless” or “intentional” use of nonprofits for partisan political ends.

Ultimately, the IRS caught wind of the arrangement and stepped in, ruling that as an educational nonprofit, ALOF couldn’t finance a purely political enterprise. In 1990, the final episode of the program was produced instead by a third conservative group, Citizens Against Government Waste—which, while not technically affiliated with Gingrich, was a major donor to his enterprises.

With the IRS’s ruling, ALOF’s new role was more or less dead. But it continued to beat on, at least for a few years, as a conduit between donors and GOPAC. Because ALOF owed GOPAC money, Callaway offered donors the option of giving to ALOF instead, thereby shoring up the group’s finances and taking advantage of its tax status. Citizens Against Government Waste gave $37,000 to ALOF in 1991, and ALOF cut a check for $37,000 to GOPAC later that day. The ethics committee report noted that in addition to Callaway, “Two other GOPAC Charter Members made contributions to ALOF which were immediately turned over to GOPAC.”

Step 4: The College Course. With ALOF relegated to the background, Gingrich once again devised an elaborate funding and control mechanism to organize conservatives. This time, GOPAC would craft and develop a message of civilizational drift that would propel his party to victory; the corrupt welfare state was steering the United States away from the values that had made it great. But to cut costs (and skirt tax laws), he’d recruit outside groups to handle the fundraising and operations.

Gingrich unveiled a new television program, “Renewing American Civilization,” and found a willing host in Georgia’s Kennesaw State College, which offered to make it a four-credit course. Publicly, the goals were strictly educational; privately, it was a partisan mobilization drive. As Gingrich wrote in a letter, “Our hope is to have at least 50,000 individuals taking the class this fall and to have trained 200,000 knowledgeable citizen activists by 1996 who will support the principles and goals we have set.”

You didn’t need to work at GOPAC to see the real aims of the course. Gingrich was rebuked by many of the same scholars he claimed had helped devise the course. Boston College professor James Q. Wilson, whom Gingrich touted as an adviser to the course, actually repudiated the program after initially coming on board. According to one letter obtained by the ethics panel, the famed academic scolded the speaker for the clearly partisan tone of his lesson plan: “If this is not to be a course but instead a sermon, then you should get a preacher to comment on it.”

Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist whom Gingrich had also touted as a contributor to the course, soured on the experiment as well. In a 1996 book, he called the course “a partisan organizing tool.”

It was an odd public-private partnership. Kennesaw State provided classroom space to Gingrich and gave out course credits to students who participated in the class, but it relied on a third-party called the Washington Policy Group to manage and raise funds. All of that would be pretty innocuous, except GOPAC was the Washington Policy Group’s only client, and its staff consisted of three GOPAC vets. Gingrich promoted the entire operation in floor speeches.

H/T: Tim Murphy at Mother Jones

Please tell me how much blame each of the following deserves for the country’s current economic problems.

Almost all/A lot but not all:
George Bush: 51
Republicans in Congress: 44
Democrats in Congress: 36
Barack Obama: 31

None/only a little:
Barack Obama: 39
Democrats in Congress: 22
George Bush: 22
Republicans in Congress: 17
^{(MoE: ±4.1%)}

Americans also trusted Democrats more than Republicans on handling the economy, health care, the budget deficit, taxes, and creating jobs. Republicans had the edge on national security.

Nonetheless, the poll wasn’t a stellar report card for President Obama and Congressional Democrats. Republicans definitely received lower marks, but 75% of the public thinks the country is headed in the wrong direction and a majority disapprove of President Obama’s job performance. 47% said he deserves to be reelected compared with 48% who said he doesn’t.

92% said the economy was extremely important (52%) or very important (41%) and 78% said the budget deficit was extremely important (46%) or very important (33%). (Numbers don’t add up because of rounding.)

h/t: Jed Lewison at Daily Kos