Some bits of good news, part two

I overlooked posting this when it happened a week ago, but it certainly deserves mention even now. From the Washington Post for May 4:

The Republican-controlled Senate voted yesterday to block new Labor Department rules that critics said would deny overtime pay to millions of white-collar workers, handing an embarrassing rebuff to the Bush administration on a politically sensitive jobs issue.

The Senate voted 52 to 47 to scrap the new rules despite recent changes to address earlier criticism, an intense lobbying campaign by Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao and a last-ditch GOP effort to avert defeat by proposing a long list of jobs for which overtime pay could not be eliminated.

The original proposal would have cost 8 million workers their eligibility for overtime, while adding a fraction that number. Under pressure and the real threat of an embarrassing defeat, the WHS* revamped the plan to reduce the pernicious effects which they originally denied existed. Happily, that wasn't enough.

The rules changes under the new proposal would have reduced the number of higher-paid workers eligible for overtime by as many as 4 million while allowing more low-paid workers to get overtime pay by raising the income limit below which employees are automatically eligible. The plan passed by the Senate blocked implementation of the first part of those changes while allowing the second.

The House, which voted to block the new regulations last year, hasn't taken a vote this session, but Senate supporters of protecting overtime expressed confidence the House would go along with the Senate.

*WHS = White House Sociopaths