Congress Approves Family Leave Bill : Legislation: House Democrats, invoking Bush’s ‘family values’ theme, push through a measure to allow workers up to 12 unpaid weeks. A veto is likely.

WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats, seeking to embarrass President Bush on the GOP’s own family values issue, approved and sent to the White House on Thursday a family medical leave bill that Bush has threatened to veto despite widespread support.

The legislation would require larger employers to grant workers up to 12 weeks a year of unpaid leave--either to obtain medical treatment for themselves or to care for a newborn, sick children, ill spouses or elderly parents.

Although companies would not be forced to pay workers for the time off, they would be required to continue employees’ medical insurance and to guarantee that their jobs would be available when they returned.

While Bush has said repeatedly that he approves of the concept, he objects to forcing companies to provide the time off, believing that would be burdensome, especially to smaller firms.

As Thursday’s vote neared, White House aides suggested to Capitol Hill that Bush might be willing to use several hundred million dollars in tax incentives to encourage small employers to provide the leaves. But they reiterated that the President intends to veto the latest legislation, as he did a similar bill in 1990.

The legislation approved Thursday by the House in a 241-161 vote was a compromise version of the measure endorsed by the Senate in a voice-vote last month. In all, 203 Democrats, 37 Republicans and one Independent supported it.

Although the margin fell short of the two-thirds majority that would be needed to override a veto, Democratic leaders said they hoped the President’s rejection would convince voters that they, and not the Republicans, were the strongest supporters of “family values.”

The catch phrase, a major theme of the Bush campaign, is now being used by both parties to demonstrate their commitment to tackling some of the issues troubling Americans, from economics to questions of morality.

House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) said the legislative gridlock so often criticized by Bush actually “lies with the President” on the family values issue. “There is no more concrete example of legislation dealing with family values than (this bill),” Foley said.

Expectedly, the fiercely partisan battle sparked unusually heated floor debate. Speaking for the Administration, Rep. Robert S. Walker (R-Pa.) argued that this was “not a bill about families” but merely another Democratic attempt to draw government into family problems.

“This bill kills jobs,” he said, by bloating employers’ costs and making them less able to hire more workers. “It undermines the job-creation ability of this economy,” Walker warned. He predicted that “thousands” of jobs would be lost if the measure became law.

But Democrats contended that the Republicans’ concerns were overblown and insisted that the United States was the only major industrialized country that does not guarantee its workers protection against dismissal for taking extended leave when family emergencies arise.

House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) recalled how his son, Matt, had survived a childhood battle with cancer in part because Gephardt and his wife, Jane, had been able to take enough leave to be with him during his hospital treatment.

“For the parents whose employers do not provide this benefit voluntarily, the choice between keeping one’s job or caring for a new child or sick family member is a choice no American should have to make,” Gephardt said.

For all the political furor, this year’s version of the bill is substantially weaker than the one that the Democrats sent Bush two years ago--the result of an effort by Democrats to accommodate complaints by small business that the costs would be too burdensome.

Thursday’s legislation would apply only to companies that employ 50 or more people--a segment that House sponsors said included only about 5% of American businesses and about half the nation’s total work force--and to federal, state and local government workers.

No employees would be eligible unless they had worked at least 1,250 hours a year--an average of about 25 hours a week. And employers could exclude the highest-paid 10th of their work force from the liberal leave policy.

Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.), a major sponsor of the bill, complained that the White House had repeatedly rebuffed Democrats’ efforts to negotiate a compromise that Bush might find more acceptable. “We weren’t allowed to talk with anybody,” she told the House.

The legislation was opposed by most of the major national business lobby groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Assn. of Manufacturers and the National Federation of Independent Business.

Organized labor strongly supported the family leave legislation and lobbied heavily for its enactment. Also behind the measure were civil rights groups, religious organizations and senior citizens’ associations.

California’s 45-member House delegation essentially split along party lines in Thursday’s voting, with Democrats supporting the measure and Republicans opposing it. The lone exception was Rep. Tom Campbell (R-Palo Alto), who voted for the bill, as he did in 1990.

Four California lawmakers did not vote in Thursday’s balloting--Democrats Mel Levine of Santa Monica and Mervyn M. Dymally of Compton, and Republicans Jerry Lewis of Redlands and Carlos J. Moorhead of Glendale.

Republicans revived the family values issue during the party’s nominating convention in August, but have backed away from it recently in the face of adverse reaction in the political polls. Their push angered many Democrats, who felt they had been targeted unfairly.

Vote on Family and Medical Leave

WASHINGTON--Here is how the California delegation voted on a bill requiring unpaid family and medical leave for workers:

Democrats for--Anderson, Beilenson, Berman, Boxer, Brown, Condit, Dellums, Dixon, Dooley, Edwards, Fazio, Lantos, Lehman, Martinez, Matsui, Miller, Mineta, Panetta, Pelosi, Roybal, Stark, Torres, Waters, Waxman

Republicans for--Campbell

Democrats against--None

Republicans against--Cox, Cunningham, Dannemeyer, Doolittle, Dornan, Dreier, Gallegly, Herger, Hunter, Lagomarsino, Lowery, McCandless, Packard, Riggs, Rohrabacher, Thomas

Democrats not voting--Dymally, Levine

Republicans not voting--Lewis, Moorhead