When I heard that Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., was introducing legislation to require all employers of 100 or more workers to offer them a week of paid vacation, I chuckled to myself and prepared to move on to reading about the next outrage from Big Government.
![]() Rep. Alan Grayson |
Then I noticed that no one in Congress, no organization and apparently no individual had yet voiced an articulate objection to this brazen violation of the Constitution and all that is good and decent in the world.
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Let me be the first – and let me not be the last.
First a little background.
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Grayson says this idea struck him like a thunderbolt on a recent visit to Disney World. I'm not sure if his mommy took him or whether it was a taxpayer-sponsored visit.
"There's a reason why Disney World is the happiest place on Earth: The people who go there are on vacation," he explained. "Honestly, as much as I appreciate this job and as much as I enjoy it, the best days of my life are and always have been the days I'm on vacation."
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That makes two of us: The happiest days I have are when Congress is on vacation, too.
Grayson's revelation prompted him to introduce "The Paid Vacation Act" – legislation that would be the first to make paid vacation time a requirement under federal law.
The bill would require companies with more than 100 employees to offer a week of paid vacation for both full-time and part-time employees after they've put in a year on the job. Three years after the effective date of the law, those same companies would be required to provide two weeks of paid vacation, and companies with 50 or more employees would have to provide one week.
But it's not just altruism that leads Grayson to force you to pay for the vacations of others. It's a plan, he says, to stimulate the economy!
If workers have more vacation time, they will take fewer sick days, they will be happier and more productive.
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Now maybe you didn't realize that members of Congress are experts on productivity. They know much more about it than private employers do. And the proof of the pudding is the number of vacations Congress takes. Somehow, with all their time off, they still manage to squeeze in enough working time to burden U.S. taxpayers with thousands of new nonsensical regulations every year.
But, maybe you ask, is there even a problem in the U.S.? Don't most employers already give workers at least a week off for vacation every year?
Of course they do.
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However, Grayson cites statistics of some meddlesome, do-gooder think tank that claims there are still some 28 million Americans who don't get any paid vacation. This, Grayson claims, somehow costs the economy $300 billion each year in stress and workplace burnout.
Does he actually believe these statistics? If he does, why not just give each of these 28 million vacationless workers $10,714 in cash. That's $300 billion divided by 28 million workers. Problem solved.
At least this solution would not result in other workers losing their jobs – the inevitable result of new mandates on employers who currently don't believe they can even afford to offer workers a week off with pay.
Imagine the vacation you could take with $10,714! I bet you could even go to Disney World.
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People like Grayson are a disgrace to all the principles that made America great and unique as an experiment in liberty.
In another more enlightened time in American history, people like this would be laughed off the political stage. Today, inmates like Grayson are running the asylum.
I don't know what turnip patch he emerged from before being elected to the Congress, but let me make this simple:
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- The Congress of the United States has no constitutional authority to tell employers, other than federal agencies, how much vacation time their employees get.
- Centralized, command-and-control dictates like this have failed everywhere they have ever been tried in the history of the world.
- Forcing employers to give paid vacations to employees who are not currently entitled leads to other employees losing their jobs.
- Workers on vacation are never more productive than those who are at work.
- Employer mandates like this also result in higher consumer prices, and guess what that translates into? Fewer and shorter vacations.
Is this really ignorance on the part of Grayson? Or is it something far more insidious?
Government is taking over auto manufacturing.
It's taking over health care.
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It's regulating freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
It's indebting our grandchildren and great-grandchildren with do-gooder schemes.
No, this isn't mere stupidity. This is a determined effort to seize power for the few and reduce liberty for the many.