The bill
Empowering Employer Child and Elder Care Solutions Act
HR. 2270, 119th Congress — read as touching Labor Unions.
Sponsored by
Rep. Messmer, Mark [R-IN-8]
ID: M001233
Follow the money
The bill
HR. 2270, 119th Congress — read as touching Labor Unions.
The sponsor
Every bill has someone who introduced it. That name is where the paper trail starts.
The money
30 itemised contributions to this sponsor, pulled from FEC filings.
The alignment
This bill's text tracks the "Introduction" section, p. 624-626 of the Mandate for Leadership.
Track this bill's progress through the legislative process
Latest Action
POSTPONED PROCEEDINGS - Pursuant to clause 1(c) of rule XIX, the Chair announced that further proceedings on H.R. 2270 is postponed.
January 12, 2026
📍 Current Status
Next: The bill will be reviewed by relevant committees who will debate, amend, and vote on it.
1. Introduction: A member of Congress introduces a bill in either the House or Senate.
2. Committee Review: The bill is sent to relevant committees for study, hearings, and revisions.
3. Floor Action: If approved by committee, the bill goes to the full chamber for debate and voting.
4. Other Chamber: If passed, the bill moves to the other chamber (House or Senate) for the same process.
5. Conference: If both chambers pass different versions, a conference committee reconciles the differences.
6. Presidential Action: The President can sign the bill into law, veto it, or take no action.
7. Became Law: If signed (or if Congress overrides a veto), the bill becomes law!
Another masterpiece of legislative theater, brought to you by the esteemed members of Congress who clearly have nothing better to do than concoct more ways to screw over working-class Americans.
Let's dissect this farce, shall we? The "Empowering Employer Child and Elder Care Solutions Act" (because who doesn't love a title that sounds like it was written by a committee of tone-deaf bureaucrats?) claims to be about helping employers provide child and dependent care services to their employees. How noble. Except, of course, it's not.
What this bill actually does is exclude these "benefits" from overtime compensation calculations. Translation: employers get to pretend they're being generous while simultaneously screwing over their employees by denying them fair pay for their work. It's a classic case of "we care about your family, but not enough to actually pay you what you're worth."
The affected industries? Any company that can afford to offer these "benefits" in the first place – i.e., large corporations with deep pockets and a vested interest in keeping labor costs down. The compliance requirements are laughable: just insert some boilerplate language into your employee handbook, and voilà! You're now an "empowering employer."
Enforcement mechanisms? Ha! Don't make me laugh. This bill relies on the honor system – because we all know how well that works in the corporate world. Penalties for non-compliance? Oh, I'm sure they'll be draconian... said no one ever.
The economic and operational impacts? Well, let's just say this bill is a gift to employers who want to keep their labor costs low while pretending to care about their employees' well-being. It's a masterclass in corporate welfare, courtesy of your friendly neighborhood politicians.
In short, HR 2270 is a legislative disease that needs to be diagnosed and treated – with a healthy dose of skepticism and contempt for the politicians who peddle this nonsense. The real illness here? Corporate greed, enabled by spineless lawmakers who are more interested in lining their own pockets than actually helping working Americans.
Diagnosis: Terminal stupidity, with a side of corruption and cowardice. Prognosis: bleak.
Rep. Messmer, Mark [R-IN-8]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
No organization contributions found
No committee contributions found
No individual contributions found
This bill has 8 cosponsors. Below are their top campaign contributors.
ID: M001194
Top Contributors
10
ID: H001091
Top Contributors
0
No contribution data available
ID: H001090
Top Contributors
10
ID: T000467
Top Contributors
10
ID: S001196
Top Contributors
10
ID: F000484
Top Contributors
0
No contribution data available
ID: H001102
Top Contributors
10
ID: O000177
Top Contributors
10
Hub layout: Politicians in center, donors arranged by type in rings around them.
Showing 19 nodes and 42 connections (90 secondary connections hidden)
Total contributions: $86,894
Showing top 1 donor by contribution amount
Which industries are materially affected by specific provisions in this bill. 2 harmed.
Section 2(a) amends FLSA to exclude child/dependent care payments from overtime rate calculation, reducing overtime pay for workers, which labor unions oppose as it diminishes worker compensation.
Same provision reduces overtime compensation for school employees (e.g., paraprofessionals, custodians) who may receive child care benefits, negatively impacting members of teachers unions.
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document.
— 592 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise Overtime Pay Threshold. Overtime pay is one of the most challenging aspects of the Fair Labor Standards Act rules. “Nonexempt workers” (e.g., workers whose job duties fall within the law’s power or whose total pay is low enough) must be paid overtime (150 percent of the “regular rate”) for every hour over 40 in a work- week. Overtime requirements may discourage employers from offering certain fringe benefits such as reimbursement for education, childcare, or even free meals because the benefits’ value may be included in the “regular rate” that must be paid at 150 percent for all overtime hours. And because some of these fringe ben- efits may be more valuable (and often come with tax preferences that benefit the worker), the goal should be to set a threshold to ensure lower-income workers have the protections of overtime pay without discouraging employers from offering these benefits. l DOL should maintain an overtime threshold that does not punish businesses in lower-cost regions (e.g., the southeast United States). The Trump-era threshold is high enough to capture most line workers in lower-cost regions. One possibility to consider (likely requiring congressional action) would be to automatically update the thresholds every five years using the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) as an inflation adjustment. This could reduce the likelihood of a future Administration attempting to make significant changes but would also impose more adjustments on businesses as those automatic increases take hold. l Congress should clarify that the “regular rate” for overtime pay is based on the salary paid rather than all benefits provided. This would enable employers to offer additional benefits to employees without fear that those benefits would dramatically increase overtime pay. l Congress should provide flexibility to employers and employees to calculate the overtime period over a longer number of weeks. Specifically, employers and employees should be able to set a two- or four- week period over which to calculate overtime. This would give workers greater flexibility to work more hours in one week and fewer hours in the next and would not require the employer to pay them more for that same total number of hours of work during the entire period. Compliance-Assistance Programming. Labor agencies are often tempted to encourage “over compliance” by companies subject to regulation by pursuing “regulation through enforcement” strategies. Rather than giving regulated enti- ties clear boundaries for what they can and cannot do under the law, the agencies — 593 — Department of Labor and Related Agencies rely on the vagueness of the law to bring enforcement activity against businesses that fail to meet an inspector or agency head’s personal standard. This is not fair to regulated parties and results in disfavored companies bearing the brunt of the agencies’ enforcement efforts even though their behavior may be within the main- stream of employer behavior. l Labor agencies should provide compliance assistance to help businesses and workers better understand the agencies’ position on their own rules and should do so in a way that makes it easier to follow those rules. This frees people to focus on their work rather than slogging through an ever-growing body of laws, rules, and guidance documents generated by the agencies. Clear and Restrictive Rules on Guidance Documents. Federal agencies not only issue regulations to fill in gaps left by legislation, but also supplement those reg- ulations with “guidance” documents that occupy a unique and often confusing area between law and “helpful advice.” Unfortunately, wielded by overzealous enforcement agents, such guidance, some of it even hidden from public view, morphs into binding law used against unsuspecting employers. Guidance can be a tricky thing and can be used for good or bad. It should be used to make compli- cated regulations easier to understand, so that businesses can do their actual jobs and focus on providing jobs to American workers and value to consumers (really, compliance assistance). But guidance is often used to create new rules overnight without following legal requirements—like giving the public an opportunity to provide valuable input. This wrongful use of guidance hurts workers and those who employ them. In October 2019, President Trump signed an executive order ending this abusive practice and created a new, fairer system for American busi- nesses and their employees. In response, DOL published its PRO Good Guidance rule,10 which expressly limits its use of guidance in enforcement actions and gives the public the opportunity to submit comments to influence the department’s deci- sions on creating, revising, and even rescinding guidance. Under this rule, agencies cannot treat guidance as legally binding and must make all guidance documents readily accessible on their searchable online databases. This rule was immediately rescinded by the Biden Administration. l DOL should reinstitute the PRO Good Guidance rule via notice and comment. l Congress should amend the Administrative Procedure Act11 to explicitly limit the use of guidance documents.
Policy matches are calculated using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text. A score of 60% or higher indicates meaningful thematic overlap. This does not imply direct causation or intent, but highlights areas where legislation aligns with Project 2025 policy objectives.