Lastly, the proponents of the Medical Waste Tracking Act of 1988 used public persuasion and issue framing extensively. Proponents framed this bill as a major and urgent issue because it was disrupting families’ summers at the beach. Furthermore, 1988 was an election year, and Congress needed to get something passed fast, or else no Northeastern Congress member was going to be safe in his or her House seat. For this reason, the bill was framed as an emergency. However, the bill itself was innocuous so that no one could object to it. The programs attached to the bill were unfunded, voluntary (besides NY, NJ, CT, and PR that made it state-mandated), and simply involved accounting for and tracking medical waste outputs of medical facilities. Therefore, …show more content…
The number of weeks that an individual could take off for emergency fluctuated between 18 weeks in 2 years (original bill) and the finally agreed upon 12 weeks of unpaid leave in a 12 month period to care for either a new baby or an ill family member through multiple compromises with different week allowances. The number of workers that qualified a business for being included in this act changed from 5 to 15 to 20, 30, and then was settled at 50 employees. This Act would apply to businesses with 50+ employees within a 75 mile radius. This change in the number of employees that would bind the company to comply with the FMLA ultimately freed up small businesses. Lobbyists from the SBA then had nothing to argue for in regards to this bill, and moderate Republicans were then comfortable voting for the bill. Furthermore, the last version of the bill before it was passed was modified to include the final compromise by the House of Representatives to allow homosexuals into the military. This was a completely unrelated issue, yet was a very salient and visible issue in the United