Voters want overtime pay expanded - By a lot.

by Laura Clawson

Hear that, Mr. President? It's good to be bold.

We don't yet know how high President Obama will raise the salary threshold for workers to get overtime pay. A new poll finds significant public support for him to raise it to the very highest end of what had been discussed. Public Policy Polling conducted a survey for Americans United for Change and found 73 percent support for an increase in the overtime threshold, but what's most striking is this:

65% of voters think workers making up to $75,000 a year should be allowed to receive overtime pay when working more than 40 hours in a week regardless of job classification, compared to only 23% opposed to a change to that level. This is a pocketbook issue that creates little division across party lines- 68% of Democrats, 66% of Republicans, and 58% of independents favor moving the overtime pay threshold to that level.

That's if people are just asked "Would you support or oppose allowing people to receive overtime pay when they work more than 40 hours a week if they make $75,000 a year or less regardless of their job classification?" Given a choice of different salary levels for overtime to kick in, 44 percent still chose $75,000 a year, while an additional nine percent chose $60,000 and 10 percent chose $50,000. Even a modest increase like the $42,000 rumored to be the level the Obama administration was considering would mean that an additional 3.5 million workers would be eligible for overtime pay