House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) was on FOX News Sunday yesterday and had this to say about the deceptively-named Employee Free Choice Act:

WALLACE: But you want to pass the bill, just to be clear here, that the — that unions, that labor, AFL-CIO, is talking about the Employee Free Choice Act, which would — which would create a one-step system, a public vote, on whether or not to unionize.

HOYER: Well, a public vote — you mean a signing of the — of the card which says, “I want the union to represent me.”

WALLACE: Yes, right.

HOYER: What I have said, and I said on your program and will reiterate, that bill that passed the House handily is certainly going to be the base bill. Will there be discussions? There may well be discussions.

And again, I want to stress nobody is precluding having a secret ballot. What we are saying is that an alternative route will be available. And if employees choose to sign — over 50 percent of the employees sign a card saying, “We want to be represented by the union,” that that will be effected.

HOYER: And give me a sense of the time frame? You said maybe not the first month. How soon?

HOYER: Well, I think it will be early. I think it will be early in the year, certainly in the early spring.

Right now, obviously, our major, major focus is getting people back to work, getting our economy moving, making sure that working people can get back to work and we start creating those 3 million jobs that President- elect Obama has talked about. So that’s a priority item for us.