Save American Workers Act of 2014
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Madam Speaker, first the facts--not the facts from this side of the aisle, not the facts from the other party, but the facts that we get from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which is in charge of telling all of us--Congress and the rest of the country--what does legislation that is proposed by Democrats and Republicans actually cost, and what will it actually do. They are the nonpartisan referee that we are supposed to rely on to sort of give us the facts without getting into these political battles.
What do the folks at the Congressional Budget Office say about this bill? One, it will increase the deficit by $75 billion; two, around a million American workers will lose their health insurance coverage that they get through their employer today; and three, around five times as many workers in America will be at risk of losing hours at work as a result of this bill should it become law. Okay, so those are the facts not from Republicans, not from Democrats, but from the nonpartisan CBO.
So let's now talk a little bit about those facts a bit more, because I think a lot of folks are very confused. What the heck is going on? We are going to lose hours at work? We are going to gain? What is going on? Essentially it is this. We have got to figure out how we make sure that employers who currently offer health insurance to their employees don't say, hey, I don't want to do it anymore, so I am going to stop offering it. How can I do that? I can make sure I keep my employees employed for less hours than is required by the law.
This bill says if you have that threshold that the number of hours you have to work is 30, well, a whole bunch of employers are going to say, hey, I can game the system if I drop the number of hours my employee works at the job to less than 30. That is true.
The problem is this. The vast majority of Americans don't work 31 hours, 32 hours a week. They work 40. A lot of Americans, in fact, work 42, 44. They work overtime. So what the Affordable Care Act did was made sure that most employers who currently offer employer-covered insurance to their employees continue to do it because very few employers are going to say, I can game the system by dropping my 40-hour worker to 29 hours. That is 11 quality hours, unless you were just letting these folks just sit on a couch.
What happens if you raise the number of work hours to qualify for the affordable care coverage to 40 hours? Well, that is why the CBO says about 1 million Americans will lose their insurance coverage, because if you are working a 40-hour workweek, an employer would say, gosh, it would be tough for me to drop you to 29 hours, it would be a lot easier to say, I will drop you to 39 1/2 hours, in which case I no longer have to offer you insurance.
That is why the Congressional Budget Office said that over 1 million Americans would lose their health insurance coverage and why it would cost about $75 billion to do this legislation, because guess what? If the employers are no longer offering you insurance and you still have to go to the doctor for your child and you can't afford it anymore because you don't have insurance, guess who gets to pay? The folks up there in the audience in the gallery and those of us here who pay taxes, because guess what? They will go to the emergency room, and now they will use the Medicaid program to help cover that bill they can no longer afford because the employer cut them back a little bit.
If we all really want to make sure Americans get to work, then let's separate the myth from the fact. Remember 4 years ago death panels? If the Affordable Care Act, this new health security law, takes effect, death panels are going to decide if your grandmother gets to live. How many death panels have you heard that have told your family member he or she will have to die? Okay, I ask anyone in this audience, do you have a doctor? Do you have insurance? Do you know your doctor? Ask yourself this question: What is the name of your government doctor? You have a doctor. Did you know your doctor works for the government? You are going to say, no, I have known my doctor for a long time. He or she doesn't work directly for the government. If you believe the myth, yes, your doctor does because, remember, this was a government takeover of health care. It was a myth.
In fact, this Affordable Care Act's law requires you to use private health insurance coverage to get your health care through private doctors and private hospitals. But what it does is it requires you to do it, and it requires employers to do it, as well. That is what the law did. It didn't say, you are going to go to a government doctor or a government hospital.
So once you separate the facts from the myth, it becomes pretty clear what we have to do. We have to make sure if you are an American we reward you for your work. If you are an American and you get health insurance through your employer, we don't want your employer to game the system and put the burden on you now. And so what we
want is to make it affordable for the employee and affordable for the employer.
This bill makes it unaffordable for the employee moving forward, and it makes it, quite honestly, for the employer, as well, because you are losing your good workers. We need to defeat this bill and try to make the Affordable Care Act work for everyone.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source