Nomination of Kent Yoshiho Hirozawa To Be A Member Of The National Labor Relations Board
Floor Speech
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Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Utah for organizing this effort.
Let me answer that question by coming up with a couple of things we can find consensus on. First of all, I think all of us agree the American middle class is one of the things that make us exceptional. All the countries in the world have rich people. Unfortunately, every country in the world has people who are struggling. But what has made America unique and different from all of these other countries is that we have a vibrant middle class. We have people who work hard, make enough money to own a home, take their kids on vacations, save for college expenses, and kind of fulfill many of their dreams.
I grew up in that environment. I tell people all the time I didn't have everything I wanted, but we always had everything we needed. Through hard work and sacrifice my parents became part of that great American middle class--working-class Americans who had the opportunity to give us the life they never had.
I think we can all agree the middle class is very important for America because it is one of the things that makes us exceptional, unique, and sets us apart from the rest of the world. Quite frankly, one of the reasons why people want to live here and love being in America is because it creates those opportunities.
What strengthens the middle class? We are having a debate about that in this country. Is it a bunch of government spending? Is it a bunch of government programs? Is it the Senators? Is it the President of the United States? The answer is no. What rationally makes the middle class possible and vibrant is jobs that pay middle-class salaries. What makes it possible is that we have jobs that pay that kind of money so people can join the middle class and give their kids a better life.
Where do those jobs come from? Do they come from the government? Do they come from the White House? Do they come from the Senate or from our laws? They don't. They come from a vibrant private economy that is creating those jobs. How those jobs are created is not that complicated. People have to start new businesses or grow a business that already exists. Those are the two primary ways in which middle-class jobs--in fact, most jobs--are created outside of government. That is the only place where we will find the kind of growth we need for a vibrant middle class. We should analyze every issue before this body through the lens of the middle class and through the lens of whether it makes it easier or harder for someone to start a business or grow an existing one.
Let's examine what the Senator from Utah just asked about ObamaCare in the context of what I just explained. The answer is that it is clear ObamaCare makes it harder for people to start a business or grow an existing business for a number of reasons the Senator has pointed out. No. 1, it has an incentive for businesses not to grow. It tells a business owner that if they have more than 50 full-time employees, they will have to meet a set of rules which will make it very expensive for them to start a business or grow an existing business.
The other thing it creates is a tremendous amount of uncertainty. It goes back to the point the Senator from Utah raised. These laws are being canceled on a whim. The President is deciding to enforce one part of it but not another part of it. That creates confusion.
Imagine if a person has a business and some money set aside to grow, that business owner doesn't know how much it is going to cost to grow. You know what they do? They don't grow the business. As a result, those jobs are not created.
How about the cost of that insurance, which is an issue the Senator from Utah talked about a moment ago. Yesterday in Florida the commissioner of insurance said that in the individual marketplace in Florida next year--because of ObamaCare--rates are going up 30 to 40 percent. Ask yourself: Does that make it easier to start a new business or does it make it harder? Does it make it easier to grow an existing business or does it make it harder?
Think about the impact all of this uncertainty is going to have on middle-class workers. Add to that the following: Right now there is an incentive to have part-time workers. That is why we are reading everyday in the newspapers that company X is moving people from full-time to part-time. Companies are moving employees to less than 30 hours so they can avoid the penalties in this bill.
How about insurance? Let's say a person works somewhere that has insurance and they are happy with it. This law might require the employer to put that person on a new insurance or move that person to a government exchange, which means that doctor that worker has been dealing with for 10 years who knows their case history might not be their doctor next year because of ObamaCare. The result is we have a holding pattern.
Businesses in America, the people who create the middle-class jobs, are in a holding pattern and waiting to see which direction this goes, but they are all headed in a poor direction because of this.
So when the Senator from Utah talked about this and asked the question: What impact is the Senator hearing, that is what I am hearing. I am hearing that this law makes it harder for people to create jobs. This bill is going to make it harder on the middle-class jobs. It is going to make it harder for middle-class jobs to be created because it makes it harder to start a business and makes it harder to grow an existing business.
I imagine the Senator from Utah has heard similar concerns in his own State. The Senator from Texas has joined us, and he is from a State even larger than mine. I am sure he will share his input on what he is hearing from his home State and from people across the country.
I say to my colleague that is what I have been hearing from my constituents everywhere I have been going in Florida for the last 6 months.
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Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, in response to the Senator from Utah, I would say I have because I think there is a pretty clear understanding growing every day, as evidenced by the Senator from Texas a moment ago, who went through all these groups out there, including labor unions that have now turned on ObamaCare because of what it means to their members. So it is increasingly established how much damage this law is doing.
The question I get, I say to the Senator from Utah, is, What can we do about it? There is almost this resignation by people that, well, what can we do about it? It is already in place. Is there anything we can do?
So I think there are three things we should be able to do, and I will summarize those fairly quickly.
The first thing we should do is not continue to double and triple down on these things.
I think both the Senator from Texas and the Senator from Utah grew up at the same time as I did, so they will remember something that a lot of the younger people here probably do not remember. There was a time when Coca-Cola came out with something called New Coke. It was a new Coca-Cola formula. After about 100-some years, they changed the formula of Coca-Cola and they came out with something called New Coke. It was a disaster. Everybody hated it. In fact, they hated it because--they said: If we want to drink something that has that kind of sweetener, there are other options on the market. We like old Coke.
What did Coca-Cola do when New Coke began to flounder? They did not say: Well, we are just going to continue to make more of it. They backed away from it. They went back to the original formula. They learned from their mistake, and they did not double down. That is the way it is in the real world. That is the way it is in our lives, and that is the way it is in the private sector--but not government, not Washington. In Washington, if something is going wrong, here they double and triple down. It is like an invitation to move forward. We should not do that. That is the first thing I would say.
The second thing I would say is that we have to stop this from moving forward. The implications of this law are already being felt, but the regulations around this law--the mandates in this law, the fees and the costs and the new rate increases in this law, those things, you are only going to start to feel that right now. In the next few months you are going to really start to feel what this new law means to your life, to your business, to the place where you work.
Now is the time to act. People ask me: What can we do about it? Let me tell you what is probably not going to work in the short term. You are probably not going to get President Obama to sign a bill that repeals ObamaCare, and you are not going to get the votes in the Senate to do that. So these repeal votes--I will vote for every single one of them, but the problem is that our chances of getting that accomplished are probably minimal so long as President Obama is the President of the United States. So truly our last option is to stop paying for this thing. Why would we continue to pour billions and hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into a disaster? Why would we double down with your hard-earned money on a program that is going to hurt you?
We will have a chance to do that in September because in September, in order for the government to continue to function, we have to pass something called a short-term budget. I wish it were a permanent budget, but it is supposed to be a short-term budget. All we are saying is, in that short-term budget, fund the government, keep the lights on, pay the military, make sure Social Security checks go out. The only thing you should not do is you should not fund and pay for ObamaCare.
The pushback we get from that from some people is, well, that is crazy because that means you are willing to shut down the government over ObamaCare. That is not the way I see it. The way I see it is that if we pass a budget that pays for everything except for ObamaCare and the President says he will veto that, it is he who wants to shut down the government, it is he who is basically saying: I will shut down the government unless it pays for ObamaCare. That is an unreasonable position. It is unreasonable because this law is so bad. His own allies are coming to him and saying: Please stop this from moving forward. Well, we are going to give you a chance, Mr. President, by refusing to fund it.
Here is my last point: To my colleagues in the Republican Party--I know every single one of the Senate Members here in the Republican Party is against ObamaCare--this is our last chance, our last best chance to do something about this. When this thing starts to kick in and starts to take root, it is going to be very difficult to undo major portions of this despite the damage it is going to create.
Now, I only speak for myself, although I think I can speak for the other two Senators who have joined me here today in this effort. I want to be able to go back to Florida, no matter how this thing turns out, and say to the men and women who sent me here in 2010: I did everything I could to keep this from happening to you.
When someone comes to me and says: I just got moved to part time because of ObamaCare, I want to be able to look them in the eye and say that I did everything I could.
When someone says to me: I just lost the insurance I was happy with; I now have this new insurance plan I am not that familiar with, and my doctor, whom I have had for 30 years, is not on that plan, I want to be able to say to them that I did everything I could.
When someone comes to me and says: I have a pretty successful business; I have set some money aside; I was going to open a new business or grow this one, but I am not because of ObamaCare, I want to be able to say that I did everything I could.
If we pass a budget in September that funds ObamaCare, you did not do everything you could. You paid for this. You doubled down on it in ways that will have irreparable harm to our economy and to our country.
This is our last best chance.
To those who say they are against ObamaCare, I believe you. But let me tell you something. If we are not willing to draw a line in the sand on this issue, then on what issue are we willing to draw a line in the sand? If we are not willing to go to the limit on this issue, then what issue is there? Is there an issue on which we are prepared to say: We will not move forward because of this? Is there an issue on which we are willing to do everything we can and lay it all on the line? Is there such an issue? And if it is not this one, which one is it?
That is the choice before us. I truly believe you cannot go back home and say you did everything you could to stop ObamaCare if you vote for a budget that funds it.
I would ask the Senator from Texas if he too shares those thoughts and those feelings?
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