Protecting Volunteer Firefighters and Emergency Responders Act of 2014

Floor Speech

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I rise today to discuss my two amendments to the legislation we have been debating this week. I think most of us would agree we need to give folks a hand up. That makes a lot of sense. But we also need to ensure they have a solid foundation on which it stands. The best way we can help the unemployed is to help them find a job. My amendments aim to do just that. First, we will restore the 40-hour workweek which was destroyed by ObamaCare. The employer mandate currently requires employers to provide health insurance to full-time employees, and the new definition of a full-time employee is 30 hours per workweek. As a result, employers are cutting hours for many of the employees to fewer than 30 hours per week.

I have heard from several employers at home in South Carolina, representing institutions as large as Clemson University and as small as the local surf shop that are suffering the consequences of this new 30-hour definition.

A few weeks ago I was on a bus in Charleston talking with some of my constituents. I started speaking with one young man who had just moved to South Carolina from Georgia looking for new opportunities. He worked for a restaurant and had recently received notice that his hours were getting cut. After talking with this young man for a few minutes, it became very clear to me that his pay was cut and his hours were dwindling as a direct result of the 30-hour rule. Not only was he losing 25 percent of his pay, he was losing the ability to work overtime.

According to the Hoover Institution, 2.6 million Americans are especially at risk of having their hours and wages cut like the young man with whom I was speaking. Of those 2.6 million Americans, 59 percent of them are between the ages of 19 and 34, 63 percent are women, and 90 percent do not have a college degree. Further, families most at risk are those with a median income, $29,126.

Many of these millions of Americans who are earning hourly wages to support their family will see a 25-percent cut in their pay as employers struggle with the massive new costs forced on them by the Federal Government--their Federal Government. Thanks to ObamaCare, not only will these workers not have health insurance but they will no longer have full-time jobs. We must--and I want to emphasize we must--restore the 40-hour workweek, period.

My second amendment is the same as my SKILLS Act which I introduced as a part of my opportunity agenda earlier this year. It provides much needed reforms to modernize the government's bureaucratic means of workforce development and training programs. With 4 million jobs currently unfilled across our Nation today, including 65,000 jobs in South Carolina, job skills training is critical for folks looking for work. We have to make sure people are prepared for continued success, and that starts with education and workforce training.

Thanks to the leadership of my colleague, Mrs. Foxx in the House, the SKILLS Act has already passed with some Democratic support on the other side of the Capitol. It is well past time for that to happen in the Senate, and I hope my colleagues will join me in providing more skills and more opportunities to develop the skills to put Americans back to work.

This is truly a conversation about jobs. How do we encourage job growth and stop the government from blocking job creation? It is a simple answer. These two amendments are steps in the right direction. Let's not let politics dictate the future of these two amendments. We can do better, and we should.

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