Save American Workers Act of 2014

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

I thank the gentleman. I thank you for your leadership.

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to stand here in support of this legislation--good legislation--that will help people in my district in Michigan, a hard-hit State because of economic problems and, I think, bad, bad efforts and policies from an administration that didn't understand that workers who are encouraged to work to their fullest extent produce an economy.

It is hard to take seriously the objections of the Democrat side of the aisle here when they talk about the middle class, they talk about employees and their efforts to help them, a party who enshrines the minimum wage and unemployment insurance as the golden grail of what grows an economy. I find that absurd.

It is a party who has decimated the middle class in the last 6 years with policies including what we are discussing today. Moving from 40 hours to 30 hours as full-time worker requirements? I don't get it.

We also understand it is the same party that told us, if you like your insurance, you can keep it--no. If you like your doctor, you can keep it--no. If you like your hospital, you can keep it--no. And now we hear their objection that basically says, if you like your job, you can keep it--no.

Back in September, before this ill-advised law took place, Janet from Jackson, Michigan, called my office in tears, a 56-year-old mother of three, single parent, who had just been told that morning by her job provider in home health care--a very valuable field of service--that she no longer would be working 36 hours, which was her normal working hour opportunity, and was being moved back to 28 because of what? The Affordable Care Act requirements. And so she said to my office staff, in tears:

How am I now going to make it when I was making it on 36 hours at that job, supplementing that with a waitress job on the weekend, and I was paying my mortgage and my insurance, and now I am going to be asked to pay for all that on 28 hours? I am 56 years old. Where am I going to get another job?

That is what is being produced by this. We want to give Janet the opportunity to have her 36 hours back. We want to give Jim, Jerry, and Joan, and all the rest of the people, the opportunity to have the fullest hours they can possibly have in an America that grows the middle class and gives opportunity for success.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source