Save American Workers Act of 2014
Floor Speech
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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, there has actually been a debate on this floor by all of my colleagues, women, coming down from the Republican side, talking about how wonderful this bill is for women and how bad ObamaCare is for women.
I want to make this point, which is that, before the Affordable Care Act was passed, there was gender discrimination against women. The standard body was clearly the male body because women were paying about 48 percent more for health care before this law went into effect, a law that said there would be no more gender discrimination, that women could not be charged more because things like pregnancy might take place. Women became among the biggest winners under the new Affordable Care Act.
In talking about protecting women, it is interesting to me that the Republicans, including my women colleagues, oppose the raising of the minimum wage. Two-thirds of minimum wage workers are women. They oppose the Paycheck Fairness Act. Isn't it time in 2014 that women get paid equal pay for equal work? They oppose the funding of preschool. They support a budget that would cut Pell Grants for colleges. They oppose making sure that the Affordable Care Act will provide contraceptives as a preventative service to women.
I am also hearing about the economics of freedom. Under the Affordable Care Act, now you don't have to be locked into a job because you need the health insurance. That is what I call freedom. Suddenly, entrepreneurialism is unleashed because women, and men are able to say, I am going to take a risk, but I am going to still be able to find health insurance.
The other thing I hear is that it is a job killer. Actually, H.R. 2575 would force 1 million people to lose their employer-provided coverage, and it would increase the number of uninsured up to 500,000. This is not a number that has come out of some Democratic think tank. This is a number that comes from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Ask the workers themselves, and this is what they will tell you. The National Education Association says, We oppose this bill because we believe it would create a disincentive for employers to provide health coverage.
They act like we are changing what full-time employment is, from 30 to 40 hours.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentlewoman has expired.
Mr. McDERMOTT. I yield the gen tle lady an additional 1 minute.
Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Here is what we are changing. We are saying, if you work 30 hours, your employer should provide you with health insurance.
What this bill says is, now, if you work 39 hours, your employer can deny you health care coverage. So it actually raises the bar and says that workers can no longer get coverage between the 30 and 39 hours that they work. This is not a good thing.
The American Federation of Labor represents millions of workers. This bill not only fails to address the problem it was intended to solve, but it makes the problem worse. Raising the threshold of how many hours will only move the cliff and will actually increase employers' incentives to reduce workers' hours. The Communications Workers of America say the threshold from 30 to 40 hours per week doesn't help. It would actually encourage employers to lower the number of hours.
There has been some implication, I think, that the Teamsters Union is supporting this bill. That is not true. The Teamsters are not supporting this legislation. I would urge my colleagues to oppose it as well, and I encourage my women colleagues to stand up for women.
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