Save American Workers Act of 2014
Floor Speech
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Mr. YOUNG of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, the President proposes a 25 percent increase in the minimum wage. ObamaCare, however, is resulting in as much as a 25 percent decrease in the pay of millions of hourly workers. Because of the 30 hours is full time provision, too many Americans are not able to work the hours they need to support their families. By passing my bill, the Save American Workers Act, we can create an America that works simply by restoring the traditional 40-hour workweek.
I am joined this evening in this Special Order by my colleagues, Representatives KELLY of Pennsylvania and BARR of Kentucky, but so many people have helped bring this important issue to the attention of the American people at large, to rank and file Americans, who during this down economy are looking for as many hours as they can get and for as much take-home pay as they might receive.
Let me just kick this evening off by explaining in some level of detail what this 30-hour provision is because, frankly, for the uninitiated, it is a bit foreign for most of us to consider full-time employment to be a 30-hour workweek, but that is the case under the Affordable Care Act. In fact, the Affordable Care Act mandates employers provide ObamaCare-sanctioned health insurance to all of their employees should they employ 50 or more individuals who work 30 or more hours per week.
We have all heard from employers about the adverse consequences--unintended, I expect--created by this 30 hours is full time provision. The unintended consequence is chiefly that so many employers, especially those who are squeezed by tight profit margins or those who just wouldn't be financially viable entities, are moving their employees down below this 30-hour threshold. They are reducing the number of hours that their hourly employees can work so that they don't have to provide ObamaCare-sanctioned health insurance.
The employer mandate has been delayed by the administration twice, so it is clear that this is ill-considered policy. While the White House says the delays are to help employers, it should be even more apparent to those of us who visit with our constituents on an almost daily basis that it is the low- and middle-income worker who is being most adversely impacted by this employer mandate.
The real result of the 30-hour bill--let me be clear--is fewer jobs, reduced hours, reduced wages, less take-home pay for things like food and shelter and clothing for Americans who need it most. I can cite plenty of examples in my district in which this is having a very serious impact at this early stage of ObamaCare's implementation. I live in Bloomington, Indiana.
Indiana University is feeling the pinch of this and is reducing some hours of some of their hourly employees, from custodians to cafeteria workers and others, because they cannot remain a financially viable entity, as taxpayers expect it to be, should it have to comply with this employer mandate as it is currently constructed.
Ivy Tech Community College is also feeling the pinch. In fact, 4,500 of their adjunct professors are losing hours. This is resulting in reduced course offerings for many students, but more importantly for those adjunct professors, they need the wages, they need the hours. Should Ivy Tech decide to continue on with business as usual, they would be eating all sorts of compliance costs to try and measure the hours of their hourly employees and ensure that they are complying with the law. They have done the math. They have figured out that this 30 hours is full time provision amounts to a $12 million unfunded mandate, courtesy of Uncle Sam.
I have heard from 39 public school corporations in Indiana about the adverse consequences of this 30 hours is full time provision. In fact, they are suing the Federal Government, along with the State of Indiana, because of this provision, which they say will have catastrophic financial consequences on their operations, on their balance sheets.
From a practical perspective, the majority of employers who voluntarily provide coverage to their employees do so for their full-time employees, and they do so because they want to attract the absolute best talent they can within the labor market. This system has succeeded in providing coverage for nearly 160 million Americans. It is working. In fact, this is the largest source of health coverage in America, but the 30-hour rule radically disrupts this success and this model. Many people will lose their coverage, especially your lower-skilled workers, often your entry-level opportunities where younger workers get valuable work experience and start to work their way up the economic ladder. We need to protect the wages of Americans who depend on them the most. That is what this bipartisan effort, the Save American Workers Act, is all about.
I am proud to be joined in this effort by Representative Barr, who has shown some leadership on this issue, and by Representative Kelly, who was out front very early with respect to this issue. I look forward to engaging in some dialogue this evening and in turning over the mike to them to get their State level perspectives, but I think it is worth noting, because I do want to recognize them, the fair-minded Members among us who look for opportunities to work across the aisle.
Representative Lipinski, a Democrat from Illinois, has shown a lot of leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives with respect to this issue. There are a handful of other Democrat Members who have signed on to the Save American Workers Act. It is my fervent hope, not for my interest but for the interests of my constituents and for those like them around the country, that other Democrats will join the vast majority of Republican Members of Congress in supporting this bill.
With that, I would just invite the dialogue of Mr. Barr, my good colleague in his first term--but he seems far more experienced than that--to speak to the Save American Workers Act.
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Mr. YOUNG of Indiana. Reclaiming my time, I sometimes like to distill the narrative down to some numbers.
You just mentioned the movement down to 29 hours a week. Let's consider the Kentuckian or the Hoosier who is currently working 39 hours a week, and because of this provision, their employer is unable, under the current economic conditions, to offer them ObamaCare-sanctioned health insurance.
They are incentivized to move that hardworking hourly work down to 29 hours. That is a loss of 10 hours per week. Over the course of a month, that worker is losing an entire work week.
How is an hourly worker that has to pay for food and shelter and clothing and other basic expenditures supposed to take care of their family?
It is imminently unfair, and someone needs to stand up for our low- and middle-income workers. I think that is the essence of what this is all about.
Mr. BARR. Absolutely. I totally agree. You are absolutely right. I would commend the gentleman for being one of those leaders in our country who is standing up for the working people of this country.
I would just note the president of the Teamsters Union, James Hoffa, has said that this rule will ``destroy the foundation of the 40-hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class.''
In short, ObamaCare is hurting the very people that it was intended to help. I don't think this is a partisan issue. There are well-meaning people on both sides of the aisle who want to help working families make it a little easier and get by a little easier and put food on the table and earn a living wage, but this law is punishing people for working hard. Hard work is what made this country great.
Why would we disincentivize hard work? Yet that is exactly what ObamaCare does.
Mr. YOUNG of Indiana. If I could interject because I think you hit on a key point. This isn't ideological. This ought not be partisan at all. In fact, we have a number of Democratic cosponsors. I am gratified by their intellectual honesty, their courage, their support. They are doing the right thing here. They are looking out for their constituents.
We have all been asked to come here and get something done while people are feeling pain. This was certainly an unintended consequence, is my reading. I don't want to impugn the motives of those who hurriedly passed this Affordable Care Act. I don't think they intended this.
So we repeal the provision. We replace it with something that makes sense and restores wages for workers that need it most.
Mr. BARR. Absolutely. This is commonsense reform.
Again, I commend Congressman Young and other colleagues who have sponsored the Save American Workers Act. This is a simple piece of legislation. It would simply repeal the 30-hour definition of full-time employment in the Affordable Care Act, in ObamaCare, and restore the traditional 40-hour definition.
It makes perfect sense. It would help employees who are seeking the hours that they need to take care of themselves and their families. It would lower the burden and the regulatory costs on employers.
It would allow American businesses to be more productive. It will allow American workers to be more productive. It will get to the heart of why our economy is not where it should be today.
I really appreciate the gentleman's leadership on this issue.
Mr. YOUNG of Indiana. Thank you for not just your support, but your vocal support, engagement, leadership, and education of your colleagues and others who are important stakeholders with respect to this issue. Thank you so much for being with us here this evening.
I would like to pivot off of your discussion of this down economy. We are at a 35-year low in labor force participation. None of us is happy with the rate of job creation or business creation.
One of my constituents was sharing with me recently they saw a stat indicating that business creation and entrepreneurship are at a 15-year low. Clearly, we are experiencing the hardest of times.
The way to grow an economy, based on my economic background, is not to reduce the hours of workers and impose new compliance costs on our employers. Instead, we need to be removing obstacles to realizing the sorts of income that people need and opportunities to work your way up that economic ladder. Unfortunately, this goes in the opposite direction.
I am pleased today to be joined by my good colleague, Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania, who partnered with me in helping to draft this legislation. He has proven himself to be a fine leader in the Ways and Means Committee.
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Mr. YOUNG of Indiana. Reclaiming my time, I sometimes like to distill the narrative down to some numbers.
You just mentioned the movement down to 29 hours a week. Let's consider the Kentuckian or the Hoosier who is currently working 39 hours a week, and because of this provision, their employer is unable, under the current economic conditions, to offer them ObamaCare-sanctioned health insurance.
They are incentivized to move that hardworking hourly work down to 29 hours. That is a loss of 10 hours per week. Over the course of a month, that worker is losing an entire work week.
How is an hourly worker that has to pay for food and shelter and clothing and other basic expenditures supposed to take care of their family?
It is imminently unfair, and someone needs to stand up for our low- and middle-income workers. I think that is the essence of what this is all about.
Mr. BARR. Absolutely. I totally agree. You are absolutely right. I would commend the gentleman for being one of those leaders in our country who is standing up for the working people of this country.
I would just note the president of the Teamsters Union, James Hoffa, has said that this rule will ``destroy the foundation of the 40-hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class.''
In short, ObamaCare is hurting the very people that it was intended to help. I don't think this is a partisan issue. There are well-meaning people on both sides of the aisle who want to help working families make it a little easier and get by a little easier and put food on the table and earn a living wage, but this law is punishing people for working hard. Hard work is what made this country great.
Why would we disincentivize hard work? Yet that is exactly what ObamaCare does.
Mr. YOUNG of Indiana. If I could interject because I think you hit on a key point. This isn't ideological. This ought not be partisan at all. In fact, we have a number of Democratic cosponsors. I am gratified by their intellectual honesty, their courage, their support. They are doing the right thing here. They are looking out for their constituents.
We have all been asked to come here and get something done while people are feeling pain. This was certainly an unintended consequence, is my reading. I don't want to impugn the motives of those who hurriedly passed this Affordable Care Act. I don't think they intended this.
So we repeal the provision. We replace it with something that makes sense and restores wages for workers that need it most.
Mr. BARR. Absolutely. This is commonsense reform.
Again, I commend Congressman Young and other colleagues who have sponsored the Save American Workers Act. This is a simple piece of legislation. It would simply repeal the 30-hour definition of full-time employment in the Affordable Care Act, in ObamaCare, and restore the traditional 40-hour definition.
It makes perfect sense. It would help employees who are seeking the hours that they need to take care of themselves and their families. It would lower the burden and the regulatory costs on employers.
It would allow American businesses to be more productive. It will allow American workers to be more productive. It will get to the heart of why our economy is not where it should be today.
I really appreciate the gentleman's leadership on this issue.
Mr. YOUNG of Indiana. Thank you for not just your support, but your vocal support, engagement, leadership, and education of your colleagues and others who are important stakeholders with respect to this issue. Thank you so much for being with us here this evening.
I would like to pivot off of your discussion of this down economy. We are at a 35-year low in labor force participation. None of us is happy with the rate of job creation or business creation.
One of my constituents was sharing with me recently they saw a stat indicating that business creation and entrepreneurship are at a 15-year low. Clearly, we are experiencing the hardest of times.
The way to grow an economy, based on my economic background, is not to reduce the hours of workers and impose new compliance costs on our employers. Instead, we need to be removing obstacles to realizing the sorts of income that people need and opportunities to work your way up that economic ladder. Unfortunately, this goes in the opposite direction.
I am pleased today to be joined by my good colleague, Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania, who partnered with me in helping to draft this legislation. He has proven himself to be a fine leader in the Ways and Means Committee.
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Mr. YOUNG of Indiana. Thank you for your leadership on this important issue.
This is not a political issue. There is an old saying that good policy is good politics. Those who are driven primarily by political considerations--and I think there are, frankly, few that are primarily driven by those--they need to be on the right side of history. They need to be adopting a more optimal policy with respect to how we treat our low- and middle-income workers, so I would invite their support.
Please understand, even in this sometimes shrill, divided Congress, even in this sometimes divided Nation, there are still things we can agree upon. There are commonsensical solutions that we can adopt. There are problems that we can solve.
Repealing the first ever definition of ``full time'' in full law at 30 hours and moving it up to 40 hours, the traditional full-time workweek standard, just makes common sense. It is going to restore wages for millions of workers. $75 billion in foregone wages will be realized if we pass the Save American Workers Act.
Now, there has been quite a bit of talk about wages in this town and beyond in recent weeks, the minimum wage, in particular. I didn't come here to talk specifically about the minimum wage, but let me just illustrate the impact of this 40-hour provision. Let's consider the worker who works at the Federal minimum wage, which few actually do, but $7.25 an hour. So many States have a higher minimum wage. So many people get multiple jobs and, you know, gosh, my heart goes out to them. I appreciate their work ethic. But as a proportion of our economy, most people are not working at the $7.25 rate.
But let's suppose someone is and they work 40 hours a week. That is $290 in take-home pay per week. Now, if we were to raise the minimum wage as the President suggests to $10.20 but this person got dropped down to 29 hours a week, guess what they would be making? Roughly $290 a week. The same thing.
So, for those who see this as a sort of an issue that is somehow partisan but care deeply about the issue of the minimum wage, which I think can create distortions in the economy and kill jobs and so forth--that is a separate debate that I suspect we will have--but those who care deeply about this ought to be on board with this 40 hours is full time legislation, the Save American Workers Act, so I would invite their bipartisan support.
I note that we have just about every Republican who has signed on to this bill. We have a handful of courageous Democrats, and I commend their participation. I think we have some others with us this evening who are supportive of this legislation, prepared to speak to their constituents' experiences and their thoughts about the adverse consequences of a 30-hour definition of ``full time'' in the United States of America.
I am joined by my colleague from Oklahoma (Mr. Lankford), who is a very thoughtful and articulate member of the Budget Committee and cares deeply about his State. I yield to the gentleman.
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Mr. YOUNG of Indiana. You mentioned a very compelling story, incidentally, and I think all of us hear these stories, Republican, Democrat, Independent. It matters not. I suspect we all hear them around our district. You mentioned the President's Statement of Administration Policy which came out today, April Fools' Day. I had to wonder whether it might have been an April Fools' joke. It, in part, reads: Rather than attempting, once again, to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which the House has tried to do over 50 times, it is time for Congress to stop fighting old political battles and join the President in an agenda focused on providing greater economic opportunity. And then it goes on and on.
Listen, this is not a repeal of the Affordable Care Act. This is a repeal of a provision that we recognize that a bipartisan group of United States Congressmen and many Senators recognize is flawed. So, I mean, it is an absolute red herring.
I cannot understand why the administration won't engage with us in a fair-minded, statesmanlike way to mitigate the pain so many Americans are feeling.
Mr. LANKFORD. I would have to tell you honestly, I would like nothing better for my citizens that I represent to not have to live under this law. I would absolutely vote again, as I have multiple times, to repeal this entire law.
But I also have a responsibility to do whatever I can to protect the people of my district from the harmful effects of this law, and this law has many harmful effects. One of them is it is forcing those that struggle the most in our economy to make two ends meet to have to go out and get multiple jobs, and it has made it even harder for them, in transportation, in timing, in time with their family. They are losing all of those things. It has been taken away from them based on a preference of an administration, not something that is actually economic responsibility of the President.
Mr. YOUNG of Indiana. I would like to associate myself with those remarks pertaining to preferring to start over in an open, deliberative fashion. My belief would be that, if we started over with respect to health care reform, we could actually control costs, increase access, continue to incentivize innovation, and do all the other things that were purportedly the rationale behind this law.
We want to broaden coverage to those who don't have coverage, but the Affordable Care Act, so-called, does not even accomplish that. And so the administration, at least according to the Statement of Administration Policy put out today, welcomes ideas to improve the law. Well, this is an idea to improve the health care circumstances of so many Americans. We need to repeal this 30-hour provision within the law, so that is what the Save American Workers Act does.
Now, I noted that this created some perverse incentives, this 30-hour threshold. I heard a story from a constituent who will remain unnamed for obvious reasons, but they indicated they own some fast-food restaurants, and they are actually contemplating employing some of their workers at one fast-food restaurant under the 30-hour threshold and then making an arrangement with a nearby restaurant, whether they own it or someone else owns it, of a different name to finish out their workweek. So basically, to use a colloquial example, you take off the Subway shirt or the McDonald's shirt and then put on a Burger King shirt.
These are the sorts of perverse incentives created by ill-considered provisions in a very hastily passed and, frankly, partisan law.
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Mr. YOUNG of Indiana. I thank the gentleman.
I am going to close where I began. The President is proposing a 25 percent increase in the minimum wage, but ObamaCare is resulting in as much as a 25 percent decrease in the pay of millions of hourly workers. Because of the 30 hours is full time provision, too many Americans aren't able to work the number of hours they need, aren't able to get the take-home pay they need to support themselves and their families and to go after the dreams that they want to realize.
So by passing my bill, one which has bipartisan support and which has enjoyed great leadership by so many of my colleagues, the Save American Workers Act, we can create an America that works simply by restoring the traditional 40-hour workweek.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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