Save American Workers Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Ms. DeGETTE. Mr. Speaker, this bill purports to solve a problem that does not exist.

The Republicans keep claiming that this provision of the Affordable Care Act is affecting workers' hours, but despite these claims and despite a lot of anecdotal evidence that I have heard from the business community, the labor and employment experts have detected no such impact.

In fact, our economy has created 10.8 million new jobs since the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Almost 10 million of those jobs are full-time jobs.

What this proposal would actually do is put more workers into the kind of jeopardy that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle say they are trying to prevent.

Only 7 percent of Americans work in jobs that place them close to the current 30-hour-a-week threshold. Far more Americans--about 44 percent of them--actually work 40 hours a week, so even slight changes to their work schedules are going to deny them access to the health insurance that they so desperately need.

I have been sitting here. I am really touched by the concern that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have for women and for young people, people who really are at the lower end of the employment spectrum and who the Republicans say are going to be harmed by this.

Let me tell you, for the 4 percent of the large corporations that are subject to these provisions of the Affordable Care Act--people who have 50 employees or more--here is the way it is going to work for the young people and for the women.

These people are going to be people working for large corporations, making just barely above minimum wage. If they work 40 hours a week, they get insurance.

Under this proposal, all their employer has to do is cut 1 hour a week out of that--39 hours a week--and suddenly they lose their health insurance. And that is what is going to put those people at risk. Those women in clerical jobs, women with little kids, those young people in their twenties coming into the job market, trying to do the right thing and have health insurance, now they are going to have to pay for that insurance out of their own pockets, and for no reason.

The consequences of this misguided proposal don't stop there. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that H.R. 30 would raise the deficit by $53 billion in the next decade while also keeping a million American workers from getting health insurance through their jobs.

I actually agree with my friend from Illinois (Mr. Roskam). I think the intentions behind this bill are good intentions. But I think the effect of this bill is going to be to deny insurance for a whole lot of Americans who are at risk--women and young people, exactly the people we should be giving insurance to.

Vote ``no.''

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