Save American Workers Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Ms. CLARKE of New York. Mr. Speaker, today, I rise to oppose H.R. 30,
the highly irresponsible Save American Workers Act. This legislation
weakens employees' access to health insurance, threatens employer based
insurance coverage, and increases the budget deficit by 45.7 billion
dollars due in part to the resulting increase in the number of
uninsured.

I have always believed that access to quality healthcare is a right,
not a privilege! The Affordable Care Act's current 30-hours per week
threshold for classification as a full-time employee was designed to
discourage employers from circumventing penalties that support the
successful implementation of the law. Raising the threshold to 40 hours
per week would limit access to employer-provided insurance coverage,
and thereby impede a person's right to access healthcare.

Some businesses argue that the Affordable Care Act's classification
of a full-time employee adversely impacts a business' hiring and its
ability to offer other employee benefits. However, the facts just don't
bear this out.

According to the San Francisco Federal Reserve, when the Affordable
Care Act's provisions are fully implemented, the overall increase in
the incidence of part-time work is likely to be ``small, on the order
of a 1 to 2 percentage point increase or less.'' Other organizations'
analyses have also found little evidence that health reform has
increased part-time work. In fact, since President Obama took office,
the overall full-time employment rate has consistently increased, so
much so that the current U.S. unemployment rate is 5.8 percent.

The Republican majority is offering the American people a solution in
search of a problem. This bill does not save American jobs, nor does it
help the American worker. Rather, this bill relegates American workers
to the second class status of the ``uninsured'' and in doing so denies
them, what I believe, is their right to affordable, quality healthcare,
which is something that all Americans deserve.

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