Repealing the Employee Mandate

Floor Speech

Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. Speaker, in May, I came to the floor to highlight the concerns that small businesses in my State have with the looming implementation of ObamaCare. I spoke about a daycare center that had 73 employees and that had been in business for 24 years. It had been struggling mightily with the uncertainty on how to meet the employer mandate.

Last week, the administration announced that they will postpone the job-killing employer mandate until 2015. They admitted that after 3 years of bureaucratic work that the fatally flawed employer mandate is unworkable.

While the President's announcement is welcome news for small businesses in the short term, it signals just how problematic ObamaCare will be to implement. The employer mandate was forcing businesses, like the daycare center in my district, to lay off workers, to cut employee hours, and to potentially close their doors depending on their financial statuses.

Businesses don't need a temporary reprieve to ObamaCare. They need a permanent one. A recent poll found that, as a result of ObamaCare, 41 percent of businesses have put off hiring and 19 percent have reduced the number of employees in their businesses.

Pushing off one of ObamaCare's worst provisions for a year will do nothing but prolong the pain and increase the uncertainty. Instead, we should repeal and have a workable bill with patient-centered reforms that will improve the affordability, access, and quality of medical care.

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