Save American Workers Act
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. LANKFORD. I thank the gentleman from Indiana.
It is my privilege to get a chance to be able to speak out for the constituents that I represent who are asking the same questions a lot of Americans are asking: Why did you just drop my hours?
People that have jobs, go to work every day, trying to pay for their family, barely eking by, working hourly, suddenly got their hours dropped, and they are asking all of us: Why did this happen?
Well, the difficult thing is we are trying to explain to people it happened because more people were needed onto the exchanges, and so the administration needed additional people to get onto this health care coverage. So it isn't actually something to help people; it is something to help the administration and their formula, which makes them even madder.
They don't want to be a pawn in some game. They want to take care of their family. They want to be able to do what they can do in their job and to take care of their kids and play soccer with them on weekends and be able to spend time, but things have changed dramatically for them now.
Mr. YOUNG of Indiana. So would it be accurate to say that, in part, it is our lower-income to middle-income workers, through reduced hours, who are paying for the Affordable Care Act, which is wildly unpopular nationally?
Mr. LANKFORD. It is. And it is wildly unpopular larger in that group as well. Every section of Americans, when you go and get a chance to visit with them, they will tell you the same thing: my premiums went up; my deduction went up; I lost access to a doctor; I had to change to a different hospital; I lost some of my choices.
And this whole belief that suddenly now we have 7 million new people that got there, millions of those individuals that are now in the exchanges used to be on health care that they liked. They were kicked off of it January 1, and now they are forced into a new system, and the President is somehow celebrating.
I was astounded by the sense of, at the very last minute, all these people filed and they got excited about it. There are around 43 million people that are uninsured in the United States. Seven million of them have actually capitulated to the administration's forced enrollment into this program or face a fine. That would be something akin to, during tax day coming up just 15 days from now, the administration standing up and celebrating that 25 percent of Americans actually filed their taxes on time because they would face a fine if they don't. Well, no one would actually celebrate that, but this administration is celebrating 25 percent of the people actually following through on it.
There are real lives and real people that are attached to this. Let me tell you about one of them. Her name is Cindy. And like some of the other individuals that were here visiting before, Mr. Kelly from Pennsylvania, didn't want her name put out publicly on it because, in this day and age, people are becoming more and more afraid of their government and what their government is going to do to them rather than for them.
So Cindy works at a job at a restaurant. She works more than 40 hours a week, and then finds out, after the transition happens, January 1, they are dropping her hours back to 26 hours a week. Twenty-six hours a week is really hard. Her job plus 30 hours was really difficult for her to make ends meet. She can't make it at 26 hours. So now this individual has to go out and try to find a different job to add up to two different jobs.
Let me talk to you about a dad that his son just graduated from high school. He didn't make great grades in high school, but he is a good, hard worker. So he is engaged in a job, and he is out looking for a job. Doesn't have a college degree, just a working guy. He cannot find a job for more than 28 1/2 hours, so he is looking for two jobs to try to get that, to try to build up to enough money to be able to do it.
So suddenly, this sense of we are going to help provide for people by forcing people to get to this providing health care, what is actually happening is people are just dropping the hours. It is the same thing everyone said before.
And the President's statement today that there is no good reason to go back to a time before ObamaCare, I would have to tell you, Cindy would disagree with that; this other gentleman would disagree with that. A lot of people would look back and say: I would much rather go back to working one job than be forced to work two jobs and still not have health care coverage.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
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.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source