Rep. Kelly Champions ‘Save American Workers Act’
House passes bipartisan bill co-sponsored by Rep. Kelly to repeal Obamacare’s job-killing 30-hour work week rule
WASHINGTON — U.S. Representative Mike Kelly (R-PA) – a member of the House Ways and Means Committee – delivered remarks on the floor of the House of Representatives today in support of H.R. 2575, the Save American Workers Act, of which he is an original co-sponsor. The legislation would repeal the 30-hour definition of “full-time employment” in the employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), and restore the traditional 40-hour definition. The House passed the bill this afternoon by a bipartisan vote of 248-179.
Highlights of Rep. Kelly’s remarks:
“The 40 hour work week — where could it possibly have started? How did we come to accept that? … It was actually the product of the Depression. When they did the Fair Labor Standards Act, they said, ‘We need to have a measure, so it will be a 44-hour [work week]’ — part of the New Deal, by the way. In 1940, they changed it to 40 hours a week [that constituted] full-time employment. Then, all of the sudden, Obamacare comes along, and the New Deal has been replaced by a bad deal.”
“When you go back to 1937 and 1940, what were they trying to do? They were trying to get America back to work. It was after the Great Depression. So it was about getting folks back to work. Now you fast forward to today and it’s not about getting people back to work — it’s about getting Obamacare to work. This makes absolutely no sense, and who has it hurt the most? It has hurt low-income and middle-income people; 2.6 million folks have been affected by either losing their job or losing hours.”
“So, you’ve got to scratch your head and say: ‘Wait a minute — if we are really trying to get America back to work, why would we take their hours from them? Why would we slash their work week by 25 percent and think it is going to work? It has nothing to do with helping working people — it has to do with making Obamacare work.”
“We had the New Deal that got replaced with a bad deal, and now we have H.R. 2575 — you know what it is? This is a good deal. This is a good deal. And I don’t [know] how … with 435 members [of the House], any one of us could say that this just doesn’t make sense for the folks that we represent right now.”
“Why would we do this to them? Why would we take their work hours away? Why would we put in jeopardy 2.6 million people just in an effort to make Obamacare work?”
“If it’s about making it easier for Americans to work, then it’s high time that we start to turn the tide. It’s time that we look at what’s going on and we say to ourselves: ‘If it worked before, why can’t it work again? Why can’t we go back to 40 hours? Why can’t we make it easier for American families to get through the hard times that they’re going through right now?’”
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