Heidi Alexander: “I agree with the Senator from Utah. I think he stated clearly what the constitutionality is and he has been a most…”

“I agree with the Senator from Utah. I think he stated clearly what the constitutionality is and he has been a most forceful advocate of that. As I think about the legislation we are talking about, I am thinking also about the employer mandate and the requirement that, as I mentioned earlier, employers pay $2,000 if they do not offer insurance or a $3,000 penalty if they offer the wrong kinds of insurance. I would say to the Senator from Utah that we are making it more difficult to lower the unemployment rate in this country, which has stayed too high, with 12 million people unemployed, when we keep loading up employers with costs that make it more expensive to hire an employee. If we make it more expensive to hire an employee, we don't give the employer an incentive to hire more people. In fact, we discourage the employer from hiring more people. I wonder if I might ask the Senator, in thinking about the employer mandate, if he agrees that employers across the country are considering reducing their number of employees, having more part-time employees in order to deal with this new cost of the employer mandate which is part of the health care law.”