Political Quotes

“It is now my pleasure to yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Colorado (Ms. DeGette), a distinguished member of Energy and Commerce. Ms. DeGETTE. Mr. Speaker, this bill purports to solve a problem that does not exist. The Republicans keep claiming that this provision of the Affordable Care Act is affecting workers' hours, but despite these claims and despite a lot of anecdotal evidence that I have heard from the business community, the labor and employment experts have detected no such impact. In fact, our economy has created 10.8 million new jobs since the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Almost 10 million of those jobs are full-time jobs. What this proposal would actually do is put more workers into the kind of jeopardy that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle say they are trying to prevent. Only 7 percent of Americans work in jobs that place them close to the current 30-hour-a-week threshold. Far more Americans--about 44 percent of them--actually work 40 hours a week, so even slight changes to their work schedules are going to deny them access to the health insurance that they so desperately need. I have been sitting here. I am really touched by the concern that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have for women and for young people, people who really are at the lower end of the employment spectrum and who the Republicans say are going to be harmed by this.…”