the gentleman referred to his ability to offer a package under ERISA to your 220 employees on the business you managed, but what about those 900 real estate agents that work as independent contractors for this company, who had to go out…

we believe that the average reduction for a small employer would be somewhere between 15 and 30 percent.

Mr. Speaker, we have 41 million Americans who do not have health insurance. As I said before, Congress has been talking about this for a decade. And while the underlying bill will not solve the entire problem, it will help in addressing…

the 15 percent reduction is only the reduction in the administrative costs of running the plan. When you begin to look at what pooling and larger pools will do, it brings the costs down significantly.

The issue here that Members need to understand is that our pension system is a voluntary system on behalf of employers for their employees. And while we will have much more debate on this when we get into the substitute, we walk a very…

Mr. Speaker, last year the Congress responded to the Enron and Global Crossing financial collapses by passing bipartisan legislation to strengthen worker retirement security and enhance corporate responsibility. And thanks largely to the…

Mr. Speaker, today we have before us a pension security bill that passed the House last year with broad bipartisan support. That is the underlying bill, with two exceptions, two issues that were contained in last year's Sarbanes-Oxley…

Right now we have taken the 63 Federal job training-retraining programs back in the late 1990s and ran them into three funding streams to the States. What we propose to do in this bill is to reduce that to one funding stream. This idea of…

Mr. McKEON. Mr. Chairman, in 1998 we joined together in a bipartisan fashion to pass the Workforce Investment Act. We had 150 Federal job training programs, and that did not work. We cut it down to 60. We took those 60 Federal programs and…

Under the bill 80 percent of the funds are, under formula, to go to the local boards. This would bring that to 85 percent. I do think it gives the local boards more certainty over exactly the kind of funding that they should expect from…

Mr. Chairman, let me ask my colleagues to support the gentlewoman from Ohio's amendment. I think for those States that do not provide the technical assistance to the local boards, they need that help, especially in terms of the financial…

Mr. Chairman, as we stand here today, hundreds of thousands of Americans are searching for good, stable new jobs. The unemployment rate in April rose to 6 percent. As the economy works toward recovery, hundreds of thousands of Americans…

But as we can see, the debate is coming down over an issue of whether faith-based organizations can maintain, maintain their Title VII religious exemption. When we wrote the civil rights laws in this Congress back in the 1960s, we made it…

Though the legislation is important for us as legislators, we have a chance today to provide out of work Americans with more than just a temporary fix. We can provide them with the tools they need to get and keep a job. Some of my…

I support the Vitter amendment, but let me just clarify for Members what we are doing here in the reauthorization of WIA. This is nothing more than a fine-tuning effort, further streamlining the funding stream, further clarifying that we…

In all, the conversation that we heard from my friend from California revolved around the current system and how the current system works and the changes to the current system. But there is one very large dynamic that is being changed, and…

None of us believe that our active duty soldiers should be in a position where they are going to have to make payments on their student loans while in fact they are not here. This discretion has been given to the Secretary under the Higher…

as I have mentioned to the gentleman and staff, we have worked on his important addition to this bill, but under the 1973 Budget Act we are required to find offsets. As the gentleman is aware, there is about a $10 million cost estimate…

I speak in support of H.R. 1104, the Child Abduction Prevention Act, which strengthens the punishment and consequences of those criminals who would dare to harm our children, as well as provides for the national coordination of the AMBER…

I rise in support of H.R. 14, the ``Keeping Children and Families Safe Act of 2003.'' This bill reauthorizes the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act and the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act, and related child and family…

this year more than 865 million people will visit a museum in America and millions will use their local library for books and other community services. Libraries and museums play a vital role in educating our children and promoting…

For our colleagues who have listened to the debate today on the reauthorization of H.R. 4, the welfare reform law, I probably do not have to remind my colleagues that the sounds of the debate, the points that have been made, were all made…

Welfare reform is a signal achievement for our House Republican majority. It offers a striking contrast between the core beliefs that inform our political party's appreciation for the proper role of the Federal Government in helping people…

Mr. Chairman, as we said before, the 1996 act has been a huge success in helping 9 million American families move from welfare to work, lifting their spirits, allowing them to participate in the mainstream of American life. The proposal…

let me thank my colleague the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Tiberi) from Columbus, Ohio, and an Ohio State grad and a former member of the Ohio State marching band for bringing this resolution to the floor today, and let me say I support the…