Political Quotes

“My colleagues in the House and I are here today to talk about another unintended consequence of the Affordable Care Act. We understand there is little appetite in this body to provide fixes to a flawed law. However, we believe that an unexpected and previously undetected problem with the law represents special and urgent circumstances. This really took me by surprise. The fact that the Affordable Care Act could force volunteer fire companies to provide health insurance to their volunteers or pay a fine would burden them with unbearable costs and possibly cause them to reduce the number of volunteers they have or shut their doors altogether. Simply put, this is a public safety issue. This is a problem today because the Internal Revenue Service currently treats volunteer firefighters as employees for Federal tax purposes. Under the Affordable Care Act, if they have 50 or more employees and they work 30 hours a week, then the employers have to provide health insurance or pay a fine. Here is a key point that I want to make. Some fire companies may hear about this and immediately think: well, we only have 25 volunteers so we are safe, we don't have 50. Well, that may not necessarily be the case. Some fire companies are considered part of their local government.…”