Kevin Brady: “we are right to be concerned about our teachers. They are overworked. They are underpaid. We are concerned about them. I…”

“we are right to be concerned about our teachers. They are overworked. They are underpaid. We are concerned about them. I think had it not been for study over the last year or so, I would be giving the exact same speech today as my Democratic colleagues from Texas because we are all concerned. It turns out this is not exactly the case I thought it was. Recently we held a hearing on this legislation. We wanted to hear from our Texas teachers, so we requested the chairman invite our Texas State Teachers Association, our Texas Federation of Teachers and the Association of Texas Professional Educators to testify. Unfortunately, they were not able to because of various reasons, the snow being one of them, but we submitted their testimony on their behalf and urged members of the subcommittee to study it. During the hearing, it was shown that teachers in government pensions are not being singled out. They are not. The government pension offset affects more than just teachers. It affects more than 5 million people in all sorts of State, local and Federal Government pensions who do not pay into Social Security.”