Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 2575, the so-called ``Save American Workers Act of 2014,'' which represents the 52nd attempt by House Republicans to impede the Affordable Care Act and deny Americans the security that comes from having access to affordable, high-quality health care. I oppose this bill because its effect would be to deny employer provided health insurance to hard working employees who work more than 30 hours but less than 40 hours per week. If this bill were to become law in its current form, the health security of 10.2 percent of the workforce, or approximately 19.8 million workers, would be placed at risk. I offered two amendments to H.R. 2575 that would prevent this travesty but regrettably neither was made in order by the Rules Committee. Jackson Lee Amendment #1 would have improved this bad bill by amending the bill's 40 hour work week definition to include the employee's average commuting time in the computation of hours worked for purposes of determining ``full-time employment.'' Commuting time has become a major issue for those who work hourly wage jobs because their workday is much longer. According to the Bureau of the Census nearly 8.1% of American workers commute 60 minutes or longer. In 2011, almost 600,000 full-time workers had ``mega-commutes'' of at least 90 minutes and travel 50 miles or more from their homes.…”