[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 160 (Friday, October 30, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10948-S10949]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              JOBS POLICY

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I was watching television this morning, 
and I was contemplating the challenge that confronts our country, this 
economy, and the American people when it comes to jobs, seeing that 
more and more people, unfortunately--even though the stock market 
appears to be coming back some and people's 401(k)s are perhaps no 
longer ``201(k)s'' or ``101(k)s,'' but still unemployment continues to 
creep up and up. Even the administration estimates that unemployment 
will exceed 10 percent in the near future.
  It occurred to me that there are a number of things that we are doing 
here in Congress that actually, rather than encouraging job creation or 
facilitating job creation, are job-killing policies.
  Today I wish to concentrate on whether the proposed health care 
reforms we have seen out of the House and those that at some point will 
come out of the Senate when Senator Reid's bill is revealed contribute 
to job-killing policies coming out of Washington or whether they are 
growth, progrowth, and job-incentivizing policies.
  Yesterday we learned that 530,000 Americans filed for unemployment 
benefits for the first time, more than half a million Americans. So 
despite the fact that our economy grew in the third quarter, and the 
recession is over from a technical point of view, for more than half a 
million Americans this recession we are growing out of just got worse.
  It reminds me of--I think it was Ronald Reagan who said a recession 
is when a neighbor loses their job; a depression is when you lose your 
job. The fact is that a lot of Americans are hurting with roughly 9.8 
percent unemployment, with people unable to make their house payments, 
and the foreclosure problem continues unabated. In my State, we have 
not been immune from the recession, but I am glad to say our economy 
continues to outperform other States. Instead of the 9.8 percent 
unemployment, we are at 8.2 percent. I never thought I would be 
bragging about 8.2 percent unemployment, but I am grateful it is not 
worse.
  The relative success of Texas is due to our job-friendly business 
environment. This is an important lesson to which I think Washington 
ought to pay more attention: What kind of policies emanate from 
Washington, just like what kind of policies emanate from Austin, which 
encourage job creation and which policies destroy job creation.
  One of the keys to our relative success is we have kept taxes 
relatively low. According to the Tax Foundation, 42 States have taxes 
higher than Texas. In other words, we are in the bottom 8 of all 50 
States. We have kept our regulatory burden relatively light, meaning it 
does not cost businesses a lot of money to comply with redtape and a 
heavy regulatory burden. We are a right-to-work State, so people are 
not compelled to join a union in order to qualify for a job. We have 
adopted sensible legal tort reforms, which I think has created a 
predictable business environment and litigation environment. Rather 
than chasing people away from the litigation lottery, they are now 
encouraged to come, understanding what the rules of the road are and 
what is expected of them. That has helped.
  In contrast, Washington is considering delivering several job-killing 
proposals. For example, our national debt is projected to grow by $9 
trillion over the next 10 years.
  We don't know whether the higher energy costs we will face in the 
cap-and-trade bill that has been proposed will actually pass, but if 
they do, it is projected to add a lot of costs to small businesses, 
whether they are an agricultural producer just paying for diesel fuel 
or those businesses that have high electricity costs, such as Texas 
Instruments in Dallas, TX. They have one of the highest electricity 
costs in the State because of the nature of their manufacturing 
business. If cap and trade imposes additional costs on them, it is 
going to kill their ability to maintain their level of business and 
grow their business and create more jobs.
  American employers don't know whether card check will become law. Of 
course, this is the bill that would deny the secret ballot for workers 
to decide whether to join a union, and we don't know whether a new era 
of global protectionism will reduce global trade and investment 
opportunities. My State of Texas loves free trade because we realize 
creating more markets globally for our goods and services creates more 
jobs in our State. Unfortunately, the message in Washington is 
confusing, to say the least, if not hostile, to free trade.
  Yesterday we got to look at more job-killing policies coming out of 
Washington in the form of Speaker Pelosi's health care bill which, to 
her credit, was revealed to the public. It was posted on the Internet. 
I wish Senator Reid would post his bill that he sent over to the 
Congressional Budget Office on the Internet so we could take a good 
look at it, read it for ourselves, see how this impacts our 
constituents and our States, and so the American people can read it and 
see how it will affect them. Will it drive insurance up? Will it impose 
more taxes? Will it cut Medicare benefits, for example, if you are a 
Medicare Advantage beneficiary? I give Speaker Pelosi credit. At least 
she put her bill on the Internet.
  What we have learned from this 1,900-page bill so far--and we are 
still scouring it to find out what its impact will be, both its 
intended impact and its unintended consequences. Initially, the 
Congressional Budget Office said the House bill, Speaker Pelosi's bill, 
will actually bend the cost curve up. It said:

       On balance, during the decade following the 10-year budget 
     window, the bill would increase both Federal outlays for 
     health care and the Federal budgetary commitment to health 
     care, relative to the amounts under current law.

  I thought health care reform was supposed to bring costs down. We 
heard the President and all of us have spoken in terms of bending the 
cost curve. Nobody thought we would be bending the cost curve up. We 
thought we were unified in a bipartisan way determined to bring the 
costs down. But that is not what the Congressional Budget Office says 
the Pelosi bill does.
  Then we learned that this much vaunted public option would actually 
cost more than private insurance plans. That is what the Congressional 
Budget Office said. They wrote:

       A public plan paying negotiated rates would attract a broad 
     network of providers but would typically have premiums that 
     are somewhat higher than the average premiums for the private 
     plans in the exchanges.

  Here, again, I assume these are unintended consequences, those we 
ought to be very careful about avoiding.
  Surely, the purpose was not to make the public option or a 
government-run plan more expensive than private insurance. But that is 
what the Congressional Budget Office believes the Pelosi bill would do.
  The public plan would have lower administrative costs, to be sure, 
because it would be subsidized by the taxpayers but would probably 
engage in less management of utilization by its enrollees and attract a 
less healthy pool of enrollees.
  Then when we look at job-killing provisions of these health care 
proposals, we have to look at the tax penalty on individuals who do not 
have insurance, the so-called mandate, the government directive that 
everybody buy insurance or pay a penalty. That would generate, 
according to the Congressional Budget Office, under the Pelosi bill, 
$33 billion in new penalties and taxes.
  Then there is perhaps the unkindest cut of all, and that is the so-
called pay-or-play requirement for businesses which would tax 
employers, the very people we are looking to help us retain

[[Page S10949]]

and create jobs, an additional $135 billion penalty.
  It is important to remember this so-called pay-or-play mandate is 
essentially a tax on workers and take-home pay. Most of the increased 
costs of this new mandate on employers will simply be shifted to 
workers in the form of lower wages. Employers may also respond by 
cutting jobs, particularly for low-income workers, or deciding to 
outsource more jobs or relying more on part-time workers. You don't 
have to take my word for it. Let me cite Ezekiel Emanuel. That name may 
sound familiar because he is the brother of chief of staff Rahm 
Emanuel. He writes with Victor Fuchs in the Journal of the American 
Medical Association:

       It is essential for Americans to understand that while it 
     looks like they can have a free lunch--having someone else 
     pay for health insurance--they cannot. The money comes from 
     their own pockets.

  Harvard professor Kate Baicker has said:

       Workers who would lose their jobs are disproportionately 
     likely to be high school dropouts, minority, and female. . . 
     . Thus, among the uninsured, those with the least education 
     face the highest risk of losing their jobs under employer 
     mandates.

  We also know there are members of the administration--the Cabinet--
who are, I guess as every Cabinet does, cheerleading for the proposals 
of the administration which they serve. Certainly that is the case with 
Secretary Sebelius. The Secretary of Health and Human Services has made 
the claim on the agency Web site, among other places, that health care 
reform would be good for job creation. But I suggest that the report of 
Secretary Sebelius is riddled with errors and false assumptions.

  Independent, nonpartisan studies have shown that these proposals will 
actually raise premiums on people who already have insurance. So when 
the President says: You can keep what you have if you like it--well, 
you are not going to be able to keep it at the same price. You are 
going to end up paying a lot more for it.
  The Congressional Budget Office has found these ``reforms'' will also 
increase taxes on the middle class, as well as hurt jobs, as I have 
explained, and small businesses. Of course, in order to pay for it, the 
Senate Finance Committee bill--which I presume will be included in the 
Reid bill, but we have not seen it yet--will actually cut Medicare 
benefits for seniors in order to pay for it.
  I suggest it is not helpful to the cause of health care reform to 
release flawed reports filled with false promises. I hope the Obama 
administration and all of our colleagues in the Senate will try to work 
together on a step-by-step approach to try to address the problems that 
make health insurance unaffordable and to cover people who currently 
are not covered.
  I think the American people would be better served if Secretary 
Sebelius directed her attention instead to addressing shortages and 
delays in the distribution of the H1N1 vaccine. In Texas, we were 
promised 3.4 million doses of vaccine by October, and we have been 
delivered about half of that, 1.7 million, even though the peak of the 
swine flu, H1N1 season is upon us in the next couple of weeks.
  I am afraid it doesn't build a lot of confidence when this 
government-run health care plan or program delivers about 50 percent of 
what it promises. It is not a confidence builder.
  Going back to the health care plans, let me just say that every 
independent analysis of the health care bills we have seen so far, 
whether they are Speaker Pelosi's bill or the one that came out of 
Senator Dodd's committee or Senator Baucus's committee, have found that 
costs will actually increase, not go down, for small businesses.
  The Pelosi health care bill released yesterday increases taxes on 
small businesses. Specifically, it imposes a 5.4 percent surtax on 
individuals with incomes over $500,000 and families with income greater 
than $1 million. One may say these are rich people; they can afford it. 
But half of the people who will be captured are small businesses that 
are not big corporations. They are individuals, they are sole 
proprietors, they are partnerships, they are subchapter S corporations 
where the principal employer receives their income as a flowthrough and 
paid on a personal income tax return.
  These kinds of additional fees and taxes on small businesses and job 
creators have the opposite result of what I thought we were about, 
which is to encourage job creation and retention.
  All told, just the surtax in the Pelosi bill would cause small 
businesses to face the highest marginal tax rate in 25 years. And, of 
course, it also imposes the pay-or-play mandate on employers that I 
talked about earlier.
  Former Congressional Budget Office Director Peter Orszag, who now 
serves in the Cabinet at the Office of Management and Budget, has 
indicated a pay-or-play mandate will hurt workers' wages. He said:

       The economic evidence is overwhelming, the theory is 
     overwhelming, that when your firm pays for your health 
     insurance you actually pay--

  The worker--

     through take-home pay. The firm is not giving it to you for 
     free. Your other wages or what [you would have earned 
     otherwise] are reduced as a result. I don't think most 
     workers realize that.

  I agree with him when he said that workers actually end up paying a 
higher cost. It is not absorbed by the employer, but it also ultimately 
results in reduced wages.
  The Congressional Budget Office has said:

       [I]f employers who did not offer insurance were required to 
     pay a fee--

  Here again talking about the pay-or-play mandate in the Pelosi bill 
and Senate bill--

     employees' wages and other forms of compensation would 
     generally decline by the amount of that fee from what they 
     would otherwise have been--just as wages are generally lower 
     (all else being equal) to offset employers' contributions 
     toward health insurance.

  Again, I end with the question that I asked earlier: Is what we are 
doing in Washington on health care or in a variety of other areas 
actually killing jobs rather than encouraging and facilitating jobs? I 
think, unfortunately, in the examples I mentioned, we are considering 
job-killing policies. The American people are worried about it. That is 
why they want to be able to read the bills.

  I hope we will be able to read the Reid bill soon--the bill the 
majority leader has written behind closed doors--because the American 
people are entitled to see how it will impact them; whether they will 
pay higher premiums; whether they will pay more in taxes, even if they 
are middle-class workers; and whether, if they are a senior, their 
Medicare benefits are going to be cut, as I fear they will be.
  The Gallup Poll says the American people are understanding the 
consequences of this debate well. It says Americans have become more 
likely to say the cost their family pays for health care will get 
worse, not better, if these proposals pass; 76 percent say their costs 
would get worse or not change, only 22 percent believe their costs 
would be reduced by these proposals.
  I think this is another reason why we need to slow down, be careful, 
and let's read the bill. Let's show the bill to the American people, 
get input from our constituents so we don't engage in job-killing 
policies, either intentionally or inadvertently, at a time when we 
ought to be very gravely concerned about growing unemployment and more 
and more people losing their homes due to foreclosures. Certainly, we 
should not be doing anything which would make the matter worse rather 
than better.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Florida.

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