[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 23 (Tuesday, February 23, 2010)]
[House]
[Page H654]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          WHERE ARE THE JOBS?

  (Mr. BOEHNER asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, when I travel around my 
district, I run into a lot of people who are looking for work, hanging 
on by their fingertips, and they want to know, When's Washington going 
to wake up? They're asking, Where are the jobs?
  I have run a small business, and one of the things a small business 
needs in order to grow is they need some certainty, certainty about 
what the future is going to look like. With all of this talk about 
raising taxes here in Washington, D.C., imposing mandates on employers 
in the health care bill or a new national energy tax, all they're doing 
is creating more uncertainty that is causing employers to be frozen in 
their job creation.
  The Congressional Budget Office has made clear that the mandate that 
was in the Senate- and House-passed bills, the Senate bill, $750 per 
person for an employer who doesn't offer health care to their 
employees, each employer may have to pay that fee. Now what we see is 
the President offering that that penalty should be $2,000 per employee. 
This is going to raise the cost of employment and, according to the 
Congressional Budget Office, costs tens of thousands of jobs across our 
country.
  It's time to scrap this bill, to get back to commonsense ideas that 
will help improve the cost of health care in America and widen access 
and bring some certainty to employers across this country who want to 
hire more people but won't with all of the uncertainty that is out 
there.

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