[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 119 (Monday, July 27, 2015)]
[House]
[Pages H5488-H5490]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1530
                      HIRE MORE HEROES ACT OF 2015

  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and 
pass the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 61) amending the Internal Revenue 
Code of 1986 to exempt employees with health coverage under TRICARE or 
the Veterans Administration from being taken into account for purposes 
of determining the employers to which the employer mandate applies 
under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
  The Clerk read the title of the joint resolution.
  The text of the joint resolution is as follows:

                              H.J. Res. 61

       Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
     United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

       This joint resolution may be cited as the ``Hire More 
     Heroes Act of 2015''.

     SEC. 2. EMPLOYEES WITH HEALTH COVERAGE UNDER TRICARE OR THE 
                   VETERANS ADMINISTRATION NOT TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT 
                   IN DETERMINING EMPLOYERS TO WHICH THE EMPLOYER 
                   MANDATE APPLIES UNDER PATIENT PROTECTION AND 
                   AFFORDABLE CARE ACT.

       (a) In General.--Section 4980H(c)(2) of the Internal 
     Revenue Code of 1986 is amended by adding at the end the 
     following:
       ``(F) Exemption for health coverage under tricare or the 
     veterans administration.--Solely for purposes of determining 
     whether an employer is an applicable large employer under 
     this paragraph for any month, an individual shall not be 
     taken into account as an employee for such month if such 
     individual has medical coverage for such month under--
       ``(i) chapter 55 of title 10, United States Code, including 
     coverage under the TRICARE program, or
       ``(ii) under a health care program under chapter 17 or 18 
     of title 38, United States Code, as determined by the 
     Secretary of Veterans Affairs, in coordination with the 
     Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Secretary.''.
       (b) Effective Date.--The amendment made by subsection (a) 
     shall apply to months beginning after December 31, 2013.

     SEC. 3. BUDGETARY EFFECTS; STATUTORY PAY-AS-YOU-GO (PAYGO) 
                   SCORECARDS.

       The budgetary effects of this joint resolution shall not be 
     entered on either PAYGO scorecard maintained pursuant to 
     section 4(d) of the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2010 (2 
     U.S.C. 933(d)).

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from 
Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin) each 
will control 20 minutes.

[[Page H5489]]

  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Wisconsin.


                             General Leave

  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all 
Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend 
their remarks and include extraneous material on H.J. Res. 61 currently 
under consideration.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Wisconsin?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the 
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rodney Davis), the author of this 
legislation, for the purposes of explaining what it does.
  Mr. RODNEY DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise in 
support of my bill, the Hire More Heroes Act.
  This commonsense legislation will help small businesses hire more of 
our veterans by exempting veterans who are already receiving health 
care through the DOD or the VA from being counted towards the 50-
employee limit for the employer mandate under the Affordable Care Act.
  On opening day, the House passed H.R. 22, the Hire More Heroes Act, 
by an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 412-0.
  I especially want to thank my colleague from Hawaii, Tulsi Gabbard, 
for working together on this issue. And I also want to take this time, 
Mr. Speaker, to thank Chairman Paul Ryan and his entire Ways and Means 
Committee for ensuring that this very important issue is addressed in 
this Congress.
  In order to maximize the chances for this important legislation to be 
implemented into law this session, we are again considering the Hire 
More Heroes Act, which I reintroduced last week as H.J. Res. 61.
  H.J. Res. 61 is an example of how Washington is supposed to work. I 
say this because this idea didn't come from Washington. It came from a 
member of my Veterans Advisory Board in Madison County, Illinois.
  After explaining ObamaCare to veterans throughout southwestern 
Illinois and how it impacts their VA benefits, this advisory board 
member, Brad Lavite, began wondering why they were subject to the 
employer mandate if they were not even in need of health insurance 
coverage.
  His concern was raised with me at one of my Veterans Advisory Board 
meetings, and shortly thereafter we began work on this Hire More Heroes 
Act.
  This bill will help small businesses, those with less than 50 
employees, hire more of our Nation's veterans by making a commonsense 
change to ObamaCare.
  We continue to see this law's lingering impact on our economy, as 
many small businesses delay hiring, cut hours and, in some cases, 
reduce payroll.
  In fact, the National Small Business Association found that 91 
percent of small businesses have seen increases in their healthcare 
costs, and two-thirds of their members listed the Affordable Care Act 
as a reason for holding off on investing in people.
  Mr. Speaker, when a small business invests in people, that is how 
America creates jobs.
  In my home State of Illinois, it is estimated this year that 
Affordable Care Act premium increases will rise as much as 30 percent.
  By making this commonsense change to the law, we will not only help 
provide small businesses much-needed relief, but also--the main goal--
help veterans, our heroes, find more work.
  Despite receiving some of the best training in the world, post-9/11 
veterans are consistently faced with higher unemployment rates than 
that of other veterans.
  So as more and more of our veterans return home, the Hire More Heroes 
Act will give these veterans a boost in this very competitive job 
market.
  Again, Mr. Speaker, this bill passed earlier this year 412-0. I am 
asking all of my colleagues to support this commonsense, bipartisan 
policy that will help American businesses hire more of our heroes.
  Mr. Speaker, I again want to thank Chairman Ryan.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  I rise in active support of this bill. It encourages veteran 
employment as well as the growth of mid-sized businesses.
  The unemployment rate for veterans of recent times has gone down, but 
it still remains too high. That is especially true for those women who 
have served in our armed services.
  As I talk to veterans at home, the challenge they face continues in 
terms of employment. In Macomb County, for example, there is a 
particularly active part of the Vietnam veterans.
  That post works day and night to try to get employment for their 
membership, but there remains a major challenge. This bill will help.
  This bill continues to be part of our national commitment to help the 
veterans who have served this Nation and who deserve the chance as they 
return to find full-time employment.
  So let's all of us, as we did before, vote unanimously for this bill.
  I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  I, too, want to echo the sentiment here, which is this is just a no-
brainer. What I particularly like about this bill is this is just the 
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rodney Davis) doing his job as a Member of 
Congress, getting a very constructive idea from a constituent veteran 
who pointed out a flaw in the law so he went and spoke to his Member of 
Congress.
  His Member of Congress looked at the law, saw that it needed to be 
changed, and here we are making this change.
  This is democracy. This is how this Republic is supposed to work. So 
I am very pleased to see that we are here doing this on a bipartisan 
basis.
  I was, unfortunately, unavoidably detained for the last bill. I 
wanted to make just a couple of points on the last suspension that just 
passed that the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Chaffetz) brought to the 
floor, H.R. 1831, Evidence-Based Policymaking Commission Act of 2015.
  Right now we spend so much of our time here in Congress and in the 
Federal Government focusing on measuring success of our policies based 
on measuring inputs, not outcomes, how many programs are we creating, 
how much money are we spending, not are these programs working or not.
  So we have bipartisan legislation that just passed to create a 
commission to take a look at the data that we already collect and see 
if we can give access to academics and use this data more effectively 
so we can better measure outcomes of our policies.
  We want to make sure that we can use our data to evaluate better 
policy. We want to make sure that we do it in a way that ensures 
people's privacy.
  But we want to move the kind of debate we have been having here from 
liberal versus conservative or Republican versus Democrat to what works 
and what doesn't work.
  Nowhere is this more crucial than in our efforts to fight poverty, to 
try to make a difference, to move people from being dependent, from 
being stuck in poverty, from being frozen in their current station of 
life, to reigniting the notion of upward mobility and more successfully 
targeting and going at the root cause of poverty so that we can 
actually have programs that are measured based on success and outcomes, 
which is, are we actually getting people out of poverty.
  The purpose of the bill that just passed is to reorient our entire 
way of looking at things so that we can focus on these outcomes. So I 
just wanted to lend my statement on that.
  I want to congratulate the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rodney Davis) 
for bringing this issue with our veterans to our attention. I urge 
adoption.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Kansas (Ms. 
Jenkins), a member of the Ways and Means Committee.
  Ms. JENKINS of Kansas. I thank the chairman. And I thank the 
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rodney Davis) for his leadership on this 
issue.
  Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to come to the floor today again as a 
supporter of the Hire More Heroes Act. This bill is as commonsense as 
they come. It exempts our heroes, those veterans and Active-Duty 
military from counting towards the President's employer mandate penalty 
tax.
  These veterans and Active-Duty military already receive health 
insurance

[[Page H5490]]

through the VA and TRICARE. So requiring these employers to provide 
them with health insurance is redundant and could also have the 
unintended effect of discouraging employers from hiring these folks.
  This part of the President's healthcare law is clearly not drafted in 
a thoughtful manner.
  I urge my colleagues again today to vote in favor of this bill that 
would eliminate the unnecessary confusion and encourage businesses to 
hire more heroes.
  Finally, I urge the Senate to pass this legislation so that it can 
finally get to the President's desk.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may 
consume to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rodney Davis) for the 
purpose of closing.
  Mr. RODNEY DAVIS of Illinois. I again thank the chairman.
  Thank you to Ranking Member Levin and all of my colleagues on both 
sides of the aisle for looking at this very important issue, this 
correction that needed to be made so that our veterans get the 
opportunities they deserve.
  I would like to thank my colleague from Kansas (Ms. Jenkins) for 
coming to the floor today to talk about how important this issue is.
  I urge all of my colleagues to listen to everybody on the floor today 
and the bipartisan consensus to, once again, pass this commonsense 
piece of legislation.
  I also want to thank the veterans that I have the honor to serve in 
Illinois. This idea came from one of them, a constituent who saw the 
flaw.
  Now we have the chance to, once again, correct it. I hope this bill 
can get to the President's desk.
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my 
time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the 
gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan) that the House suspend the rules 
and pass the joint resolution, H.J. Res. 61.
  The question was taken; and (two-thirds being in the affirmative) the 
rules were suspended and the joint resolution was passed.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

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