[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 44 (Tuesday, March 9, 2021)]
[House]
[Page H1179]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      PRO ACT MUST HAVE EXEMPTIONS

  (Mr. LaMALFA asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I am from California, and almost 2 years 
ago, the State passed a bill known as AB-5, where all workers would be 
presumed as employees unless the worker can show that they satisfy all 
three prongs of what is known as the ABC test.
  It went into effect in January 2020, and it had quite a few 
exemptions in it--barbers, musicians, translators, home inspectors, 
golf caddies, things like that. But after the bill passed, flaws were 
found in it. They had to go back and legislate again to add newspapers. 
They had to go back and extend the time for others for when it would 
kick in.
  So, what is happening? Here in this House, we are on H.R. 842. Now, I 
had an amendment that would provide for some of those exemptions. This 
provides for zero exemptions for this requirement that all would be 
presumed as employees.
  We are going to go ahead and do actually worse than the State of 
California, passing the PRO Act without the exemptions.
  Government should be here to foster economic growth, not restrict it. 
The PRO Act would kill growth, squash innovation in the gig economy and 
the American economy.
  Why are we going backward here when we can learn from California's 
mistake?

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