[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 87 (Wednesday, May 19, 2021)]
[House]
[Pages H2547-H2548]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     GETTING AMERICANS BACK TO WORK

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Nehls) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. NEHLS. Madam Speaker, I stand here today after speaking with 
business owners across my district and the country. I have heard story 
after story of businesses struggling to get entry-level, minimum-wage 
workers back to work. Why is that? Because they are actually having to 
compete, not against COVID or lockdowns, but against the Federal 
Government to get employees back to work.
  In my home State of Texas, you can make up to $535 in unemployment 
insurance, but add in the additional $300 per week payments that came 
from Federal COVID relief, and that is $835 per week not to work. That 
equates to nearly $21 an hour. That is exactly why Texas and 20 other 
States have opted out of Federal COVID unemployment insurance benefits. 
But there are still States where business owners are being forced to 
compete against the Federal Government for employees.
  My own brother, Tyler, who owns a construction company in Wisconsin, 
told me business has picked up for him. What a blessing. Now, he is 
trying to hire additional employees to grow his business. He has just 
got one problem: Folks are telling him they are making more sitting at 
home at $17.50 an hour. They tell him if he wants them to work, he is 
going to have to pay them $25 an hour.
  Situations like my brother Tyler's were hardly an unexpected 
consequence of paying workers more not to work. So expected, it seems 
as though when Democrats failed to get their minimum wage hikes through 
the Senate in February, they used the Federal unemployment insurance 
program to accomplish the same result, albeit temporarily.
  While there are many who are still struggling from the effects of 
COVID, whether it be from health effects or the effects of lockdowns on 
their business, millions more are taking advantage of the unemployment 
insurance system and sitting at home playing Xbox instead of working 
and being productive members of society.
  On top of a labor shortage driven by the Federal Government paying 
people not to work, President Biden is proposing historic levels of 
spending and raising taxes on our job creators. His multi-trillion-
dollar proposals, like his $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan and $1.8 
trillion American Families Plan, will cost thousands of jobs through 
tax hikes amid an already struggling market.
  What message does raising the corporate tax rate send to job creators 
when they are trying to rebuild in the aftermath of the pandemic? It 
sure sounds like we are telling them to take their business overseas or 
hire less.
  To bounce back from the Biden administration's dismal job reports in 
April, which showed just 266,000 new jobs added, certainly 
underperforming the Dow Jones estimate of 1 million new jobs, we need 
to be stimulating economic opportunity and growth with less taxes and 
less regulation, which will create good-paying jobs that encourage 
people to get back in the workforce.
  What won't fix our struggling economy is throwing money at the 
problem, which seems to be all the Washington swamp knows how to do. 
The liberal tax-and-spend model is failing our economy and failing the 
American people. Gas prices are up, homes are more expensive, and the 
per pound cost of copper is more than double what it was just 12 months 
ago.
  We are not going to spend our way out of this mess with $1-trillion 
programs that do nothing but serve liberal

[[Page H2548]]

special interests. We do it by letting the free market flourish through 
lower taxes, lower regulation, and more economic freedom.
  This model worked under President Trump, who delivered record lows in 
unemployment for Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and women, and it will work 
again, if only the Biden administration will put the American people 
first and not special interests.

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