The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Labor was published in the Senate section on pages S2614-S2615 on May 10, 2018.
The Department provides billions in unemployment insurance, which peaked around 2011 though spending had declined before the pandemic. Downsizing the Federal Government, a project aimed at lowering taxes and boosting federal efficiency, claimed the Department funds "ineffective and duplicative services" and overregulates the workplace.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS
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INTERNATIONAL FRANCHISE ASSOCIATION
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask that my remarks to the International Franchise Association be printed in the Record.
The material follows:
International Franchise Association
Mr. ALEXANDER. What I have discovered is that those who like a center-right administration, which I do, have a hard time accepting success. I could probably do the accomplishments and achievements over the last 15 or 16 months in a 60 second version, which would be a better economy, lower taxes, fewer regulations, more conservative judges, repeal of the part of Dodd Frank that hamstrung small financial institutions in mortgage lending, Alaskan energy, a new NLRB, the local control of schools--that actually happened before President Trump came in because of a Republican majority in the Senate--and the repeal of the individual mandate. That's a pretty good list. In fact, if you only did economy, taxes, regulations and judges, at the end of four years, most administrations would be pretty happy with the different direction. So if you cut through all the tweets and the chaos and confusion and the noise and the cable television in Washington, D.C. and look at the direction of the country, I think it's significantly different.
I'll give a couple of examples of that: rolling back regulations--only once before this administration and this Republican majority in Congress, we've used a provision in the law that allows us to overturn a regulation with 51 votes. We've done it 15 times in the last 15 months, including the blacklisting rule, including the OSHA record keeping rule. Most of you know about all these things in detail so I won't go into detail, but those are important. They're unusual and they're a completely different direction.
We passed the first major tax reform for 31 years. In Tennessee, I hear a lot about that, not just from individuals whose taxes are lower but I hear it from corporations who are now paying 21 percent on their income tax. But I'm hearing especially about being able to deduct capital investments in the first year, and I think we can see the results in the economy.
We have been able to confirm experienced and qualified nominees in a whole range of areas and I would suggest that in no area has the shift in policy been more marked than in the Labor area. For example, there's a new labor secretary, Acosta. A new deputy labor secretary, Pizzella. There's a new NLRB chairman Ring, NLRB member Kaplan, NLRB member Emanuel, NLRB general counsel. Those are big changes in the policy direction of this country. Then we've been examining, or these new appointees have been examining policies that are harmful that you work on a regular basis. Let's start with joint employer guidance. At least Secretary Acosta was able to pull back that guidance as it bled over from the NLRB to the department.
The problem with the joint-employer decision for me is that we live in a time when it's harder to find a good middle class job close to home. People are always flying here, flying there in what I would call the Internet economy. The hundreds of thousands of franchisees we have in America are an opportunity for mom or mom and dad or a family to work 12 hours a day, work several days a week, build their own business in their own home, contribute to their own community and be a part of the American middle class. And the joint employer decision during the last administration was a direct assault on that route for the middle class. And I'm glad to see this administration heading in a different direction on that as well as the Micro Union decision, as well as beginning to review the Ambush Election Rule.
These are all major, major decisions. Where are we likely to go on joint employer? Well, the House has done its job, but in the Senate to get legislative results, you need 60 votes, and that's going to be hard to do--impossible to do--without Democratic support. We don't have any Democratic support in the Senate right now. Your association has been working hard to try and develop that. I hear Democrats privately talking about it, but when it comes to co-sponsor a bill or vote for a bill, they don't want to do that. So I think I would suggest to keep pushing, but a more likely solution is when the NLRB revisits the rule, because that's after all how it was changed in the first place, and by a new administration with new appointees from a center-right administration and a center-right Senate that keeps things headed in that direction.
Last thing I want to mention to you has to do with what I believe is a prominent Labor Department proposed rule involving health insurance called association health plans. I worked for the last seven months to try to at least temporarily fix the individual market. President Trump asked me to do it. He did a very good job of working with us. In the end, we had a proposal which he called Senator McConnell and Speaker Ryan and asked him to put it in the omnibus spending bill a month ago. They agreed to do it but the Democrats blocked it because Democrats didn't want to vote for the so called Hyde compromise language that they'd been voting for on elective abortion since 1976 and that they voted for in a hundred other provisions in the same bill. The shame of that is that we have millions of Americans who don't get any government subsidy. A contractor, for example, may be earning $60,000 and paying 15 or $20,000 for their insurance.
We had a proposal and Oliver Wyman--the experts in health consulting--said over these next three years would reduce those premiums up to 40 percent. If you're paying $20,000 for your health insurance and you get an $8,000 reduction, those are real bucks. So we have to turn to the administration to get changes in the Affordable Care Act. One of the most promising potential administrative changes is Secretary Acosta's proposed rule, and I hope you've followed it. It basically would allow uninsured people who are self-employed and more small business people to enjoy some of the same health insurance benefits that people who work for large companies do. Most Americans get a subsidy of some sort from the government for their health insurance. More than half of Americans get their insurance on the job, they get in effect about a $5,000 subsidy because of the way the tax code interacts with the employer deductions and the income that goes to the employee on large group insurance. So, if you're a small business person, you get the same kind of insurance that somebody who works for IBM might have.
It would be cheaper. I just mentioned the amount of the deduction, and it wouldn't have the same protections that the large group plans have where you couldn't be charged because of a pre-existing condition, you couldn't be denied insurance or be denied coverage. You'd have to have coverage offered for your kids up to the age 26. You couldn't have lifetime limits and you would have of course, the lower costs. That could affect 9,000,000 Americans like the contractor I described who are getting hammered by Obamacare because they get no subsidies when they buy their insurance, and could affect the 11,000,000 other people who are self-employed or work for small businesses that don't provide health insurance. So that rule is not yet final. It's been published by the Department of Labor for everybody to consider.
I expect it to soon become final. And I expect that when it is, it's likely to be the single greatest development in the near term for individuals who are either uninsured or who worked for small businesses and who can't afford the insurance that is offered. So thanks for all that you do. We'll keep our eye on joint employer. At the very least, our committee can continue to focus on it. My hope is that the NLRB revisits the issue soon.
And I hope you remember when you think about this administration and you look through the chaos and the tweets and all that goes on here, that if you stripped that all away, there's a picture of a country heading in a significantly different direction with a better economy, lower taxes, fewer regulations, more conservative judges, a repeal of a significant part of Dodd Frank, an energy bill in Alaska that we've been trying for 40 years to do, a different NLRB, more local control of schools and a repeal the individual mandate.
In a big democratic, messy government, that's a significant shift of direction. I hope we can add joint employer to it before very long.
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