WASHINGTON - Today at a markup of the Ways and Means Committee’s Legislative Activities Report for the first half of the year, Ranking Member Sander Levin (D-MI) highlighted that the one measure Committee Republicans hailed as a “Jobs Act" (HR 1745) during the first six months of the year would in fact end the federal guarantee of unemployment insurance and leave millions of Americans with the uncertainty that their insurance checks could stop arriving altogether. The measure, which could cause up to four million Americans to lose their benefits, passed out of committee in May against unanimous Democratic opposition. The measure is so blatantly mislabeled as a jobs bill that even some House Republicans have recoiled at the prospect of a floor vote on the measure.
“Six months into this Congress, the Republican majority in the House and in this Committee has failed to consider a single measure to help create jobs, even as 14 million Americans continue to look for work," Ranking Member Levin said in his opening statement. “Instead, this Committee has considered legislation to undermine unemployment insurance benefits and repeal health care reform."
A fact sheet on HR 1745 can be found here. The official dissenting views of the Ways and Means Committee Democrats can be found here.
Ranking Member Levin’s full opening statement:
The Legislative Activity Report before us does reflect the priorities that the majority has brought to this Committee over the last six months. Unfortunately, it is more notable for what it is missing. Six months into this Congress, the Republican majority in the House and in this Committee has failed to consider a single measure to help create jobs, even as 14 million Americans continue to look for work.
Instead, this Committee has considered legislation to undermine unemployment insurance benefits and repeal health care reform. The Republican budget would end Medicare and double seniors’ health care costs by 2022.
This Committee should stop trying to undermine the health, unemployment and retirement benefits that are the underpinning of stability for middle class families, and instead focus on how to foster economic growth and job creation.
It should finally act to extend Trade Adjustment Assistance, which Republicans have shamefully allowed to lapse for the last four months. It should consider legislation to address China’s currency manipulation, which some economists estimate would create hundreds of thousands of jobs. It should take up the Building American Jobs Act introduced by Committee Democrats, which would extend the highly successful Build America Bonds program that helped finance over $180 billion in infrastructure investment.
The priorities of this Committee in the first six months of the new majority have been the wrong ones. We will be submitting our dissenting views, and I hope that our agenda for the next six months will include a stronger emphasis on economic growth and job creation. #
