This morning the House has resumed debate on repealing the health care law enacted last year. After closing debate last night on the fiscal impact the law has had and would have, this morning we started debating what economic impact the law has and will have.
Unemployment remains high: 9.4 percent nationally and 12.6 percent in the Sacramento region. It is therefore crucial that we carefully evaluate the economic impact of legislation as we do not want to suffer a double-dip recession.
Unfortunately, the health care law from last year stifles job growth. It penalizes employers for failure to offer government-approved health insurance benefits, it imposes onerous paperwork mandates completely unrelated to health care on small businesses, and it creates the effect of an “uncertainty tax” on employers and entrepreneurs.
Penalizing Employers, Penalizing Workers
The Health and Human Services Department (HHS) granted over 200 different major companies waivers from the mandates in the health care law. These companies have said that they cannot implement what is imposed on them under this law, lest they lose jobs. That is more than 200 already and HHS is talking about extending a number of those waivers.
It makes no sense to allow the federal government to have the ability to impose mandates, and then revoke them in the one case because employers have convinced the Secretary of HHS that it would kill jobs, but in the other case, the government imposes the mandates and insists there is no threat to job growth.
If in fact the law does not have the effect of killing jobs, those waivers would not be requested and the Secretary of HHS would not be suggesting that they be done.
Burdensome Mandates on Small Businesses
Just one new mandate in the health care law – that businesses file a 1099 form with the IRS for every business-to-business transaction totaling more than $600 a year – will have severe unintended consequences on small businesses. Small businesses account for 60 percent of new jobs and yet we are adding paperwork requirements on them that have nothing to do with improving accessibility, affordability, or quality of health care for employees. This mandate will only have the effect of increasing compliance costs for small businesses at a time when we could use their innovation and growth.
Therefore, I have also introduced legislation (H.R. 4) to repeal this new 1099 requirement. So far H.R. 4 has 253 bipartisan co-sponsors. If the full repeal of the health care law stalls in the Senate or does not garner enough support to override the President’s veto, the House will move H.R. 4 and other targeted legislation forward so that the most harmful parts of the law are removed before more damage is done to our economy.
Uncertainty Tax
The federal government is expected to issue about 10,000 pages of new regulations to implement the health care law. Without knowing how exactly the law will be implemented and what the regulations will entail, businesses are not in a position to expand. Not only are they concerned about the impact on their own business, but any negative impact the law has on other suppliers or contractors will eventually affect them. The law therefore encourages employers to “wait and see” rather than take the entrepreneurial risks that will create jobs and bring our economy recovery.
To read more about the economic impact of the health care law, please read the Report on the Economic and Fiscal Consequences.
Sincerely,
Daniel E. Lungren
Member of Congress
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