Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, last week the President was in Denver, CO, where he talked about the economy. He said this: ``By almost every measure, we are better off than when I took office.'' That is quite a statement. ``By almost every measure we are better off than when I took office.'' I know a lot of Americans struggling with high health care bills who might disagree with that because the truth is that very few Americans are better off than they were 5 1/2 years ago. Household income has plummeted by more than $3,300 since the President took office. Meanwhile, the price of everything, from milk to the refrigerator to store it in, has risen. Gas prices have nearly doubled since the President took office. College costs have soared. Of course, family health insurance premiums have increased by nearly $3,000 per family.

Combine reduced income with higher prices and you get a reduced living standard. Under the Obama Presidency, families who were once comfortably in the middle class are now struggling to make ends meet. Other Americans have dropped out of the middle class altogether.

There are 3.7 million more women in poverty today than there were when the President took office. Mr. President, you want to talk about the war on women?

When the President took office, 33 million Americans were on food stamps. Today more than 46 million Americans receive food stamps. Americans struggling financially have had few opportunities to get ahead because the Obama economy has offered very little in the way of opportunity.

The President likes to talk about the jobs the economy has gained recently. But what he does not say is that 5 years after the recession officially ended, our economy is still posting recession-type levels of unemployment.

Back in 2009 the President's economic advisers confidently predicted that unemployment would fall below 6 percent in 2012. Well, here we are 2 years later. We are still not below 6 percent unemployment even after a historic expansion of monetary policy and the largest fiscal stimulus since World War II. The only reason the unemployment rate is not higher is because so many Americans have given up looking for a job entirely and dropped out of the workforce. The labor force participation rate currently stands at 62.8 percent--near a 36-year low. To put it another way, if the labor participation rate today were what it was when the President took office, unemployment would not be a little over 6 percent, it would be 10.2 percent. That is how many people have completely dropped out of the labor force and are no longer even looking for a job.

Then there are the millions of Americans who are working part time because they cannot find a full-time job. The Labor Department reported that the economy lost more than half a million full-time jobs in June and gained almost 800,000 part-time jobs. That is not a good statistic. It is the rare part-time job that pays all the bills and gives financial stability. Americans need more full-time jobs, not more part-time jobs.

They also need the opportunity for higher paying jobs, but that is another opportunity which is in short supply in the Obama economy. Forty-one percent of the jobs lost during the recession were high-wage jobs, but just 30 percent of the jobs recovered have been high-wage jobs. Similarly, 37 percent of the jobs lost in the recession were midwage jobs, while just 26 percent of the jobs gained since the recession have been midwage jobs. Meanwhile, while just 22 percent of the jobs lost during the recession were low-wage jobs, 44 percent of the jobs gained since the recession have been low-wage jobs.

We are trading high-wage jobs for low-wage jobs, full-time jobs for part-time jobs. That is the reality that many Americans are experiencing. The Obama recovery, however, has been producing low-wage part-time jobs--not the types of jobs that Americans need for a future of financial security and stability.

No policy is threatening Americans' economic future more than ObamaCare. As every American knows, ObamaCare has failed to deliver on its promise of making health care more affordable. The President promised that his health care law would reduce premiums by $2,500. Instead, premiums have risen.

Millions of Americans had their insurance plans cancelled and were told that their new plans would cost more--sometimes much, much more. One constituent wrote to tell me that the cheapest plan she could find for her family of four would cost $17,000. Another wrote to tell me that his insurance plan was cancelled due to ObamaCare and the cheapest bronze plan he could find was $987 a month--more than double what he was paying before. On top of that, the plan had a higher deductible and significantly higher cost-sharing requirements than his old plan.

I am sure every one of my colleagues--Democrats and Republicans--has received letters just like this. Our constituents are hurting. What middle class family can afford to pay $17,000 a year in insurance or double its health care premiums from the year before?

ObamaCare is placing an immense burden on middle-class families. The huge premium hikes that many Americans are facing are having a real impact on families' budgets. Money eaten by health care costs is money that can't be spent on a daughter's college education or a new car to replace the failing one or on repairs for the roof--and there is seemingly no end to ObamaCare's penalties.

In addition to hiking insurance premiums, ObamaCare is also encouraging companies to drop spousal coverage from their health plans. UPS and the University of Virginia, for example, have already dropped spousal coverage because of ObamaCare. Women are particularly affected by this since, as the Wall Street Journal reports, they tend to be the ones being dropped from employer-sponsored health care plans.

Then there is ObamaCare's marriage penalty. A woman who qualifies for a tax subsidy to help her purchase insurance could lose that subsidy if she gets married--even if both she and her husband qualified for the subsidy when they were single.

ObamaCare isn't just hiking Americans' health care bills, it is also damaging their economic prospects. Thanks to the 30-hour workweek rule, ObamaCare is helping to drive the surge in part-time employment. Businesses that couldn't afford to give health insurance to workers working more than 30 hours have been forced to reduce their employees' hours and, by extension, their wages. Sixty-three percent of those affected by this provision are women.

Then there is the employer mandate, which is discouraging wage growth and making it more difficult for employers to grow their businesses and to hire new workers. When employers are forced to pay for benefits they can't afford, they often have no choice but to reduce wages or cancel raises and abandon plans for growing their businesses.

Then there are the other ObamaCare provisions that discourage job growth, such as the tax on medical devices such as pacemakers and insulin pumps, which has already been responsible for the loss of thousands of jobs in the medical device industry.

The last thing that we need right now in this weak economy is the kind of widespread devastation ObamaCare is causing. Americans are being hit from both sides. ObamaCare is raising their medical bills and it is destroying their job opportunities.

If the President were serious about trying to help middle-class Americans, he would be looking at where his health care law went wrong and at least supporting fixes for its most damaging provisions.

If Democrats were serious about fixing health care and helping the economy, they would be taking up Senator Collins' Forty Hours is Full Time Act, which would fix the ObamaCare 30-hour workweek rule and put Americans back to work or they would support my bill to eliminate the employer mandate for schools, colleges, and universities, so that these institutions aren't forced to cut wages or to eliminate positions.

Democrats thought if Americans found out what was in ObamaCare and what it meant for them, they would come to like it. Well, Americans have found out what is in the President's health care law, what it means for them, and they don't like it.

ObamaCare is hurting American families, it is hurting our economy, and it is time to start over and replace this bill with real health care reform, the kind that will lower costs,
that will increase choice, and that will put Americans back in charge of their health care.\

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