S.Amdt. 430

SA 430. Mr. LANKFORD submitted an amendment intended to be proposed
to amendment SA 267 proposed by Mr. McConnell to the bill H.R. 1628, to
provide for reconciliation pursuant to title II of the concurrent
resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2017; which was ordered to lie
on the table; as follows:

At the appropriate place, insert the following:

SEC. ___. FINDINGS; SENSE OF THE SENATE.

(a) Findings.--The Senate finds as follows:
(1) Obamacare's employer mandate has had a devastating
impact on the job market in the United States since it took
effect in its earliest form in 2015 . Small businesses and
the jobs they create have been stifled by the punishing
consequences of this government mandate.
(2) Under Obamacare, the employer mandate generally imposes
a tax penalty on employers if they have 50 or more full-time
equivalent employees and do not offer health insurance that
meets all of the standards under the law.
(3) In 2015, the Congressional Budget Office (referred to
in this section as ``CBO'') found that these penalties are
being passed on to employees in the form of reduced wages. In
2016, these reduced wages equaled $2,160 per employee
according to CBO's estimates. This means that any company
that ignored the employer mandate in 2016 is likely to face
fines of over $2,000 per employee in 2017.
(4) CBO expects that, by 2025, the amount of reduced wages
per worker will balloon to $3,500.
(5) In addition, CBO projects that wages are being even
further reduced because companies cannot deduct the penalty
as an expense, on account of Obamacare. To compensate for
paying business taxes on higher accounting profits, companies
are being

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forced to reduce wages by more than the amount of the penalty
payments.
(6) CBO estimates that the penalty represents a 7 percent
increase in the tax rate of employees at firms that are
subject to the employer mandate penalty.
(7) In addition, Obamacare's employer mandate requires that
all businesses with at least 50 full-time equivalents provide
their full-time workers with health insurance coverage that
satisfies the law's requirements. Employers who fail to offer
coverage that satisfies the employer mandate are subject to
the penalties.
(8) In 2015, CBO found that defining full-time employment
as a 40-hour week rather than a 30-hour week would alleviate
$45,000,000,000 in tax penalties on employers over the
following decade.
(9) The employer mandate penalty creates incentives for
businesses to reduce their hiring or shift their workforce
toward part-time jobs.
(10) These stark realities are playing out all across the
country as businesses are now well into year 2 of mandatory
compliance with this onerous mandate and its negative effect
on jobs.
(b) Sense of the Senate.--It is the sense of the Senate
that the committee of jurisdiction of the Senate should
review--
(1) the economic impact that Obamacare's employer mandate
and redefinition of full-time employment as a 30-hour work
week has had on businesses, employee wages, and the job
market as a whole; and
(2) the effect on the job market, if Congress were to enact
policy to restore the 40-hour work week definition, and
eliminate the current 30-hour definition that is purely
arbitrary and serves as a damaging barrier to more hours and
better pay for American workers.
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