Today’s Agenda
Today, Senator Lee will fly back to Washington, where he will meet with members of his staff and attend a White House congressional holiday reception.
From the Senator’s Desk
Courtesy of the Republican Policy Committee:
Businesses small and large are once again showing signs just how Obamacare is affecting their willingness to hire. In his Sunday column George Will writes about how Obamacare’s new health insurance mandates mean the Carl’s Jr. chain will open fewer stores, and therefore hire fewer workers:
When CKE’s health-care advisers, citing Obamacare’s complexities, opacities and uncertainties, said that it would add between $7.3 million and $35.1 million to the company’s $12 million health-care costs in 2010, [CEO Andy ]Puzder said: I need a number I can plan with. They guessed $18 million — twice what CKE spent last year building new restaurants. Obamacare must mean fewer restaurants.
And therefore fewer jobs. Each restaurant creates, on average, 25 jobs — and as much as 3.5 times that number of jobs in the community. (CKE spends about $1 billion a year on food and paper products, $175 million on advertising, $33 million on maintenance, etc.)….
CKE restaurants have 95 percent employee turnover in a year — not bad in this industry — and the health-care benefits under CKE’s current “mini-med” plans are capped in a way that makes them illegal under Obamacare. So CKE will have to convert many full-time employees to part-timers to limit the growth of its burdens under Obamacare.
In an economic climate of increasing uncertainties, Puzder says, one certainty is that many businesses now marginally profitable will disappear when Obamacare causes that margin to disappear. A second certainty is that “employers everywhere will be looking to reduce labor content in their business models as Obamacare makes employees unambiguously more expensive.”
It’s not just franchisees groaning under the weight of Obamacare’s mandates. On Friday, the PBS News Hour interviewed Bobby Joslin, the owner of a small business sign company in Nashville, who agreed that Obamacare is reducing hiring:
We’re fighting mandates that just keep coming at us at nowhere….For instance, the Obamacare, when we bring on a new employee, we don’t know what that employee truly is going to cost us in 2014. And we’re not in the practice of hiring people and then laying them off.
These real-world testimonials sync with the views of many economic experts. Analysts at UBS have stated that Obamacare is “arguably the biggest impediment to hiring, particularly hiring of less skilled workers.” And the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta has said that he has “frequently heard strong comments to the effect of ‘my company won’t hire a single additional worker until we know what health insurance costs are going to be.’”
From the Whip
The Senate will convene at 2:00pm today and will begin a period of morning business until 4:30pm.
At 4:30pm, the Senate will begin up to 1 hour of debate on the following nominations:
-Executive Calendar #363, Edgardo Ramos, of New York, to be United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York.
-Executive Calendar #364, Andrew Carter, of New York, to be United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York.
-Executive Calendar #365, James Rodney Gilstrap, of Texas, to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Texas.
-Executive Calendar #406, Dana Christensen, of Montana, to be United States District Judge for the District of Montana.
At 5:30pm, the Senate will proceed to a Roll Call Vote on one of the judicial nominations; it is expected that the remaining three nominations will be confirmed by voice vote.
On Twitter
SenMikeLee
Last week I voted with every other U.S. Senator to sanction the Central Bank of Iran: http://ow.ly/7OXlo
SenLeeComs
“An obscure federal agency could soon ban imports of popular smart phones that use Android software.” http://on.wsj.com/vgdzaj
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@DavisClipper don’t forget! @SenMikeLee‘s Mobile Office is coming to David County this week. Times and locations here: bit.ly/tT5Mkc
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Europe’s now looking for an IMF bailout. Guess who provides the largest chunk of IMF funding? #rhymeswithUncleCam #nobailout #eu #tcot #tlot
Around the Water Cooler
Unemployment aid applications up 2nd straight week
The number of people applying for unemployment benefits rose for the second straight week, a sign the hiring market is recovering at a slow and uneven pace.
Weekly applications for unemployment benefits rose by 6,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 402,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. Applications had been below 400,000 for three straight weeks.
Paul Ryan to endorse in GOP primaries, help replace ‘timid’ congressmen with ‘bold conservatives’
Republican House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan says he’s on a mission to help elect “more conservatives in Congress to save the country” and plans to endorse in congressional races where there are “clear cut cases between reformers and career people.”
Looking Ahead
Tomorrow, Senator Lee will meet with representatives of GE and hold a Utah tele-press conference at 5:30 EST (3:30 MST). He will also attend the lighting of the Capitol Christmas Tree.