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Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, this is not a killer amendment. This just kills a bad part of the bill.
The reconciliation bill makes a bad employment situation even worse. It imposes $52 billion in new taxes on employers who cannot afford to provide health insurance to their workers. The new employer tax will result in lower wages and lost jobs.
According to CBO:
Requiring employers to offer health insurance--or pay a fee if they do not--is likely to reduce employment.
Low-income workers are particularly hard hit by the employer mandate in the reconciliation bill. CBO says an employer mandate ``could reduce the hiring of low-wage workers'' and would ``increase incentives for firms to replace full-time workers with more part-time or temporary workers.''
The Nation's unemployment rate is 9.7 percent, and in many States the unemployment rate is well into the teens. We should be doing everything possible to create new jobs, but the employer mandate in the reconciliation bill does the opposite.
The job-killing taxes in the bill will slash wages and cut jobs.
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