Senate Dems Afraid Of Voting On Conservative Job Creation Ideas | BLS Employment Report

Today in Washington, D.C. - April 4, 2014
The Senate is not in session today and will reconvene at 2 PM on Monday. At 5:30, a vote is scheduled on final passage of H.R. 3979, the unemployment insurance extension bill.

Yesterday, the Senate voted 60-36 to waive the Budget Act with respect to H.R. 3979 and then voted 61-33 to invoke cloture on H.R. 3979.

Senate Democrats continue to blockade Republicans from offering any amendments to the unemployment insurance bill. Today, Sen. John Thune (R-SD) has collected a number of GOP job creating ideas into a single amendment which would authorize construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, postpone the individual mandate and repeal Obamacare’s limit on hourly work, allow small business tax relief, and pass the House-passed SKILLS Act. Will Democrats allow a vote on these basic, commonsense ideas?

The House convened at 9 AM today. Today, the House began debate on H.R. 1874 — "To amend the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 to provide for macroeconomic analysis of the impact of legislation." Yesterday the House passed H.R. 2575 (248-179) — "To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to repeal the 30-hour threshold for classification as a full-time employee for purposes of the employer mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and replace it with 40 hours."

In a desperate effort to save his job as Senate majority leader, Harry Reid is going to bring up the Paycheck Fairness Act for a vote. Trying to divert attention from the real issues that concern Americans, the left hopes that reviving this tired legislation will advance the idea of a conservative "War on Women" and earn them votes in November. Previous Congresses have rejected it, however, for good reason: the "Paycheck Fairness Act" would stifle job creation, send existing American jobs overseas, and burden employers with expensive paperwork and frivolous lawsuits.

The Paycheck Fairness Act, introduced by Sen. Barbara Mikulski, would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA) in the following ways:
Allows for unlimited compensatory and punitive damages to be granted, even without proof of intent to discriminate. Currently, an employer must be found to have intentionally engaged in discriminatory practices in order for an employee to receive monetary compensation, and even then, the employee is entitled only to back pay. The provision in the PFA is unacceptable and unnecessary, as damages are already available under Title VII for pay discrimination.

Changes the "establishment" requirement. The EPA currently requires that employees whose pay is being compared must work in the same physical place of business. The PFA would amend the word "establishment" to mean workplaces in the same county or political district. It would also invite the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to develop "rules or guidance" to define the term more broadly. This leaves the door open for the EEOC to compare a woman's job in a rural area to a man's job in an urban area that has a much higher cost of living, which would drive up the cost of employing the woman in the rural lower-cost area. Such increase in employment costs would result in fewer people being employed, and would also result in employers shipping jobs overseas.

Replaces a successful pay discrimination-determining system with a proven failed system. The PFA would invalidate the successful, Supreme Court-endorsed system for determining whether pay discrimination has occurred (known as the Interpretative Standards for Systemic Compensation Discrimination), and would replace it with the highly inaccurate Equal Opportunity Survey, which has found true discriminators to be non-discriminators 93 percent of the time.

Increases the numbers in class-action suits. Under EPA, if an employee wants to participate in a class-action suit against his employer, he must affirmatively decide to participate in the suit. The PFA would automatically include employees in class-action suits, unless they affirmatively opt out. This change would result in booming business for trial attorneys, and huge costs to employers, who may decide to ship jobs overseas to avoid such costs altogether. In addition to these changes, the PFA would institute a system of "comparable worth" effectively allowing judges, juries and unelected bureaucrats to set employees' wages, instead of employers. Thus, an employee's compensation level would be based on some vague notion of his "worth," instead of on concrete factors like education, experience, time in the labor force, and hours worked per week. The PFA would also cause employers to avoid hiring women in low-paying positions, since the employers may then become targets for burdensome lawsuits. This trend would result in even higher unemployment for low-skilled women, potentially increasing the number of families dependent on government assistance.

Elaine Chao, former Secretary of Labor, called the PFA a "job killing, trial attorney bonanza," and said employers potentially would see female applicants as instigators of lawsuits, instead of contributors to productivity.

Action: Call or email your Senators and tell them to vote against the Paycheck Fairness Act. Since forcing the nuclear option on the Senate, Reid knows he can get the bill passed with only Democrat votes. If you have a U.S. Senator up for election, especially a democrat, it is time to impress on them your dissatisfaction with the phony Paycheck Fairness Act.

BLS released their unemployment report today and states that employers added 192,000 jobs, slightly below February’s total of 197,000. Employers also added a combined 37,000 more jobs in February and January than previously estimated. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 6.7 percent. While the White House is claiming improvement in the employment numbers, there are three facts being ignored 1) the number of workers not reflected in the unemplyment numbers who have dropped out and are not looking for work or working "off the books," 2) With the cut back in hours by small business owners because of Obamacare, already active workers have had their hour reduced and are taking one or two more part time jobs to earn enough money. These employers report new hires but the persons hired are all ready working, and 3) the figures do not reflect the real unemployment numbers for Millennial, ages 18 to 29, who if working were to be helping to fund the cost of Obamacare.

Generation Opportunity, a national, non-partisan youth advocacy organization, also released its Millennial Jobs Report for March 2014. "The declining labor force participation rate has created an additional 1.916 million young adults that are not counted as 'unemployed' by the U.S. Department of Labor because they are not in the labor force, meaning that those young people have given up looking for work due to the lack of jobs. The effective (U-6) unemployment rate for 18-29 year olds, which adjusts for labor force participation by including those who have given up looking for work, is 15.5 percent. The (U-3) unemployment rate for 18-29 year olds is 8.9% ...

• African American rates are 23.6% and 19.4%
• Hispanic rates are 16.2% and 11.1%
• Women rates are 13.1% and 8.2%

"Patrice Lee, Director of Outreach at Generation Opportunity, issued the following statement: "Chronic unemployment and underemployment continue to plague my generation and this month’s report shows we aren’t making any meaningful progress. But April brings us one month closer to November. If politicians keep passing laws that hurt young people (and I have no doubt they will), we’ll have the opportunity to hold them accountable."

Politico writes today, “Final approval of the Senate’s unemployment insurance proposal has been delayed until next week, as Democrats rejected Republicans’ request for a vote on their amendment. . . . The delay will affect Senate Democrats’ election-year agenda on the floor. Democrats had planned to hold a coordinated vote on paycheck fairness for men and women on Tuesday meant to coincide with Equal Pay Day and a speech from President Barack Obama, but that may now be punted until Wednesday. And Senate Democrats’ push for a vote on raising the minimum wage appears likely to get pushed until after the Easter recess.”

Recall that last week, Democrats rolled out their carefully poll-tested election year agenda to much fanfare. Of course, as The New York Times wrote, it was all about political posturing since “[t]he proposals have little chance of passing. But Democrats concede that making new laws is not really the point.” Instead, The Times explained, “[t]he votes will be timed to coincide with campaign-style trips by President Obama.”

But thanks to their maneuvers this week, Democrats have now “scuttle[d] a carefully-coordinated schedule for the coming week,” writes CBS News.

Why? All because Democrats continue to refuse to take any difficult votes. This week, they blockaded all Republican attempts to amend the unemployment bill to do anything to spur job creation or roll back the Obama administration’s job-killing policies. Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Thune then tried to combine a number of conservative ideas previously offered by GOP senators on jobs into one amendment. Still, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and his caucus refused even one vote on these ideas.

The AP notes, “Republicans hoped to add a series of measures in a catch-all amendment to the bill they say would boost job growth, like approving the Keystone XL pipeline, reducing taxes on small businesses, and eliminating the 30-hour workweek rule in Obamacare. ‘This is an amendment that seeks to take the causes of joblessness head on - rather than simply treating the symptoms of a down economy,’ said Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on Wednesday.”

More specifically, the Thune amendment would have approved the Keystone XL pipeline and natural gas exports, blocked job-killing EPA regulations of power plants, restored the 40-hour workweek damaged by Obamacare, repealed the individual mandate, repealed the medical device tax, included small business tax relief, reined in some executive branch rulemaking , and implemented the House-passed SKILLS Act.

“‘They've blown up all their carefully coordinated show votes, delayed [nominations] and look like fools--all to avoid one simple vote on one amendment,’ a senior Republican aide said” to CBS.

Meanwhile, Politico reports, “A tepid jobs report on Friday showed the economic recovery has yet to turn the corner despite expectations among some economists and market watchers that robust jobs growth in March would put an end to several months of weak data. . . . The average number of jobs created each month over the last year now stands at 183,000 — below the level of growth that economists want to see more than five years after the height of the 2008 financial crisis.”

Clearly, job creation could use a boost. But Senate Democrats don’t want to vote on anything that would help get the economy going again, because their political considerations continue to take precedence.

As Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said, “All week, Republicans have been coming to the floor to talk about our proposals to ignite job creation and get the economy back on track. We’ve been talking about ideas that can help Middle Class Americans who’ve been struggling just to make it in the Obama Economy. But our Democrat colleagues don’t seem to care all that much. They seem too preoccupied with an election that’s still 7 months away. . . . [Democrats] don’t even want the elected representatives of the people to have a say – on what Americans say is the most important issue facing our country [the economy]. This is especially galling because ... [the Democrats] always seem to find time for poll-tested show-votes aimed at firing up the Left. They may not be overly concerned about passing jobs legislation for the American people, but you can bet they’ll be forcing everyone to endure plenty of political show votes as we get closer to November. . . . No wonder Americans are so disillusioned with Washington.”

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