FW Newsletter: New Survey Suggests ObamaCare Is Killing Jobs

House Conservatives Update: September 18, 2016 The last two weeks in the House of Representative have been busy ones for House conservatives. The federal government will run out of money with its fiscal year ending on September 30. That means Congress must pass a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government funded since Congress failed to pass its spending bills before the September 30 deadline. House conservatives have been fighting to make sure any CR extends into next year, while the establishment wants it to expire in the lame duck. A lame duck CR will be full of handouts for the status quo and passed by a House and Senate at their least accountable state. The CR didn’t come up this week, although the rumor was that the Senate would pass one and leave town. Next week should see more action on the CR: the question now is if the House or Senate will move first. We will be there no matter what happens supporting House conservatives in the fight against a lame duck CR. House conservatives have also been engaged on the issue of impeaching the IRS commissioner, John Koskinen. Just before House conservatives were planning to get a vote on the House floor on impeachment, the House Judiciary Committee agreed to finally hold a hearing next Wednesday where the commissioner will testify. This is a win for holding the Obama administration accountable, the rule of law, and conservatives. FreedomWorks will be closely monitoring the hearing and will keep calling for the impeachment of the IRS commissioner. New Kaiser Survey Suggests ObamaCare Is Killing Jobs - via Forbes Yahoo Finance’s Ethan Wolff-Mann, who may have the best name in journalism, writes it’s not true that ObamaCare has caused employers to reduce workers’ hours because the new Kaiser Family Foundation/Health Research Educational Trust survey found “a whopping 7% of employers with more than 50 employees actually gave part-timers full-time jobs since Obamacare was officially launched in 2013. Only 2% of employers cut full-timers to part-time.” Leaving aside the question of whether 7 percent is a whopping figure, the figures Wolff-Mann cites don’t necessarily support his claim. ObamaCare’s employer mandate requires employers with more than 50 employees to provide a government-defined minimum amount of health insurance to all full-time employees, defined as those working 30 or more hours per week. Critics have predicted the mandate will therefore cause some workers employers to shift from full-time to part-time workers in order to avoid penalties. Read more here... House Conservatives Are Winning - by Adam Brandon via The Hill If one listens to the narrative advanced by rent-seeking, parasitic Washington political establishment, conservatives were “trounced,” as one publication put it, in Republican congressional primaries this cycle. This narrative could not be further from the truth. Certainly, there were some disappointments in this election cycle. The loss of Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.), one of the most principled conservative members of the House, was a huge blow. Of course, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other crony special interests spent heavily to boost his moderate Republican primary opponent. Former Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who, rather than be spurned by the conservative members of his conference and lose his the speakership, resigned his House seat. He may have toasted a glass of red wine when Rep. Huelskamp lost, but this old House seat is now in the hands of a member of the House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio). Read more here... FreedomWorks' Book Club Spotlight: "Our Lost Constitution: The Willful Subversion of America's Founding Document" In Our Lost Constitution, Senator Mike Lee tells the dramatic, little-known stories behind six of the Constitution’s most indispensable provisions. He shows their rise. He shows their fall. And he makes vividly clear how nearly every abuse of federal power today is rooted in neglect of this Lost Constitution. Get your copy here... Conservative Lawmakers Wary of Last Minute Budget Process Don't Let Criminal Justice Reform Fall Victim to Congress' Calendar - by Adam Brandon via Independent Journal Review With the House set to adjourn on Sept. 30 and the Senate set to follow suit a week later, a number of bills deserving passage look increasingly likely to become casualties of the race for the exits as lawmakers head home to campaign for re-election. It would be especially unfortunate if three bills, in particular, were allowed to fall by the wayside, eclipsed by the annual mad dash to cobble together yet another budgetary continuing resolution before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30th. Read more here... How Financial CHOICE Act Rescues Unbanked Americans - via Competitive Enterprise Institute If the New York State Department of Labor is really concerned about unbanked employees being hit with fees, it should lend its support to the Financial CHOICE Act in the U.S. House. The state DOL recently made headlines with its rules mandating that employers paying their workforces with prepaid debit cards ensure that employees have “unlimited, free withdrawals” from at least one nearby ATM. This must be the case even if the employees have no bank accounts. But the rule will likely make things worse because it overlooks the real problem – the fact that so many workers are “unbanked” in the first place. Unbanked workers frequently have to pay fees to access their money whether their checks are paper or electronic. Read more here... Competition and Monopoly Wayne Brough explains how the robust threat of competition keeps firms eager to please their customers. A competitive market results in lower prices and a higher quality of goods for consumers, and it prevents firms from being able to abuse market power. But when monopolies occur, there is no competition, and the consequences can be very dangerous. Watch it here... Obama Administration's Lawless Decision Delays a Much-Needed Infrastructure Project - by Kenny Stein Seemingly every day some politician or another, usually from the left of the political spectrum, calls for more infrastructure investment. In North Dakota there is a $3.7 billion infrastructure project under construction. This project received all the necessary federal permits and is 60% complete. But now the Obama administration, bowing to radical left wing protestors, has thrown the project into doubt with its unprecedented decision last Friday to halt construction on one section of the project. Apparently infrastructure investment is not the priority we were led to believe. The project in question is known as the Dakota Access Pipeline. It would carry domestically-produced oil from North Dakota down to Iowa to connect booming production from the Bakken oil field with the rest of the country. As much as 50% of the total production from the Bakken could pass through the new pipeline. This oil from the Bakken is currently transported to market by rail, a significantly more dangerous mode of transportation. Transporting oil by pipeline instead of rail will not only be safer, it will free up rail capacity for transporting agricultural products which were being crowded out by the huge quantities of oil on the tracks. Read more here... Las Vegas Taxpayers Could Be on the Hook for $750 Million to Fund NFL Stadium - via Reason Las Vegas and Nevada taxpayers may soon be on the hook for a $750 million handout to a billionaire casino magnate's company, to build a stadium for the National Football League (NFL)'s Raiders and the University of Nevada-Las Vegas' football team. The crony capitalist cabal known as the The Southern Nevada Tourism Infrastructure Committee—which ESPN describes as comprised of "casino leaders and elected officials"—voted unanimously to raise Las Vegas hotel taxes as a means of financing a brand-new domed stadium. The Raiders, who currently call Oakland (Calif.) home, will contribute far less at $500 million, while Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino owner and financier of failed political campaigns, will contribute $650 million through his Las Vegas Sands corporation. Read more here... 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