Politics|Resistance From Right Slows G.O.P. Press to Redefine Full-Time Worker
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Resistance From Right Slows G.O.P. Press to Redefine Full-Time Worker
By Jonathan Weisman
WASHINGTON — One of the new Republican Congress's first legislative priorities — redefining a full-time worker under the Affordable Care Act — is gaining opposition just days before passage from a surprising group: conservatives.
The House will take up legislation on Wednesday, the first major bill of the 114th Congress, that would change the definition of a full-time worker under the health law from one who works 30 hours a week to one who works 40 hours. A vote is scheduled for Thursday.
Writing in early November in National Review, Yuval Levin, a conservative popular with House Republicans, said the legislation "seems likely to be worse than doing nothing." His rationale is that there are many more people who work 40 hours a week than just over 30, and that it would be easier for an employer to cut their hours to 39 a week to avoid offering them insurance than to 29.
"Putting the cutoff for the employer mandate at 40 hours would likely put far, far more people at risk of having their hours cut than leaving it at 30 hours," Levin wrote. "That would make for a worse effect on workers and on the economy. So by setting the definition lower, Obamacare's architects were trying to mitigate the damaging effects of the employer mandate some, and by setting it higher Republicans would be worsening those effects." Instead, he called for a full repeal of the employer coverage mandate.
Bill Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, drew more attention to the post when he took to Twitter to bolster Mr. Levin. "I don't see why Republicans should be taking the lead in an alleged fix of Obamacare that I'm not sure would improve it anyway," he said Monday.
The dispute exemplifies how moving from a slogan to actual legislation may be more tricky for Republicans than they expected. "It's one thing to say that's an easy change," said Joseph Antos, a health care analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. "There's nothing easy about changing any one sentence in the Affordable Care Act."
And the issue goes beyond the health care law.
The House and Senate also will move almost immediately to approve the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico — but at a time when the price of oil is so low, investment in Canadian tar sands is expected to dry up.
The House on Tuesday will approve a new rule for the coming Congress mandating that the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation estimate the cost of all "major legislation" factoring in the bill's impact on economic growth. That might make tax cuts appear less costly to the Treasury, but depending on how budget office fulfills it, the rule change could also make Democratic bills, like the major infrastructure legislation the House will introduce Tuesday, appear less expensive.
Still, Republican leaders and their allies are pushing to change the definition of part-time employment under the health law. After a yearlong delay, the law's "employer mandate" will go partly into force this month, meaning that businesses with 100 or more full-time employees will have to offer at least 70 percent of their workers health insurance or pay a penalty.
Business groups say companies that employ low-wage, low-skilled workers are most likely to reduce their hours below the threshold to avoid the penalty, since such businesses are the most sensitive to worker costs.
"When you think about who we've heard from, admittedly anecdotally, the biggest problem is for those workers traditionally not offered health insurance," said Katie W. Mahoney, executive director for health policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
They also point to a study by George Mason University's Mercatus Center, which receives much of its funding from business groups, that suggests as many as four million workers could have their hours cut below 30 by employers avoiding mandated health coverage.
But other conservatives point to a simple fact: Far more Americans work 40 hours or more than those who work about 30.
More than half of all workers maintain at least a 40-hour workweek, according to a study by the Commonwealth Fund, a New York-based foundation that studies health care. Most of them already get employer-provided health insurance, but about 9 percent — or 2.6 million Americans — do not.
"At a full-time definition of 40 hours per week, there are more than twice as many workers at high risk of hours reductions because they are within five hours of the full-time definition at firms that do not offer health insurance coverage," the study concluded.
By pushing those workers onto the federally subsidized health insurance exchanges, the definition change would also increase the federal deficit by $73.7 billion over a decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The White House last year promised that President Obama would veto the bill, a vow likely to be reissued this week.
As the job market strengthens, employers will be less inclined to cut hours or drop coverage because workers will be able to look elsewhere for better benefits, said Stuart Butler, who spent 35 years at the conservative Heritage Foundation before moving to the Brookings Institution.
"We're not seeing as much of a change of behavior among employers as some of us had feared," Mr. Butler said. "And I think that would be the case here, too."