I want to welcome all of you to help us make certain that if we are on the wrong track, you can help us by improving the work we are doing. It is my basic understanding, that with the exception, the other four witnesses support repeal. You believe we are to get rid of this. I assume, out of the four, with the exception, right now, none of you have a Small Business. You do not make payrolls and you do not have responsibility for healthcare and pension benefits. Is that correct . I would assume further you are not just volunteering your thoughts. The three of you are experts in what you do, unlike mr. Falk, and you get paid for what you do the same way doctors and lawyers get paid calling you lobbyists would not be a stigma but a label as to what your business is. Am i correct in that assumption . No, i am not a lobbyist. A nonpartisan policy research institute. What i articulated, alternative to the Affordable Care act [indiscernible] you would not be here if you were supporting and trying to improve the health care. You are here basically your income is based on the fact that that is your professional position. I would strongly disagree with you. Do not disagree. Just say what it is. My positions are on the record and i write them everyday on the internet. I am asking you whether you get paid for advocating your position. That is all. I do not doubt you are a professional. I do not get paid to advocate a particular position. When you were working for the person running for president , did you get paid for advocating a Healthcare System within . I did not. You are a volunteer professional. I volunteered for the romney campaign. In the positions you take on health care, you do not get compensated . Not for taking any particular position. What you are doing is volunteer contribution to help us understand your position. You are not a doctor, but you do have a professional position . I have articulated my view about the Affordable Care act. You have done eloquently. It appears to me it is mr. Falks opinion that would help us understand what we have done. Incidentally, my son is a marine. I cannot say anything unkind. I want to thank you guys in the marines for your service. But whatever they put in your water, i could understand you are just as excited about your business as you have been for serving our great country. I want to thank you for your service. With all of the people you hire, parttime and fulltime, what is the breakout in that . I know you have more parttime than fulltime. 15 of my employees are full timers by choice. Most of the people i employ are parttime employees. High schoolers and college kids, if you needed fulltime, you would hire fulltime. Supply and demand. I offer them as many hours as they want. Ok. You said those who work full time, they get healthcare. I offer healthcare. They accept it . Not all the time. It is because i am a nice guy. It is about providing an opportunity for my employees. I want to take care of them because they are valuable to me. Time is expired. Can i just ask one closing question . Perhaps after. [laughter]uld be no. You may have different views and different beliefs because you are here because you care about the issue, you are at committees in the issue. We are pleased you are here with us today. Thank you. A macro question, if we can. Since the enactment of obamacare to this point, when the employer mandate has been temporarily suspended for a year, what do you think the overall impact of the enactment has had on gdp growth . What is your thought on the impact of slow growth we have had in the gdp over the past few years relative to the implementation or the proposed implementation of this enactment . What impact on the decisions, our job creators, relative to the decisions to hire and expand . I do not think i have seen an academic estimate of that. It is a subjective response i will have to give. There has been a lot of information coming through the system, even at the Federal Reserve level, where they noted employers have responded to the incentive of the healthcare law by limiting the hiring. The direction is clear it is negative. The size and quantity of it, that is harder for me to put a number on that. There have been many reasons why the economy has performed poorly. This is one of the reasons. I would add what we have seen is a substantial shift from fulltime to parttime employment. We have record high numbers of people who are parttime workers and lower numbers of fulltime workers. That is a transition i would expect to continue as small employers wrestle with the mandate. Another reason why it would be great policy to repeal the employer mandate. We keep data and produce it monthly on the status of Small Business economy, and it has been clear over the last few years things have not gone well. The difficulty is trying to pull out what is the Macro Economic issues from the problems put forward by obamacare. We cannot tear them apart as to which is which. It has had impact on their general view of the requirements before them. We have some data suggesting recently they are becoming concerned about political issues increasingly rather than economic issues. Political is a very wide term. Mr. Falk, you indicated you think it is important to provide Health Insurance to your full time employees and you also indicated parttime employees are offered the opportunity to work more hours if they want to. Does that working more hours at some point lend to the prospect you might get to a point where you would hit the 50 fulltime employee threshold . If so, what that means in terms of your ability to conduct your businesses, your 12 units . Definitely it is i have taken into consideration. I do not think i will go over that threshold immediately. What has been happening with your current insurance amy adams ins insurance or the Health Insurance providing . Has that steady and has that gone down . It is true. It is not a myth my insurance premiums that we share the premium on, it cost them more and me more every year. Could that be tied to the continuing pressures of the obamacare requirements that the healthinsurance industry continue to pay billions of dollars to the federal government each year and it is passed onto employers to pay those premiums, the lifting of the policy cap, part of the enactment, the extension of coverage to those, do you think all of those factors continue under obama care lend themselves to increasing premiums for the job creator on the street . I do not know. Mr. Rangel was good at pointing out all of these Panel Members were experts on health care. They have until july to get 12 businesses up and running and there is a website they can go to figure it out. I am sure they would be overwhelmed. This takes up all of my time right now. Thank you. I appreciate it. I want to commend you. This is a remarkably important topic as we move forward with the calamity confronting the country right now. Republicans are for positive health reform, reform that recognizes patients and families and doctors ought to be making medical decisions and not washington, d. C. I would encourage my friend to take a peek at it and embrace positive solutions. This was talked about being all about politics. You talk about politics. Here is an announcement from the administration coming out a blog post from the irs. We have governance by blog post, that delays the reporting requirements for employers for a year that happens to fall after the 2014 election. Talk about politics. I would encourage my friends to open their eyes to the political activity of the administration. You said, if you actually care you would throw more money at this program. With all due respect, if the individuals who wrote this law actually cared about the health care of this country, they might have investigated the consequences for the physicians taking care of those patients. They might have talked to folks trying to run a business and create jobs, instead of doing what we have clearly identified and it has been admitted to by folks on the other side of the aisle when they are honest behind closed doors, this was not supposed to be the final product. It does not change the law one iota. Mr. Falk, i want to commend you for what you are trying to do out there to navigate the remarkable waters of this destructive law. You mentioned in response to mr. Thompson, you said, there was concern about getting information. You were having difficulty doing that, and he did not allow you to respond. I would like to give you an opportunity. One of the things i wanted to respond to him about, i have been to conventions and we have had a briefing about health ear every time but every time it is different. The target continues to move. With every new policy or extension or consideration they are giving to someone else, i still do not know what to do. He is right. There is a website out there. Healthcare. Gov. It just got announced publicly a couple weeks ago. I understand that. I will look up all the information i can. I am engaged. I do all of these events and conferences on business. 75 of smallbusiness owners probably have no idea what is going on. They do not know about healthcare. Gov. It is a wonderful, beautiful site, but does nothing to assist you. When you spend all this time trying to comply with government regulations like this and rules that are incomprehensible, what are the consequences to your business and job creation . These guys are experts but are not creating any jobs. I am trying to grow my business. I am fortunate enough to be a large enough smallbusiness owner that i have an Administrative Assistant but i do not have a Government Relations person on my staff like microsoft has. I have to shoulder all of these burdens to find out what is going on with health care and how much it will affect me and my employers and my business. My business provides me an income for my family, the profit that i make. If the costs continue to take out the profit, i will decide to close out my lower performing units because they will not make enough money and it will take jobs away. Exactly. Mr. Roy, i want to touch on the point you are making on workers. I have had employers tell me they are decreasing the number of fulltime to parttime workers because of this law. 322,000 increase in parttime workers to 8. 2 million in june. Can you describe consequences happening in the real world, bringing about increasing part time workers and how destructive that is to jobs . We have heard talk about what the right thing to do is or what employers do if they care. We have not heard a lot about what the incentives are. They are clear. It is to structure parttime workers so they do not have to offer coverage to parttime workers. Thank you. Thank you. I want to mention. We have two chambers in our area. About 2000 each. 90 are 50 employees or less. I was very active with them. 137,000 businesses. In that chamber. 93 or less, 50 employees or less. The number one issue in the last 13 years or 15 years, the number one issue is the rising cost of healthcare. In our area, we had one employer that has been somewhat successful. His cost last year went up 1. 5 million. The other end of the spectrum, when we do town halls, we all do town hall meetings, one woman stood up and said, i have six employees and my Health Care Costs has gone from 1000 to 2000 for a family of four. That is the thing that is crazy. It is unbelievable. They said they would cut the cost 25 , and im just looking at a reality with a lot of businesses that if they get their bill every year if pharmacists will came at 27 increase. He negotiated out 12 . The employees are kicking in more and the coverage is not quite as good so they get it down to 12 . That is a reality. This is doing nothing to bend the cost of healthcare, even though it was supposed to come down 25 . I want to go to one point you make, and that is the uncertainty that people are feeling about not growing and not creating jobs. You said healthcare costs are going to double or triple. How did you say how healthcare costs are going up substantially, and give me more background on where you get your information from. Health insurance is increasing for everyone but it will increase for people who shop for themselves, the individual or nongroup market. That is where the Affordable Care act heavy regulation will drive up the cost of the insurance plans of the market by two to three times for some workers and on an average you period period you are saying a worker might pay what now and what they will pay in the future . In california, where i have done extensive research, the average increase for runs of civilized individuals will increase by about 70 . That is what im hearing. I want to applaud you because we need to be competitive in this country with china and india, more people willing to take risks, more people willing to sign a note at the bank, so i applaud you and what you are doing. You said something about planning. Everybody, i have always done some kind of planning. One of the factors is his cost Going Forward for employees. It used to be 22 someone said. Now you hire someone for 50,000, almost 40 in terms of his experience. In terms of your business, how many jobs have you not created or businesses you might not have opened as a result of dealing with the uncertainty . From 1998 to 2008, about 1. 5 locations per year on average. I have opened up to locations and that was just last year. I would say i probably could have opened up another six to eight locations. As i get bigger, i can probably move more aggressively as i get bigger, i have chosen not to do that because of the uncertain economy and the regulation changes that happened with taxation and everything else. It is the most important regulation right now that is on my mind. I was going to mention you said multiple entities. Is that a huge issue, or is that in a list of five or six things, is that at the bottom of the list . A lot of people, they own a is business, his family related or the son owns a business, and they are very good turned about the uncertainty. We do not know exactly how big it is. I call it a sleeper issue because we just do not know exactly how much, how broad this extends. Of all Small Businesses that have 20 or more employees, only 35 have a single owner and most have multiple owners. Then you talk about business owners, and 39 of them own multiple businesses. They do this in combinations. Your time has expired. Thank you. You are welcome. Mr. Smith is recognized. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I know you have great respective and expertise on both sides of the issue. These discussions are healthy and need to be had. We know the American People want our Health Care System to work and there is growing skepticism the more it gets involved and the more expensive it becomes, and people can be harmed. That is a growing concern, one i think we all share. Mr. Jos, you are an expert on the healthcare bill. I appreciate that. You probably study that a great deal. This component we have discussed here today, we are told is not ready for enforcement. Do you think there are other components that might share the same view of yours . Are there other parts that perhaps you think need to be delayed as well . I think the administration is in triage mode. They do not have the resources to implement all of the provisions on time. It is a lack of resources . Much is. Another part is the way this law is intended to be implemented, the states would take much of the responsibility. For political reasons, the states have declined to do that. I think they are under a lot of pressure and are trying to decide what needs to be done right now and what can wait. There have been other provisions. Another that relates to business is nondiscrimination. Which says that for businesses who are insured, they cannot offer a better package to their highly compensated employees. That raises a lot of difficulty issues, which we could probably spend another hearing talking about. That position fortunately says nothing happens until they put out regulation. They are trying to put that out. They do not talk to me anymore than they talk to you, but i think they decided they are going to focus on what is essential, which is the premium tax credits, the individual mandate to keep the Insurance Markets from collapsing, getting the exchanges up and running. When you say the premium tax credits, is that the Small Business tax credit i constantly hear from folks back home, that it is so complex . This is the individual tax credit. The Small Business tax credit is already out there. Do you feel there are a lot of Small Businesses eager to take advantage of that . A nonprofit that my wife is on the board of has taken advantage of that and found it allows them to extend insurance to their employees. You are right. Many have found it is limited to very Small Businesses with lower wage employees. I think the administration is moving ahead with the resources and the time they have to do the essential, to get Health Insurance to those uninsured and who need healthcare. Thank you. Mr. Dennis, if you could reflect on the Small Business perspective on the Small Business tax credit. The feedback i get is it is much more hassle than it is worth and as to the complexity of our over complex tax code. Yes. The Small Business tax credit, i do not want to call it totally a fiasco, but it has not done very much. Part of the reason was is that it was not structured very well. It is complex. The second one is, it is a bait and switch in the sense it brings you in and gives you credit for a while and after a while it goes way. It gives you this incentive to make an obligation, if you will. Once you have made the obligation and it has gone on for a year or two, then it is gone. So, it has not been successful in the sense of very few businesses have taken advantage of it. There have been a few businesses that have taken advantage of it. In all likelihood, they would have been offering healthcare anyway. Thank you. I yield back. Thank you. Mr. Kelly is recognized. Thank you, mr. Chairman, and i thank the panel for being here. I am a Small Business person. But i think, when you look at this whole activity taking place now