That means debating and voting on bills that passed the House and then stacked up in the Senate. "It also means renewing our commitment to repeal Obamacare, which is hurting the job market along with Americans’ health care," House Speaker John Boehner and presumed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wrote in an
op-ed in Thursday's Wall Street Journal. Boehner and McConnell did not say they would repeal Obamacare; they simply renewed their "commitment" to do so. Moreover, Boehner and McConnell indicated they will take a piecemeal approach to Obamacare, rather than outright repeal.
Among the bills they intend to bring up, they specifically mentioned the
Hire More Heroes Act, which would tweak Obamacare in a way that encourages employers to hire more veterans. They also mentioned a proposal to restore the traditional 40-hour definition of full-time employment. House Republicans previously have identified the "
worst parts of Obamacare" as the tax on medical devices and the arbitrary definition of full-time work as 30 hours, instead of 40. In the past two years, the House has passed dozens of bills -- 54 by most counts -- to either repeal, defund, delay or tweak all or parts of The Affordable Care Act. Most recently, on Sept. 18, the House passed the
Jobs for America Act (H.R. 4), which would have restored the traditional 40-hour work week, scrapped the medical device tax, and encouraged the hiring of veterans who are covered by other government health care plans.
Boehner and McConnell said the legislation they intend to pass will not "single-handedly turn around the economy," but they called their plan "a sensible and obvious first step." The two leaders promised not to repeat the mistakes of Democrats, who tried to "reshape large chunks of the nation's economy with massive bills that few Americans have read and fewer understand." They promised that congressional committees would "conduct meaningful oversight of federal agencies" as well as write and debate bills; and they said Democrats, soon to be in the minority, will be given the opportunity to "participate in the process of governing."
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