Medical Device Tax Repeal Now Part of Jobless Benefit Extension Discussion in U.S. House

Lawmakers have been sparring over reinstating expired jobless benefits.

On Jan. 17th, Congress recessed for a week-long break without any resolution to the impasse, which impacts benefits for 1.3 million Americans who have been out of work for six months or more.

Senate Democrats and Republicans are at odds about how to reinstate jobless benefits, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he would revisit the issue after the recess.

An offer by Senate Democrats to fund the program through November was rejected by Republican colleagues because it used budget cuts that wouldn’t take effect until 2024 to pay for it. Though the majority of Republicans oppose the extension, a handful of Republicans necessary to overcome procedural hurdles are generally supportive of an extension, which means an agreement is possible if a way can be found to offset the cost.

“I have a number of members who feel the unemployment insurance issue is a serious matter that ought to be addressed, but addressed in a fair and bipartisan way, with the majority in the end deciding what kind of bill passes,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

The GOP-controlled House has, for the most part, stayed out of the debate about long-term jobless benefits. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has said that the House will look at any extension that comes out of the Senate, but the chamber is not working on legislation of its own. House Republicans counter that they have approved legislation they say would spur job growth, but Senate Democrats have ignored their bills.

“The best way to help out-of-work Americans is to create jobs and grow our economy. That’s exactly what Republicans are focused on, creating jobs for middle-class families and small businesses,” Boehner said.

What does this have to do with the 2.3 percent medical device excise tax?

A few House Republicans, however, are taking up the issue of unemployment benefits and working the medical device tax into the mix.

On Jan. 15, Reps. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) and Mark Meadows (R.-N.C.) introduced legislation to provide a one-year extension of Tier 1 Federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation benefits that includes three measures the lawmakers say will encourage new job creation and preserve current jobs and wages.

Their proposed legislation, titled the GROWTH (Generating Real Opportunities for Workers and Transitional Help) Act, would extend unemployment benefits for an additional 12 months while reforming the program to limit the length of time a recipient is eligible for benefits.

In addition to the device tax repeal, the legislation calls for approving the Keystone Pipeline (which is a system to transport synthetic crude oil from the Canada and crude oil from the northern United States to refineries in the Gulf Coast of Texas), allowing construction to begin on the project and potentially creating approximately 42,000 direct and indirect jobs and restoring the 40-hour work week, not the 30 hours currently stipulated in the healthcare law’s formula, protecting workers from having their hours cut or jobs eliminated.

The Dent-Meadows legislation offsets costs of the extension of benefits by “cracking down”—according to a statement from Dent and Meadows—on fraudulent child tax credit claims and eliminating the ability to claim benefits from both unemployment insurance and disability.

“This is a commonsense proposal that continues to provide assistance to those who have lost their jobs and are looking for work, while at the same time addressing the underlying problem of unacceptably high unemployment and slow economic growth,” said Dent. “We must recognize families are still utilizing federal emergency unemployment benefits because of the dismal job market in so many communities across the country. The GROWTH Act ties the need for immediate assistance with policies that we know will either create new opportunities for workers or save jobs from being eliminated, forcing more Americans onto the unemployment rolls.

“The state of the job market in our nation is unacceptable,” said Meadows. “Millions of Americans, including far too many in Western North Carolina, continue to search for work without success. Though the federal government is considering another extension for unemployment benefits, isn’t that only another bandage for the real problem? Extending unemployment benefits without doing anything to create jobs simply forces us to repeat that same action again and again. We have extended these benefits 11 times over the past five years, clearly demonstrating the need for a more effective solution.”

The medical device tax repeal language in the Dent-Meadows legislation copies the standalone repeal bill introduced in 2013 by Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-Minn.) that never taken up by the House Ways and Means Committee. The bill had co-sponsorships from 227 Republicans and 42 Democrats.