Transcripts For CSPAN Labor Secretary Acosta Testifies On FY

Is about your apprenticeship order. I salute your interest in that and the president s interest in it and look forward to supporting it. I have one question about it. The executive order allows you to deny access to the expansion of the Apprenticeship Program for certain sectors that already have effective and widespread Apprenticeship Programs. Is that directed at the Construction Industry . Do you plan to exempt the Construction Industry from your executive order . Secretary acosta senator, thank you for the comments and the questions. First, let me say going to your earlier combhent that this morning the department of ib comment that this morning the department of labor had a request for information regarding the overtime rule. Once approved by o. M. B. That request would ask the public to comment on a number of questions that would inform our thinking with respect to many of the issues that you raised. Now, moving to the president s executive order, the president is well familiar with apprenticeships, particularly in the Building Trades and is well aware of the success of apprenticeships in the building trade. Senator alexander why would you consider exempting the Construction Industry, if you are . Secretary acosta senator, if i can if i can then comment on that. And so the executive order provides the secretary of labor with discretion to look at particular industries, and if the Current Program is effective and widespread, its a donoharm provision where if a program is currently working and would not benefit from wider expansion, then there is discretion to not fix what is not broken. And so regulations will have to be presented that implement that and those regulations would govern how that particular provision is. Senator alexander i understand that. Do you have an intention to exempt the Construction Industry at this moment . Secretary acosta senator, i have an intention to create regulations that will provide rules for the road on how that provision will be adopted. Senator alexander well, my time is i have nine seconds, but in that nine seconds, if there are 500,000 unfilled job for construction workers today, i would hope that would be evidence that there is room for Apprenticeship Programs in the Construction Industry. Secretary acosta we would agree. Senator alexander thank you, mr. Chairman. Senator blunt thank you, senator alexander. Senator shotts. Senator shotts thank you for your good work. Many people from this administration have attacked the bureau of labor statistics as phony, fictitous and a hoax when they dont like the data thats presented to them. For instance, at a rally in iowa last december, the president elect said the unemployment number, as you know, is totally fiction. And a few months earlier, he said you hear a 5 Unemployment Rate, its just a phony number. Senator schatz this march the o. M. B. Director mulvaney accused the Obama Administration manipulating the numbers to make the Unemployment Rate look smaller. These are really dangerous attacks on Government Data generally and your department in particular. I know youre a datadriven leader, and so i want to ask you the bureau of labor statistics has existed for more than 130 years to provide independent, unbiased and rigorous data on employment levels in the country. Lawmakers use it for policymaking. Journalists and researchers use it to accurately inform the public, and these attacks degrade the public trust. And so i want to give you as much leeway as possible because i understand you work for the Trump Administration so this is not a setup question in order to get you sideways with any member of your administration. But i would like to hear from you what you think about the bureau of labor statistics, their accuracy, not just under your leadership, but over time . Secretary acosta senator, i appreciate the question. And let me, i guess, make three points. First, all the Statistical Agency witness wn the government, not just the bureau of labor statistics, but there are several, about half a dozen statistical agencies, serve an incredibly important role. And in fact, they have particular protections that are given them by o. M. B. To safeguard them from administration to administration and those important protections, because the data that they produce is used over time by researchers in setting policy, and i think its very important to protect the integrity of that data. One of the issues coming out of b. L. S. Is theres actually six measures of unemployment that b. L. S. Produces. At least six, and then several submeasures. Some of which are more narrow and some of which are broader. And so sometimes when folks refer to the Unemployment Rate, which as i just did earlier today, 4. 3 , i was referring to the u3 figure. Theres the e6 figure which is much broader which is about 8. 4 which includes underemployment generally. Then we have the Labor Force Participation rate which unfortunately keeps dropping, and just from demographic changes, just from the aging of america, would drop by approximately. 3 per year if we dont do more to bring folks into the labor force. And so i think sometimes when folks challenge the number, whats really going on is that particular numbers measure those things they are intended to measure. And they do so professionally. But what they measure may not necessarily be what is being discussed. And so we have a very low Unemployment Rate but we need to get more americans back to work. And if you look at the Labor Force Participation rate, enough americans arent working. Theyve given up. And so the multiplicity of numbers can sometimes create confusion. Senator schatz i understand that and giving the benefit of the doubt to some of the political leaders who character the numbers in a way to make their point and sometimes a valid point, sometimes a point in the context of an election but thats all fair game. What i want to be assured of is that the secretary of labor stands up for not just his department and not just b. L. S. But generally for the agencies that collect data. Because theres something more insidious going on. If the point is, hey, look, its a low Unemployment Rate but that doesnt tell you the whole story, fair enough. But if people are being told by their leaders at the highest level that the government is lying to them, that is a whole different proposition and it is your job to stand up for the people who create these data sets. Secretary acosta i deeply respect the integrity and the importance of data sets. They set policy. Theyre used by senators like yourself and others here, and i hear your point. Senator schatz thank you. Senator blunt thank you. Senator lankford. Senator lankford glad youre here. Thanks for your continued service. Can you give us the insight on joint employer, the definition where things are going in the ongoing conversation with the dep depth of labor . Secretary acosta senator, i can certainly do so the department of labor has withdrawn the guidance that had been previously issue on the joint employer. That guidance had been issued in january, 2016, and discussed the agencys rejection of the common law concepts so that guidance is no longer in effect within the department of labor. Now, the National Labor Relations Board, as the senator is aware, doesnt come within the department of labors jurisdiction. Chairman alexander earlier referenced the National Labor Relations Board impending nominations. As the National Labor Relations Board fills, i would suspect that thats an issue they will have to take up and decide how to proceed. Senator larningford ok. Great. Everythings on hold pending that . Secretary acosta well, the department of labor, the guidance has been withdrawn and so that is the portion of that issue thats within the jurisdiction of the department of labor. Senator lankford talking about the fiduciary rule. This is where you have to have cooperation with another entity, the s. E. C. , to try to figure out how thats going to work. Where is that conversation right now . Secretary acosta and so previously the s. E. C. Did not work jointly with the department of labor. As i indicated quite publicly, i think that the s. E. C. Has important expertise and that they need to be part of the conversation and i asked to be chairman of the s. E. C. If the s. E. C. Would be willing to work with us. The chairman indicated his willingness to do so, and its hope as the s. E. C. Also receive full complement of the commissioners that the s. E. C. Will continue to work with the department of labor on this issue. Senator lankford you mentioned in your Opening Statement about enforcement and this committee, i would tell you, would expect that, that if there are safety issues, we do want to be able to maintain enforcement. You go back as far as the Clinton Administration when al gore led an effort across the nation and working with regulators to try to bring down the tone of the regulators and those inspectors that are coming in. I hear pretty consistently that folks used to come in to help us. Now they come in to fine us, especially from Small Businesses. And the abundance of new regulations that have come in in the last several years, they ask a simple question can we have some mercy . If we miss something, come tell us we miss something but dont come in with a fine book immediately. Come in with a warning. So i would ask only and we can work through this in the days ahead. I have a bill that actually deals with this, issues specifically to mandate it, but especially for Small Businesses. They miss something, they dont have an attorney on staff, they dont have compliance people on staff, they run their business. And it is extremely helpful if the attitude of enforcement individuals come in to help people rather than just to be able to fine. Do you have any comment on that . Secretary acosta i do, senator. At the same time i raised the point about enforcement, in the paragraph before that i talked about compliance assistance and the point i was making is that compliance assistance i think is very important. We need enforcement to go hand in hand but compliance assistance at the end of the day, i believe, can bring about sometimes greater compliance. When i was United States attorney, i would talk to chambers and i said, look, we can prosecute cases, but preventing wrongdoing in the first place is more successful. Isnt it better to have a traffic light that prevents accidents rather than give people tickets after the accident has occurred . And so the current budget actually requests an increase in the Compliance Assistance Program within osha, for example, and just this morning, the Department Also announced the return of opinion letters within the wage and hour division. The opinion letters had been use for seven years, im told 2010, and theyre a mechanism that Small Business and others can write and ask a question, how does this work, because sometimes they dont know the answer and so those opinion letters had been discontinued and we announced this morning that we are reinstating those opinion letters. Senator lankford are you doing any kind of shuffling within your own staff to make sure you have people in the right spots . When you deal with inspectors, as Industries Rise and fall, sometimes you can end up with the wrong people that are covering an area thats declined . For instance, no grand secret theres a lot of coal mines that closed. If we have a large number of inspectors with coal mines closing, that becomes an issue. Its something e. P. A. And b. L. M. Faced several years ago, studying coal bit methane and we dont have that anymore. I encourage you to take that on in the days ahead. Senator blunt thank you. Senator. Thank you, mr. Secretary, for being here. One of the reasons that the Health Care Bill thats about to be pending before the senate is so stunningly unpopular is that the president , your boss, consistently during the campaign and after the campaign about a Health Care Reform bill, a repeal of the Affordable Care act, that wouldnt cause anyone to lose insurance. Senator murphy promises were made over and over again that more people would be insured after this process was finished than under the Affordable Care act, and c. B. O. Confirmed again yesterday that under the senate bill, 22 Million People across this country, the equivalent population of 16 u. S. States would lose their health care insurance. And speaking to your portfolio, mr. Secretary, the effect is on individuals with employersponsored health care and those who are getting their insurance through other means. There is a recent article in the atlantic which says, the headline is how the g. O. P. s Health Care Bill would affect people insured through work. And the subheadline is fewer people would sign up for employersponsored plans and fewer employers would offer coverage. Millions of people would lose employersponsored health care according to the c. B. O. Estimates. So given the promises that were made by many of my colleagues and by the president himself, i guess i just have a Pretty Simple question for you. Do you think the purpose or the outcome of Health Care Reform should be to ensure more or less americans . Secretary acosta senator, Health Care Reform and as were looking at this Health Care Bill were asking, how can we go forward as a nation with the bill that respects individual choice . Ultimately, senator murray raised a question around health care as well, and as were looking at the workplace, one issue that certainly i think we need to consider is, what does this do in terms of jobs . And does the multipolicity of expenses put on employers create a disincentive to hire . Certainly we need to respect individual choice, and we also need to consider whether were going to be creating jobs by in ct reducing the cost of many of these programs that do place burdens on the economy as a whole . Senator murphy let me restate the question. Insurance is really important to people. They prefer jobs that have insurance. Do you think that the purpose of Health Care Reform should be to insure more people or less people . Secretary acosta senator, again, the purpose of Health Care Reform is to ensure that individuals have access to insurance choice. And i guess, you know, i push back because sometimes theres an effort to measure based on how much we spend or how many people are covered rather than to measure based on are folks getting jobs or are we respecting individuals choices and so i do think its important to provide individuals with choice. Senator murphy youre not suggesting of the 22 million peern that will lose insurance, the majority of those people are choosing to lose insurance . Secretary acosta what im suggesting is that we have a Health Care System that imposes number of mandates and that as a nation getting increasingly and increasingly expensive and im Encouraging Congress to work to address those issues. I think its an incredibly its one of the most important issues were facing. Health care is becoming more costly. Individuals are finding they cannot afford what is in essence a broken system and i think its very important that it be addressed in a way that makes it effective in the long term. Senator murphy i appreciate your comments. I will just say for the record, c. B. O. Does not come to the conclusion that 23 Million People, 22 Million People are going to lose coverage because theyre exercising their right to decline coverage. They admit there will be a small portion of healthy individuals who may choose to go without health care, but they also come to the conclusion that the vast bulk of that 22 million are losing health care because they simply cannot afford it because the cost, under the american Health Care Bill, will spiral 23 premium increases in the first year, 400 premium increases for older americans, such it is completely and totally unaffordable. So i understand your comments about choice. Thats not what c. B. O. Says is the main cause of why these numbers are absolutely catastrophic. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Senator blunt thank you, senator murphy. Senator kennedy. Senator kennedy thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, i think thats exactly what the c. B. O. Report says. T me go back just quickly to a question that senator alexander asked you, because im not sure about the answer. The president s executive order, which i applaud, do you plan to exempt the Construction Industry from it . Secretary acosta senator, the president s executive order provides discretion to the secretary of labor to e