INHOFE: OBAMA LEANING ON INDUSTRY TO DELAY SEQUESTRATION PINK SLIPS
July 18, 2012
WASHINGTON,
D.C. – U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), a senior member of the Senate Armed Services
Committee, today spoke on the Senate floor about the pending Defense cuts under
Sequestration. During his speech he said
that the Obama administration is “leaning on” industry to delay pink slips that
are required by law.
WATCH FLOOR SPEECH HERE and HERE.
“I have every
reason to believe, because I’ve heard from people in industry, that the
President of the United States is trying to get them to avoid sending pink slips
out until after the November 7 election,”
said Inhofe. “I would remind him that we have something called the Workers Adjustment
and Retraining Notification Act, the WARN Act.
It requires these companies to give 60 days’ notice of pending
layoffs.
“Since
Sequestration will take place on January 2nd, these workers must be
notified of their pink slip by November 2nd. This is what I’d like to remind those
companies: they don’t have to wait. If they want to notify workers today, they
can do that. I think it is imperative that
the workers who are going to be laid off work as a result of the Obama
Sequestration be notified in advance of the November election. We’re going to do everything we can to make
sure that happens.”
Under the federal WARN Act, employers must give
employees 60 days’ notice of layoffs. That means employees must be notified of
sequestration cuts by Nov. 2, 2012 — just days before this year’s election. In
some cases, state law requires 90 days’ notice, meaning that some will get the
news on Oct. 2.
The Oklahoman
reported
on a study that shows Oklahoma stands to lose 16,000 jobs under Sequestration. When factoring in potential cuts in military
personnel, the number of lost jobs in Oklahoma increases to over 20,000.
In additional remarks prepared for delivery, Inhofe
said, “The answer from Senate Democrats
to this threat to our national security:
use the cuts as leverage against Republicans to raise taxes on small
business because they see no political downside in delaying action on the
implementation of cuts. Yesterday, an
Ernst & Young study showed that such a tax increase would cost our economy 700,000
additional jobs. Under the Obama
economy, our nation has endured more than 41 months with at or over 8 percent
unemployment.
“So, the options
President Obama and the Democrats are giving this nation with this radical approach
is fewer jobs on one hand, or fewer jobs on the other hand. We need more jobs –
not fewer jobs and we must keep our national security strong. We need a
permanent fix now, or at least a temporary fix that removes sequestration from
the current political environment.”
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