Hire More Heroes Act of 2015

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="350"] US Capitol Building[/caption]

My U.S. Congressman Sam Graves issued a statement yesterday (7th of January, 2015) on the passage of the Hire More Heroes Act (H.R. 22) This was the first time I heard of this House of Representatives bill and because I am trying to be more up to speed with my representatives, I decided to check this little (only 4 pages) bill. //My next post should and may be on Opencongress.org, govtrack.us and other websites that make knowing what is going on in Washington super easy and possibly fun//

This is not the first time that the House has tried to pass a Hire More Heroes Act bill. Rodney Davis (R IL 13th district) sponsored the same bill (H.R. 3474) (although it said "of 2014") in 2013, the 13th of November. This bill passed the House the 11th of March 2014. There was 1 "Nay" vote by Jerrold Nadler, a democrat from NY. It must have been a mistake because it passed almost unanimously. Of course there were 23 who did not vote at all, 8 Republicans and 15 Democrats. The bill then failed to pass the Senate. Govtrack.us has "Status: Died (referred to Committee)."

H.R. 22 is a bill "to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to exempt employees with health coverage under TRICARE or the Veterans Administration from being taken into account for purposes of determining the employers to which the employer mandate applies under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act." Sam Graves (R MO 16th district) said in his statement  “Under Obamacare, small businesses are penalized for hiring more than 50 employees at full-time hours. This legislation exempts our veterans from this provision.”

The bill passed the House with 99% "Yea's" and 1% not voting but has a 15% chance of being enacted, according to some super cool method Govtrack.us uses to determine such things. Most likely it will die in the Senate again. However, if my Congressman Sam Graves thinks it is important (as well as one of my Senators Roy Blunt who was the sponsor last year), then I might as well watch it.