text: I was very proud to lead a group of my colleagues in speaking on the floor of the House last night to promote and support H.R. 3685, the Protecting Volunteer Firefighters and Emergency Responders Act.  This legislation is necessary to protect volunteer firefighters from unintended consequences of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  The bill has more than 80 cosponsors, including members of both parties.  An unexpected and previously undetected problem with the law represents special and urgent circumstances.  This really took me by surprise ?ÛÒ the fact that the ACA could force volunteer fire companies to provide health insurance to their volunteers or pay a fine.  That would burden them with unbearable costs and possibly cause them to reduce the number of volunteers they have or shut their doors altogether.  Simply put: This is a public safety issue.  I?Ûªve been concerned that since the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) currently views volunteer firefighters as employees, fire companies and municipalities would be forced to provide health insurance or pay a fine, saddling them with unbearable financial burdens and threatening public safety.  I sent the IRS a letter in November requesting a clarification, but the correspondence has gone unanswered as of today.  Under the Employer Mandate Provision, employers with 50 or more employees must provide health insurance or pay penalties.  This could be problematic for fire companies, particularly in Pennsylvania where 97-percent of stations rely exclusively or mostly on volunteers.  Fire companies could exceed the 50 employee threshold in several different ways: by themselves based on their size, by being part of a larger combined force under several different chiefs, or by being part of a municipality that has 50 or more public employees in total.    Some fire companies may hear about this and immediately think, ?ÛÏWell, we?Ûªve only got 25 volunteers so we?Ûªre safe.  We don?Ûªt have fifty.?Û? That may not necessarily be the case.  Some fire companies are considered part of their local government.  That could mean that if you take the number of firefighters ?ÛÒ paid and unpaid ?ÛÒ now considered employees by the IRS, and add them to the number of other public employees, you can easily reach fifty, even in a small town.?Û?