donutline

The Congressional Budget Office says ObamaCare is a job killer. But we already knew that, and have been saying so for four years. Now the Fed is catching up a little bit, yet losing 2-2.5 million jobs is the tip of the iceberg. “President Barack Obama’s healthcare law will reduce American workforce participation by the equivalent of 2 million full-time jobs in 2017, the Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday in a report…”

What does the White House think of this horrible reality for at least 2 million people and their families? It’s just a “small percentage of the economy.” Remember I warned you about what happens when people are the budget. You get cut, you’re just a number on a piece of paper, “a percentage” of one thing or another.

Via RCP.

ALEXIS SIMENDINGER, RCP: Medicare and Social Security are aimed at, primarily, people of a certain age, seniors. So when you talk about older people, that’s a whole separate equation than the ACA. This is a group of human beings who are in a program that are of all ages.

JASON FURMAN, WHITE HOUSE: First of all, this number itself is a small percentage of the overall economy. Second of all, this number itself is about, effectively, choices of people. And third, it doesn’t reflect the full set of factors that go into it.

Via Reuters, through Free Beacon.

President Barack Obama’s healthcare law will reduce American workforce participation by the equivalent of 2 million full-time jobs in 2017, the Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday in a report that could fuel Republican efforts to paint the law as a job killer.

In its latest U.S. fiscal outlook, the nonpartisan CBO said the health law would prompt some lower-income workers to limit their hours to avoid losing federal subsidies that are available under the law to help pay for health insurance.

The CBO said the biggest impact on work hours from the health law would begin in 2017 because major provisions of the law will be well under way by then. The CBO said there would be smaller declines in work hours that would occur before then.

Work hours would be reduced by the equivalent of 2.5 million jobs in 2024, the agency said.

Republicans have long argued that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a job killer that would discourage employers from hiring full-time workers.

“The ACA also will exert conflicting pressures on the quantity of labor that employers demand, primarily during the next few years,” the agency said.

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9 Comments | Leave a comment
  1. Maynard says:

    The Democrats are in full denial mode, and the man in the street is often confused about why the economy is so sluggish, in that the connections between his job and Washington policies is murky. It’s easier to blame something locally, like your employer. Or, if reaching for an abstraction, blame “racists”, as you are told to do. The world is confused and confusing, and the words of evil counselors ring loud throughout the land.

    Those of us who pay our own insurance premiums know the truth about ACA, because we’ve been hit right in the wallet. My personal insurance costs (a high-deductible policy meant to protect me from overwhelming bills and nothing else) have spiked 135% since they passed the “Affordable Care Act”. That’s sucking an extra $2500 a year out of my pocket. Real money! And that slimy Obama still goes around saying he didn’t raise taxes. Oh, no, it’s not a tax increase; it’s just the government holding a gun to my head and demanding I pay thousands of dollars to a crony — who, by the way, is likewise ordered what they’re supposed to sell me. We’re not autonomous human beings; we’re marionettes, dancing as Washington pulls our strings. And we were reduced to this controlled state by people who once marched chanting the mantra, “My body! My choice!”

    (Just for the record, the merging of government and corporate interests; that’s what they call “Fascism”.)

    But the Democrats are in denial, and the media is in denial, and much of the nation has come to see Washington’s dysfunction and cronyism as so fundamental and systematic that there’s simply nothing we can do. So we shrug and carry on as best we can, quietly aware that Washington is our adversary, always looking to brace ourselves against the next blow. What a tragic fall from a nation that began with the proclamation of “We the People”.

    • makeshifty says:

      And we were reduced to this controlled state by people who once marched chanting the mantra, “My body! My choice!”

      Oh, don’t I know it! Thing is, Republicans, and Tea Partiers, did themselves no favors running candidates who wanted to ban abortion even in the case of rape and incest. They weren’t the majority of GOP candidates in 2012, but they gave fuel to the Democrats to say, “They want to own your body.” Women heard that loud and clear, liberal and conservative, and I suspect they considered that a worse fate than being manhandled by Obamacare, though now I think many are starting to wonder what the difference is. Liberals are making hay out of the 2012 election for the upcoming election, focusing in on socially conservative state legislators who are mandating sonograms before abortions. If they want to do that at the state level, that’s their right as far as I’m concerned. It may be a fool’s errand, since as Tammy points out, it’s typically redundant. Women already know they’re aborting a fetus. However, we have to be on the lookout for liberals in both parties (including “religious liberals,” as Tammy calls them in the Republican ranks), in the national races, and 2012 was one such instance.

      What a tragic fall from a nation that began with the proclamation of “We the People”.

      I agree, but I reflect on the fact that we’ve been through this before. Our ancestors went through this with Woodrow Wilson, and then with FDR. We went back in the direction of freedom both times, though the last time it took about 13 years. Some argue that the last two times were different, because of demographics, and now that most Americans live in urban areas, we’re experiencing a permanent change in favor of this sort of government. I hope they’re wrong, but I worry about that, too.

    • ancientwrrior says:

      Maynard, the Dummycrats are not full of denial, they are full of poop!

  2. makeshifty says:

    First of all, this number itself is a small percentage of the overall economy. Second of all, this number itself is about, effectively, choices of people.

    What they’re really saying is, “This is the fault of employers. We’re not telling them to lay people off.” It’s the same thing they said about insurance costs. “This is the decision of insurers. We’re not telling them to raise their rates.” It’s the private sector’s fault. It’s based on the idea that if it’s not their responsibility; if they didn’t directly order something to happen, it’s not on them. What blame-shifting! The economy tanks in 2008 and the Dems blame it all on Bush. Bush didn’t order people not to pay their mortgages. He didn’t order employers to lay off workers by the hundreds of thousands. He didn’t order banks not to make loans. Those were individual choices as well. Instead of putting the blame on the private sector, Bush took the attitude of “these things happen,” and took actions to try to compensate for the disaster. We can argue the merits of what he did, but he didn’t just shrug responsibility for dealing with a responsive, dynamic system like America. But to believe the Democrats, it was Bush’s policies that were to blame then. They caused the disaster. Obama’s policies are not to blame now. If a disaster ensues, it’s because we brought it on ourselves. How !#@$ing convenient for them! Oh, I can’t wait for Obama to “refocus on jobs” again!

    So many of the games liberals play remind me of ones we used to play as teenagers. This was one of them: If you do it, you suck. If you complain about me doing the same thing, what’s your problem?

  3. Shifra says:

    Yeah, 2.5 million people is just a “smidgen” of the population.

    Or, as Joseph Stalin famously said: “One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.”

  4. strider says:

    A government kept afloat on borrowed money has no meaningful economy, he must have meant they are a small percentage of the voters.

  5. Alain41 says:

    Regarding the intersection of people and the economy, MSNBC questioned O’Reilly’s interview with the President, which is fine, but they took exception to O’Reilly’s claim that he was a self-made man because he was raised in a town built by gov’t funds. Unbelieveable! If you went to a State college or any public school, does that mean you’re not self-made because the school was built with gov’t funds? Idiot belief/message.

    http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/chris-hayes-on-oreilly-super-bowl-interview-what-are-you-doing-why-is-this-happening_b212493

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