Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), in 2010, said of Obamacare: “It’s about jobs. In it’s life, it [the health bill] will create 4 million jobs — 400,000 jobs almost immediately.” She actually said that.
Then, Pelosi, in January 2013, while speaking to artists and musicians in her district shortly after the passage of Oamacare, said:
We see it as an entrepreneurial bill, a bill that says to someone, if you want to be creative and be a musician or whatever, you can leave your work, focus on your talent, your skill, your passion, your aspirations because you will have healthcare. You won’t have to be job locked.
So Nancy, which is it? Is Obamacare going to create jobs? Or is it going to be an “entrepreneurial bill?” It seems that an “inconvenient truth” has caused Pelosi to change her tactic!
The fact that Obamacare is a job killer is well documented. As an American Thinker article by Dr. Brian C Joondeph states: “The reality is that 2.5 million more Americans will be out of the labor force within the next ten years due to the effects of ObamaCare.” And a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report entitled “THE BUDGET AND ECONOMIC OUTLOOK: 2014 TO 2024,” acknowledges (on page 117) that ObamaCare will reduce full-time employment by 2.5 million over the next ten years. The same report doesn’t predict a bright economic future as well.
On February 4, 2014, the editorial board of (the always objective) The New York Times opined of Obamacare that, “That is mostly a good thing, a liberating result of the law.” The NYT continued:
The report estimated that – thanks to an increase in insurance coverage under the act and the availability of subsidies to help pay the premiums – many workers who felt obliged to stay in a job that provided health benefits would now be able to leave those jobs or choose to work fewer hours than they otherwise would have. In other words, the report is about the choices workers can make when they are no longer tethered to an employer because of health benefits. The cumulative effect on the labor supply is the equivalent of 2.5 million fewer full-time workers by 2024.
Jordan Weissmann, in a February 5, 2014, article in The Atlantic, said:
Yesterday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Capitol Hill’s official number-cruncher, reported that the health reform law would probably encourage more adults to cut back their work hours than it had previously predicted. [emphasis mine of Weissmann’s words]
More adults will simply decide to take it easy.
And, not to be outdone, Paul Krugman wrote on February 5:
What we had here was, instead, a system [speaking of employer supplied health care insurance] in which subsidies were available only if you worked more than a certain amount, surely leading some people to work more than they would have wanted to otherwise. [emphasis mine of Krugman’s words]
Read Krugman’s article and tortured “logic” if you want a good laugh.
Benjamin Kline Hunnicut, in a February 7, 2014, Politico article entitled “Why Do Republicans Want Us to Work All the Time?” has, IMHO, topped them all. Hunnicut, in an effort to support his position by rambling about hours worked and how reduction is good, writes:
The president’s critics, in high dudgeon, are fulminating about lay-abouts and scofflaws actually choosing to work less than what God intended, predicting a host of ills that will supposedly befall the nation, from moral turpitude to economic ruin.
The fuss will doubtless soon die down, but this bit of political theater has resurrected a very old debate about working hours, and could conceivably reawaken what I have called the forgotten American Dream. That dream has not always been just about striving to consume bigger houses, fancier clothes, faster cars. The idea that “full time” work is something foreordained and the bedrock of morality is new, mostly a product of the last century.
Hunnicut also tries to soften the CBO report findings by saying, “… it’s clear the CBO was talking about workers voluntarily reducing their hours in response to the law – not getting laid off or seeing their shifts scaled back.” [emphasis Hunnicut’s] “Voluntarily,” yeah, sure. Hunnicut, if you really believe that, I hold the deed to a NYC bridge in which you may be interested.
OK Mr. Hunnicut, if what you, in your article, say is true, will magic somehow occur? Will those who have had job hours voluntarily cut, come to the country’s rescue? Will, as Dr. Joondeph writes:
Goods will be produced and services provided all by themselves if workers stay home and take it easy. Tax revenues will magically appear in the Treasury if fewer Americans are working, earning an income, and paying income tax. And everyone will be paying his or her mortgage, student loans, and credit cards by taking it easy. Never mind that average household credit card debt is over $15 thousand.
The concept of freedom from “job lock,” of not being locked into a job because it offers health insurance, what Democrats say is wonderful, is the latest “catch phrase.” Kinda like “gravitas.” Yet the average worker stays in his or her job less than 4.5 years, and will have 15-20 jobs over their lifetime. But regardless of facts, the Democrats (and their lap-dogs, the MSM) will continue to spout their “wisdom.” What’s sad is that a majority of voters will buy this load of manure.
But that’s just my opinion.
Cross-posted at The Pot Stirrer, my personal, very conservative web site!