In voting to repeal health care legislation today, did the Republicans vote against higher pay for 650,000 Americans?
And if so, how can this be, when the Republicans have told us that the health care plan is a "job killer?"
The answer lies in looking at the "logic" they used to arrive at the conclusion and speculating on what their true motives might be.
My assertion is that the title of my diary is at least at true as the Republican claims, if not more so. The truth is that neither one is completely accurate, but the why is kind of interesting.
So let's look at where Republicans got their data that says 650,000 jobs would be lost. Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar of the Associated Press actually does a decent job fact-checking this claim:
A recent report by House GOP leaders says "independent analyses have determined that the health care law will cause significant job losses for the U.S. economy."
It cites the 650,000 lost jobs as Exhibit A, and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office as the source of the original analysis behind that estimate. But the budget office, which referees the costs and consequences of legislation, never produced the number.
According to Alonso-Zaldivar, what the CBO actually said is that the effect on labor supply and demand would be small, due mostly to the freedom that would be afforded workers to leave jobs held simply simply to get health benefits - because they could get health insurance without the job, thanks to the new legislation:
"The legislation, on net, will reduce the amount of labor used in the economy by a small amount roughly half a percent primarily by reducing the amount of labor that workers choose to supply," budget office number crunchers said in a report from last year.
See the difference there? The CBO didn't say that jobs would be lost, putting people out of work. It said that workers would voluntarily choose not to provide their labor anymore.
That's a big difference.
Economist Paul Fronstin of the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute:
"CBO isn't saying that there is job loss as much as they are saying that fewer people will be working," explained Fronstin. "There is a difference. People voluntarily working less isn't the same as employers cutting jobs."
Besides disingenuously trying to assert that the CBO backs up their loss of jobs claim, the Republicans probably also didn't calculate the 650,000 number correctly:
[S]taffers took the 131 million jobs in the economy and multiplied that by half a percent, the number from the CBO analysis. The result: 650,000 jobs feared to be in jeopardy ...
But Fronstin said that approach is also questionable, since the budget office and the GOP staffers used different yardsticks to measure overall jobs and hours worked. The differences would have to be adjusted first in order to produce an accurate estimate.
But the number being wrong isn't even my central point.
What I'm interested in, is what the Republicans might really be scared of and why. In their vote today, they may have well been voting against higher pay for workers. Here's why:
How does having a labor pool desperate for health care benefits benefit corporations and companies? It allows them to attract workers who will take a job because they need the health benefits. If those workers voluntarily quit those jobs, because they have access to health care elsewhere, then about the only way that management will be able to attract labor to those jobs is to pay higher salaries. This follows the rules of supply and demand. (They could also off-shore the jobs, or eliminate the jobs). But if there's a true need by management for those jobs, then they'll have to do something to fill them ... Something in the form of higher pay or benefits lucrative enough to attract workers.
And here's where the speculation as to motives comes in. Perhaps Republicans, in wanting to keep their corporates friends fat and happy with lots of willing labor, voted to repeal the health care legislation precisely because it gives some workers an edge over management and increases the likelihood of higher wages needing to be paid to attract workers for those jobs.
It makes more sense to me than the line the Republicans are floating.