CBO: Really, GOP, we didn't say Obamacare would kill 2.5 million jobs

Joan McCarter

Daily Kos Staff

Monday February 10, 2014 · 12:57 PM PST

2014/02/10 · 12:57

no image description available — CBO Director Elmendorf, explaining it like we're really stupid.

Douglas Elmendorf, Director of the Congressional Budget Office, addresses the National Association for Business Economics Policy conference in Alexandria, Virginia March 26, 2012. The U.S. economy needs to grow more quickly if it is to produce enough jobs to bring down the unemployment rate, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Monday, tamping down expectations of a quick reversal of monetary easing.  REUTERS/Gary Cameron   (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS BUSINESS) - RTR2ZWGA

CBO Director Elmendorf, explaining it like we're really stupid.

It's a reflection of just how committed to lying about that Congressional Budget Office report Republicans are that the CBO felt compelled to put out another memo, this one reiterating what was clearly stated in the actual report: As many as 2.5 million people may choose to leave full-time work when they have the option of getting affordable health insurance elsewhere. Not that 2.5 million jobs would be lost. The CBO's Doug Elmendorf:

Q: Will 2.5 Million People Lose Their Jobs in 2024 Because of the ACA?
A: No, we would not describe our estimates in that way.

We wrote in the report: “CBO estimates that the ACA will reduce the total number of hours worked, on net, by about 1.5 percent to 2.0 percent during the period from 2017 to 2024, almost entirely because workers will choose to supply less labor.” The reason for the reduction in the supply of labor is that the provisions of the ACA reduce the incentive to work for certain subsets of the population. [...]

Because the longer-term reduction in work is expected to come almost entirely from a decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply in response to the changes in their incentives, we do not think it is accurate to say that the reduction stems from people “losing” their jobs.

There's at least half a dozen more paragraphs there, explaining in the simplest possible terms what the CBO said about workers and health insurance. It should be clear now, not that it will make a difference with Republicans.

CBO: Really, GOP, we didn't say Obamacare would kill 2.5 million jobs

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