It's tough to find a Republican who is not pushing outright
falsehoods about Obamacare. They are either ignorant of or not
interested in the facts.…
“Anyone who wants to call the ACA a ‘job killer’ is either ignorant
of or not interested in the facts,” Jared Bernstein and Ben Spielberg
wrote in the
Washington Post.
We mention this today because you heard a lot about
repealing Obamacare during the last Republican 'debat'e, and not much of
it will be anchored in facts or truth. It’s tough to find a Republican
who is not pushing outright falsehoods about Obamacare. Cruz
has been falsely claiming for years that Obamacare is the biggest
job-killer in America. Jeb has said, “You get rid
of Obamacare and replace it with something that doesn’t suppress wages
and kill jobs.” Jindal has pushed the myth that Obamacare
kills jobs, “Why not delay all of the mandates in Obamacare [which] has
become such a job killer in our economy.”
Both writers are from the the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. They went over the latest job numbers and they agree with previous studies;
Obamacare is not a job killer. Not only is Obamacare reducing the
number of uninsured as intended, but it is also not a job killer. Sorry
Republicans.
A few points to remember from the
Washington Post:
Strong health-care employment growth shouldn’t surprise
anyone. Demand for labor is derived from the demand for the goods and
services that people want and need. Thus, we’d expect the expansion of
health coverage to boost jobs in that sector — in addition to driving
historically large reductions in the number of Americans without health
coverage, saving states money and slowing growth in health-care costs.
Yet House Republicans are still trying to repeal parts of the law,
claiming that “many of the key elements of Obamacare [are] harming
individuals and families [and] hurting job creation.” Fox News
hack O’Reilly maintains that, “While some of the poor
benefit, other Americans are punished because the job market is
smaller.” Some presidential candidates agree: Jeb calls the ACA
“the president’s job-destroying health-care law” and Cruz’s site asserts that “Obamacare is causing millions to lose their
jobs.” Cruz and Rubio aren’t even content to repeal parts of the
law — they want to repeal the entire thing.
But but…Obama is just subsidizing jobs in healthcare with rich people’s money! Nope, not that either:
Even if we’re generous here and assume that those
shouting “job killer” mean that the gains in the health-care sector are
coming at the expense of the rest of the job market, there’s no evidence
to support that claim, either.
“Well,” injured Republicans will huff, “Obamacare is certainly
turning America into a part-time nation!” We’ve addressed this in the
past when it was also found to be untrue, but as a reminder:
Nor is there any evidence that Obamacare is causing a
shift from full-time to part-time jobs — the number of involuntary
part-time workers is actually down since 2013 (and as Dean Baker notes,
the evidence that the ACA’s premium subsidies may be encouraging
voluntary part-time work is a good thing), while full-time employment
has been steadily rising. Again, steady job growth is surely a function
of the broad employment recovery, not health reform, but it is yet
another trend going the wrong way for the critics.
Discussing September’s job numbers, Jason Fuhrman, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, noted, “Full-time jobs more than fully account for all job gains since early ’10, with part-time jobs holding steady.”
In reality, Obama is setting records for job growth. The October jobs report showed that President Obama has overseen
68 consecutive months of private sector job growth. That’s 13.5 million
private sector jobs over 68 straight months. He has also overseen the
strongest three years for overall job creation (even with the Republican
sequester impacting the public sector) since 2000.
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