FACT CHECK: Anti-Obamacare Chorus Is Off Key
As if recognizing that fellow Republicans were getting a bit overheated, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, House Budget Committee chairman, introduced a reality check when questioning Douglas Elmendorf, budget office director, during a hearing Wednesday. "So just to understand this, it's not that employers are laying people off, it's that ... people aren't working in the workforce, aren't supplying labor," he posited.
"That is right," Elmendorf replied. . .
Some Republicans picked their words more carefully than others in reacting to the report.
House Speaker John Boehner, for example, said the report backs up Republican arguments that Obamacare "hurts take-home pay," a plausible point as far as it goes. Ryan said the availability of health insurance subsidies will be a disincentive to find work, a claim supported by the study.
But the predicted withdrawal from the labor market is no more a killer of jobs than today's surge of retirements by baby boomers entering old age. If anything, it could open job opportunities for people who can't get in the workforce now.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2014/02/06/us/politics/ap-us-health-overhaul-fact-check.html?hp