From Joe Garofoli:
Here’s a handy tip to remember as the House debates the Republican-proposed health care law repeal, aka H.R. 2, “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act.”
That name? It’s about as real as the Niners playoff chances.
Yes, we know H.R. 2 doesn’t have a prayer of getting through the Dem-controlled Senate. But time for a quick visit to into how the name doesn’t match the reality.
Republicans say the health care law would kill 650,000 jobs. Back the old pre-New Civility days, House Speaker Boehner near-Tourettically repeated “job-killing” to describe its effects during a press conference. Boehner’s peeps have since, post-Tucson, down-graded “job-killing” to “job-destroying.” Whatever. They’re both wrong.
The source: The GOPers are misrepresenting a line in the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office report (p. 47 if you care) that says the new law would “reduce the supply of labor slightly.”
But that doesn’t refer to a reduction in the number of people working, the CBO says in thick CBOese (p.67). It means that people would be working less because they wouldn’t have to because they now have expanded medical coverage. Or to go to the CBOese:
“The expansion of Medicaid and the availability of subsidies through the exchanges will effectively increase beneficiaries’ financial resources,” the report states. “Those additional resources will encourage some people to work fewer hours or to withdraw from the labor market.”
Zzzzzzzzzzzzz….oops, sorry. Back to our Lies, Half-truths and Contradictions.
So where did the GOP pull the 650,000 figure from? False extrapolation.
It took this line from the CBO report: “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.”…then ran it through The False Extrapolator.
Republicans reckoned that half a percent of the 131 million jobs currently in the economy would translate to… voila: 650,000 jobs gone. As MBA-holder George W. Bush might have described it: That’s some fuzzy math.
One more reminder when you hear folks talk about repealing the law: The CBO said that REPEALING the health care law would actually be a budget imploder. Hmmm. Haven’t heard the GOP quote that report.
[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/detail?entry_id=81213#ixzz1BQuPzjYD]
As I see it, the Republicans are either assholes who think that only rich people deserve to be healthy, or they’re complete idiots who can’t do math. I don’t particularly want either type of person working in government.
