Speaker Pelosi’s Employment Advice: Quit Your Job, Get Free Health Care
Ahead of this morning’s release of May jobs data, it’s worth highlighting Speaker Pelosi’s comments on jobs vis-à-vis the health care bill. In February at the White House summit, the Speaker claimed that passage of the health care bill “will create 4 million jobs – 400,000 jobs almost immediately.” But in a speech earlier this month, Pelosi took an entirely different tack, claiming that people should leave their jobs because the federal government will now provide for all their health care needs:
“If you want to be creative and be a musician or whatever, you can leave your work, focus on your talent, your skill, your passion, your aspirations, because you will have health care. You don’t have to be job locked.”
It’s unclear what prompted this abrupt about-face in the Speaker’s attitude towards the health law’s job creation prospects (or lack thereof). Perhaps she took her own advice, and having passed the bill, found out that the legislation’s more than $500 billion in job-killing tax increases will stifle economic growth and prosperity for decades to come. One could also argue that an office-holder with one of the highest net worths in Congress who spent $16,000 on flowers in nine months might be a tad removed from the problems faced by struggling middle-class families. Either way, it’s hard to believe that encouraging people to quit their jobs to “be creative” – or imposing more than half a trillion dollars worth of new taxes on large and small businesses alike – will help promote economic recovery.