CBPP Rebuts Obama Administration Talking Points on Health Care and Jobs
In case you hadn’t seen it, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities this afternoon released a report on the health care law’s impact on jobs. Its first sentence: “Health reform will change the American economy in many ways over the next few decades, but it will not significantly change the number of jobs or the unemployment rate.” Yet the Administration earlier this afternoon released its own set of talking points, which claim that the health care law “will continue to support growth of the labor market and the broader [economic] recovery in 2011 and beyond.”
In other words, even the liberal Center for Budget and Policy Priorities doesn’t believe the Obama Administration’s rhetoric when it comes to the health care law creating jobs. Of course, this shouldn’t be a surprise to some, as liberal groups such as AARP and Families USA released a Powerpoint presentation back in September noting that “Many don’t believe health reform will help the economy.” The Congressional Budget Office likewise agrees, noting that the law “will encourage some people to work fewer hours or to withdraw from the labor market,” and that “on net, [the law] will reduce the amount of labor used in the economy” by about 750,000 jobs.
The bigger question is this: If the public doesn’t believe the White House talking points – and even liberal groups can’t sing from the Administration’s songsheet – isn’t the problem the policies in the job-killing health care law itself, rather than the Democrat messaging?