OPINION:
The luckiest people in the world right now are the 2.3 million Americans about to find themselves in the unemployment line. That’s the Democratic response to the latest Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates of Obamacare’s damage to the economy.
Losing your job sets you free, so millions are being liberated. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid dubbed the newly fired masses “free agents.” “We have the CBO report,” said the Nevada Democrat, “which rightfully says that people shouldn’t have job lock.”
Free agency can be great news for the multimillionaire wide receiver or free safety moving from one team to the next, but it’s a disaster for one of the millions of Americans who live paycheck-to-paycheck, struggling to provide a decent life for their families. Being free to do as you please is little consolation when there’s no money to pay the bills.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi brought out her pom-poms to echo this new party line. “In addition to being just plain wrong on the facts of the CBO report,” says Mrs. Pelosi, “the GOP seems to have forgotten that ending ’job lock’ has been an avowed Republican goal for years — even a highlight in the Republican Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential race.”
This is the ultimate bait and switch. Republicans have argued for a portable health insurance plan that allows employees to switch from job to job without losing coverage. One way to do this is with private health care savings accounts, which use pre-tax dollars to cover medical expenses.
Unlike Obamacare, this works, because the funds remain in the employee’s control at all times. This further encourages the individual to spend his money wisely.
The Congressional Budget Office, in its recent report, described job destruction, not job lock. The nonpartisan analysts estimated that 2.3 million Americans would lose their full-time positions as employers choose to cut hours and jobs to avoid Obamacare penalties.
Others would “voluntarily” cut their own hours in order to qualify for Obamacare subsidies. Either way, this represents an enormous loss of the nation’s productivity. President Obama knows it, too; the administration just announced a delay in the employer mandate for medium-sized businesses until 2016.
Obamacare has turned the American dream on its head. The government gives access to insurance that is more expensive than what was available on the free market, and 2.3 million Americans will lose their jobs.
For 2 centuries, people from the far corners of the earth have come to America for the opportunity to better themselves through hard work and determination.
Now the president and his acolytes boast that the government will free them from their jobs. There is an old proverb that says: “Success is a ladder you cannot climb with your hands in your pockets.”
President Obama has rewritten the proverb: “Success is a ladder the government asks you to climb with the government’s hands in your pocket.”
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