Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Doug Elmendorf testified before Congress Thursday that ObamaCare will cost 800,000 jobs. During the hearing, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) asked, “[I]t’s been argued … that the new health care law will create jobs and increase labor force participation. But if I recall from your analysis, it was quite the opposite. Is that not the case?” Elmendorf replied simply, “Yes.”
Rep. John Campbell (R-CA) followed up by asking, “[I]n your estimation, the health care law would reduce employment by 800,000 in [2020]-’21. Is that correct?”
“Yes,” Elmendorf replied again. “The way I would put it is that we do estimate, as you said, that … employment will be about 160 million by the end of the decade. Half a percent of that is 800,000.”
“[I]t’s about jobs,” insisted then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) just days before the final vote on the so-called Affordable Care Act. “In its life, [the bill] will create four million jobs — 400,000 jobs almost immediately.” Au contraire, says the CBO, and their estimate still includes static scoring, all the phony “savings” and so forth that the law’s authors inserted to make it look better. Somehow, “we told you so” doesn’t quite satisfy.