Dana Milbank:
The congressional number-crunchers, perhaps the capital’s closest thing to a neutral referee, came out with a new report Tuesday, and it wasn’t pretty for Obamacare. The CBO predicted the law would have a “substantially larger”
impact on the labor market than it had previously expected: The law
would reduce the workforce in 2021 by the equivalent of 2.3 million
full-time workers, well more than the 800,000 originally anticipated.
This will inevitably be a drag on economic growth, as more people decide
government handouts are more attractive than working more and paying
higher taxes.
This is grim news for the White House and
for Democrats on the ballot in November. This independent arbiter, long
embraced by the White House, has validated a core complaint of the
Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) critics: that it will discourage work
and become an ungainly entitlement. Disputing Republicans’ charges is
much easier than refuting the federal government’s official
scorekeepers.
White House officials rushed to dispute the
referee’s call — arguing, somewhat contradictorily, that the finding
was both flawed and really good news if interpreted properly.
Some workers will gain employer coverage,
and others will enroll in existing employer plans because they face
penalties if they don’t have coverage. However, some employers may drop
coverage for part-time employees, and some workers will leave their
employer plans because less expensive coverage will be available
elsewhere (for example, under Medicaid). On net, we expect enrollment in employer plans to shrink 5.9 million, or about 3.5 percent, in the population under 65…

Before you start scoffing about “the rich,” realize that the third bracket includes “households making between about $21,000 and $40,000 a year,” according to our old friend Byron York.
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