Playing games with CBO testimony on jobs and the health-care law

By Glenn Kessler

CBO Confirms Health Care Law Destroys Jobs

--headline over a House Budget Committee posting on You Tube

A long and rather dry discussion of nation's budget outlook at the House Budget Committee has exploded with a frenzy of politics after a brief exchange, highlighted in the video clip above, between Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.) and Congressional Budget Office director Douglas W. Elmendorf. The CBO last August had estimated that the new health care law over the next decade would reduce the number of overall workers in the United States by one-half of one percent, and Campbell got Elmendorf to utter the words "800,000."

CAMPBELL: "That means that, in your estimation, the health care law would reduce employment by 800,000 in '20-'21. Is that correct?"

ELMENDORF: "Yes. The way I would put it is that we do estimate, as you said, that the household employment will be about 160 million by the end of the decade. Half a percent of that is 800,000. That means that if the reduction in the labor used was workers working the average number of hours in the economy and earning the average wage, that there would be a reduction of 800,000 workers."

House Republicans have spent weeks criticizing the CBO and its estimate that repealing the health care law would increase the deficit. But somehow this estimate--reached with the same assumptions the CBO has used before--met their approval.

Within hours, conservative publications such as the Weekly Standard and the National Review had posted commentaries lauding Elmendorf's statement. "Job Killing," declared the National Review. The National Republican Congressional Committee made it a campaign theme, sending out an email on Friday attacking Democrats: "Jay Inslee Doesn't Get It: ObamaCare Will Cost 800,000 Jobs: Washington Democrat Refuses to Repeal the Law the CBO Admits Will Destroy Jobs." The Washington Post's conservative blogger Jennifer Rubin approvingly linked to the youtube video.

So what's the truth? Did Elmendorf really say the new health care law would "destroy" jobs?



The Facts

Note that Elmendorf never said the words that the GOP has attributed to him, such as "destroy" or "kill." He used the phrase "reduction of labor." It doesn't quite roll off the tongue like "destroy" -- and it does not mean the same thing.

The CBO first discussed this issue, briefly, in a budget analysis last August. Boiled down to plain English, the CBO is essentially saying that some people who are now in the work force because they need health insurance would decide to stop working because the health care law guaranteed they would have access to health care.

Think of someone who is 63, a couple of years before retirement, who is still in a job only because they are waiting to get on Medicare when they turn 65. Or a single mother with children who is only working to make sure her kids have health insurance.

Now some might argue that despite these heartwarming stories, the overall impact of the health law on employment is bad because it would be encouraging people -- some 800,000 -- not to work. Moreover, the argument could go, this would hurt the nation's budget because 800,000 fewer people will pay taxes on their earnings. That's certainly an intellectually solid argument -- though others might counter that universal health care is worth a minimal reduction in overall employment -- but it's not at all the same as saying these jobs would be "destroyed."

We asked a spokesman for the House Budget Committee for a response, but have not heard one. If we get one, we will add it at the end.



The Pinocchio Test

This is the kind of political gamesmanship that gives politics a bad name. The House GOP has taken a a sliver of a phrase and twisted it beyond all meaning. Elmendorf never said 800,000 jobs would be destroyed, and he certainly did not mean to suggest that. Given that Republicans have routinely faulted the CBO for its estimates and assumptions on the health care bill, they should be ashamed of immediately embracing this particular aspect of the CBO's analysis.



Three Pinocchios

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