As Sarah Jean Seman at Townhall.com adroitly points out: “The 2.5 million workers that will be driven out of the workforce due to Obamacare is actually 'a liberating result of the law,' in the eyes of The New York Times.”
Seman went on to quote what perhaps is the most absurd, twisted logic in the entire February 5 editorial by the Times:
The Congressional Budget Office estimated on Tuesday that the Affordable Care Act will reduce the number of full-time workers by 2.5 million over the next decade. That is mostly a good thing, a liberating result of the law. Of course, Republicans immediately tried to brand the findings as “devastating” and stark evidence of President Obama’s health care reform as a failure and a job killer. It is no such thing.
The report estimated that — thanks to an increase in insurance coverage under the act and the availability of subsidies to help pay the premiums — many workers who felt obliged to stay in a job that provided health benefits would now be able to leave those jobs or choose to work fewer hours than they otherwise would have. In other words, the report is about the choices workers can make when they are no longer tethered to an employer because of health benefits. The cumulative effect on the labor supply is the equivalent of 2.5 million fewer full-time workers by 2024.
The Congressional Budget Office isn't exactly a conservative think tank like say the Heritage Foundation and, what's more, the liberal media love to cite CBO numbers as they often help underscore their preferred talking points. As such, there was no way the Times could have plausibly questioned the data with a straight face. So instead the Times sought to push the Administration’s tortured propaganda that unemployment is somehow, well, liberating. If that's the case, President Obama might be on track to be the next great emancipator.
Unfortunately, the New York Times is not alone. As my colleagues here at Newsbusters have pointed out, the Huffington Post is trying characterize conservatives as crazy for reacting negatively to this latest news: 'ObamaCare Opponents Freak Out' Over Workers' New 'Freedom'
And NBC also has joined in on the delusion: NBC's Todd Whines: 'Unfair' for GOP to Say ObamaCare Will Cost Jobs
Wouldn’t it be interesting to see how these same journalists would spin this news if they were liberated from their jobs thanks to the mess that is ObamaCare?
