Progressive Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank said on Tuesday that the explosive new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report showing Obamacare will reduce the workforce by 2.3 million full-time workers over the next seven years has “bestowed a big gift on the law’s Republican critics” heading into the November midterm elections.
The CBO originally estimated that Obamacare would hasten the equivalent loss of 800,000 full-time workers. Now, the CBO says Obamacare’s damage to the labor market is “substantially larger” than first anticipated because the law creates an incentive not to work.
“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,” conceded Milbank.
The White House and its allies quickly attempted to both attack the CBO’s devastating report and spin it as a positive development. As Milbank notes, however, the Obama administration’s frequent use of CBO figures makes that a difficult task.
“Obamacare has been undermined by the very entity [CBO] they had used to validate it,” said Milbank. “This is grim news for the White House and for Democrats on the ballot in November.”
According to the Real Clear Politics average of polls, just 38% of Americans now support Obamacare.