Creating? No, Obamcare Is Killing Millions Of Jobs

Dept. Of Corrections: Leading Democrats said ObamaCare would create 4 million jobs by cutting health costs and unleashing entrepreneurs. Now we learn the promise was off by 6.5 million - in the wrong direction.

Here's what Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the top Democratic in the House, had to say about ObamaCare in February 2010:

"It will create 4 million jobs, 400,000 jobs almost immediately - jobs, again, in the health care industry but in the entrepreneurial world as well."

Pelosi was citing a paper released a month earlier by the left-wing Center for American Progress, which claimed the law would lower health care costs, improve business bottom lines, boost wage growth and create up to 400,000 jobs annually over the next 10 years.

Like so many other ObamaCare promises, it turned out to be completely bogus.

Not only will ObamaCare not create 4 million jobs, the Congressional Budget Office now says it will cut the number of hours worked 2% by 2024 - which is the equivalent of losing 2.5 million full-time jobs.

A big reason, according to the CBO, stems from the income-based subsidies meant to lower premium costs. When combined with other features of the tax code, these subsidies end up creating an effective marginal tax rate of nearly 50% for some lower middle-class families.

That is, every extra dollar these families earn will cost them about 50 cents in lost tax credits and ObamaCare subsidies, "thus discouraging work." To liberals, this is no big deal, since workers will be "choosing" to work less. "Means-tested programs always reduce employment," writes Kevin Drum in Mother Jones.

Funny how they never mentioned this during the health care debates.

But wait, it gets better.

The CBO also says that rather than boost wages, ObamaCare will cut compensation by roughly 1% over the next decade. Among the reasons cited:

The employer mandate - which requires firms with 50 or more workers to provide "affordable" health benefits or pay a steep fine - will kill jobs early on and, over time, the mandate's costs will "be borne primarily by workers in the form of reduced wages or other compensation."

The same goes for the so-called "Cadillac tax" - a steep excise that ObamaCare will impose on high-priced insurance plans starting in 2018. The CBO also expects the cost of this tax to "be borne primarily by workers."

Translation: ObamaCare amounts to a big, new, hidden tax on employees.

These adverse effects, the CBO admits, are "significantly larger" than it had estimated back in 2010, saying in its defense that new information came to light since then. Maybe so. But had the CBO been forthright about its impact on jobs and incomes back then, ObamaCare might never have made it to President Obama's desk.