My guess is that while the CBO report on the effects of Obama care on employment is damning, a truly objective and comprehensive report would have been much more damning by several orders of magnitude

I agree. And reality may end up being even worse then a ” truly objective and comprehensive report”.

By its nature, CBO is limited in how it can predict things. Flip side is it strict rules mean that CBO itself can’t spin things much.

The premise behind the CBO is that when they are given a question, they are also given the parameters for that question and even told what data to consider. Like a calculator really, only as good as the info entered.

Thus, if they were asked what 2+2 equals, but then were told that 2 is really only 1.4, then they really can come up with 2+2=2.8 with a straight face. That’s an extreme and simple example, but that’s how I understand it works.

When the CBO was scoring Obamacare, Paul Ryan was going to great pains explaining why their numbers were correct for what they were being forced to score, but how that really didn’t capture the likely outcome. If you do a little research, you’ll find that this is true.

In the end, politicians and presidents will use the CBO to help them get their way with absurdly low projections and then dismiss them later when they re-score for the emerging reality. Just like now.

One would be better off looking at all past government programs and calculating what the proponents said it would cost versus what it ended up costing. And then using that percentage to recompute anything that comes out of a politicians mouth. 300%? 500%? I bet using math based on simple history would be far more accurate than CBO projections.

The issue of course is that once the reality becomes known, it is far too late to stop the train. Which is why limited government form the get-go was the mantra of our founding fathers. They knew what would happen, and it is.

I swear, are there a couple of stoned college age schmucks in a basement somewhere who come up with these ridiculous ideas and terminologies?

These organizations all have institutional survival instincts and agendas, because they all have mission statements, budgets, tables of organization and staffing levels that can be expanded, contracted, or even zeroed out, according to Congressional whim or animus.

So, unless very strongly ideologically driven–under Obama that would be practically all executive agencies, to name a few the DOJ, FBI, CIA, DOS, IRS, BLS and the Census, EPA, or NASA and “global Warming,” the Department of Energy and green energy projects, etc.–they usually tred very lightly, and try to avoid controversial subjects, or moving too far out on a limb.

In the case of the CBO, being creatures of Congress, they dance to the tune set by Congress.

For instance, by law each new piece of legislation considered by Congress has to be “scored” by CBO, so that members of Congress have some idea of the immediate and long term costs and the many potential impacts such legislation might have, should it become law.

Well, CBO scores a piece of legislation according to the parameters given to them by those authoring the bill, i. e. bills can be written in such a way–one part taking effect before another part, for instance, to deliberately cause it to “score” well, or CBO can be told to score based on assuming that certain economic conditions prevail–say low inflation, and interest rates, or a certain employment rate–over a certain time period.

My guess is that while the CBO report on the effects of Obama care on employment is damning, a truly objective and comprehensive report would have been much more damning by several orders of magnitude.

holmes Says:

Also job losses from people MAKING LESS MONEY. They buy fewer things.

The Unaffordable Health Insurance and Patient Denied Care Act has two serious problems which will negatively impact the economy, i.e., create job losses. One is as you state, people making less money to buy things thanks to reduced hours and/or job losses, thereby not buying goods and services which keep people employed. But the more insidious problem is the reduced, or total lack of, disposable income of those who still have jobs. The increased health insurance premiums (not going down by $2500 but up by 40% or more) and the skyrocketing deductibles reduce the disposable income of many people/families. If they are spending more on health insurance and it concomitant costs, then they aren’t buying that new fridge, or going out to a dinner and a movie. Add in an increased minimum wage to raise prices across the board and you have a deliberate progressive recipe for economic disaster.

What frightens me most is that many lefty pols and economists pay lip service to these issues as actually helping the economy to grow. Calling such statements Orwellian doesn’t do them (social) justice.

Geoffrey Britain Says:

The MSM propaganda machine will continue to promote ObamaCare and minimize and ignore its actual effects and repercussions, until reality makes their spin untenable.

Then they will engage in lying, obfuscation and false accusations in an attempt to historically revise the issue to their advantage.

We’ve already heard a big one: 404Care’s failure is due to Republicans not helping with a ‘fix’, instead choosing to continue to criticize a law in which they had no hand nor votes. It’s a version of ‘You warned me I’d fukc up, I fukced up. Now help me unfukc myself. If you don’t, it’s all your fault!’ Progressives have the minds of self-centered, narcissistic two-year-olds. That self-centered narcissism is fine if you’re two-years-old, but it’s quite unbecoming in a 50-year-old president or in 70-years-old House Minority and Senate Majority leaders.

I’ve said it before, I have never seen a more unserious government in my lifetime. But then we now are an extremely unserious People, swooning over bread and circuses, so the problem does go hand-in-hand. Whether us now being an unserious People is the chicken or the egg is up for debate.

As a final thought which I’ve heard a thousand times before, just not from any progressive pol: When was the last time a poor person offered you a job with full benefits? But let’s demonize the rich with more class warfare and tax the bejesus out of them. Yeah, that’s the ticket, more envious class warfare. Uncle Sugar Government will take care of you, until it no longer has taxation ‘income’ to pay the bills to do so. This version of ‘kick the can down the road’ is not a child’s game at all.

/sarc.

These are the people who originally scored Obamacare much better than this current revision.

If anything, they’re probably on the low side.

The CBO report only dealt with the lost jobs from Obamacare itself. If amnesty happens, there will be an immediate tidal wave of firings as low-skilled workers are replaced with illegals.

That’s because employers don’t incur a penalty ($2000 to $3000 per employee) for hiring illegals under Obamacare.

The economy is already shaky. Given this incentive, what employers will choose is a no-brainer.