Cry Me a River

While the Republican echo chamber squeals and screams and screeches about the latest CBO (Congressional Budget Office) report prophesying the Affordable Care Act allegedly costing 2,000,000 jobs in the future, the truth is struggling out from under all the politically motivated hysteria.  In point of fact, the CBO report is talking about nothing of the kind.  The issue is not job loss but the number of labor hours workers will decide to supply. 

Let’s put it another way.  A man working sixty hours a week to keep his family insured and fed will be able to cut his hours and take his family’s health insurance with him because of subsidies.  An unsung benefit of the Affordable Care Act and its attendant subsidies is that a woman working for some dick in the corner office who treats her like rubbish will be able to tell him what he can do with his job and go find another position working for someone who understands the difference between service and servitude.  She will not have to forfeit her health insurance.

My dad used to say, “I can’t be a Republican.  I carry a lunch box.”  His axiom holds true today.  That the Right has no use for the Working Class has been made abundantly clear over the last three decades.  That they oppose choice for those they believe they have a right to control – workers and women - is beyond question.  It is all part of the same thing, and it is all wrong. 

Having said this and to paraphrase the brilliant Ezra Klein; there is something perverse in the psychology of people who after refusing to pass any kind of jobs bill - even to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure - are now lamenting with tears of indignation an imaginary loss of jobs in order to discredit healthcare insurance reform that will benefit workers and the poor.