The Congressional Budge Office (CBO) report is being hailed by Republican ideologues as proof that Americans having affordable health care under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is the work disincentive, job killing blight they’ve been claiming. Although the CBO did not quantify their estimation regarding full-time-equivalent employment in relationship to the unemployed (seeking but not finding jobs) and the underemployed (i.e. part-time workers wanting more hours), right wing barkers are shouting out a headline of “2 million jobs lost.” Just pulled that out of the hats they sit on, I suppose.

What’s interesting is that, according to the Washington Post, the CBO projection “that total employment (and compensation) will be smaller than it would have been in the absence of the ACA” is not enumerated into a specific number. The exact wording related to labor decline is set forth as ‘almost entirely’ due to a reduction in labor that ‘workers choose to supply.’ (Emphasis on CHOICE).

The Post’s cryptic translation of the above notes that this “net drop in business’ demand for labor” appears to be “almost entirely as a reduction in labor force participation and in hours worked relative to what have occurred otherwise rather than as an increase in unemployment … or underemployment.” The Post tries to run away from CHOICE being, in and of itself, legitimate—but rather cites the factual misrepresentation of many Republicans regarding the CBO report as discrediting an otherwise arguable point of debate regarding the safety net being a disincentive to work.

Again, CHOICE should be the right of the worker, not solely the right of the employer. A social contract exists between both. The employer hires workers to provide necessary labor for a successful business or service. The worker takes the job out of the need to provide for a successful life. Mutual need, mutual responsibility: Be a good, fair, and honest employer, providing a decent wage and upward mobility; be a good, fair, diligent employee, providing a dependable work ethic for the advancement of the employer. Both seeking excellence of opportunity, and mutually obligated to serve each other’s needs.

While the CBO is considered to be a nonpartisan entity, it’s probability supposition, if reported correctly, shows a bias in its language suggesting the average American worker’s ethos to be entirely “entitlement-driven,” as if shopping around for the best job fit is inherently selfish. That to do so implies a lack of work of ethic. Funny how a reduction in force by certain employers to escape the burden of healthcare—the money saved not passed on to the employees saddled with an increased workload—does not seem to carry a similar onus of being entirely “profit-driven.”

Rub-a dub-dub / Three men or Three maids in a tub, / And who do you think they were? / The government taker, / The corporate-raker, / The politico faker / ‘Twas enough to make a man or woman stare. Stare at their ballot and vote for democracy, unowned and unincorporated. 

Healthcare is not an entitlement; it is a just return of life provision for labor provided. Right to work cuts both ways: It’s the right to work or NOT for an employer who doesn’t deserve it.

Carl