The GOP Lie That Obamacare Is Creating A Part-Time Employment Economy

One of the favorite memes currently in Republican circles and, of course, on Fox News is that the Affordable Health Care Act is forcing employers to reduce hours for employees and make them into part time employees in order to avoid having to pick up health care insurance costs under the AHCA employer mandate.  While it is true that a small number of employers have done this, the reality is that they are using the AHCA as a smoke screen to cover what their Scrooge like management mentality had caused them to undertake in any event.  The real truth is that the AHCA is NOT creating a part time employment economy no matter how many times dishonest - can we say the word lying? - Republicans claim otherwise.   A piece in Think Progress looks at the real data.  Here are highlights:

Politicians and media figures opposed to Obamacare regularly insist that the health law is creating a part-time economy. But independent analyses and monthly employment data reveal that claim to be false.

The monthly jobs report that was released on Tuesday found that the U.S. economy had added 148,000 jobs in September and that the national unemployment rate fell to 7.2 percent. And as University of Michigan economics professor Justin Wolfers pointed out on Twitter, the report also found that the economy has been adding full time employment while actually shedding part-time jobs.

In fact, full time employment rose by over 1.6 million between September 2012 and September 2013. The number of people saying they worked a part-time job for economic reasons — such as part-time work being the only kind available — fell by nearly 700,000 in that same time period. Michael R. Strain, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, tweeted out the trend in graph form with the caption, “Not much evidence of Obamacare’s part-time America here.”

Indeed, if the Affordable Care Act really were forcing businesses to cut back to more part-time workers, you would expect to see the exact opposite trend.

That isn’t to say part-time work hasn’t seen a rise during certain points of the recession. As Ben Casselman of the Wall Street Journal points out, “[p]art-time employment fell in late 2012, then rebounded in early 2013.” But now part-time employment has dropped for two consecutive months, leading Casselman to conclude that “even if the upward trend resumes, it’s doubtful that the health law is to blame.”

The hard numbers confirm earlier studies showing that very few employers have actually cut workers’ hours because of the health law. In fact, a September survey of chief financial officers found that American companies actually intend to increase their ranks of full-time workers by nearly two percent over the next 12 months, even as Obamcare’s mandate that large companies provide basic health benefits to their full-time employees goes into effect.

Almost all politicians tend to stretch the truth.  But here, the data shows that the GOP and its pundit allies aren't simply stretching the truth.  They are lying.  And as noted before, the dishonesty of the GOP has increased in direct correlation to the rise of the Christofascists within the party.  It's yet another example of the fact that no one lies more than the "godly Christian" crowd.  

Boehner Halts Talks on Cuts, and House G.O.P. Cheers

The story line in the right wing echo chamber is that sequestration was 100% a White House idea and efforts are being made to blame sequestration, which begins today, on anyone but the Congressional Republicans.  Outside of cuckoo land, all one need do is look at the House GOP's conduct to see which political faction is driving the nation into sequestration.  It is something that the cretins at Newport News Shipbuilding who voted for Mitt Romney and Scott Rigell take the time to remember as they receive their pink slips and notices that they are being laid off.   Ditto for Virginia Beach GOP voters who will hopefully now take a financial hit as well  The New York Times looks at the actual cheering the the House GOP engaged in as the despicable John Boehner ended all talks to avoid sequester yesterday.  Here are article excerpts:

WASHINGTON — Speaker John A. Boehner, the man who spent significant portions of the last Congress shuttling to and from the White House for fiscal talks with President Obama that ultimately failed twice to produce a grand bargain, has come around to the idea that the best negotiations are no negotiations.

As the president and Congressional Democrats have tried to force Mr. Boehner back to the table for talks to head off the automatic budget cuts set to take effect on Friday, Mr. Boehner has instead dug in deeper, refusing to even discuss an increase in revenue and insisting in his typical colorful language that it was time for the Senate to produce a measure aimed at the cuts. 

“The revenue issue is now closed,” Mr. Boehner said Thursday, before the House left town for the weekend without acting on the cuts and a Senate attempt to avert them died.

While the frustrations of Congressional Democrats and Mr. Obama with Mr. Boehner are reaching a fever pitch, House Republicans could not be more pleased with their leader. 

“We asked him to commit to us that when the cuts actually came on March 1, that he would stand firm and not give in, and he’s holding to that,” said Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana and chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee. “I think Friday will be an important day that shows we’re finally willing to stand and fight for conservative principles and force Washington to start living within its means. And that will be a big victory.” 

Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, said that on the whole, he thought the spending cuts were a welcome development for which Mr. Boehner deserves credit.  

Mr. Boehner seems not only to have engendered the good will of his conference but also to have locked in place the spending cuts Republicans have been fighting for. “That’s a big win, to finally stand firm on cutting spending,” Mr. Scalise said.

 It's more than clear who the economic saboteurs really are.

Thousands of Lost Jobs: The Cost of Sequestration

Barack Obama appeared today at Newport News Shipbuilding and made a strong case locally for demanding that the Congressional Republicans stop playing games with the lives of thousands  - if not millions nationwide - of American families.  Also in the cross hairs of the GOP saboteurs is the nation's military.  Yes, the GOP blathers about "supporting our troops" even as they have sent our service members to their deaths and serious injury in needless wars that were paid for on the equivalent of a credit card.  Now, defense spending will be cut in a meat cleaver manner as opposed to a surgeon's scalpel.  How anyone in the military or the defense industry still believes a word coming out of the GOP noise machine is dumbfounding.  The Virginian Pilot looks at the local impact of the GOP effort to destroy the economy and leave thousands of Americans unemployed.   Here are highlights:

Thousands of blue-collar jobs will be lost if federal lawmakers don't strike a deal by the end if the week to avoid sweeping budget cuts, President Barack Obama told a crowd of about 3,000 shipyard workers this afternoon.

Standing in front of a massive propeller in a cavernous facility used to build submarines, Obama called on Congress to compromise or risk harming the economy in Hampton Roads.

"The main reason I'm here is to call attention to the important work that you’re doing on behalf of the nation’s defense, and to let the American people know that this work, along with hundreds of thousands of jobs, are currently in jeopardy because of politics in Washington," Obama said.

"These cuts are wrong. They're not smart, they're not fair. They're a self-inflicted wound that doesn't have to happen," Obama added at a shipbuilding site in Virginia.

The White House has warned the $85 billion in cuts could affect everything from commercial flights to classrooms to meat inspections. The cuts would slash domestic and defense spending, leading to forced unpaid days off for hundreds of thousands of workers.

At Newport News Shipbuilding, Virginia's largest industrial employer, Obama renewed his effort to warn of the dire consequences the cuts could have on military readiness and local economies. He spoke in front of a massive submarine propeller, with workmen and the few female employees watching up from the cavernous assembly floor and down along railings from three open levels above.

"The threat of these cuts has already forced the Navy to cancel the deployment and delay the repair of certain aircraft carriers," Obama said.

Mike Petters , president and CEO of factory parent company Huntington Ingalls, said in an interview that the company will probably "throttle back" plans to hire between 10,000 and 15,000 workers over the next five years because of the budget uncertainty. He said his biggest headache in running the business is the continuing resolution.

Echoing Obama's warnings about the military repercussion were the five members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who traveled to Capitol Hill to say the cuts could impart a serious blow to military readiness. Their appearance marked the fourth time in the last three weeks that top Pentagon leaders have testified before Congress about the cuts.

Yes, you read that right - 10-15,000 workers at Newport News Shipbuilding alone.  Not surprisingly, GOP extremist Congressman Scott Rigell opted to accompany Obama since he likely knows that if sequestration happens and is rightfully blamed on the GOP, he may well not be re-elected in 2014.