Obama Claims ObamaCare is a Jobs Program

Every once in a while someone will say something so spectacularly asinine that I’m literally stunned. Admittedly, Obama’s ability to stun yours truly is noticeably fading due primarily to the propensity for, and frequency of, obtuse economic pronouncements from his administration. I suppose I’m being slowly but steadily conditioned to expect nothing else.

This morning, while enjoying my typical breakfast of an ice cold diet Splenda Coke, I overheard a reporter on TV in the C4P lobby say something to the effect that Obama claimed he really is focused on jobs and that ObamaCare is actually the centerpiece of his jobs program, and that's why he's working so hard to pass it. After wiping up the diet Coke which, seconds before, had occupied my mouth, I thought surely I had heard wrong. After all, I was up late last night, had a few adult beverages, and could have easily been mistaken. Nobody, much less the president of the United States, could possibly say something so incredibly ignorant. But then we are talking about Obama…

I moved with alacrity to the nearest unoccupied C4P workstation, the only one available being next to Rich Crowther who was putting the finishing touches on his Sunday Roundup. Once I logged in, I typed the words “Obama: health care is a jobs program” into Google. Sure enough, my ears did not deceive me. Yesterday, in an article for the Washington Examiner, Byron York quoted Obama:

"What has happened is a lot of the debate in Washington has been around health care, so people think, well, I guess they must not be working on jobs," Obama said Friday in Allentown, Pennsylvania. "No, we’ve been working on jobs the whole time. Health care is part and parcel with where we need to take our economy."

[…]

Just to make things perfectly clear, Obama pledged in his Saturday address that he will "focus every single day" on the jobs issue. As far as health care is concerned, he repeated that he's doing it for jobs. "I’m determined to meet our responsibility to do what we know will strengthen our economy in the long-run," Obama said. "That’s why I’m not going to let up in my efforts to reform our health care system…"

Oh, of course. Now I get it. Nationalizing more than 1/6 of the economy is a jobs program! Why didn’t I think of that? This contention, of course, is so profoundly absurd that it’s difficult to know where to begin. To honestly promulgate such nonsense, one would have to believe that a new multi-trillion entitlement program with its resulting higher deficits, higher taxes, higher inflation, higher interest rates, higher legal fees, and increased business mandates, will entice businesses to hire more employees.

This audacity of ignorance coming from Obama is truly breathtaking and on a par with his claim that extending health insurance to tens of millions of people will somehow lower costs. The thought that Obama could possibly believe any of this rubbish illustrates the colossal mistake America made in November 2008, and the challenge we face in overcoming the damage that has already occurred as well as that which will occur during the remaining three years of the “Age of Obama”. Only someone with utter contempt for free markets who has never created a job in his life could possibly think this way. I’m reminded of a graph David Riddick included in an earlier post.


The above graph, as David pointed out, needs no further comment and is as good an explanation as any for the appalling lack of economic literacy emanating from the Obama Administration. In order for businesses to hire workers and thus, create jobs, they have to have the reasonable expectation that there will be a sustained increase in demand for the product (or service) they provide. Foisting this huge new entitlement on our over taxed, over-regulated, and debt-ridden economy will accomplish exactly the opposite. That something so obvious even needs to be mentioned is astonishing.