Hillary Blames ObamaCare for Lost Jobs
Napoleon Bonaparte said that one should never interrupt an enemy who is making a mistake. The political corollary is that one should never interrupt political opponents who are relieving themselves on each other's shoes and their own, as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are now doing. Here is what Hillary Clinton's own Website says about the so-called Affordable Care Act.
Defend the Affordable Care Act. Hillary will continue to defend the Affordable Care Act (ACA) against Republican efforts to repeal it. She'll build on it to expand affordable coverage, slow the growth of overall health care costs (including prescription drugs), and make it possible for providers to deliver the very best care to patients.
Clinton, however, told the truth (it must have been an accident) to a questioner during a political rally.
QUESTIONER: “Hi, I just want to know why there is discrimination against the part-time workers when so many companies are going to part-time when it comes to FMLA?”
HILLARY CLINTON: “Well, that’s why they are going to part-time. That, and also, the Affordable Care Act. You know, we got to change that because we have built in some unfortunate incentives that discourage full-time employment.
The Democratic front-runner therefore said openly that legislation she supported, and still supports, resulted in loss of full-time employment for the working people whom the Democrats claim to represent.
All of these consequences were easily foreseeable back in 2010 when Nancy Pelosi told Congress that it had to vote for the bill to see what was in it, and added that she was willing to sacrifice House seats (other than her own, of course) to pass it. Bart Stupak (D-MI) and my own representative Paul Kanjorski (D-PA) were among those who destroyed their political careers along with, as it turns out, millions of full-time jobs and health insurance policies. Kanjorski, a conservative pro-Second Amendment Democrat, could have probably stayed in office for life had he not forgotten that his district's voters, and not Obama or Pelosi, decided every two years whether to keep him. He forgot, as country & western singer Shania Twain put it, to "dance with the one that brought you."
Exploit the Opportunity
Hillary Clinton's open admission that the ACA destroys full-time employment, with the result that people may have to get two jobs (without benefits) to make ends meet, should deliver a Republican landslide in the House, Senate, and White House next year.
(1) The ACA was the crown jewel of Barack Obama's administration, and hundreds of Democrats boasted of their roles in helping to pass it. Now the Democratic front-runner has blurted out that the crown jewel in question was nothing more than a counterfeit piece of glass all along, and that the Emperor's invisible clothes are really not there at all.
(2) The Democrats can no longer argue that opposition to the ACA is Republican obstructionism. Hillary Clinton could not have said more plainly that the ACA destroys full-time employment for the workers whom the Democrats claim to represent.
Impartial and nonpartisan objective evidence also shows that the ACA is anything but affordable. As demonstrated by Chris Conover, "In 2014, premiums in the non-group market grew by 24.4% compared to what they would have been without Obamacare." My personal experience is that Aetna just cancelled my grandfathered $232/month high-deductible policy, and the cheapest ACA-compliant policy would have cost me $448/month had I not been able to get into Altrua's medical cost sharing program for $250/month. Alternatives include Liberty HealthShare and, for Christians only, Medishare and Samaritan. These are the facts, political rhetoric from neither party can do to nothing to change them, and this is exactly what will appeal to independent voters who hold the balance of power in most national elections.
The issue can therefore be turned not only against Clinton but also against every single member of Congress who voted for the ACA or even supported it verbally. These include Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) and Senate candidate Joe Sestak (D-PA), who calls ObamaCare a "proven success." Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) needs to challenge Sestak openly to tell the voters yet again that ObamaCare is a "proven success" when the would-be head of his own party admitted it was a failure.
William A. Levinson is the author of several books on business management including content on organizational psychology, as well as manufacturing productivity and quality.