World News Korner

After an entire day of talking about the Republican plan to shutdown the government in response to the implementation of Obamacare, perhaps it is also time to remind everybody that the very premise for their "concern" is total bullshit.

The above graphic is brought to you by Republican propagandists.

Courtesy of the Washington Post:

For years, Republicans have labeled President Obama’s Affordable Care Act a “job killer.” But as the essential elements of the law begin to phase in, conservative critics have become more specific, latching onto alarming stories about certain businesses cutting employees’ hours or declining to hire workers — all, apparently, because of the health-care law’s dictates.

As usual with Obamacare, it’s not that there isn’t something to be concerned about. But Republicans have blown the law’s potential problems so far out of proportion that their attacks sound like a “Saturday Night Live” parody.

“Americans all over this country are suffering because of Obamacare,”Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said last month. “It is the single biggest job killer in America.”

Well, here’s what the law requires: All firms that employ 50 or more full-time workers — or the equivalent in part-time workers — must provide health-care coverage to all of their full-time employees. If they do not, starting in 2015 the government will assess a fine based on the number of employees the businesses have. The fear is that companies on the cusp of hiring their 50th full-time employee might hold back. Other businesses might try to cut their employees’ hours.

The potential for some reduction in the availability of low-wage work is real. But mainstream economists aren’t seeing anything like the catastrophe Republicans have foretold, and they don’t anticipate a calamity, either.

That is because only 3 percent of small businesses — those with fewer than 500 employees — have more than 50 workers, so 97 percent of small employers are exempt from the law’s mandates. Meanwhile, virtually all large companies already offer health insurance to their employees. Aside from things such as reporting requirements, Obamacare’s mandates will directly obligate only about 1 percent of American businesses to do anything different.

Okay so this is what we have learned today? Well first we learned that potential donors for the GOP are freaked out that they are shutting down the government and potentially holding raising of the debt ceiling hostage in order to stop Obamacare. Then we learned that the plan for shutting down the government has been in the GOP playbook virtually since Obama took office. And now we learn that the frightening consequences of implementing the Affordable Care Act on businesses, that the Right Wing has been screaming about, are completely and totally false.

So yes the country may indeed default on its debt. The only political party responsible are the Republicans who have been pushing this agenda for years. And the reason that they feel it is overwhelmingly important to pick this fight, it NOT to protect the American people, or even American businesses, it is to protect the future of their party whose death throes they feel all around them.

And here you thought you could never dislike the Republican party more than you already did.

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