Former Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin said the latest CBO report does in fact say Obamacare will destroy millions of jobs.
Holtz-Eakin, who is now president of the American Action Forum, released a video on Monday debunking the notion that Obamacare has the benefit of "liberating" 2.5 million Americans from the workforce.
"If we had a policy that raised wages by taxing labor and it got rid of 2.5 million jobs, we would say we killed 2.5 million jobs," Holtz-Eakin said. "If we had a mandate that made it more expensive to employ people, raise the effective wage for employers, we would say we killed off 2.5 million jobs with that mandate."
"In this case the [Affordable Care Act] has effectively killed off 2.5 million jobs; it is just an indirect effect," he said. "The fact that people have the option of retiring means that the ACA has an implicit tax on labor. Employers have to pay higher wages in order to lure people from their homes into the workplace. Those higher wages make 2.5 million jobs unprofitable for employers to offer. And the ACA tax kills off the jobs."
"When you hear this controversy about killing jobs versus retiring, remember the economics are the same and the ACA is at the root of us losing 2.5 million jobs, the income those 2.5 million jobs produce, and the tax base that will go along with it," Holtz-Eakin said.
Following the release of the CBO report on Feb. 4, many repeated the White House’s message that Obamacare is beneficial because Americans will no longer be "trapped in a job." The Washington Post said "it’s a confusing issue," but the law does not kill jobs, it only encourages people "not to work."