WASHINGTON – A new analysis from the Congressional Budget Office says that the Affordable Care Act will result in more than 2 million fewer full-time workers in the next several years, providing Republican opponents of the law a powerful political weapon leading up to this year’s midterm elections.
The law is also expected to have a significant effect on hours worked, the nonpartisan budget office said in a regular update to its budget projections released Tuesday. With the expansion of insurance coverage, more workers will choose not to work and others will choose to work fewer hours than they might have otherwise, it said.
The decline in hours worked will translate into a loss of the equivalent of 2.5 million full-time positions by 2024, the budget office said.
Republicans immediately seized on the report as evidence of the health care law’s adverse effect on the economy.
“Obamacare is only making things worse,” Rep. Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin said in a statement. “This costly law is not only pushing government spending to new heights, it is disrupting coverage and leaving millions of Americans worse off.”
The budget office analysis found that much of the law’s effect comes from reducing the need for people to take a full-time job just to get insurance coverage, and from the premium subsidies effectively bolstering household income.
The White House pushed back against the Republican attacks, citing the report’s finding that the law will have no effect on the total demand for worker hours.
“Claims that the Affordable Care Act hurts jobs are simply belied by the facts in the CBO report,” said the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, in a statement.
The budget office also estimated that about 1 million fewer Americans than expected will receive health insurance coverage in 2014 through the marketplaces established by the Affordable Care Act, primarily because of the troubled rollout of the exchanges.
It also revised its estimates of the number of people receiving coverage through Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Plan coverage, lowering it by about 1 million.
The news in the report is not all bad for Democrats. The office also sees the budget deficit falling to $514 billion in the 2014 fiscal year, or about 3 percent of economic output, from $1.4 trillion in 2009. Many economists consider deficits of that size to be sustainable in the long term.
