Reacting to a report that says Obamacare will lower work hours because it lowers the hourly threshold an American must work in order to obtain health care, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney called “freedom” a “buzzword” on Tuesday.
“It’s not anything but an added choice that they have that allows them more freedom, to use a certain buzzword, more choice,” he said.
“This actually explains a lot,” the Independent Journal Review said. “THIS is why the Obama Administration is so willy-nilly with our freedoms as Americans! They think it’s just a buzzword! They don’t realize it’s an actual thing!”
The comment also sparked a firestorm on Twitter, Twitchy said.
“Freedom, oh, freedom, well that’s just some people talkin’,” one person sarcastically said.
“They can take our lives, but they will never take our BUZZWORDS!” another person tweeted, invoking the famous line from “Braveheart.”
“Next? The Constitution is just some guidelines,” tweeted Twitter user Michael Cope.
Another person expressed a desire to “slap Carney across the face.”
According to a report published Tuesday by the Congressional Budget Office, Obama’s signature legislation will push some two million workers out of the labor force by 2017 as they decide to either work fewer hours or drop out of the labor force altogether.
The White House called this “positive” because, the Washington Times said, “it means Americans will forgo jobs or extra work to stay home with their children or strike out on their own as entrepreneurs.”
Republicans, on the other hand, see the report as an “I told you so” moment.
A post at the conservative blog Weasel Zippers observed that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., once crowed that Obamacare would create some four million jobs, with 400,000 jobs created “almost immediately.”
But that hasn’t happened.
In fact, the blog said, just the opposite has taken place. And the prospects for the future aren’t looking very good in terms of the job market.
Jason Furman, Obama’s chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, told the press in the same session that American workers choosing to work less was a net positive, comparing them to 95-year-olds on Social Security.
“This is a choice on the part of workers, and I have no doubt that if, for example, we got rid of Social Security and Medicare, there are many 95-year-olds that would choose to work more to avoid potentially starving or to give themselves an opportunity to get healthcare,” he said.
Related:
- Darrell Issa: White House press secretary Jay Carney a ‘paid liar’
- Jay Carney to Joe Scarborough: IRS, Benghazi, NSA scandals ‘phony’
- Sheila Jackson Lee: We’ll give Obama ‘a number of executive orders’ to sign
- Jay Carney to Piers Morgan: Scandals involving IRS, Benghazi, AP ‘don’t exist’
- Jay Carney on threats to whistleblowers: ‘Benghazi happened a long time ago’
