There’s an old joke that a quandary exists when your mother-in-law drives off
a cliff in your new Porsche. Are you more happy about losing her or more unhappy
about losing your sports car?
I’m not clever enough to come up with humorous quandaries, but I have shared
policy quandaries.
I’ve asked, for instance, whether libertarians might
have second thoughts 
about an end to drug prohibition if the result was bigger
government.
And I speculated whether leftists or social conservatives would be more
upset about a gay man legally adopting his lover in order to minimize
Pennsylvania’s death tax.
And if you like this kind of thing, I have more than one
dozen additional examples of these types of quandaries.
I have something else to add to the list, and it’s near and dear to my heart
because I like to think that I’m among the biggest critics of both Obamacare
and bureaucracy.
But what happens if there’s an issue pitting Obamacare and bureaucrats
against each other? Would I be able to pick sides?
This isn’t theoretical speculation. Check out these
excerpts from a recent report in the New York Times.
Cities, counties, public schools and community colleges around the country have limited or reduced the work hours of part-time employees to avoid having to provide them with health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, state and local officials say. …Even after the administration said this month that it would ease coverage requirements for larger employers, public employers generally said they were keeping the restrictions on work hours because their obligation to provide health insurance, starting in 2015, would be based on hours worked by employees this year. Among those whose hours have been restricted in recent months are police dispatchers, prison guards, substitute teachers, bus drivers, athletic coaches, school custodians, cafeteria workers and part-time professors.
To be honest, I don’t know how to react to this. Am I glad that we have more evidence that Obamacare is hurting people and reducing labor supply? That’s obviously the case, and it’s an embarrassment to the Obama Administration.
For months, Obama administration officials have played down reports that employers were limiting workers’ hours. But in a report this month, the Congressional Budget Office said the Affordable Care Act could lead to a reduction in the number of hours worked, relative to what would otherwise occur. Jason Furman, the chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, reaffirmed the White House view that the law was “good for wages and incomes and for the economy over all.” …The Obama administration says “there is absolutely no evidence” of any job loss related to the Affordable Care Act.
One suspects, by the way, that the Obama White House must have a very strange definition of “job loss.”
