Times from coast to coast says drop ObamaCare, focus on jobs

It was the best of Times, and it was, er, the best of Times.  Two papers that rarely agree on editorial viewpoints both come to the same conclusion today, although for different reasons, which is that ObamaCare needs to be shelved at a moment of national economic crisis.  One expects that from the Washington Times, which opposes the Democratic approach to health-care reform anyway.  But when the Seattle Times offers its second editorial demand for a shift in focus from creating expensive entitlements to job creation, that’s a signal Democrats should heed:

Much of American politics is driven by imperatives expressed as, “Every American should have “X.” The “X” changes: It can be health care or something else. Often this page has agreed, and no doubt will again. But right now we fill in the blank this way:

Every American should have the best possible opportunity to find work.

Given the shrinkage of the economy since 2007, this is not the time to promise every American a new benefit. And that is what these bills want to do. By their attempt at generosity, they would raise the cost of creating a job, especially by small employers.

Some small employers now offer employees no coverage. Under the Senate bill, if employers had one employee receiving a federal subsidy to buy insurance — and the bill creates these subsidies — the employer would have to pay a 2- to 8-percent tax on the entire payroll. And a payroll tax is a tax on the creation of jobs.

They posted the editorial on their website last night, before the new jobs data made their declaration as obvious an imperative as we have seen in a long while.  The Seattle Times, not known for their slavish devotion to free-market principles and smaller government, understands that these programs will cost jobs and burdened a stumbling economy.  Now that we have seen the actual job loss numbers, and not the somewhat misleading unemployment rate figure alone, their point is all the more valid today.

Last month, the White House leaked a strategy to back-burner ObamaCare and do a “hard pivot” towards job creation.  Frankly, given the administration’s big-government notions of how to accomplish that, that may not have been good news anyway.  So far in 2010, though, we’ve seen little evidence that Democrats are taking these numbers seriously, or the failure of their Porkulus bill to stem the tide of job losses.

The Washington Times’ editorial focuses more on how to stop the bill from becoming law.  They offer contact information for key Democrats in the House who may be open to opposing the ObamaCare bill on the abortion issue.  But as Eric Cantor noted earlier this week, there are other issues on which House Democrats could flip into opposition as well.  Be sure to see if your Representative is among those listed — and melt the phones accordingly.