The real reason SCOTUS could save POTUS

[Draggingtree]

The Washington Post:

The real reason SCOTUS could save POTUS

 

By Marc A. Thiessen, Published: April 2

 

Obamacare may be President Obama’s proudest legislative achievement, but the fact is it has been a political disaster for Democrats. The unpopular law has galvanized Obama’s conservative opponents, driven away moderates and independents, and hung like an albatross around the neck of the U.S. economy. A decision by the Supreme Court to overturn the law in its entirety could be the best thing that ever happened to Obama’s prospects for reelection.

If the Supreme Court were to lift the weight of Obamacare from the economy, we might see a spurt of job creation and capital coming off the sidelines that could be extremely helpful to the president come November. As Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) recently put it, “If [Obamacare] is thrown out, you’re going to see the economy bump up, just simply because [of] all the people who are not hiring with the anticipation of what it’s going to cost and the mandates associated with it. I think you’re going to see a big bump in the economy if it gets thrown out.”

Coburn is right. A recent Gallup survey found that 48 percent of small businesses said the potential costs of Obamacare were holding them back from hiring new workers. As one small business owner told “PBS News Hour” late last year, “when we bring on a new employee, we don’t know what that employee truly is going to cost us in 2014,. And we’re not in the practice of hiring people to then lay them off.”

Indeed, analysts at UBS Investment Research have called Obamacare “arguably the biggest impediment to hiring” in our economy (which is saying a lot considering the pending expiration of the Bush tax cuts and the massive regulations Obama has proposed for the energy sector).