[i]The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office gave new fuel to the debate over the Affordable Care Act Tuesday with its estimate that the law will lead to the eventual loss of about 2.5 million full-time jobs. In its annual budget and economic forecast the agency also said that the ACA or Obamacare will reduce the total number of hours worked by about 1.5 percent to 2 percent from 2017 to 2024. Even though total employment will increase over the coming decade, the CBO said, “that increase will be smaller than it would have been in the absence of the ACA.” CBO director Douglas Elmendorf told reporters that the analysis done by his agency’s experts “led us to conclude that the effect of the Affordable Care Act on labor supply would be a good deal larger than we had thought originally.” In 2011, the CBO estimated the loss of full-time equivalent jobs due to the law would be about 800,000.[/i]