President Obama’s team of national security advisers is under attack on Capitol Hill for not foreseeing the collapse of Iraq’s army forces who have been routed by Sunni jihadists.
Republicans are calling for heads to roll, and Democrats have been slow to defend Obama’s national security team after a string of questionable performances.
ADVERTISEMENT Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have second-guessed Obama’s decision to release five senior Taliban commanders from Guantánamo Bay and his handling of the civil war in Syria. Now they’re concerned the insurgent’s lightning war across Iraq has taken the administration by surprise.
Obama even took heat Thursday from the editorial page of The Washington Post, which asserted the “pretense” of Obama’s claim to have ended the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan “is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.”
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called for the wholesale resignation of Obama’s national security team, starting with Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“We need a new national security adviser. We need a new team. We need a new team that knows what America’s national security interests are and are more interested in national security than they are in politics,” he said on the Senate floor.
IRS Claims to Have Lost Over 2 Years of Lerner Emails…ah yea that’s believable Jun 13 2014
Washington, DC – Today, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) issued the following statement regarding the Internal Revenue Service informing the Committee that they have lost Lois Lerner emails from a period of January 2009 – April 2011. Due to a supposed computer crash, the agency only has Lerner emails to and from other IRS employees during this time frame. The IRS claims it cannot produce emails written only to or from Lerner and outside agencies or groups, such as the White House, Treasury, Department of Justice, FEC, or Democrat offices.
“The fact that I am just learning about this, over a year into the investigation, is completely unacceptable and now calls into question the credibility of the IRS’s response to Congressional inquiries. There needs to be an immediate investigation and forensic audit by Department of Justice as well as the Inspector General.
“Just a short time ago, Commissioner Koskinen promised to produce all Lerner documents. It appears now that was an empty promise. Frankly, these are the critical years of the targeting of conservative groups that could explain who knew what when, and what, if any, coordination there was between agencies. Instead, because of this loss of documents, we are conveniently left to believe that Lois Lerner acted alone. This failure of the IRS requires the White House, which promised to get to the bottom of this, to do an Administration-wide search and production of any emails to or from Lois Lerner. The Administration has repeatedly referred us back to the IRS for production of materials. It is clear that is wholly insufficient when it comes to determining the full scope of the violation of taxpayer rights.”
Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Charles Boustany Jr., M.D. (R-LA) added, “In the course of the Committee’s investigation, the Administration repeatedly claimed we were getting access to all relevant IRS documents. Only now – thirteen months into the investigation – the IRS reveals that key emails from the time of the targeting have been lost. And they bury that fact deep in an unrelated letter on a Friday afternoon. In that same letter, they urge Congress to end the investigations into IRS wrongdoing. This is not the transparency promised to the American people. If there is no smidgeon of corruption what is the Administration hiding?”
NJT NEW, EXPRESS, ONE-SEAT SUMMER SHORE RAIL SERVICE LAUNCHES JUNE 28
Dual-powered locomotives to transport customers between New York Penn Station and the Jersey Shore
June 10, 2014
NEWARK, NJ — In conjunction with the Christie Administration’s continued commitment to the recovery and continued revitalization of the Jersey Shore, NJ TRANSIT today announced the launch of new, weekend rail service from New York Penn Station and northern New Jersey cities to shore communities along the North Jersey Coast Line.
The new shore service will begin on June 28, utilizing NJ TRANSIT’s new, dual-powered locomotives to provide a one-seat ride.
“NJ TRANSIT looks forward to placing our new dual-powered locomotives into service on the North Jersey Coast Line, which will entice more visitors, provide greater customer convenience and make the trip down the shore faster and easier than ever before,” said NJ TRANSIT Executive Director Veronique “Ronnie” Hakim.
Starting June 28 and continuing through September 1, four new, roundtrip express trains will be launched on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays between New York Penn Station and Bay Head. Two of these new roundtrips will be geared to beach travelers, with the additional two roundtrips providing service during the early morning and late night timeframes.
The new express service will serve New York Penn Station, Secaucus Junction, Newark Penn Station, Elizabeth, Rahway, Aberdeen-Matawan, Red Bank, Long Branch, Asbury Park, and then all station stops to Bay Head, without having to change trains in Long Branch. A travel time savings of approximately 25 minutes is expected from the normal travel time between New York and stations such as Belmar, Manasquan and Point Pleasant.
Seating will be limited aboard the new express service, with customers strongly encouraged to purchase round trip tickets or beach packages (a savings of $6.50 off the cost of rail service and beach admission) prior to the start of their trip. NJ TRANSIT tickets and beach packages are available at ticket windows and ticket vending machines. Customers can also purchase NJ TRANSIT tickets using MyTix mobile ticketing.
Express trains will supplement NJ TRANSIT’s regular hourly rail shuttle service between Long Branch and Bay Head, and will operate using the statewide transportation agency’s new ALP-45 dual-powered locomotives. These specialized trains will operate in electric mode between New York and Long Branch and will switch to diesel operation for travel between Long Branch and Bay Head – allowing for the one-seat ride.
The announcement follows the May 15, 2014 endorsement of the new service by the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority (NJTPA), which authorized a $270,000 allocation through the federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program (CMAQ) to fund the new service.
Detailed schedules will be available June 17 on njtransit.com.
NJ Democrats keep fighting on civil service changes
New Jersey Democrats are seeking to invalidate new rules adopted by the Christie administration that they say threaten to upend the foundation of the state’s civil service system. (Seidman/The Philadelphia Inquirer)
Planning Board – Meeting Schedule June 16 & 17 – Valley Hospital Application
PLANNING BOARD
AMENDMENT TO MEETING SCHEDULE
Special Public Meetings: June 16 & June 17, 2014
In accordance with the provisions of the “Open Public Meetings Act,” please be advised that the Planning Board has scheduled special public meetings for:
Monday, June 16, 2014 at 7:30 p.m. in the auditorium at the Benjamin Franklin Middle School, 335 North Van Dien Avenue, Ridgewood, New Jersey, at which time the Board will receive instructions regarding the proposed H-Hospital Zone amendment to the Master Plan.
Tuesday, June 17, 2014, at 7:30 p.m. in the auditorium at the Benjamin Franklin Middle School, 335 North Van Dien Avenue, Ridgewood, New Jersey, at which time there will be Board deliberation and vote only concerning the proposed H-Hospital Zone amendment to the Master Plan. Doors will be open at 6:30 p.m.; all ingress into the auditorium will be limited to the doors located at the rear of the auditorium.
The Board may take official action during these Work and Public Meetings.
All meetings of the Ridgewood Planning Board (i.e., official public meetings, work session meetings, pre-meeting assemblies and special meetings) are public meetings which are always open to members of the general public.
‘We are not gullible enough to believe thousands came without aid and assistance’
Published: 13 hours ago
An organization of former Border Patrol agents Wednesday charged that the federal government, under the administration of President Obama, is deliberately arranging for a flood of immigrant children to arrive in America for political purposes.
“This is not a humanitarian crisis. It is a predictable, orchestrated and contrived assault on the compassionate side of Americans by her political leaders that knowingly puts minor illegal alien children at risk for purely political purposes,” said the statement released by the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers.
“Certainly, we are not gullible enough to believe that thousands of unaccompanied minor Central American children came to America without the encouragement, aid and assistance of the United States government,” the officers said.
“Anyone that has taken two six- to seven-year-old children to an amusement park can only imagine the problems associated with bringing thousands of unaccompanied children that age up through Mexico and into the United States.”
file photo by Maura McMahon DeNicola in Ridgewood PJ Blogger with Joe Kyrillos
Post-CA Tenure Decision, Kyrillos Seeks Repeat in New Jersey Jun. 11 Education, Joe Kyrillos, National, Uncategorized 1 comment
By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
Joe Kyrillos at 2012 RNC in Tampa, Florida
Following an earth-shattering decision by the California state court striking down that state’s tenure law, state Senator Joe Kyrillos (R-Monmouth) says he’s reaching out to an advocacy group involved in the West Coast case to help accomplish the same result in New Jersey.
He’ll start by re-introducing S-2171, “The School Children First Act.”
“This legislature should seize this opportunity and momentum to pass full tenure reform to improve education and lower property taxes in New Jersey,” Sen. Kyrillos said in a statement released by the Senate GOP office. “This overhaul bill allows public school districts to best serve their students and communities by ensuring only the best teachers, administrators and staff members are the ones educating and nurturing our next generation.”
Past efforts have been examples of tokenism at best and a waste of time for the more cynical among you.
Kyrillos says his legislation would accomplish the following:
· Eliminate last-in, first-out (LIFO) seniority protections that force schools to ignore educator effectiveness and layoff high-performing younger teachers, instead of more expensive, ineffective ones;
· Require school districts to adopt merit-based compensation schedules, whereby public school employees are paid and retained based on their performances, contributions and growth;
· Allow school principals to assign teachers to classrooms where they will be effective; and
· Alleviate tenure-law obstacles for school districts seeking to become more efficient by consolidating or merging services.
It’s a tough issue, Save Jerseyans.
Why? Because it’s easy enough to say “let’s reward good teachers and reform/penalize the bad ones,” but how do you effectively evaluate teacher performance when the good teachers find their classrooms filled with the most challenging students on an annual basis?
There’s also an emerging consensus among everyone NOT in government that testing is close to useless.
School choice is the only solution. The free market is the only fair way to judge any professional’s abilities. Anything else is probably a net negative for hardworking teachers and a net neutral for the kids we’re trying to help. Just one former student’s opinion…
Obamacare Taxes: Next Filing Season Could Be “one of the most chaotic in years.” Posted by John Kartch on Tuesday, June 10th, 2014, 10:25 AM
Problems with a key component of Obamacare will lead to unpleasant surprises for Americans during the 2015 tax filing season, according to testimony from a top tax expert before the House Ways and Means subcommittees on Health and Oversight today.
“I am here today to tell you that the upcoming tax filing season has the potential to be one of the most chaotic in years,” said Ryan Ellis, an IRS Enrolled Agent and Tax Policy Director at Americans for Tax Reform.
According to the testimony:
“One of the key elements of the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as “Obamacare,” is the creation of advanceable tax credits for the purchase of exchange health insurance plans.
Taxpayers applying for credit assistance must be evaluated by government entities ranging from the SSA to CMS to the IRS. The goal is to have an educated estimate, based on the most immediately-available government documents (e.g. prior year tax returns, etc.), of the taxpayer’s probable income for the year–which in turn determines the size of the tax credit.
In an effort to get this tax benefit out quickly, the estimated credit is advanced to the insurance company by the IRS, which applies it to customer premiums.
This is an important point—the money has left the IRS’ hands up to over a year before the taxpayer actually calculates his final credit amount. The insurance companies have collected it, and they are not required to pay it back.
Press reports this month indicated that the government was having a hard time doing all this, with 1.2 million of the 6 million federal exchange applicants having to be asked for additional income verification information from CMS. That is not surprising. Applicants are asked to complete a detailed, confusing twelve-page application which asks for income, family size, etc. It is rather like trying to fill out a 1040 on the fly. Added to this is the lack of employer reporting requirements and the failure to complete the back-end of the web site.
Inconsistencies–some of which are the result of failures of the healthcare.gov system, some of which are poor records from the government, and some of which are mistakes from the individual–are not surprising. But they are a problem. It is the middle of June, and many people have now been receiving inaccurate subsidies for six months. To the public’s knowledge, not a single advanced tax credit has been adjusted this year.
So what happens if the flawed, confusing process results in a tax credit larger than what the law calls for?
A hypothetical example might help illustrate: a health exchange customer selects an Obamacare exchange plan. The government estimates that this taxpayer will earn $30,000 this year, which makes her eligible for a $2000 tax credit. This $2000 is paid to the taxpayer’s insurance company to help with premiums.
The next spring, our customer/taxpayer is filling out her tax return. Unfortunately, the government estimated the taxpayer earned too little and paid too large a credit. She actually earned $40,000, and so only had a $1500 credit coming to her.
Depending on the taxpayer’s income level and availability of verified affordable workplace insurance, she will have to pay back much or all of the $500 overage to the IRS. This means skinnier refunds and maybe even liabilities, and it won’t be the taxpayer’s fault—it will be the government’s fault.
It is also inevitable that many people are receiving tax credits for which they are completely ineligible. The firewall of the offer of employer sponsored insurance is a new concept — tax preparers will have difficulty figuring out how it works in operation. There is virtually no way to catch it on the front end — but come tax filing season, many people will end up owing thousands of dollars, and it will be a complete surprise.”
Ridgewood Planning Board holds contentious meeting about Valley Hospital
JUNE 10, 2014, 6:40 AM LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, JUNE 10, 2014, 2:25 PM BY BARBARA WILLIAMS STAFF WRITER THE RECORD
The Valley Hospital has been aggressively seeking approval from the Planning Board to double in size and on Monday night it took its most vigorous stand yet, presenting information that some board members said they found selective, confusing and disingenuous.
Valley Hospital in Ridgewood and the surrounding neighborhood homes.
The board will vote next week on whether Valley should be given the master plan amendment it is seeking to undertake an expansion project that will nearly double the size of the hospital.
Monday’s meeting was to be a time for the board to hear summations from the attorneys representing Valley and residents opposing the project. But first Valley’s planner, Joseph Burgis, made a 45-minute presentation he characterized as clarifications that the village planner had requested. Instead, Burgis addressed some of the complaints and questions raised by residents over the last 15 months of hearings.
Burgis acknowledged that the construction is a detriment, but added that air monitoring will be done during the duration. He said that the school board issued a statement saying it is not concerned about the construction affecting students attending Benjamin Franklin Middle School, which is located next to the hospital.
“As far as construction, there’s no getting around the timetable,” Burgis said. “I don’t mean to minimize the 6-year time frame, it’s a long period of time but it’s necessary to make this happen.”
He said that traffic will decrease by 430 trips per day because Valley will be moving outpatient services off-site. It wasn’t until the end of his presentation, however, that it became clear that the predicted decrease was not based on current traffic but instead was a comparison between this plan and previous expansion plan Valley had before the board in 2010.
– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/ridgewood-planning-board-holds-contentious-meeting-about-valley-hospital-1.1032397#sthash.6nOuaWi6.dpuf
photos surfaced from Texas and Arizona showing Border Patrol processing centers
US struggles with surge in illegal immigrant children By Geoff Dyer in Washington
Federal officials were scrambling at the weekend to provide medical and other supplies to an emergency shelter in Arizona to help house a surge of illegal child immigrants into the country that President Barack Obama has called “an urgent humanitarian situation”.
More than 750 children from Central America spent the weekend in an unused warehouse in Nogales, Arizona, which the border patrol agency has turned into a temporary “way-station” for the children, a state official said.
The improvised shelter is one of the by-products of a jump in illegal immigration from Central America this year, including 47,000 children who entered the country on their own – almost double the number from the year before.
The difficulties in coping with such large numbers of unaccompanied children are stoking the already tortuous debates about reforming the country’s immigration system..
Jan Brewer, the conservative Republican governor of Arizona, described the conditions at the shelter in Nogales as “dire”. She urged people to ask the Obama administration “the reason for this massive influx of illegal crossings and the cost to taxpayers for having to deal with the crisis created by the President”.
Although the overall trend of illegal immigration has dropped in recent years, the authorities have been overwhelmed in recent months by the surge in children trying to cross the border. The federal government is establishing facilities at military bases in Texas and California to help house the children while their cases are being examined. The administration estimates that the influx of immigrant children could cost the federal government $2.28bn this year.
President Obama’s West Point speech proved telling in ways he probably didn’t plan. The commander-in-chief tried to use the commencement address to quell concerns over a foreign policy that has produced nothing but controversy and setbacks since the debacle in Benghazi.
But the president scored more misses than hits with the audience, pundits and the press. Even The Washington Post acknowledged that the speech did little more than mow down a field of “straw men.”
As far as policy goes, the speech may have been a clarion call for little more than muddling through. But for prospectors of presidential rhetoric, it is a gold mine. And the biggest nugget is the paradox of an administration mimicking the caricature of the foreign policy it created to discredit the previous administration.
Every administration must define the enemy from which they are protecting us. During the Cold War, that was easy. But since the fall of the Berlin Wall, it’s often been less self-evident.
That can be problematic. Strategy, after all, is a competitive practice: the art of besting somebody—the Trojans, the Red Coats, the Nazis, whoever’s on the other end of the spear, the sword or the gun. “It is about getting more out of a situation than the starting balance of power would suggest,” Lawrence Freedman declares in his new book, Strategy: A History. “It is the art of creating power.”
And then, slapping the other side over the head with it.
During the Cold War, the enemy was in Moscow. The big challenge was to make neither too much, nor too little of the threat. George Kennan always argued for a tempered, measured threat assessment. On the other hand, the drafters of NSC 68, led by Paul Nitze, and Senator Arthur Vandenberg wanted to “scare the hell out of the American people.”
Getting the threat right was critical. It was the main selling point to the public about how much was enough to defend us.
But America’s long-time selling point for strategy crumbled with the Wall. No self-evident replacement arose until 9/11. From the rubble of the World Trade Center, a strategy for fighting a “global war on terrorism” (GWOT)—the “Long War”—emerged.
Then came Obama. He not only shortened the long war and banned GWOT from the rhetorical locker room, he actively participated in a campaign to delegitimize the whole endeavor. That crusade continued into the West Point speech. “[A] strategy that involves invading every country that harbors terrorist networks is naive and unsustainable,” the president told the Corps of Cadets and their assembled loved ones.
Of course, the Bush administration had made exactly the same point again and again, post 9/11. Bush, for example, passed on taking on a number of transnational terrorist groups including Hamas, Hezbollah, all sorts of Pakistani groups with lots of initials and most of the nascent groups in North Africa.
Bush invaded exactly two places—Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama invaded one—Libya, and he tried to bomb his way into another war—Syria. So, at least numerically speaking, the score on invasions is pretty even. Obama’s critique of GWOT is an embarrassment of oversimplification.
But while treating the terrorist threat dismissively, Mr. Obama went on to identify an alternative “enemy” on which to pin a grand strategy. Unfortunately, his chosen enemy is just as far removed from a pressing threat to national security as his caricature of the Bush Doctrine was divorced from the real Bush Doctrine.
The “enemy” chosen by Obama to animate America’s grand strategy is climate change. The nation’s existential goal, therefor, is “to energize the global effort to combat climate change, a creeping national security crisis that will help shape your time in uniform,” the commander-in-chief told his new troops at West Point. Apparently, the new second lieutenants will spend their careers fighting the weather.
Weather may seem an odd foe for the military. But for a progressive president, it’s the perfect choice.
Obama can’t be accused as a warmonger because he doesn’t want the military to fight anyone—he wants the military to help people.
Weather isn’t a person or a country. He risks offending almost no one.
Making climate change a national security matter also helps a president to press for other statist agenda items—from pet green energy projects to adopting the right-to-protect doctrine.
Unfortunately, as an organizing principle for national security, climate makes a terrible “enemy.” It is enormously complex and unpredictable. The unpredictability of how climate change will play out on the global stage ought to dissuade any strategist from regarding it as an organizing principle around which one can practice what Freedman calls “the art of creating power.” Basing strategy on climate would be the ultimate march of folly.
Mr. Obama may well know that. The reference to climate may be just like the rest of the address: knowingly empty rhetoric. But it does lead to a conclusion devoid of complexity and unpredictability—this speech and the vapid ideas in it will soon be forgotten.
Originally appeared in The National Interest.
James Jay Carafano, a leading expert in national security and foreign policy challenges, is The Heritage Foundation’s Vice President, Foreign and Defense Policy Studies, E. W. Richardson Fellow, and Director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies.
Ridgewood seniors enjoy one last solid baseball season
JUNE 6, 2014 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, JUNE 6, 2014, 12:31 AM BY MATTHEW BIRCHENOUGH ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR
The Ridgewood High School boys baseball team fell short of the championship aspirations it had set before this season, but the squad didn’t finish the year without adding a few more signature victories for a senior class that has experienced its share of them.
The Maroons’ 16 seniors can cherish the program’s first victory over Don Bosco in a decade and a deep run into the North 1, Group 4 state tournament.
“We did have some great wins, and we had some tough losses,” RHS head coach Kurt Hommen said Monday. “We had a very experienced team, a team that’s played together for a quite a while.”
Ridgewood finished 16-10, overcoming a rough early stretch in which it lost 4-of-5 by a combined score of 35-16 to drop its record to 4-4.
– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/sports/high-school-sports/boys-baseball/maroon-seniors-spur-signature-baseball-wins-1.1030444#sthash.352ziWIB.dpuf
Support the Ridgewood Baseball Booster Scholarship Fund Through June 30, Yankee Candle products ordered online will help support all levels of RHS baseball. Click here for the flyer and more information.
Send in the Clowns; Rice’s credibility in question By Alexander Bolton – 06/07/14 06:00 AM EDT
She doubled down on her statement Friday by insisting that Bergdahl deserved praise for volunteering to serve in a dangerous conflict.
“Let’s remember this is a young man who volunteered to serve his country. He was taken as a prisoner of war,” she said in a CNN interview.
National Security Adviser Susan Rice’s comments that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl served with “honor and distinction” has amplified GOP criticism of President Obama’s prisoner swap and undermined Rice’s credibility on Capitol Hill.
Independent experts have cast doubt on Rice’s judgment, given questions about whether Bergdahl was captured by the Taliban after deserting his post in Afghanistan. Even allies of the White House are suggesting she stay off the Sunday talk shows.
“When I saw her on TV making that honor and distinction comment it just seems so phony to me,” said Andrew J. Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University. “I think she doesn’t think seriously about the content of the words and it gets her in trouble and it embarrasses the president.
“It’s a problem if you have people who say things that end up attracting such adverse attention,” he added.
Rice is under fire for touting Bergdahl’s military record, after his former platoon mates accused him of deserting his post and endangering the lives of his comrades.
Patrick Ventrell, Rice’s spokesman, said “she stands by what she said in this instance and stands by her service.”
But even Obama’s allies say Rice should lay low for a while to avoid attracting more flak on Capitol Hill and elsewhere in Washington.
“First she’s given incomplete talking points about Benghazi, then she’s dispatched to say on the talk shows that Bergdahl served with ‘honor and distinction.’ If I were Rice, I’d start taking Sundays off,” wrote Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson.
Robinson’s unsolicited advice to Rice meshes with what her fiercest critics on Capitol Hill are saying.
“My recommendation is that from now on Susan Rice stay home with her family and not go on any of the Sunday talk shows,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
Surprise! The Government Now Can’t Even Guess How Much Obamacare Ultimately Will Ultimately Cost. Genevieve Wood June 06, 2014
It’s no secret Obamacare is unaffordable. But now we also know that even the Congressional Budget Office can’t predict how much more this disastrous law will cost.
According to a footnote from a Congressional Budget Office report released in April but reported this week by Roll Call, the law’s true costs and long-term fiscal impact are simply impossible to track.
That’s a change in tune for the CBO, which originally reported in 2010 that Obamacare would pay for itself and over the course of a decade would decrease the deficit,
So what’s changed? Well, thanks to the constant modifications to the law, the only thing predictable about Obamacare’s provisions is that they’re unpredictable. Many of the “savings” and “revenue” (read: mandates and tax increases) originally proposed to pay for this redesign of one-sixth of the U.S. economy, whether Medicare cuts or employer mandates, have been waived, stalled or simply not implemented, making a defensible revised forecast impossible. The changes occurred because it became clear such measures were both politically unpopular and realistically unaffordable.
There are other reasons it’s virtually impossible to even guess how much Obamacare will ultimately cost. We learned this week that more than 2 million people—a whopping quarter of those enrolled in Obamacare—who signed up for insurance via Obamacare’s health care exchanges have discrepancies in their records and paperwork. Apparently the government has inaccurate or inadequate information regarding the income levels of more than 1 million people who signed up and can’t verify the immigration or citizenship status for more than 900,000. That means some current enrollees may not be eligible for Obamacare subsidies and may lose their coverage or may have been given too generous a subsidy and eventually will have to pay the government back.
Serco, Inc., a government contractor hired to track down and verify the missing information, released a statement saying, “Current system access and functionality…limits the ability to resolve outstanding inconsistencies.” That means the government’s websiteis again was not up to par and much of the work to resolve the data discrepancies will require hands-on work to figure out who among these 2 million people should be getting insurance and subsidies through the exchange and who should not. In other words, there will need to be a significant number of extra staffers brought onto fix this mess. Guess the Obama administration finally is delivering on those “job creation” promises—too bad it’s at the taxpayers’ expense.
Not all the bad news regarding the spending train wreck that is Obamacare emanates from Washington. Many of the statesthat chose to set up their own exchanges spent hundreds of millions of federal dollars to do so—and yet ended up with exchanges that don’t work.
As we approach the next enrollment period in November, lawmakers in those states are frantically trying to figure out whether they can get more dollars from Washington to fix their problems or if they are going to have to use their own state funds. State Rep. John Delaney, a Democrat in Maryland, worries his state will have to divert dollars from education, fixing potholes and other programs to fix its broken exchange. “You can’t just print money in the states,” he said,
That’s right. But the printing presses in Washington have been overused for some time as well—and states that gladly jumped on the Obamacare bandwagon and took the bait shouldn’t be let off the hook by Congress.
So to sum up, the CBO can’t calculate Obamacare’s future costs, confusion about enrollees’ actual salaries could lead to wildly varying numbers on how much it costs this year, and there’s no telling how much money some states ultimately will weasel out of Washington to set up Obamacare.
Talk about a monstrosity of a government program.
What we do know for sure is that Obamacare will cost far more than President Obama and all those who voted for it in Congress told us it would. Which most of us realized all along.
Genevieve Wood advances policy priorities of The Heritage Foundation as senior contributor to The Daily Signal.
