Taxpayers lose $139 million on Fisker Automotive loan

Happy Thanksgiving from the Obama administration. The Energy Department has sold off its $192 million loan guarantee to Fisker Automotive to Chinese billionaire Richard Li for $25 million — the biggest taxpayer loss on a green loan since the failure of Solyndra.

The Energy Department will announce the “selling of the promissory note” to Hybrid Tech, which is owned by Chinese billionaire Richard Li, according to sources familiar with the sale. The DOE sold the loan to Li for $25 million after lending the financially troubled green automaker a total of $192 million since 2009.

“Once again, American taxpayers are losing out to foreign investors due to the Obama administration’s failed green energy policies. Time after time this administration has fumbled the ball with their attempts to pick winners and losers when it comes to American energy,” House Energy and Commerce Committee vice chairman Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, said in a statement to The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“As a result of President Obama’s misguided policies, the Department of Energy Loan Guarantee program is quickly becoming a highly utilized stimulus program for foreign investors,” she added.

Via: Daily Caller

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Obama administration was warned of healthcare.gov liabilities in March

Senior White House and Department of Health and Human Servicesofficials were told last spring of problems that could derail the launch of healthcare.gov, according to a report compiled for the Obama administration and obtained by the Washington Examiner.

Even though senior administration officials repeatedly gave assurances about the readiness of the Obamacare website, they were privately told by outside consultant McKinsey & Co. of risks threatening the functionality of the online marketplaces.

A 14-slide presentation warned of “insufficient time and scope of end-to-end testing,” that the website would launch at “full volume” rather than staggered over time, so-called “stacking” of all phases and “significant dependency on external parties/contractors.” The report also flagged “multiple definitions of success” and “evolving requirements” for the website.

According to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which provided the report to theExaminer, White House and HHS senior officials were briefed on the findings between March 28 and April 8.

White House Chief Technology Officer Todd Park attended a meeting about the report on March 28. Among those present at an April 4 briefing were Health and Human Services SecretaryKathleen Sebelius and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Marilyn Tavenner. Jeanne Lambrew, Obama's health policy adviser, and then-White House deputy chief of staff Mark Childress were briefed on the report April 8 at the White House, according to the House committee.

For weeks, President Obama has been on the defensive over the problem-ridden healthcare.gov website and his broken promise that all Americans could keep their current insurance plans under Obamacare. The president's approval ratings have hit all-time lows in a series of recent polls.

White House officials, however, dismissed GOP attempts to pounce on the previously undisclosed report.

“As we have said many times now and as has been frequently reported, flags were definitely raised throughout the development of the website, as would be the case for any IT project this complex,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz said.

Via: Washington Examiner

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[VIDEO] Sebelius: ‘Don’t believe what you’ve heard’

Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Friday urged potential healthcare consumers to disregard ObamaCare website horror stories and partisan bickering over the law.

Speaking at a panel in San Antonio, Texas, Sebelius was asked what advice she would give to those seeking federal healthcare plans.

“Sign up,” she said. “Don’t believe what you’ve heard. Just check it out, look at the prices, look at the plans.”

The Obama administration is working furiously to fix the myriad problems that have plagued the HealthCare.gov website, as the botched rollout has dominated headlines and provoked a round of congressional hearings.

Sebelius is scheduled to testify in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee next week.

On Friday, Sebelius said she wasn’t happy with the state of the website, but said “significant improvements” have already been made.

“I’d be the first to admit that the website is far from where we want it to be and where it should be,” she said.

“We’ve made significant improvement over the last several weeks but it’s still not functioning at the right pace,” she added.

Via: The Hill

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Waxman: I Logged Onto Healthcare.gov on My iPad During Hearing So It’s All Good

The ranking member on the House Energy and Commerce Committee downplayed the mounting concerns about the efficacy and integrity of the Healthcare.gov website because he was able to log on while fiddling around on his mobile device during today’s hearing.

Contractors including CGI Federal appeared before the committee today to answer questions about the failure of the Obamacare exchange website, but no administration officials testified.

“We are disappointed that the system is not in place and running the way we envisioned. But the contractors have given us assurances that they think everything will be every day better to the point where the deadline can be met for people to sign up, choose a health care plan in time for it to go into effect January 1. The absolute deadline for that to happen is December 15th,” the top Democrat on the committee, Henry Waxman (Calif.), told reporters.

“I think we need to keep in mind that many people already have been able to get their health care plan under the exchange — under the marketplace — under the federal and state marketplaces. And that many people are anxious to get health insurance. And we ought to make sure that it’s working, and not take the approach that some of my colleagues have taken: ‘If it’s not working now, we ought to abolish the whole system.’ Of course, they’ve been against it from the very first day, and wanted to abolish it, and even close out the government to try to eliminate the Affordable Health Care plan,” he continued.

“But we got to stay with it and make sure it’s done. And I was encouraged by the testimony that they feel that they can beat this deadline — absolutely deadline in December 15th — and that people can try now. Because many people are getting through.”

Waxman noted that he went on his iPad during the hearing “and I was able to access healthcare.gov.”

“And I told them I wanted to look at the different plans. They asked where I lived, and I said it was in California, so they referred me to Covered California. And I went on that. And in the course of 10 minutes, I was looking at the various health plans that were available to my constituents,” he said.

His experience was brought up by other Democrats in defense of the exchanges.

Via: PJ Media

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Contractor behind HealthCare.gov to testify extra testing could not have saved site

A top executive with CGI Federal, one of the contractors paid millions to create the ObamaCare website, says “no amount of testing” could have prevented the site’s problem-plagued start.

Senior Vice President Cheryl Campbell’s remarks are part of prepared testimony she will give before a Republican-led House hearing Thursday on the insurance-marketplace site. They also appear to challenge new claims by the administration that a lack of adequate testing was part of the problem.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing is the first since the site’s disastrous Oct. 1  launch -- marked by crashes, slow response times and its inability to let customers make purchases.

Several contractors are set to testify Thursday, and will likely face tough questioning from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, though prepared testimony indicates the witnesses may try to spread the blame around -- including to government officials overseeing the project. 

Prepared testimony from contractor Optum/QSSI blamed in part a "late decision" to require customers to register before browsing for insurance, which could have helped overwhelm the registration system.

Via: Fox News

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New study says threat of man-made global warming greatly exaggerated

A peer-reviewed climate change study released Wednesday by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change finds the threat of man-made global warming to be not only greatly exaggerated but so small as to be “embedded within the background variability of the natural climate system” and not dangerous.

Armed with the new findings, Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee grilled administration environmental policy officials about the economic consequences of its aggressive regulatory crackdown on the fossil fuel industry.

The 1,000 page study was the work of 47 scientists and scholars examining many of the same journals and studies that the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change (UNIPCC) examined, producing entirely different conclusions.

 "This volume provides the scientific balance that is missing from the overly alarmist reports from the IPCC, which are highly selective in their review of climate science," the authors write.

The study was done under the auspices of the Heartland Institute, which claims it "has no formal attachment to or sponsorship from any government or governmental agency."

The Heartland Institute’s president, Joseph Bast, said of the study, "The big issue in the global warming debate is how large is the human impact on climate. And this report shows that it is very small, that natural variability, the variability that's caused by natural cycles of the sun and other factors, way outweigh anything the human impact could have."

Via: Fox News

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