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

Continue Reading.....

NORQUIST’S SOLUTION TO ROUND TWO OF THE DEBT CEILING HIKE

The first round was a draw. The debt ceiling was moved off to Feb. 7, 2014 and the continuing resolution kept the sequester spending levels through Jan. 15, 2014. Status quo ante.

However, it certainly looked like a loss for conservatives because hopes had been raised that the Democrat Senate and President Obama would agree with the Republican House and defund/repeal Obamacare. Reid and Obama declined/ignored that offer.

So now what? What did we learn from Round One?

First, Republicans in Congress and conservatives across the nation need to look at the strengths and weaknesses of each team. What are the pressure points? What does each side want? (It might have been a good idea to do this three months ago, but horses and barn doors….)

Second, keep in mind that Republicans and Democrats each wield a veto. The Senate can reject any House initiative. The House can reject any Senate proposal. Neither side can force the other team to accept anything. This limits one’s expectations. Strategies that insist that one team can “stand firm” and win need to take a refresher course in arithmetic and high school civics.

Third, the team that wants a change in the status quo is at a disadvantage. In August 2012 Obama wanted a gigantic hike in the debt ceiling to take him past the November 2012 election. He had to make big spending concessions to win House GOP agreement. This October, Republicans were demanding the end of Obamacare. They were fighting uphill with the sun in their eyes. The defense has the advantage in these evenly matched fights.The Senate said no.

Via: Human Events

Continue Reading.....

Obama’s Goat - That’s what he’s turned the National Park System into.

The National Park System has a budget of $2.6 billion, much of it raised by concession and attendance fees. Even if it were entirely taxpayer-funded it would represent only .00068 of every federal dollar in our $3.8 trillion budget. Nonetheless, hardball-playing White House strategists have made it the most conspicuous instrument of pain inflicted by the federal shutdown.

The Republican House has tried to fund the park system during the struggle over Obamacare funding, but without success. Even park funding offers by states have been rejected by the feds. Almost every day brings fresh examples of unnecessary annoyances and hardships visited on the public by the park service and its Interior Department superiors.

The purpose of these gratuitous crackdowns seems to be to provoke outrage against the House of Representatives. But might they not instead provoke well-justified resentment against political manipulation by the White House? That resentment will grow, it appears, when it turns out that that even within the Park Service the implementation of the shutdown gets exceptions based on partisan political clout.

Will someone please ask Interior Department Secretary Sally Jewell, the former private executive from Seattle, why she is allowing her department’s most popular agency to play the shutdown goat? Surely the deployment of rangers as scolds and punishers — for the infraction of trying to use a park! — hurts the Park Service image. In its nearly 100 year existence, has the National Park System ever been exploited — day upon day — for such negative propaganda?

Via: American Spectator

Continue Reading....

His Imperial Presidency

Our president forgets the Republican House was elected the very same day he was.

Thomas Friedman is worried about American democracy. He writesthat by not giving President Obama everything we wants in a funding resolution, the House of Representatives is showing “contempt for the democratic process” and is thumbing its nose at our hollowed tradition of “majority rule.”

Like much of what he writes, Thomas Friedman’s logic here is rather murky. Which majority is having its will thwarted by some ideological fringe minority? Is it the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives? A clear majority of the American people has consistently, over several years, confirmed by numerous polls, opposed Obamacare, which is at the heart of the funding disagreement. Are these the majorities of which Friedman writes? No, in his mind, and in the mind of the Democratic leadership, the House of Representatives, as long as it has a Republican majority, is an illegitimate organization. And the majority of the American people who oppose Obamacare just don’t understand it and so their opposition is irrelevant.

According to Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, no one in the legislative branch has any business trying to change anything regarding Obamacare because “it is the law.” Obamacare would not pass today. It would not have passed two years ago. It only became law because Obama’s election in 2008 ushered in short-lived Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate including a “super-majority” in the Senate, which allowed the Democrats to ram the legislation through even though no one was given a chance to read it, let alone understand it (in Nancy Pelosi’s famous words, Congress had to pass it in order to see what was in it). Even then, it only made it through Congress due to political gamesmanship. As a direct result of public opposition to this legislation, Democrats promptly lost the House and nearly lost the Senate. Yet Harry Reid says this piece of legislation is so sacrosanct that Republicans are “insane” to try to change it?

Via: The American Spectator

Continue Reading....