Why Not Take a Victory Lap on Obamacare, Republicans?:
C'mon, Republicans in the House and Senate. Get up off those fat asses and sashay yourself down to the National Mall and do a group victory lap around the Reflecting Pool to celebrate ensuring that the Obamacare enrollment effort was about as messy and disturbing as a clown orgy. Fuck, yeah. After all that time you spent working out at the congressional gyms that stayed open during the shutdown, you need to show off. High five, do an endzone dance, spike the motherfuckin' ball, something to show the United States just how proud you all are of your efforts.
After all, who was it who told Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to shove her repeated requests for more funding to implement the Affordable Care Act up her coochie? It was congressional Republicans. Even as late as April of this year, with the ACA a Supreme Court-approved law, Republicans were laughing at the idea that they would give more money to make sure that Obamacare was a success.
Let's let Sebelius herself explain why the Obama administration was asking for $1.5 billion to get the ACA exchanges going at the federal level. It's in answer to a question from Rep. Todd Young, an Indiana Republican, about the request for extra cash at a hearing on April 12, 2013: "When this bill was passed in 2010, the Congressional Budget Office estimate was a $10 billion administrative cost to full implementation of the law. And you are correct: In the law itself, there was $1 billion appropriated, a tenth of what the nonpartisan CBO recommended be the cost. I think we have done an extraordinary job, frankly, here in 2013 allocating and using judiciously the $1 billion that we had. We do have about $230 million of those dollars left. We will use those and some additional resources in 2013. And we have asked for additionally 1.5 billion (dollars) in 2014, and that's really to get the IT hub, the call center, the IT up and running." Then Young cut her off, of course.
You got that? Sebelius asked for more money to get "the IT up and running." It was still way less than was recommended, and that $10 billion was if all the states created exchanges. The Republicans in Congress told her to go fuck herself. She added at the hearing, "We are using every opportunity we have to look at my transfer authority within HHS, and dollars that we have." In other words, she was going to string together scraps of funding in order stretch the HHS budget and get it working. Sebelius also went to private companies to get them to contribute to efforts to get Americans to enroll in the exchanges, which also caused monkey rage on the right because...oh, fuck, do monkeys need a reason?
Let's bottom line this: Kathleen Sebelius and the Obama administration said they needed more money to get the website right. Congress said no. And now Kathleen Sebelius has to look these same motherfuckers in the face and answer their stupid ass questions about why the website has had so many failures. She should just hold up a goddamn mirror as her response to every question.
Bully to you, Republicans. You got the Obamacare you wanted, one that has people frustrated and angry. You've tried to defund it, challenged it in court (which you're still doing), stopped states from making their own functioning exchanges (which is one of the big reasons the cluster has been fucked) and not accepted expanded Medicaid, outright lied about shit, and were total assholes about encouraging people to sign up.
Please, don't pretend you care about making it all work better. Shit, that's like a terrorist saying that he's gonna help rebuild the embassy he just blew up instead of claiming responsibility and threatening to bomb more places. Own it. The fuck-ups are yours at least as much as they are the Obama administration's. Arguably, more so.
So take a fuckin' bow. You deserve it, you obstructionist twats. After all, we probably wouldn't even be talking website breakdowns if, instead of throwing the wrench into the machine, you had used it to tighten the bolts.
As you're taking that lap, just make sure that you give a thumbs-up to all the people who will be dicked over on their health care because you worked so hard to make sure they got dicked over.
