Posted on 10/24/2013 1:54:08 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Will the star witness who isn’t there become the sacrificial secretary?
Thursday’s marquee hearing at an otherwise quiet Capitol takes place at House Energy and Commerce. That’s where Republicans will launch their public investigation into what’s really wrong with HealthCare.gov and who’s really responsible for the centerpiece of the new health insurance marketplace that’s become such a wobbly mess.
Officials from four of the 55 contractors will testify, but no one from the Obama administration will appear. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius decided to spend the day out on the hustings, touting the benefits of the health care law across the Southwest. She has agreed to come before the committee next week instead.
It will be little surprise if the corporate executives, taking advantage of her absence as a rebuttal witness, push as much blame as possible for the online morass toward their government customers. What will be more newsworthy is if the wall of Democratic support for Sebelius starts to crumble.....
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That background helps explain why Obama is inclined to keep Sebelius at her post indefinitely.
First, it would be enormously disruptive to the implementation if it suddenly became rudderless just as the all-hands-on-deck orders are being implemented to cure the functionality ailments in the next month. There’s likely to be a surge in traffic ahead of the Dec. 15 deadline for buying coverage that would start with the new year.
Second, the intensity of the partisan rift over the law would make it highly problematic for any Sebelius successor to win Senate confirmation, especially in an election year. With efforts to legislate an undermining of Obamacare at a dead end until 2015, at least 40 Republicans could be expected to launch a filibuster against whoever might be nominated as the next HHS secretary. He or she would become the next proxy for everything they still don’t like about the statute, turning the hearings into an extended forum for their skepticism about the administration’s competence and honesty during the implementation.
“I think my job is to get this fully implemented and to get the website working right,” Sebelius said in a CNN interview Tuesday night, when asked if she and the president had discussed if she should step down.
She also declared that Obama knew nothing of the software mess before the rollout began three weeks ago — a sign that, so long as she stays in office, protecting the boss will also be part of her job.
“He will keep her because she is doing exactly what she was hired to do!”
Exactly, she is just another casualty on the road to a single payer system.
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