Posted on 04/09/2012 2:46:41 AM PDT by Libloather
White House has diverted $500M to IRS to implement healthcare law
By Sam Baker - 04/09/12 05:15 AM ET
The Obama administration is quietly diverting roughly $500 million to the IRS to help implement the president’s healthcare law.
The money is only part of the IRS’s total implementation spending, and it is being provided outside the normal appropriations process. The tax agency is responsible for several key provisions of the new law, including the unpopular individual mandate.
Republican lawmakers have tried to cut off funding to implement the healthcare law, at least until after the Supreme Court decides whether to strike it down. That ruling is expected by June, and oral arguments last week indicated the justices may well overturn at least the individual mandate, if not the whole law.
“While President Obama and his Senate allies continue to spend more tax dollars implementing an unpopular and unworkable law that may very well be struck down as unconstitutional in a matter of months, I’ll continue to stand with the American people who want to repeal this law and replace it with something that will actually address the cost of healthcare,” said Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.), who chairs the House appropriations subcommittee for healthcare and is in a closely contested Senate race this year.
The Obama administration has plowed ahead despite the legal and political challenges.
It has moved aggressively to get important policies in place. And, according to a review of budget documents and figures provided by congressional staff, the administration is also burning through implementation funding provided in the health law.
The law contains dozens of targeted appropriations to implement specific provisions. It also gave the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) a $1 billion implementation fund, to use as it sees fit. Republicans have called it a “slush fund.”
HHS plans to drain the entire fund by September — before the presidential election, and more than a year before most of the healthcare law takes effect. Roughly half of that money will ultimately go to the IRS.
HHS has transferred almost $200 million to the IRS over the past two years and plans to transfer more than $300 million this year, according to figures provided by a congressional aide.
The Government Accountability Office has said the transfers are perfectly legal and consistent with how agencies have used general implementation funds in the past. The $1 billion fund was set aside for “federal” implementation activities, the GAO said, and can therefore be used by any agency — not just HHS, where the money is housed.
Still, significant transfers to the IRS and other agencies leave less money for HHS, and the department needs to draw on the $1 billion fund for some of its biggest tasks.
The healthcare law directs HHS to set up a federal insurance exchange — a new marketplace for individuals and small businesses to buy coverage — in any state that doesn’t establish its own. But it didn’t provide any money for the federal exchange, forcing HHS to cobble together funding by using some of the $1 billion fund and steering money away from other accounts.
The transfers also allow the IRS to make the healthcare law a smaller part of its public budget figures. For example, the tax agency requested $8 million next year to implement the individual mandate, and said the money would not pay for any new employees.
An IRS spokeswoman would not say how much money has been spent so far implementing the individual mandate.
Republicans charged during the legislative debate over healthcare that the IRS would be hiring hundreds of new agents to enforce the mandate and throwing people in jail because they don’t have insurance.
However, the mandate is just one part of the IRS’s responsibilities.
The healthcare law includes a slew of new taxes and fees, some of which are already in effect. The tax agency wants to hire more than 300 new employees next year to cover those tax changes, such as the new fees on drug companies and insurance policies.
The IRS will also administer the most expensive piece of the new law — subsidies to help low-income people pay for insurance, which are structured as tax credits. The agency asked Congress to fund another 537 new employees dedicated to administering the new subsidies.
The Republican-led House last year passed an amendment 246-182 sponsored by Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.) that would have prevented the IRS from hiring new personnel or initiating any other measures to mandate people to purchase health insurance. The measure, strongly opposed by the Obama administration, was subsequently dropped from a larger bill that averted a government shutdown.
The New Imperial Presidency passed that point a LONG time ago. He runs roughshod over everybody and nobody has the stones to stop him. Nixon was threatened with impeachment and resigned for far, far less than this. Yet nobody in the MSM will tell us that.
win, lose, or draw with the SCOTUS ruling, this zombie ‘law’ will still be roaming the country side the next day...
bm
No, there’s something...audacious, if you will...about the way the Obama administration has (so events suggest to me) absconded with deci billions of taxpayer money — I mean outright theft. This doesn’t include the raping of the federal budget.
It’s way past time for a MAJOR tax revolt in this country.
The tree of liberty is in a SEVERE drought.
A dictator, such as Obama, only has the power that the people give him.
Currently at least 40 % of American voters are gladly willing to give him the necessary power to continue his dictatorship.
Dictator Obama has designed Obama”care” to be active only AFTER he is re-elected, thus enabling THE NINE SUPREMES to delay ruling on the Constitutionality of the dictate of the individual mandate until Obama is once again the Illegal Foreign White House Occupier, (IFWHO).
The purpose of Dictator Baby-Doc Barack is simple: 1.) Regulate; 2.) Control; and 3.) Destroy. By his own count he as achieved 60 % of his goals.
His deep hatred of America could have only come from his childhood.
Since there are no known networks of childhood friends from Obama’s past, Obama was probably a member of a Marxist sleeper cell funded by wealthy men with a Marxist view of the World.
The lack of credible evidence that has NOT been forged requires a long-term, highly skilled and well-funded support group.
Who the key members of Obama’s probable support group and probable sleeper cell were and are is well known to the CIA and the FBI.
Will the “Citizen Journalists” such as Breitbart Editor Joel Pollack be able to out-spy these two tax-funded spy entities?
BTW, forget about the LAM, (Liberal Agenda Media), as they are saving their notes to write their tell-all Obama books after Obama has SAFELY retired back home in Kenya.
BTW, BTW, to all the doubters of the above speculation: what does your gut tell you?
SCOTUS can stop him, with the ruling. He will keep spending now though
Democrats do every thing to make sure your retirement party a funeral are on the same day.
And let’s not forget the death tax they gave us.
And, you and I will go to prison if we withhold our hard-earned tax dollars to protest the FRaud and theft that the thuggish Obongo Bozo administration is by !
I hope and pray that this unconstitutional anti-American administration’s behavior is amply rewarded sometime in the future.
Orange jump suits comes readily to mind.
Fellow FReepers; WE MUST VOTE THIS BAND OF THUGS AND CRIMINALS OUT OF OFFICE IN NOVEMBER!
How true. The rats/media convinced most Americans the impeachment of Bent Willie was just political show. No matter what the first black Prez does, it just doesn't matter.
Our Framers included the impeachment power because they knew human nature and we would end up with the occasional rogue and criminal President. Unlike European kingdoms, we are not supposed to storm the King's palace and do nasty things to him, his family and ministers.
Why do I feel we're more likely to get GOP commercials saying "He's a good man and you have nothing to fear from an Obama Presidency - Part II"
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