During a recent discussion about the problems associated with the rollout of the Healthcare.gov website, Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s Morning Joe said on the show?that if this happened in the private sector at a big company, the person responsible would be gone. ?Fair comment, as there have been problems with the launch of the Healthcare.gov website.
Of course, Government is not in the business of building websites.? Government must rely on the bedrock of GOP ideology, the Private Sector, to build a website for them.? Through the process of competitive bidding, businesses? from all over the world submit proposals to Government Contracting Officers.? According to a study published by the GAO, 55 different contractors participated in the building the website.
According to Dr. Donald M. Berwick, Administrator for Medicare and Medicaid in 2010 and 2011, a lack of time and a lack of money contributed to the problems.? Because the GOP controlled House blocked funds, and because 30 GOP controlled States refused to set up their own exchanges, politics made things worse:
requiring the Federal Government to vastly expand its project in unexpected ways.
Problems were magnified by delaying the issuance of important regulations until after the 2012 elections. Berwick went on to stand up for the Federal workers handling the rollout, saying:
The staff was heroic and dedicated.? But we did not have enough money, and we all knew that.
Defaming, demeaning, and demonizing the Federal Government and Government Bureaucrats is one of the standard methods used by the GOP to distract from the truth that it is often their refusal to properly fund a program which becomes the major cause of problems or outright failure.
Congressman Frank Pallone, Democrat of New Jersey’s 6th District, went ballistic during the House Energy and Commerce Committee hearings on the Healthcare.gov rollout last Thursday.? The Republican Chairman, Congressman Joe Barton, Texas, 6th District, suggested that Cheryl Campbell, the witness from the Private contractor, CGI, had violated privacy laws.? Congressman Pallone jumped into the fray calling the hearing a “monkey court.”
While Congressman Pallone may have been out of line, using a reference that could easily be construed as racially insensitive, he was still making a point.? Perhaps Joe Scarborough and the GOP Congress now conducting this Congressional hearing are wrong in calling for firings and the shutdown of the Healthcare.gov website.? Are they really trying to fix the problems?? Do these Republicans up on Capitol Hill and in our State Houses really want to fix the glitches and get them up and running so that people can access them and get insurance as intended? Or is it part of the continuing effort to bring down the ACA before it ever gets the chance to be fully up and running?
Remember that this is a system originally created by Conservatives, originally put into practice by Conservatives in Massachusetts under the stewardship of Governor Mitt Romney, and then watered down so as to appease enough Republicans in the Senate and House to pass Congress in 2010.
Despite GOP obstruction, the economic benefits of the ACA are numerous.? It has been estimated that premiums paid by consumers will be lower than originally expected, and the Federal Government will save 190 Billion Dollars over ten years, also more than originally expected. ?The Federal savings might be?50 Billion more than the original estimates. And those?deficit reductions have been estimated by the CBO to continue into the following decade.
David M. Cutler, Professor of Applied Economics at Harvard University, an adviser to the 2008 Obama Campaign, has said:
The Affordable Care Act is the most serious effort ever made to address the myriad flaws in health care today. If it works as intended, the health of our economy ? as well as our people ? will be much improved.
Despite GOP claims to the contrary, the CBO determination that repealing the ACA will increase the Federal Deficit by 109 Billion Dollars has been fact checked as true.
Jonathan Gruber, an MIT Professor of Economics, has written that:
Fully implementing the ACA will make both our citizens and our economy more secure.
A study by a Texas economic and financial analysis firm, The Perryman Group, found that simply by accepting the Federal money to expand Medicaid would create private sector jobs, 300,000 in Texas by the third year of operation of the ACA.? The Florida Center for Fiscal and Economic Policy concluded that 65,000 private sector jobs would be created by year six in Florida. But since both Republican Governor Rick Perry and Florida Governor along with 16 other Red State Governors, are refusing to participate, these jobs will not be coming.
Suppose that the GOP had not been obstructing the ACA every step of the way, and had been cooperating in fixing what is broke and making what wasn’t working right better. What then? The country would have seen lower deficits, lower healthcare costs for consumers, a healthier population, no more personal bankruptcies caused by catastrophic illness, an increase in good private sector jobs, and a corresponding increase in taxes collected by Government at all levels.
Last week, the Department of Labor was late reporting the September jobs reports. The report had been delayed, as the people at the Department of Commerce who were responsible for analyzing and publishing the monthly report had been furloughed during the GOP/Teabully Government shutdown.? The report showed that employers, worried about possible effects, held off hiring in the weeks before the impending shutdown.? 148,000 jobs were added in September, still below the 207,000 monthly average added during the first quarter of this year. The unemployment rate still dipped to 7.2 percent.
Now we can expect that the results for October on both fronts will go the other way as a direct result of the GOP/Teabully Government shutdown. And it can also be predicted that the GOP/Teabully folks will blame the slowing of the economy and the overall slow economic recovery on President Obama and the Democrats.
24 Billion Dollars is the estimated loss to the US economy as a result of the GOP/Teabully Government shutdown, over .06% of yearly Gross National Product.
Republicans took control of the US House of Representatives along with 11 States as a result of the 2010 elections.? Since then, as part of their plan to bring the same austerity program that has been proven to have failed in Europe to a Government and a State near you, Government workers have lost jobs by the hundreds of thousands.? The GOP controlled States are are where most of Public Sector job losses have come from as twelve red States are responsible for 70% of all state and local public sector job losses since 2010.
2009, 2010, and 2011 have seen the most Public Sector job losses at the State and local level on record, some 600,000, while the GOP Congress has blocked all attempts at the Federal level to provide funding to the States to prevent some of these losses.
The unemployment rate was under four percent for 40 straight months before President Clinton left office.? President Bush doubled the unemployment rate before he left a ravaged economy in the hands of President Obama. ?Analysis of the job numbers show that there have been 750,000 total public sector job loses?since President Obama took office. ?The numbers also show that after eight years under President George W. Bush, the private sector had lost 665,000 jobs and that since President Obama has taken office the private sector has added 2,282,000 private sector jobs.
Republicans control the US House of Representatives.? There are currently 22 States where the GOP controls both the Governorship and the Legislature with three other States having a Democratic Governor and Legislatures controlled by Republicans. ?The GOP controlled and dominated States are adding to our economic woes. ? These public sector job cuts add to the unemployment problem and lower the tax base at all levels raising the Federal deficit and making the balancing of State budgets a more difficult task.
Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner, has asked the President:
Where are the jobs?
Speaker Boehner said that the 2012 election was:
About jobs, jobs, jobs.
And what legislation has been passed or even been introduced by the GOP/Teabully House to increase jobs and to actually help to expedite our economic recovery?? NONE. Instead, we have seen 41 attempts to repeal the ACA??until recently when the GOP tactics switched to votes to defund and/or delay the law leading up to the recent Government shutdown.? These GOP/Teabully actions caused nothing but harm to Americans, to the economy, and to the job market.? The GOP has also given us the sequester, which has been estimated to have resulted in 700,000 job losses.
What If the GOP/Teabully actually acted like patriots and worked together with Democrats, as was done under President Roosevelt, to use Government as a tool to bring the country and the world back from near total economic collapse? Where would the economy be now if the GOP/Teabully House stopped willfully and seditiously obstructing the President for no reason other than hatred and political gain?
We would probably at least have back all of public sector jobs needlessly lost as a direct result of the GOP/Teabully plan to try make the Presidency of Barack Hussein Obama a failure.? We would probably have a revived infrastructure, a recovering environment, and millions of other public and private sector jobs moving us closer to the level considered as full employment, or at least to the levels that existed at the time the last Democratic President left office in January, 2000.
But like most GOP plans and policies, they have proven once again to be cynical while failing to accomplish their goals.? Let’s make sure that they are no longer in a position to try this again.
Remember, 2013 at the State and local level. Then 2014 and beyond.? Vote as wise as we can and must? take back our country.
Edited/Published: SB
