Back to Politics

Even though the temps are still up, I found some intersting (back to the big C so the iPad correction isn't in) articles (to me).

The Health and Human Services Department “was given a billion dollars implementation money,” Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg of Montana said. “That money is gone already on additional bureaucrats and IT programs, computerization for the implementation.”

“Oh boy,” Stan Dorn of the Urban Institute said. “HHS has a huge amount of work to do and the states do, too. There will be new health insurance marketplaces in every state in the country, places you can go online, compare health plans.”

The IRS, Health and Human Services and many other agencies will now write thousands of pages of regulations — an effort well under way:

“There’s already 13,000 pages of regulations, and they’re not even done yet,” Rehberg said.

“It’s a delegation of extensive authority from Congress to the Department of Health and Human Services and a lot of boards and commissions and bureaus throughout the bureaucracy,” Matt Spalding of the Heritage Foundation said. “We counted about 180 or so.”

There has been much focus on the mandate that all Americans obtain health insurance, but analysts say that’s just a small part of the law — covering only a few pages out of the law’s 2700.

“The fact of the matter is the mandate is about two percent of the whole piece of the legislation,” Spalding said. “It’s a minor part.”

Much bigger than the mandate itself are the insurance exchanges that will administer $681 billion in subsidies over 10 years, which will require a lot of new federal workers at the IRS and health department. (http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/07/lawyers-have-already-drafted-13000-pages-of-regulations-for-new-obamatax-law/)

It is bad enough to pass a bill "that we need to pass it to see what is in it",  but to leave most of the work to government bureaucrats to actually write the implementation is unconscionable!

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A geothermal energy company with a $98.5 million loan guarantee from the Obama administration for an alternative energy project in Nevada — which received hearty endorsements from Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — faces financial problems, and the company’s auditors have questioned whether it can stay in business.
Much like Solyndra LLC, a California solar-panel manufacturer with a $535 million federal loan guarantee that went bankrupt, Nevada Geothermal Power (NGP) has incurred $98 million in net losses over the past several years, has substantial debts and does not generate enough cash from its current operations after debt-service costs, an internal audit said.(http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jul/4/lights-go-dim-on-another-energy-project/)


Alternative energy sounds great but it is still unproven and a waste of our money so far!