I saw a bit of White House spokesman Jay Carney discussing the Obamacare navigators, those people who are supposed to help folks sign up and otherwise to use the exchanges. Reports have surfaced of navigators with criminal records (including for things like identity theft). Other reports have mentioned navigators who were unsure of how to use the website, a pretty good indication of poor training. So what was Carney's answer? He said that the entire issue was part of a Republican plan to undermine the Affordable Care Act (as the White House again calls Obamacare).
Some times Washington sinks below the level of the swamp it usually is and descends all the way into the truly reprehensible. Carney's commentary is one of those times. We have people hired by the Obama administration who obviously were not properly vetted. No sane organization, not even the federal government, could think it a good idea to hire people to take down people's most confidential information if the person to be hired had been convicted of identity theft. The temptation is too great and the resulting damage for those whose information is stolen too serious. So the administration did whatever background checking that was done, it selected the people to be hired, and it trained them. There was no Republican involvement in that process at all. Now, however, when the failures of the administration surface, they are somehow the fault of the Republicans who were not even involved.
I am not concerned about Carney smearing the Republicans. They can take care of themselves. No, my concern is why no one in the Obama administration can ever say "we made a mistake." When there was a push to delay Obamacare for a year, the president let the government be shut down instead and called those who wanted the delay "terrorists", "extortionists" and "criminals". Obama surely knew that there were major problems with the entire Obamacare enterprise, especially with the website, but he still used the problem facing Americans, a problem he created, to be the springboard for a political attack rather than an attempt to fix the problem.
Americans properly expect their leader to care about solving problems. It is not enough for a president to concern himself just with his political standing and fund raising. The point of the presidency is to protect America, or as the Constitution puts it to "preserve, protect and defend" it. We should not tolerate an administration that puts its own political fortunes above the good of the nation.
Some times Washington sinks below the level of the swamp it usually is and descends all the way into the truly reprehensible. Carney's commentary is one of those times. We have people hired by the Obama administration who obviously were not properly vetted. No sane organization, not even the federal government, could think it a good idea to hire people to take down people's most confidential information if the person to be hired had been convicted of identity theft. The temptation is too great and the resulting damage for those whose information is stolen too serious. So the administration did whatever background checking that was done, it selected the people to be hired, and it trained them. There was no Republican involvement in that process at all. Now, however, when the failures of the administration surface, they are somehow the fault of the Republicans who were not even involved.
I am not concerned about Carney smearing the Republicans. They can take care of themselves. No, my concern is why no one in the Obama administration can ever say "we made a mistake." When there was a push to delay Obamacare for a year, the president let the government be shut down instead and called those who wanted the delay "terrorists", "extortionists" and "criminals". Obama surely knew that there were major problems with the entire Obamacare enterprise, especially with the website, but he still used the problem facing Americans, a problem he created, to be the springboard for a political attack rather than an attempt to fix the problem.
Americans properly expect their leader to care about solving problems. It is not enough for a president to concern himself just with his political standing and fund raising. The point of the presidency is to protect America, or as the Constitution puts it to "preserve, protect and defend" it. We should not tolerate an administration that puts its own political fortunes above the good of the nation.
No comments:
Post a Comment