Columnist.
If House Democrats are sharpening their knives, it's not for turkey-carving. After spending three years of political capital on ObamaCare, the President is returning the favor by leaving his liberal flock to fend for themselves. "Here we are, we're supposed to be selling this to people, and it's all screwed up," one House office told The Hill. "This either gets fixed or this could be the demise of the Democratic Party." Asked if Barack Obama was even more unpopular among his party than George W. Bush, another liberal staffer said, "I think that's already happened."
What's the difference between Christmas and ObamaCare? Christmas involved wise men. And after the last month and a half, most Americans are pretty certain that the health care rollout did not. Still, the President is convinced that the holiday season is the perfect time to spread peace, goodwill, and socialized medicine to all. As part of his Organizing for America (OFA) outreach, the White House is launching a new program called "Healthcare for the Holidays," encouraging "family, friends and neighbors to have the one-on-one conversations that are crucial to getting people enrolled."
If you think the malls are busy at Christmas, you should see the atheists! From mangers to tree lightings, America's grinches seem to be on every corner, ready to police the meaning right out of the holiday season. This year, the American Humanist Association (AHA) got an early start on its bah-humbugging by harassing schools that participate in Operation Christmas Child. The goal of the project, which is a long-time outreach of Franklin Graham's Samaritans' Purse, is to fill empty shoeboxes with toys for needy kids around the world. Although the ministry isn't shy about its faith, ministry spokesman Kelly Wells says the real purpose is "to show God's love in a tangible way to disadvantaged children around the world."
It is becoming evident that the President's mea culpa press conference was less about insuring the continuance of health care coverage for the hundreds of thousands of families losing their healthcare because of ObamaCare, than it was providing political cover to the Democrats who voted for ObamaCare.
People say there is safety in numbers -- but they couldn't have meant the ObamaCare enrollment count. Wednesday, the President's reputation took another tumble when the administration finally pulled back the curtain on the law's miserable debut and admitted how few Americans had signed up for the law's coverage. Let's put it this way, said Rep. James Lankford (R-Okla.): more people had lunch at Sonic in Oklahoma City Wednesday than have signed up for ObamaCare in a month and a half.
At a private event last Wednesday, President Obama bragged that he was "remaking the courts." And if his nomination of controversial professor Cornelia Pillard had succeeded, he would have taken a major step toward that goal. Despite her nauseating statements on everything from abstinence to motherhood, the President insisted on nominating Pillard to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the second most important bench in America. Unlike so many appellate courts, the D.C. Circuit has historically been one of the more balanced benches in the country -- a reputation that would certainly be in jeopardy if Pillard had joined.
Every night of every day, Americans sleep in peace because of men and women they've never met -- and some they'll never have the chance to. Even today, with the "war on terror" winding down in the news, there are still flag-draped caskets returning to Dover Air Force Base. There are still fresh graves watered by families' tears at Arlington and across America. And while other veterans suffer from wounds no eye can see, millions of others stand ready, willing to give "the last full measure of devotion" to let strangers pursue the freedom and happiness so many served to give us.
Life hasn't exactly been rosy for the business community under this administration. First, the President's policies kept the economy in the tank. Then he strangled the financial and energy sectors by passing a health care law that's trampling employers' freedom and crushing their bottom lines. Now, as if those burdens weren't enough, the President's party wants to tell companies how they should run their business, who they should hire, and what they can and can't believe.
If the White House told insurance execs to "keep quiet" about ObamaCare, they certainly listened when it came to abortion coverage. Wednesday, even the boss of the entire system, Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, managed a surprised expression when Congressman John Shimkus (R-Ill.) asked her why the agency was hiding coverage details from pro-lifers. Without skipping a beat, the HHS chief insisted she didn't know what she so clearly knew in 2009, which is that ObamaCare is the biggest expansion of taxpayer-funded abortion in U.S. history.
Today may be Halloween, but HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius didn't bother disguising her annoyance at Thursday's testy House hearing. In one of the most anticipated testimonies in years, the woman behind the biggest technological foul-up in American history was visibly irritated as she sat through a three-hour recitation of her agency's failures. At the outset, Sebelius tried to soften the criticism by doing what President Obama has not: owning up to the government's shortcomings.
*People* may be losing their coverage under ObamaCare, but abortion certainly isn't. For more than two million Americans, a routine trip to the mailbox is turning into a health care nightmare, as cancellation notices flood homes that took President Obama at his word that they could keep their health care plans. For as many as *16 million* people, being dropped from their policies is just the beginning of the bad news. Once they reenroll on the government's alternatives, they'll have no way of knowing what their plans include -- and whether that "coverage" funds the destruction of innocent human life.
Americans have heard a lot of excuses about why the ObamaCare website doesn't work, but Secretary Sebelius' latest takes the cake. In her desperation, the HHS chief tried to turn the tables on Republicans, suggesting that the "political atmosphere" was somehow to blame for the website's faulty infrastructure. "Frankly," [she said](http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10/26/sebelius-suggests-republicans-to-blame-for-obamacare-website-woes/) during a stopover in Austin, "a political atmosphere where the majority party, at least in the House, was determined to stop this anyway they possibly could ... was not an ideal atmosphere."
If there's one thing Americans have learned, it's that the ObamaCare rollout wasn't a technological hiccup, bug, or snafu. It wasn't a "glitch," any more than the Titanic was a glitch. This was a system-wide meltdown -- taking the federal government's reputation for incompetence to new heights.
Elections are funny things. Nothing does more to improve Congress' hearing and stiffen members' spines than a routine trip to the ballot box. Like democracy's miracle cure, incumbents recover from their autonomy and start paying attention to their employer: voters. Next year's midterm elections are already having that effect [on Democrats](http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/10/23/Report-All-Senate-Democrats-up-for-re-election-in-2014-will-back-delaying-Obamacare-s-enrollment-deadline), who find themselves on the opposite side of most Americans on ObamaCare. As the gulf grows, so do the liberals running for the exits. This week, some of the law's staunchest supporters were ready to jump ship on the system's linchpin: the individual mandate. Senators Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), and Mark Begich (D-Alaska) all boarded the GOP's bandwagon to delay the ObamaCare penalties that threaten Americans who don't buy insurance by January 1.
If laughter is the best medicine, then ObamaCare's delivering plenty! Everyday Americans may not be benefiting from the new system, but it's certainly been God's gift to late-night comedians. For the past few days, writers have been eating up the government's incompetence, taking rare shots at an administration that, until recently, had been virtually off-limits. Now, the ObamaCare jokes are rolling in, as everyone from Stephen Colbert to Jon Stewart mock the health care system that was supposed to be the President's greatest achievement. With the government's website on the fritz, Jay Leno cracked that a friend of his "was given six months by his doctor -- not to live, to sign up for ObamaCare." And while HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius promised that the administration is bringing in the "best and brightest" to fix the problems, Leno wondered, "Why didn't we bring in the best and brightest in the first place?"
You know the ObamaCare rollout is bad when *Consumer Reports*, the holy grail of product reviews, warns people "to stay away from Healthcare.gov." In a blog post on the new system, the progressive company that prides itself on distinguishing the "hype from the facts" says the President's new website is a bust. Steer clear, its experts say, "until its software vendors clean up the mess they've made."
ObamaCare may be a nightmare for the American people, but it's been a dream come true for government contractors. Teams of specialists have been trucked in to deal with a health care system that's quickly dissolving into the most expensive taxpayer-funded punch line of this administration. Desperate to fix the glitches that threaten the Democrats' credibility, scores of technology experts are performing CPR on a website that wasn't even tested until [a week before](http://washingtonexaminer.com/troubled-obamacare-website-wasnt-tested-until-a-week-before-launch/article/2537381) it went live. Most people familiar with the fiasco say the problems are so expansive that, even with an all-hands-on-deck approach, the errors will take months to correct. In an interview with the *New York Times*, one consultant said Health and Human Services (HHS) would have to rewrite as many as [*five million lines*](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/21/us/insurance-site-seen-needing-weeks-to-fix.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&) of software code to get Healthcare.gov up and running.
Early yesterday morning, members met in the Capitol basement -- where, for the last several weeks of negotiating, Congress's polling numbers have been. Two weeks and several protests into the partial government shutdown, both sides are hungry for a deal to end the standoff. So hungry, Roll Call reports, that a group of House conservatives sat down at Tortilla Coast restaurant to strategize with the defunding ObamaCare standard-bearer, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), to hash out next steps. Recognizing that the Senate was on the precipice of a deal that would yield virtually nothing for conservatives, a dozen Republicans talked about how to respond.
As Congress debates ObamaCare, one issue that almost stopped the law in 2009 -- yet still receives scant media coverage -- is the law's subsidies for abortion coverage. ObamaCare is funded through mandatory spending so as to avoid the Hyde Amendment, the provision which stops appropriated funds for the Department of Health and Human Services from paying for abortion or even subsidizing plans with abortion coverage. The President promised when the health care bill passed that it would not cover abortion, but like FRC warned during the debate over ObamaCare, buried deep within the 2,700 pages is language Nancy Pelosi was hoping Americans would never read, the abortion surcharge scheme. That's right! If an insurer decides to cover abortion in its plan, and the government subsidizes people's premiums in that plan, every single person is required to pay an extra abortion surcharge!
The United States of America will not go into default any time in the near future. That's a pretty strong statement to make, but it's true. Why? Because we have a lot of money with which to make good on our loans. As I noted in [yesterday's Update](http://patriotpost.us/opinion/20689), our government collects, on average, $206 billion a month. The average per-month interest on our debt over a 12-month period is $35 billion which is all that the federal government is paying as it pertains to our nation's debt. The math is pretty straightforward: We will have more than enough to service our national debt and pay for other essential obligations.
