WASHINGTON
Our Botcher-in-Chief is searching for a fall gal to blame for the continuing train wreck that is ObamaCare; Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius seems the likely pick.
Sebelius, the former Democrat governor of Kansas, testified at the House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing where Republicans and even some Democrats prodded her about why Healthcare.gov and ObamaCare itself seem to be on life support.
With her testimony, Sebelius indicated a willingness to cooperate with Congress, thus muting charges that the Obama administration was engaged in a wholesale cover-up.
Even with that testimony, Sebelius, as she freely admitted, is stuck with ownership of the ObamaCare website fiasco. If historical standards for incompetence were still in play, Sebelius already would be back in Topeka.
Sebelius has had a strange disdain for Capitol Hill when you consider that her father, John Gilligan, was a member of the House before becoming a Democrat governor of Ohio.
Until recently Sebelius not only was turning a cold shoulder to Congress but to the Fourth Estate as well.
A few weeks ago, The Associated Press obtained an internal memo from Sebelius' department stating the administration expected to have 500,000 enrolled in ObamaCare by the end of October and 3.3 million by the end of the year.
Responding to an AP query about those expectations, Sebelius' HHS declined to answer, but did issue a statement saying that the administration “has not set monthly enrollment targets.”
Of course, ObamaCare passed the Democrat-controlled House and Senate in March 2010, so Sebelius has had 42 months to get the website up and rolling. One problem, of course, is that no one in Congress actually knew what was in Obama's signature legislative achievement, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously told her colleagues shortly before the vote.
As anger and frustration have mounted over the inaccessibility of the health care website, Sebelius has become the target of catcalls, jeering jokes on late-night talk shows and an increasing number of shouts from both sides of the aisle for her resignation. It's difficult for Americans to have much faith in someone who can't oversee the construction of a website — in an age when thousands of sites are successfully launched each day.
“It's tough to take these shots,” Sebelius said a few days ago. “But I will take them until we get this right.”
Taxpayers might be frowning at the thought. But somewhere in Guilford Cemetery in Surrey, England, the skeleton of Lewis Carroll must be grinning — Alice in Wonderland lives on.
Bogdan Kipling is a Canadian journalist in Washington.
