White House won't rule out delay of ObamaCare individual mandate

The White House appeared to leave the door open Monday to delaying the so-called individual mandate in the federal health care law, as President Obama acknowledged the main website for enrollment is not working as it should.
Press Secretary Jay Carney addressed concerns over the mandate at a press briefing shortly after Obama, in the Rose Garden, personally acknowledged failures with the HealthCare.gov site and vowed that "these problems are getting fixed."
Carney was peppered with questions on whether the administration would be open to delaying the requirement on individuals to buy health insurance, if the website continues to lock out would-be customers. Echoing Obama, Carney said repeatedly that the country is just three weeks into a six-month enrollment process and suggested it's too early to make any decisions of that magnitude.
But he did not close the door on the option.
Asked if the administration is looking for flexibility in applying the mandate, Carney said: "Whatever conclusions you draw about the way the law is written, I think you can draw. The law is clear that if you do not have access to affordable health insurance, then you will not be asked to pay a penalty because you haven't purchased affordable health insurance."
He added that the administration is focused on providing that access.
Carney was vague on what the administration's next move would be, aside from bringing in tech experts from the private sector to try and repair the website. Without offering further explanation, he said the Department of Health and Human Services is "looking to align the policies with the disconnect between the open enrollment period and the individual responsibility time frames, which exist on the first year only."
Whether that signals the administration would consider even a short-term delay of the mandate is unclear.
Technically, Americans are supposed to obtain health insurance by the end of March 2014 to avoid a fine. But analysts have since calculated that, considering the time it takes to process all the relevant documents, most would have to seek coverage by mid-February. 
Republicans have used the website failures to fuel their case that the individual mandate should be delayed. They've been pushing for the delay ever since the administration announced earlier this year it would offer some employers a one-year reprieve from a separate mandate to extend insurance to workers.  
The president's remarks in the Rose Garden did little to quell their complaints.
"If the president is frustrated by the mounting failures of his health care law, it wasn't apparent today. Americans are looking for accountability, but what the president offered today was little more than self-congratulation," House Speaker John Boehner said in a statement. "Either the president doesn't grasp the scale of the law's failures or he doesn't believe Americans deserve straight answers." 
Republicans have blasted the administration for not offering up Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for a House hearing scheduled for Thursday.
But the House Energy and Commerce Committee confirmed late Monday that Sebelius would testify before the committee Oct. 30.
"As the administration continues to withhold important details and enrollment figures, I hope Secretary Sebelius is ready to give answers and finally live up to the president's celebrated claims of transparency," Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., said in a statement.

Rubio downcast about immigration reform, casts blame on Obama

I'm Legal?
Sen. Marco Rubio gave a downcast assessment Sunday about Congress passing immigration reform, arguing that fellow Republicans are leery about dealing with President Obama on the issue since he would not negotiate fairly during the recent fiscal crisis.
“Immigration reform is going to be a lot harder to accomplish than it was three weeks ago,” Rubio, R-Fla., who helped pass the Senate legislation handed to the Republican-controlled House, told “Fox News Sunday.”
Rubio said he agreed with Idaho Republican Rep. Raul Labrador who last week said House Republican leadership would be “crazy” to negotiate with Obama if the president makes the same “good faith effort” on an immigration bill that he did on fiscal negotiations and that Obama is “trying to destroy” the Republican Party.
“That’s not to say” Obama might agree to a path to citizenship for some of the roughly 11 million illegal immigrants in the country and to enforcing immigration laws, only to cancel the enforcement component, Rubio said.
The issue returned to the spotlight hours after Congress agreed on a deal to temporarily end the partial government shutdown and increase the federal debt limit, when Obama called on Congress on Thursday to swiftly reach an immigration-reform agreement.
“If the House has ideas on how to improve the Senate bill, let’s hear them. Let’s start the negotiations,” the president said. “This can and should get done by the end of this year.”
Despite Rubio’s reservations about negotiating with the president, he was steadfast in his argument that the country needs to fix a broken immigration system.
“There’s no argument the immigration system has to be fixed,” he told Fox News.
Rubio also defended himself and the Senate legislation, which has been called an amnesty program.
He said the country is now operating under a “de facto” amnesty program and that he’s not concerned about his sagging poll numbers amid a potential 2016 presidential run.
“I continue to believe it’s an important issue for our nation to confront,” Rubio said.
His comments come amid concerns from conservatives who think House leaders might meet with Senate negotiators, which would result in the lower chamber’s step-by-step plan, which begins with securing U.S. borders, being “blended” with the upper chamber’s comprehensive plan.
Rubio also said the House deserves “time and space” to craft its own legislation that “might be even better.” 

476,000 ObamaCare applications filed out of estimated 19 million that visited HealthCare.gov

WASHINGTON –  Administration officials say about 476,000 health insurance applications have been filed through federal and state exchanges, the most detailed measure yet of the problem-plagued rollout of President Barack Obama's signature legislation.
However, the officials continue to refuse to say how many people have actually enrolled in the insurance markets. Without enrollment figures, it's unclear whether the program is on track to reach the 7 million people projecting by the Congressional Budget Office to gain coverage during the six-month sign-up period.
Obama's advisers say the president has been frustrated by the flawed rollout. During one of his daily health care briefings last week, he told advisers assembled in the Oval Office that the administration had to own up to the fact that there were no excuses for not having the website ready to operate as promised.
The president is expected to address the problems on Monday during a health care event at the White House. Cabinet members and other top administration officials will also be traveling around the country in the coming weeks to encourage sign-ups in areas with the highest population of uninsured people.
The first three weeks of sign-ups have been marred by a cascade of computer problems, which the administration says it is working around the clock to correct. The rough rollout has been a glaring embarrassment for Obama, who invested significant time and political capital in getting the law passed during his first term.
The officials said technology experts from inside and outside the government are set to work on the glitches, though they did not say how many workers were being added.
Officials did say staffing has been increased at call centers by about 50 percent. As problems persist on the federally run website, the administration is encouraging more people to sign up for insurance over the phone.
The officials did not want to be cited by name and would not discuss the health insurance rollout unless they were granted anonymity.
Despite the widespread problems, the Obama administration has yet to fully explain what went wrong with the online system consumers were supposed to use to sign up for coverage.
Initially, administration officials blamed a high volume of interest for the frozen screens that many people encountered. Since then, the administration has also acknowledged unspecified problems with software and some elements of the system's design.
Interest in the insurance markets appears to continue to be high. Officials said about 19 million people had visited HealthCare.gov as of Friday night.
People seeking insurance must fill out applications before selecting specific plans. The applications include personal information, including income figures that are used to calculate any subsidies the applicant may qualify for.
More than one person can be included on an application.
Of the 476,000 applications that have been started, just over half have been from the 36 states where the federal government is taking the lead in running the markets. (Nanny States) The rest of the applications have come from the 14 states running their own markets, along with Washington, D.C.
The White House says it plans to release the first enrollment totals from both the federal and state-run markets in mid-November.
An internal memo obtained by The Associated Press showed that the administration projected nearly a half-million people would enroll for the insurance markets during the first month.
Officials say they expect enrollments to be heavier toward the end of the six-month sign-up window.
In an ironic twist, the problems with the rollout were overshadowed by Republican efforts to get changes to the health care law in exchange for funding the government. That effort failed and the government reopened last week with the health care law intact.
Stung by that defeat, some Republicans are now calling for the resignation of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. The White House says it has complete confidence in her.
House Republicans have scheduled a hearing next week to look into the rollout problems. White House allies say they're confident the problems are being addressed.
"There's no question the marketplace website needs some improvement," said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., one of the architects of the law. "The administration needs to fix the computer bugs and I'm confident that they're working around the clock to fix the problems."

Back To Work

Chinese Rating Agency Cuts US Sovereign Credit Rating

Bailey Comment: It just shows you what America has sunk to when a frigging communist country like china can downgrade our credit rating. Everyone in America should be ashamed of themselves especially our government,  I know I am.  Read the article below

A Chinese ratings agency cut its credit rating for U.S. sovereign debt by one notch to A-minus from A on Thursday, saying a deal struck by Congress to raise the government's borrowing ceiling failed to solve the cause of its debt problem.

Dagong Global Credit Rating said that the temporary fix of the debt issue would not defuse the fundamental conundrum of the U.S. fiscal deficit or improve repayment ability in the long-term, but could trigger defaults at any time in the future.

"The deal means only an escape from a debt default for the time being, but hasn't changed the fact that the growth of government borrowing has largely outpaced overall economic growth and fiscal revenues," China's biggest home-grown ratings agency said in a statement.

Editor’s Note: Obama’s Budget Takes Aim at Retired Americans

The U.S. Congress on Wednesday approved an 11th-hour deal to end a partial government shutdown and pull the world's biggest economy back from the brink of a historic debt default that could have threatened financial calamity.

Dagong said the increase in the debt ceiling, for the fifth time since President Obama took office in 2009, provided further proof of the U.S. government's inability to make improvements to fiscal fundamentals that were needed to enhance its debt servicing capability.

It said it held a negative outlook for the United States, noting that the Federal Reserve continued to inject dollars into the market through quantitative easing policies, eroding the value of the outstanding debt and hurting creditors' interests.

The downgrade put the United States several notches below Dagong's top rating and on par with Brazil, Israel and Panama, among others.

Dagong's ratings are barely watched outside of China, and major international credit agencies classify most countries very differently from the Chinese agency.

Dagong estimated that the U.S.'s foreign creditors could have suffered an estimated loss of $628.5 billion between 2008 and 2012 due to a weakening of the U.S. dollar.

China, sitting on the largest stockpile of foreign exchange reserves in the world, is the biggest holder of U.S. treasuries.

Dagong's views do not necessarily represent the Chinese government's stance, however, its analysis often runs in tandem with remarks from government officials.

China's Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao had earlier urged the U.S. government to take "concrete steps" to resolve the fiscal cliff issue and meet its responsibility to uphold stability of international financial markets.

A commentary on the official Xinhua news agency on Thursday took the two main U.S. political parties to task for "brinkmanship".

"The saga in Washington is teaching America's creditors a lesson: U.S. politicians are ready to fight each other at the expense of debt-holders' interests and U.S. Treasury bonds may no longer be safe investment," the commentary said.

The commentary does not reflect official policy but is an insight into views held at the top levels.

Fitch Ratings said on Tuesday it had placed a negative outlook over its AAA rating for the United States due to the political brinkmanship. Moody's Investors Service rates the United States at Aaa, while Standard & Poor's rates it at AA-plus.

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Furloughed government workers could be paid twice in Oregon

 Bailey Comment: The government is just a great big money pit! A small example is the article below.


Some federal workers who were furloughed in Oregon could be getting paid twice, with a state official confirming to Fox News that those workers who received state unemployment benefits during the partial government shutdown will not have to re-pay the money.
The spokesman for WorkSource Oregon Employment Department said the workers received at most a week’s worth of unemployment benefits. The spokesman said he did not know how many workers received the benefits.
He confirmed that furloughed federal workers in the state do not have to re-pay the state unemployment benefits.
The employees will receive double pay because the budget bill approved by Congress provides that all furloughed government workers will receive back pay for the days they did not work under the partial government shutdown.
Richard Hobble of the National Association of State Workforce Agencies told Fox News Oct. 11 that if federal employees receive double payment, the states should require them to re-pay the unemployment benefits once they received back pay.
“The states will be expected to collect back from the claimants who received those benefits when in fact they were compensated for those weeks,” he said.
During the partial shutdown, a third of the new unemployment claims filed in New Mexico came from federal workers. It was not clear if they would also be paid twice under the budget agreement provision if their claims were approved.
Washington D.C. and Maryland also both paid millions in unemployment benefits to about 24,000 furloughed workers during the budget crisis.