Critical part of ObamaCare website still not fixed

Even as the Obama administration struggles to deal with the approaching end of open enrollment for health care exchanges, one critical part of the website has yet to be fixed.
Earlier, administration officials had predicted ObamaCare could be seriously jeopardized if the key back end of healthcare.gov were not fixed ahead of the March 31 enrollment deadline.
The back end of the website is the two-way connection between the government and insurance companies aimed at telling each other who signed up for what.
"Insurance executives just see this as a major nightmare," says Robert Laszewski of Health Policy and Strategy Associates. "I mean, when are we finally going to be able to reconcile all the data, to know who is really covered, who is really paid, and what the insurance companies should be paid for?"
Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, raised concerns over it at a recent hearing with Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
“The number that's really important," Doggett said, "is not how many people have enrolled, but how many people have paid their premiums that are actually getting in exchange-base coverage. A number," he said pointedly, "we've never been given."
Former Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Holtz-Eakin says,"Nobody knows.There remains no clear information about who has paid the premium and as a result, who the insurance companies need to get reimbursed for."
Though some analysts believe the administration knows a lot more than it is saying, officials deny having any reliable information.
Industry sources and surveys show that while officials boast 5 million sign ups, about 1 million of them are not paying premiums, and therefore not officially enrolled.
The administration hired the firm Accenture in a no-bid contract to fix the site after a previous contractor failed, arguing in official documents last December that there was no time for competing bids,since mid-March was a key turning point in the law, and any delay would, as the document put it, "... result in financial harm to the Government..."
It even went so far as to say that "... the entire health care reform program is jeopardized” by any failure of the back end, and it laid out a list of things that could go wrong, including "Inaccurate issuance of payments to health plans which could seriously put them at financial risk; potentially leading to their default and disrupting continued services and coverage to consumers..."
"This had to get fixed right now," says Laszewski. "Well it's past 'right now', it's - you know we're into March and we don't have the back end of the system done, we don't have the ability for insurance companies to be paid, we don't have the ability for reconciliations to be done."
Those reconciliations include who has really signed up, who has paid, and if the subsidies are accurate -- something officials say they don't currently know.
Sebelius tolda congressional committee recently,"people are buying a product in the private market. As soon as we have accurate information, we will give it to you but we do not currently have information about how many people have paid."
Officials now tell Fox News, however, that the dramatic language predicting possible disaster is "no longer an accurate assessment"because they're using temporary workarounds with insurance companies.
But the companies themselves say a reckoning is coming ... that could cost them tens of millions of dollars when the books are finally reconciled. And that could take months, well after insurance companies have to set new rates for 2015.

'Not educated': Reid blames Internet ignorance for ObamaCare extension

   SENATE MAJORITY LEADER Harry Reid, attempting to explain the Obama administration's latest decision to extend a key ObamaCare deadline, says people just 'are not educated on how to use the Internet.'

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Obama administration extends health care enrollment deadline

The Obama administration will grant extra time to Americans who say they are unable to enroll in health care plans through the federal insurance marketplace by the deadline set for the end of March, Fox News confirmed Tuesday.
All consumers who have begun to apply for coverage on HealthCare.gov, but who do not finish by Monday, will have until about mid-April to ask for an extension, federal officials told the Washington Post.
The Washington Post reported that users will have a chance to check a box on the website indicating they tried to enroll before the deadline, though the government will not try to determine whether the person actually made an effort to sign up.
"This is probably the first of many (extensions)," Chris Stirewalt told Megyn Kelly Tuesday on "The Kelly File."
"This is the first nod to a dire political situation," Stirewalt added.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus pounced on the extension, calling it another delay for a "failed health care law."
“Another day, another ObamaCare delay from the same Obama administration that won’t work with Republicans to help Americans suffering from the unintended consequences of the Democrats’ failed health care law," Priebus said in a statement. "Democrats in leadership may say they are doubling down on ObamaCare but you have to wonder how many more unilateral delays their candidates running in 2014 can withstand.”
Many states and the federal government experienced technical problems with the enrollment websites, but implementation of the federal Affordable Care Act has been a relative disaster in Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon and Vermont.
Rather than focusing on meeting enrollment targets, officials in those states find themselves consumed with replacing top officials, cancelling contracts with software companies, dealing with state or federal investigations, and spending tens of millions of dollars on fixes and new contractors. The core of the problem has been the difficulty in building an online health insurance marketplace that syncs up with myriad state and federal databases.
Early projections for those five states were to sign up a combined 800,000 Americans for private health insurance coverage by March 31, 11 percent of the Obama administration's original target for national enrollment. Yet with just days to go before the six-month enrollment period ends, achieving 25 percent of that target would be considered a success.
Overseers of Nevada Health Link have called that state's program a "full failure" and a "catastrophe." Some officials have suggested dumping Xerox, which was awarded a $75 million contract to develop the system.
While Xerox remains on the job, a state board earlier this month approved up to $1.5 million to hire another tech firm, Deloitte Consulting, to assess the Xerox system and recommend fixes.
Last month Nevada officials cut their target enrollment from 118,000 to 50,000 and conceded that meeting even the lower goal would be a challenge. That drew the ire of board members, who lashed out about the thousands of people who will remain uninsured after Monday's deadline.
"These are not numbers. These are people throughout the state who don't have health insurance," said Lynn Etkins, an attorney and vice chairwoman of the board overseeing the Silver State Health Insurance Exchange.
A week later, Nevada exchange executive director Jon Hager announced his resignation to pursue "new opportunities."
It is a similar story in Oregon, where the exchange's executive director and two officials who oversaw the early technology development resigned. As of last week, 47,000 Oregonians had signed up for private insurance, less than a quarter of initial projections for the full enrollment period.
The exchange's website was so badly bungled that applications at the beginning had to be processed manually, a process that remains partially in use. Cover Oregon has withheld $26 million of the $160 million billed by Oracle, which designed the website.
The federal Government Accountability Office has announced an investigation, and a state-funded audit released last week found a failure by the exchange's managers to heed reports of problems, poor communication and what it described as "unrealistic optimism." In announcing results of the audit, Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber said he was angry and disappointed in a process that had caused so much confusion and uncertainty among consumers.
Maryland's exchange crashed at the start of open enrollment on Oct. 1 and has been rocky ever since. The exchange's initial executive director, Rebecca Pearce, quit two months into open enrollment, and last month Maryland fired the state's prime information technology contractor, Noridian Healthcare Solutions, after paying it $65 million.
U.S. Rep. Andy Harris, the only Republican in Maryland's congressional delegation, called for a review by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services into how $250 million in federal money was used in the botched exchange. The department's inspector general informed Harris that it will conduct the review.
"I mean, this is an immense amount of money on a project that I think in the end, if I were betting right now, I would bet that they will abandon the Maryland exchange and either import another state exchange like Connecticut's that works or go to the federal exchange," Harris said.
In addition to making major fixes, Maryland officials are considering whether to adopt technology developed by another state, join a consortium of other states running their own exchanges or partner with the federal exchange.
In Massachusetts, where health care reform implemented under then-Gov. Mitt Romney was used as a model for President Obama's Affordable Care Act, officials announced earlier this month that they were cutting ties with CGI Group Inc. The Montreal-based firm also was the lead contractor on the troubled federal health care website that operates in 36 states.
CGI was hired last year under a $68 million contract to develop a website transitioning Massachusetts' previous health insurance program to reflect requirements under the federal law.
But technical problems quickly led to a backlog of 50,000 paper applications, a pile that has since been whittled to about 21,000. The state hired Optum, another health care technology firm, to come up with short- and long-term solutions for the website, for which it was to be paid at least $16.4 million through the end of March.
"The picture we are painting is that we have a long way to go," said Sarah Iselin, a health care executive hired by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick to oversee fixing the website. "We are not going to sugarcoat anything."
With its politics dominated by Democrats, Vermont was an early supporter of the Affordable Care Act. While the state has had some success with enrollments, its state-run exchange also continues to be plagued with problems.
The latest official numbers released by the Obama administration show that 24,300 people had signed up for individual plans through the exchange by March 1. That compares to the administration's original projection of 45,600 by that point in time.
As recently as Tuesday, the online marketplace still could not handle enrollees reporting a change of marital status, job or other circumstance. Participants must contact the exchange's customer service line to report those changes.
Gov. Peter Shumlin, a Democrat, has repeatedly said he has been disappointed with the rollout of the exchange website, which drew widespread criticism after it went live last fall for being slow and not allowing users to correct mistakes.
The portal could not process premium payments online until earlier this month.
Vermont Republican leaders have asked for an investigation by federal prosecutors and are hoping to capitalize on the exchange's problems by targeting Democrats, who control both houses of the state Legislature, in this year's elections.
"People are just disgusted with it," said Rep. Brian Savage, the assistant House minority leader.
The governor's spokesman, Scott Coriell, said the exchange has been making steady improvements and that enrollments have been picking up rapidly as the deadline approaches.
Some states, including Nevada, are giving consumers extra time to get through the process if technical problems prevented them from completing their enrollment by Monday. As of last week, only 22,000 successfully purchased private coverage in Nevada.
In all five states, officials are trying to limp through the end of this year's signup period while focusing on fixing problems so the exchanges run more smoothly when the next open enrollment period begins in November.
Nevada officials said they will push Xerox for improvements and await the assessment from Deloitte, but officials concede there will be a lot on the line.
"We can't go through this again," Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval said. "We're not going to wake up every morning seeing stories of Nevadans who can't navigate through the system; that aren't getting insurance cards; the gentleman who had a heart attack who is still sitting in limbo not knowing what his status is.
"This has cascaded to absolute worst-case scenario."

‘Revolving door’? Ties between consultancy, gov’t raise questions about Benghazi probe

Meet Beacon Global Strategies.
The online bios for its founders and managing directors suggest no group knows more about the Benghazi terrorist attack and the Obama administration's response. Yet the consulting firm has deep ties to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others involved in the controversy – ties so intertwined with the administration and Capitol Hill that they raise questions about an upcoming hearing where former CIA Acting Director Mike Morell is slated to testify.
"It is like a revolving door on steroids," Bill Allison, whose Sunlight Foundation is a nonprofit that supports government transparency, told Fox News, adding that Washington's “revolving door” is a bipartisan problem.
"Republicans have gone through the revolving door, Democrats. … It says an awful lot about Washington and how hard it is to really be independent in Washington.”
READ BEACON'S REGISTRATION AS AN LLC
Morell, who also is a national security analyst for CBS News and has a book deal, joined the Beacon firm after retiring from the CIA last year. In doing so, he joined an organization already stacked with ex-government officials. Among them is Philippe Reines, whom the New York Times magazine recently described as Clinton's "principal gatekeeper." According to Beacon’s website, Reines traveled to more than 110 countries with the then-Secretary of State as part of her senior team.
Another employee, Jeremy Bash, was a former chief of staff to Leon Panetta at both the CIA and Defense Department. Andrew Shapiro was a Clinton policy adviser at the State Department whose portfolio included ridding Libya of shoulder-launched missiles called MANPADs. 
And it includes Republican J. Michael Allen, who was a former majority staff director for the House Intelligence Committee, headed by Republican Rep. Mike Rogers.
In November 2012, Morell testified before the House Intelligence Committee in a closed session about Benghazi, when Allen was still staff director. In May 2013, Morell testified for a second time in a closed session about Benghazi and the so-called talking points – the administration’s flawed public narrative initially blaming a protest for the attack, which killed four Americans.
Morell now is expected to testify for a third time in early April before the same panel -- the House Intelligence Committee, where his colleague Allen once worked -- after Republican allegations he misled the Senate Intelligence Committee over the talking points. The next hearing is expected to be public.
READ J. MICHAEL ALLEN'S FINANCIAL DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
Business records reviewed by Fox News show that in April 2013, Beacon Global Strategies registered as an LLC. 
Congressional rules require immediate notice to the ethics committee when a senior Hill staffer, who earns more than $120,000, negotiates for outside employment. Allen falls into this category.
A Nov. 19, 2012 Memorandum to all House Members, Officers and Employees, posted on the Ethics Committee website states:
"Certain House staff must notify the [Ethics] Committee within three (3) business days after they commence any negotiation or agreement for future employment or compensation with a private entity. Staff subject to this disclosure requirement are those employees of the House who are paid at or above an annual rate of $119,553.60. …”
"The term 'negotiations' connotes 'a communication between two parties with a view toward reaching an agreement' and in which there is 'active interest on both sides.'”
It adds: "Employees also should avoid situations that might be viewed as presenting even a risk that the individual might be improperly influenced by personal financial interests."
Disclosure forms, obtained by Fox News from the congressional clerk's office and written in Allen's handwriting, state that he filed with the ethics panel in July -- almost three months after Beacon registered. Fox News asked Allen when he began informal discussions with Beacon, as opposed to formal negotiations for employment, and whether at the time of Morell's May 2013 testimony, Allen was aware the former deputy director of the CIA might join Beacon.
In light of Morell's upcoming testimony, and given the apparent discrepancy between Morell's November 2012 and May 2013 testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, Fox News also asked Allen what steps he took to further investigate whether Morell had misled lawmakers.
After exchanging emails over a four-and-a-half hour period, Beacon Global Strategies LLC provided a lengthy statement to Fox News on behalf of Allen. While not providing specifics, Beacon provided "the overall timeline of the firm’s formation and the subsequent personnel actions."
While Allen is listed on the website as a founder, Beacon's statement indicates he was not approached until two months after its registration.
The statement said:
"This firm was founded on the strong belief that keeping America secure must be a nonpartisan endeavor, and is dedicated to acting in a truly bipartisan manner. We not only adhere to all governing ethics rules and laws, we strive to go above and beyond those requirements and hold ourselves to the high ethical and professional standards we did throughout our decades serving in government. As for the timeline: this company was formally created by the three original partners in April of 2013. Mr. Allen was approached at the end of June, at which point he filed a ‘Notification of Negotiations or Agreement for Future Employment’ with the US House of Representatives Committee on Ethics. He subsequently filed a ‘Statement of Recusal’ with the same committee. Upon accepting the offer to join the firm in July, he promptly and fully disclosed such to Congressional officials. Mr. Morell was not approached until November. Therefore, nobody could have been influenced by events that were not yet planned and had not yet occurred."
Fox News spoke Monday with Rogers, chairman of the committee, who underscored the fact that no congressional panel has done more to investigate Benghazi than his -- and that Morell is now being recalled for a third time, where, in an open forum, all issues can be addressed, including allegations that Morell misled the Senate Intelligence Committee. 
As for Beacon, in a September interview with Defense News shortly after the firm launched, Reines indicated it may be a temporary stop. "In terms of going back in, I think we all want to, but we also know that life doesn't necessarily work out so cutely."

Watergate Revisited? A hard look at the Obama-Nixon comparison

Is Barack Obama acting like Richard Nixon?
As someone who lived through the massive criminality and mendacity of Watergate, I take these comparisons seriously.
The shorthand “Watergate” stands for more than what the Nixon White House dismissed as a third-rate burglary at Democratic headquarters; it encompasses other break-ins, wiretaps, tax audits, hush money, cover-ups and perjury that sent many administration officials to jail and drove a president from office.
So for some on the right to accuse the current president of Nixonian behavior is a heavy charge indeed.
Here’s how Victor Davis Hanson frames it in National Review:
“Nixon tried to use the Internal Revenue Service to go after his political enemies — although his IRS chiefs at least refused his orders to focus on liberals…
“Nixon ignored settled law and picked and chose which statutes he would enforce — from denying funds for the Clean Water Act to ignoring congressional subpoenas.
“Nixon attacked TV networks and got into personal arguments with journalists such as CBS’s Dan Rather…
“Nixon wanted the Federal Communications Commission to hold up the licensing of some television stations on the basis of their political views…
“Nixon went after ‘enemies.’ He ordered surveillance to hound his suspected political opponents and was paranoid about leaks.”
Pretty bad stuff, right?
Now Davis lays out the particulars against this administration:
“The IRS? So far, the Obama-era IRS has succeeded in hounding nonprofit tea-party groups into political irrelevancy… 
“The FCC? According to FCC commissioner Ajit Pai, Obama’s agency, until outrage arose, had planned ‘to ask station managers, news directors, journalists, television anchors and on-air reporters to tell the government about their “news philosophy” and how the station ensures that the community gets critical information.’…
“Enemies? Federal authorities jailed a video maker for a minor probation violation after the Obama administration falsely blamed him for causing a riot that led to the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi in September 2012…
“Going after reporters? Obama regularly blames Fox News by name for its criticism…
“Ignoring the law? The Affordable Care Act as currently administered bears little resemblance to the law that was passed by Congress and signed by the president. Federal immigration law is now a matter of enforcing what the president allows and ignoring the rest.
“Wiretaps? Well, aside from the electronic surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency, the Obama Justice Department secretly monitored Fox News reporter and sometime critic James Rosen.”
The problem with most of these examples is there’s no evidence that Obama ordered, or knew about, these efforts. And that’s very different from Nixon, who as we know from the secret tapes, would talk about breaking into the Brookings Institution.
One prominent exception would be the surveillance of journalists such as those at the Associated Press and Fox’s James Rosen. Obama may not have personally known in advance, but his attorney general, Eric Holder, did.
Perhaps one day evidence will emerge that the president or his top aides encouraged the IRS Cincinnati field office to crack down on conservative groups, but so far there’s no proof.
The FCC’s aborted effort to question TV newsrooms about bias and philosophy was incredibly boneheaded and disturbing, but there is no sign of White House involvement—as opposed to Nixon’s FCC challenging the licenses of two Washington Post stations.
Did Obama order the filmmaker jailed? He rips Fox all the time, but he has sat down with Bill O’Reilly twice.
It is troubling that the president keeps unilaterally changing the implementation of ObamaCare. But it was George W. Bush who ramped up the practice of “signing statements” that reserved his right to ignore parts of newly passed congressional laws. (The House on Wednesday passed an "enforce the law" act on a largely party-line vote, and the administration is threatening a veto.)
Criticize Obama all you want. Davis has a point that civil libertarians who railed against Republican presidents have given Obama a pass (on such issues as NSA surveillance, I would add). But Nixonian conduct is an awfully high bar to clear unless you can show that a president personally condoned lawbreaking.

No special prosecutor for IRS scandal: Here’s the back story

Conservatives are up in arms over the Justice Department’s refusal to name a special prosecutor in the IRS scandal.
And that’s basically how the media covered it, as an Eric Holder vs. Ted Cruz argument.
But there’s some important history here that helps explain why the Obama administration is, in effect, able to investigate itself. And it’s a debate that goes to the heart of public confidence in government.
The attorney general’s office disclosed its decision in a letter to Cruz, saying the appointment is “not warranted” there is no “conflict of interest” in the Justice Department pursuing the case. The letter said the probe is being conducted by “career prosecutors and law-enforcement professionals…without regard to politics.”
The Texas senator fired back that Holder’s department is abandoning a “bipartisan tradition of the Department of Justice of putting rule of law above political allegiance.”
So how can the administration be trusted with such a sensitive probe? The reason Holder was able to make that decision goes back to Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.
Nixon was essentially pressured into allowing the appointment of a Watergate special prosecutor after his attorney general resigned and he needed Senate approval for a successor. The new AG, Elliott Richardson, named Archibald Cox, who proved so aggressive that Nixon had fired him (after Richardson and his deputy refused to do so and quit) in the infamous Saturday Night Massacre.
Public sentiment toward special prosecutors was favorable after Cox’s successor, Leon Jaworski, completed his work. Jimmy Carter pushed through a 1978 ethics law that included a provision for naming more neutral-sounding independent counsels. When allegations were made against a range of top federal officials, the attorney general was required to recommend such an appointment by a special three-judge panel, unless a preliminary inquiry found the charges to be “insubstantial.”
Ronald Reagan opposed extending the law, and it was narrowed in 1983. But a spate of high-profile investigations -- against Carter aide Hamilton Jordan, Reagan’s Labor secretary Ray Donovan, and Reagan’s attorney general, Ed Meese -- resulted in no charges.
Along came independent counsel Lawrence Walsh, who launched the $48-million Iran-contra investigation (into charges that money from U.S. arms sales to Iran was improperly diverted to Nicaraguan rebels).  Most Republicans wound up hating the law, believing that Walsh had too much unchecked power and was out of control.
After the Supreme Court upheld the law's constitutionality, Republicans helped filibuster the law to death in 1992. But Clinton signed a new version into law two years later -- and independent counsels pursued several of his Cabinet members. After Ken Starr’s investigation of the Whitewater land deal morphed into the Monica Lewinsky investigation, Democrats hated the law as well. It expired in 1999 without much fuss from either party.
That means every administration now gets to make the call on whether to call in an outside prosecutor not under Justice Department control.
When the IRS inspector general found improper targeting of conservative groups in the Cincinnati office, Obama called the conduct “inexcusable.” Last month, though, he told Bill O’Reilly there was not a “smidgen of corruption” in the IRS.
The problem is the same one that gave birth to the post-Watergate law. If Justice finds no higher-ups were involved in the IRS misconduct, would that finding have credibility with the public? Would an outside probe have more credibility, or spiral out of control?
With the independent counsel law dead and buried, we’re not likely to find out.
Nate Silver Gives GOP Nod
The data whiz who called President Obama’s election and has now moved to ESPN just gave the Republicans a favorable forecast for November.
Nate Silver says the GOP has a 60 percent chance of taking control of the Senate.
  Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington.

Hillary Clinton Distances Herself From Obama

Just over a year after leaving her job as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton has offered views on foreign policy that analysts said seem part of an effort to distance herself from the Obama administration as she prepares a possible 2016 White House run.
In appearances this month, Clinton struck a hawkish tone on issues including Iran and Russia, even while expressing broad support for the work done by Obama and her successor as secretary of state, John Kerry.
Clinton said in New York on Wednesday night she was "personally skeptical" of Iran's commitment to reaching a comprehensive agreement on its nuclear program.
"I've seen their behavior over (the) years," she said, saying that if the diplomatic track failed, "every other option does remain on the table."
Just two weeks earlier, Clinton was forced to backtrack after she drew parallels between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler at a closed-door fundraiser. In comments leaked to the media by a local reporter who attended the event, Clinton said Putin's justifications for his actions in the Crimean region were akin to moves Hitler made in the years before World War Two. "I'm not making a comparison, certainly, but I am recommending that we can perhaps learn from this tactic that has been used before," she said the next day at an event in Los Angeles.
As secretary of state, Clinton was a key player in a U.S. effort to reset relations with Russia, a policy that critics say now appears to be a glaring failure.
Clinton's recent rhetoric on Iran and Russia is part of a renewed focus on foreign policy for the former first lady and New York senator, who is widely considered the Democratic presidential front-runner in 2016 if she chooses to run.
She has been giving speeches across the country since leaving the State Department, but Wednesday's address was her first on-the-record event in recent months focused solely on international relations.
"Secretary Clinton is distancing herself a bit on foreign policy matters from the administration recently," said John Hudak, a Brookings Institution fellow and expert on presidential campaigns. "This is a pretty standard practice for anyone looking to succeed the sitting president, even within the same party."
"It's one of the first steps for her to say, 'We're not the same candidate,'" he said.
Clinton's office did not respond to questions about the issue.
Creating space between her position and Obama's is a "smart move," said Hank Sheinkopf, a New York-based Democratic strategist who worked for the 1996 presidential re-election campaign of Hillary Clinton's husband, Bill Clinton.
"The present administration is in a no-win situation with Russia, with Syria and in the Middle East," Sheinkopf said before Clinton's New York speech. "Making a distance from them can only help."
During her four-year tenure in the State Department, Clinton helped lead the charge on imposing strong sanctions on Iran, which she mentioned in her New York speech to a pro-Israel audience - including several Democratic lawmakers - at an American Jewish Congress dinner honoring her.
In late January, Clinton sent a letter to Carl Levin, Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, calling herself a "longtime advocate for crippling sanctions against Iran," but urging that Congress not impose new sanctions during negotiations over Tehran's nuclear program.
She said that like Obama, she had no illusions about the ease or likelihood of reaching a permanent deal with Iran following an interim agreement reached under Kerry.
"Yet I have no doubt that this is the time to give our diplomacy the space to work," a stance she reaffirmed on Wednesday.
Republicans have promised to make Clinton's State Department record an issue if she runs for the White House, focusing on the 2012 attacks on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, in which four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, were killed.
The Republican National Committee has condemned Clinton's handling of the Benghazi assault, suggesting in a recent research note that "Benghazi is still the defining moment of Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State."
Some political analysts see her toughening rhetoric as more than a campaign tactic, and fitting with her foreign policy statements before joining the Obama administration. They said that could broaden her appeal to voters if she chooses to run, a decision she has said will not come until the end of this year.
Clinton, while a senator, voted in 2002 for a resolution authorizing U.S. military action against Iraq, a position that hurt her with liberal primary voters in her losing battle with Obama for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.
"Making a credible and forceful case for America's place in the world - that's the kind of thing she's likely to say and continue to say," said Josh Block, a former Clinton administration official and now an executive at the Israel Project in Washington. "Those are messages that will resonate with Democrats and independents, as well as some Republicans." (Editing by Peter Cooney and Douglas Royalty)

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