Rep. Kelly Discusses Fight for Obamacare Accountability on ‘Fox & Friends’
Rep. Kelly: “Where in the world is the accountability and who’s being held responsible for coming up short?”
WASHINGTON — Representative Mike Kelly (R-PA), a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, appeared on Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends Weekend on Sunday, November 10, 2013, to discuss his effort to obtain answers from those responsible for the defective website of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). He specifically discussed his letter to Marilyn Tavenner, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which was sent on Monday, November 4, 2013.
Highlights from Rep. Kelly’s remarks:
“There’s an old saying: ‘If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.’ In the private sector, if you put out a bid, it’s very specific what you’re looking for, and there’s an indication there that somebody is going to be held responsible and accountable if it doesn’t come up to the standards that you expected. I have never seen anything as poorly run, as incompetent as what we’ve watched [in regard to Healthcare.gov].
“We’ve had three years to get ready for this, spent about $600 million of taxpayer money. Now we’re bringing in the ‘A team.’ My question is: Why are you bringing in the A team now? Why not from the beginning? And again — you’ve got to inspect what you expect.
“I believe these folks [the Obama administration] knew early on that it wasn’t going to work, but were so driven by a date that they had to meet and by the optics of it that they went ahead full steam anyway. This is like being on the Titanic and saying, ‘There’s all kind of icebergs out there, but you know what? Increase the speed, we’ll just bust through them.’ And now we’re watching the ship sink.
“This is all taxpayer money. … A performance bond makes sure that anybody who bids has some skin in the game, and you hold them accountable if they come up short. I want to know who’s picking up the tab on this. Unfortunately, I think it is: ‘You know, give it to those four saps sitting at the next table — those are the American taxpayers, they don’t know what we’re doing anyways, so just give them the tab, let them pay it.’
“We’ve watched five years of this [administration]… They can talk the talk, but they can’t walk the walk. My deepest disappointment is the American people have again witnessed total incompetence and I think their expectations now for a good performance are so low that they expect everything to fail. And that’s wrong.
“Where in the world is the accountability and who’s being held responsible for coming up short? I can’t find anybody that says, ‘My bad.’ The president himself says, ‘I’m sorry people misunderstood what I said.’ And I’m saying: I’m sorry that you just can’t tell the truth.
“Our job in Congress is oversight. We can look into things and expose things. We can investigate. We have to keep doing that. … That’s our job. … I’ll keep on it until I get an answer [from CMS Administrator Tavenner], and I don’t care if they say, ‘I can’t get the answer to you right now.’ I’m going to hang on this like a bulldog. We’ve got to get the answers for the American people. They deserve that.”
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