The Other McCain

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Moe Lane Shocked By Incompetent Budgeting And Lightning Strike, But Mostly Incompetent Budgeting

Posted on | December 16, 2012 | 5 Comments

by Smitty

Moe Lane, quoting IBD:

In the states with federally run exchanges, HHS will be tasked with hiring the people to run the exchanges, ensuring that insurance plans applying to be on the exchange are compliant with ObamaCare regulations, and setting up and running the websites for the exchanges. Congress has not yet appropriated the money to let HHS hire exchange employees.

…And why, exactly, should Congress appropriate more money for that? I’m sure that HHS can cut some discretionary income somewhere in order to handle the situation. Certainly the House of Representatives shouldn’t just give HHS a blank check, or anything so fiscally irresponsible; in fact, future House budget bills should deliberately not incorporate extra projected HHS exchange expenses at all. After all, HHS can take it out of the billion per year that they’ve already reserved out for exchange-based expenditures; the Department may have to tighten its belt a little, but this is the Great Recession, remember? And if the Senate doesn’t like any of this… well. They can put in any additional appropriations into their own budget, pass that and Congress can sort it all out in committee.

So, ObamaCare expected states (some of which are constrained by real-world budgeting) to set up internal bureaucracies, at their own expense. And 26 states are hoisting a middle finger at this top-down approach to generating bureaucracy.

We may need to extend The Federalist #62:

It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?

. . .adding something like. . .

And if the law be as the product of several hundred monkeys armed with quills and hookahs, who, having partaken deeply of the finest hashish, think they have produced Shakespeare, while actually having delivered a Barbary Pirate’s nightmare, well, then, the time for tar and feathers may again be at hand.

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Comments

5 Responses to “Moe Lane Shocked By Incompetent Budgeting And Lightning Strike, But Mostly Incompetent Budgeting”

  1. higgins
    December 16th, 2012 @ 7:50 am

    Russia has perfected the art of writing vague laws that are randomly enforced. This, to me, is the foundation of kleptocracy. Pundits keep saying that Obama is trying to turn America into Europe. Those pundits need to look further east.

  2. Finrod Felagund
    December 16th, 2012 @ 8:30 am

    IMHO, the monkeys aren’t armed with quills, just their own excrement.

  3. Matthew W
    December 16th, 2012 @ 8:51 am

    But guess what, the leaderless Republicans will give the blank check.

  4. Quartermaster
    December 16th, 2012 @ 3:04 pm

    Hey, I’m up for the tar and feathers part. For a good many I’d suggest a neck tie party instead.

  5. DaveO
    December 16th, 2012 @ 3:39 pm

    If one owns the press that prints money, does one need Congress for anything? The cost of all this doesn’t really mean anything to folks inside the Beltway.