Is Anyone in Charge?

Talk about a target-rich environment, where do we start?  The bungled roll out of Obamacare begs for deserved ridicule, to which we would ordinarily be happy to contribute. Unfortunately, this slag heap of legislation is still poised to do untold damage to one of the world's most advanced and successful health care systems. And if you think because you aren't poor and have a plan that you are happy with, just wait. Rush Limbaugh thinks that Obamacare was actually designed to fail in order to set the stage for a single payer system. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately (for us),  they couldn't manage to have the blame for its failure to land on the health care providers and insurance companies. The Executive Branch owns this turkey.

Why should we be surprised? This Administration has established a long string of operational failures. Benghazi, Fast and Furious, and other Justice Department fiascoes, The IRS investigative scandals, the long and questionable reach of The NSA's surveillance, which has just again reared its ugly head. And the list goes on. The only constant is the continual insistence that none of it is the Chief Executive's fault, nor anyone else in the chain of command, as best we can tell.

Six months ago, former Obama advisor, David Axelrod argued, on national television, that the federal government is so vast, that the president simply cannot know everything that is going on. And while this comment was related to recent scandals, it can also be applied to day to day management. We happen to think that the current president lacks the experience and aptitude needed to provide even minimal management of the vast federal bureaucracy. Someone should explain to him about the Cabinet, and the delegation process. But in fairness to Mr. Obama, even an experienced organization man like, say, Mitt Romney, would be hard pressed to provide what would pass for effective management in the Private Sector to this behemoth, which, by the way, had achieved its truly gargantuan proportions long before the advent of the ACA.

Obviously, this state of affairs has been a long time in the making, but until relatively recently, the Congress could exert some control by virtue of the budgetary process. Unfortunately, we haven't had a budget for a few years now, but rather have relied on Continuing Resolutions. Ditto for deficit funding as we routinely produce debt levels of astronomic proportions.  Obamacare is badly written and still not well-understood by most Americans, some of whom, apparently, work for the federal government. In spite of its supporters' claims, its costs, as it tries to provide subsidized health insurance to millions, are sure to rise to gargantuan levels. Adding this program on top an effectively out-of control government is not only unconscionable, but, now that it has saddled future generations with a mountain of debt, may finally bring us to the breaking point.

It is long past the time to reign in these excesses and bring our government back in line, or at least, as a first step, into the same area code, with our Constitutional principles. If not now, when?