Breaking: Kathleen Sebelius Resigns as HHS Secretary

Gateway Pundit

She destroyed American healthcare.
Now she’s gone.

After the rocky Obamacare rollout, Kathleen Sebelius is resigning.

The New York Times has more.

Kathleen Sebelius, the health and human services secretary, is resigning, ending a stormy five-year tenure marred by the disastrous rollout of President Obama’s signature legislative achievement, the Affordable Care Act.

Mr. Obama accepted Ms. Sebelius’s resignation this week, and on Friday morning he will nominate Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to replace her, officials said.

The departure comes as the Obama administration tries to move beyond its early stumbles in carrying out the law, persuade a still-skeptical public of its lasting benefits, and help Democratic incumbents, who face blistering attack ads after supporting the legislation, survive the midterm elections this fall.

Officials said Ms. Sebelius, 65, made the decision to resign and was not forced out

Sebelius Tells Congress Individual Mandate Won’t Be Repealed – That Was Repealed Last Week

Gateway Pundit

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Wednesday there would be no delay of Obamacare’s individual mandate. Via The Politico:

But according to The Wall Street Journal Obama repealed the individual mandate in Obamacare that requires Americans to purchase health insurance or else pay a tax penalty. And it was delayed last week.

ObamaCare’s implementers continue to roam the battlefield and shoot their own wounded, and the latest casualty is the core of the Affordable Care Act—the individual mandate. To wit, last week the Administration quietly excused millions of people from the requirement to purchase health insurance or else pay a tax penalty.

This latest political reconstruction has received zero media notice, and the Health and Human Services Department didn’t think the details were worth discussing in a conference call, press materials or fact sheet. Instead, the mandate suspension was buried in an unrelated rule that was meant to preserve some health plans that don’t comply with ObamaCare benefit and redistribution mandates. Our sources only noticed the change this week.

That seven-page technical bulletin includes a paragraph and footnote that casually mention that a rule in a separate December 2013 bulletin would be extended for two more years, until 2016. Lo and behold, it turns out this second rule, which was supposed to last for only a year, allows Americans whose coverage was cancelled to opt out of the mandate altogether.

Sebelius to hit campaign trail again after Hatch Act violation

Washington Examiner

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will soon be back to doing what she does best — campaigning for President Obama.

Sebelius will travel to New Hampshire this weekend for a swing of “grassroots events” with Obama, according to the New Hampshire Union Leader. The campaign trip comes after the Office of Special Counsel found that Sebelius had violated federal campaign law by campaigning for Obama during an official event.

From Obama, What Next?

American Thinker

We  have witnessed President Barack Obama, and his administration, issue edicts,  work against and/or ignore the US Constitution and Congress, and be inconsistent  when it suits him.  The question now becomes, “What will Obama do  next?”

War On: Obama and ObamaCare verses Constitutional Patriots and Religious Freedom

Knowledge Creates Power

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius answered questions in Congress this week about the left framed ‘contraception compromise’ or the ‘first amendment un-compromise’ as framed by the right.

Sibelius essentially said that the decision has been made and this mandate along with many other surprises for those who did not follow the ObamaCare fight on in August 2013… PERIOD!  The decision has been made and will go into affect regardless of the Constitution, religious freedom or what the American people want.

Remember what Nancy Pelosi said… “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in the bill!”  Well, you are beginning to find out.

Obama’s credibility crisis

Washington Examiner

Hard on the heels of that shocking Pew Research Center survey finding that four out of five Americans don’t trust government comes a blitz of new revelations about the Obama administration that amount to a full-fledged credibility crisis. The latest disclosures are especially damaging because they concern President Obama’s possible misrepresentation of his relationships with former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and convicted felon Tony Rezko, his administration’s misleading statements about Obamacare costs, and questions about improper manipulation of government-owned General Motors and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Blagojevich revelations were no less serious for being accidental. Blagojevich’s defense attorneys filed a federal court motion to subpoena Obama concerning charges that the former governor tried to sell the U.S. Senate seat formerly occupied by the chief executive. Improper formatting of the heavily redacted public version of the motion contained evidence that Obama spoke to Blagojevich about the Senate appointment a week before telling White House reporters that he had not done so. The document also revealed that federal prosecutors are withholding from Blagojevich’s attorneys documents describing what Obama told investigators about conversations with Rezko on the appointment or his financial ties to the Chicago developer who was one of his key fundraisers.

On Obamacare, the president and his appointees said repeatedly over the last year that it would reduce government health care spending. Yet now comes Kathleen Sebelius, Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services secretary, confessing that “We don’t know how much it’s going to cost.” Why is Sebelius only now saying this when her own department just made public a report obviously months in preparation that projected government health care costs overall will go up, not down? That same HHS report also said Obamacare’s Medicare cuts could put 15 percent of all hospitals out of business, making treatment harder to get and more expensive, especially for seniors.

Finally, General Motors claimed in national advertisements this week that it repaid its Troubled Asset Relief Program loans, plus interest, five years early. But the TARP inspector general said GM used other TARP funds to repay its original TARP loans, so the ads were fundamentally dishonest. Recall here that White House adviser Carol Browner told GM and other automakers to “write nothing down” about their dealings last year with administration officials on fuel economy standards. So it seems entirely appropriate to ask if GM’s repayment claims were “suggested” by somebody in the Obama White House. That would be the same White House that is also now suspected of improperly influencing the SEC to file fraud charges against Goldman Sachs just as Congress debates Obama’s financial reform proposal. As the Obama administration will learn, plummeting public trust eats away at the fundamental credibility of government and undermines its ability to carry out even its most basic duties.

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