I’d like to say this is a 100% idiotic attempt to deflect blame, but there are enough business haters out there for it to partly work
(Politico) Democrats taking heat back home for Obamacare’s rocky online rollout say don’t blame them — blame Big Business.
Facing an onslaught of constituent frustration over problems with online exchanges, several Democrats have started pointing fingers at the companies and senior executives in their home states that have contracts to get the health care websites up and running.
Democrats have made a version of the argument in Washington in recent months, defending the health care law not only from Republican attacks that it’s a failure — but from the line that government itself can’t do big things.
Now that rhetoric — blame the contractors — is hitting local events.
One of the instances mentioned is Sen. Jeff Merkley blaming Oracle for the Cover Oregon debacle, and even went as far as singling out Oracles president Safra Catz (hey, that sounds a bit like a war on women /sic).
In North Carolina, Hagan, who faces one of the Senate’s toughest reelection races, has asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate the HealthCare.gov rollout, with several pointed questions for the contractors’ roles.
Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said Wednesday that she is considering suing CGI over its work on the state’s exchange. Gov. Deval Patrick wouldn’t say whether he wants to sue but made it clear that he’s upset with the company.
There’s no doubt many of the contractors did a piss poor job, especially CGI. Let’s not forget, though, that many were picked in no-bid contracts, including CGI, and CGI already had a history of poor results, and that’s being charitable.
However, who was responsible for making sure the work was done? There’s a saying in business “inspect what you expect”. This doesn’t mean micromanage, it means check in now and then to make sure the work is proceeding. If you assign a task to your underling and never bother to make sure it’s being done, and done correctly, and it’s a mess, who gets blamed? You do. Your boss will hold you responsible. In the same way, it is still the fault of the government, particularly HHS, HHS head Kathleen Sebelius, and President Obama. And every Democrat who supports this law, especially those who voted for the mess.
PS: On that note, I could care less about the Chris Christie “lane closure” issue. Until Team Obama is held responsible for all their messes, such as IRS targeting, Benghazi, Fast and Furious, Obamacare, and so much more, I don’t care. I do predict, and it is an easy prediction, that the media will go all Abu Ghraid on Christie, breathless reports daily, unlike with Obama, or had Christie been a Democrat.
Crossed at Right Wing News.
I agree and it is already underway. Drudge is helping it out too.
granted, Drudge may be doing it for political reasons as well.
And, sure, we can blame CGI and other contractors for the failure of ObamaCare, but they only do what they are contracted to do. If they are given a deadline, but then not made to test it, then that is the fault of the agency who hired the contractors.
And I thought no-bid contracts were frowned upon now?
But this once again highlights the problem with government in general and the liberal government in particular: bad people, bad agencies, bad laws, bad workers, bad plans, will never die or face accountability. they are propped up and given more money.
I have a friend that owns a road construction company. When they were building the interstate in our area, he won the bid. He sat down with the government engineer and went over the specks for the job. In doing so, he told the man that the way they intended to build the road would not work and that he would suggest doing it different for less money, otherwise, they would have to replace the road in a few years as it was on a swamp. He was told to build it the way they wanted it. Now, we are replacing the road. Our government is broken and needs to be replaced, reduced and restricted.
I find it beyond ludicrous that people we elect to office somehow become so much smarter than professional engineers and professional thinkers. yet, for many voters, this aspect is a truism.
The road sounds like the proverbial $300 hammer.
But there is a reason for that.
Say a guy working in a government shop needs a hammer. Down at Lowes / Home Depot that hammer costs $20. So he wants a $20 hammer in the real world.
Yet in the world of procurement, that hammer doesn’t exist because it doesn’t have any standards that come with it. That means that someone has to come up with set of standards (head size, head materials, hammer face specifications, handle dimensions, material designation for the handle, shape of the handle, etc.)
So by the time the company’s bid on fulfilling that order for hammers, between the costs associated with testing the hammer, gaining compliance with the specifications, etc, that hammer is easily $300.
In david’s friend’s case, I guarantee the same thing happened. He bid on a job with specifications and when he went to do to job and said “that isn’t right,” the procurement officer / contract manager could not go back and change the specs of the job without reopening the comment process and the bid process.
We can blame the government alone for this, but to some extent we have to blame contractors and suppliers who look for reasons for contracts to not be awarded to others.
We had this happen in my town. The town was looking to buy a sewage line vacuum truck to clean out sewer lines. The process started with coming up with specifications for the RFP. That took 3 months. Then there was a 3 month public comment period. The RFP was then put out for bids. Three contractors bid on the thing and the lowest bidder won.
But wait! That is not the end of the story!
The specifications called for a capacity of the truck to be “X” number of gallons. The specification had been taken from a neighboring city’s truck that we had been renting. The problem was that the company who made that truck but lost the bid on price said “the other trucks aren’t that capacity.”
The other trucks were all larger in capacity, but because the RFP did not say “or greater” when specifying the capacity, the other companies were technically not in compliance with the specification of the RFP. The other companies sued saying only they had met the specification. The other companies sued saying that tawarding the contract on the strict capacity means the other company had was a guaranteed winner of the contract.
The town finally had to pull back the RFP, redo the specs, redo the public comment, put the RFP out there, wait for 90 days, get the bids, award the contract and then wait 30 days for protests to the contract being awarded.
If you are in the private sector, you call up companies that make vacuum trucks, tell them what you are looking for and get a price. You can have these trucks in a week – 30 days.
If you are the government, you can spend over a year getting the same thing.
I live in the New Soviet Socialist Republic of Jersey.
Christie is a Democrat…he’s been far past the RINO designation.