Sean Higgins
The Washington Examiner
10/23/2013
How is this for irony? After spending 2012 scourging Mitt Romney as a heartless capitalist for working at Bain & Co., President Obama is now betting on another former Bain consultant, Jeffrey Zients, to rescue his trouble-plagued Healthcare.gov website.
Obama named Zients, currently the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, to lead the “tech surge” to address the many problems with website. “Jeff will provide short-term advice, assessments and recommendations,” Press Secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday.
Zients previously worked at the management consulting firm Bain & Co., from August 1988 to June 1990. This was the same company that got Romney, who joined Bain in 1991, labeled as a “vulture capitalist” during the election.
In a January 2012 press release, Obama campaign spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter slammed Bain for firing workers and shipping jobs overseas. She quoted a news story saying “Bain more than doubled the return on the original investment while ‘workers were left jobless just as the local economy began to slump’.”
An Obama campaign ad accused Bain of being “pioneers in outsourcing U.S. jobs to low-wage companies.” The “pioneers” claim in the ad, incidentally, was inaccurate.
Related: Obamacare website contractors point fingers at White House
The two main contractors who built the inner workings of the Obamacare website told Congress the government never tested the parts together until days before the deadline. When testing did begin, the system failed in a test of just 200 people. Wyatt Andrews reports.
Update: How To Opt Out of ObamaCare Without Paying the Fine…
Less than two-hours ago, I submitted a revised W-4 form to our payroll department. My goal is to avoid being in a position where at the end of next year I am owed a refund from the federal government. As an act of civil disobedience, I am refusing to purchase health insurance. This means that I am subject to a tax/fine of 1% of my income (2% the following year, 2.5% thereafter). But the beautiful thing is that unless I am owed a tax refund, the government will never get any of that money…
…The IT issues have prompted some Democrats to urge Obama to extend enrollment deadlines and suspend penalties to beyond March 31. These are similar ideas that Texas Senator and Tea party advocate Ted Cruz argued and was demonized for just a few weeks ago, forcing the government shutdown.
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