ISSA Warns Sebelius That She Could Face Perjury Charges Over Obamacare Testimony - Rep Trey Gowdy

 

Video: ISSA Warns Sebelius That She Could Face Perjury Charges Over Obamacare Testimony - Rep Trey Gowdy

Washington Examiner: Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius could face perjury charges over her congressional testimony on Obamacare, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., warned in a letter calling for Sebelius to correct the record.

“Witnesses who purposely give false or misleading testimony during a congressional hearing may be subject to criminal liability under Section 1001 of Title of 18 of the U.S. Code, which prohibits ‘knowingly and willfully’ making materially false statements to Congress,” Issa wrote in a Wednesday letter. “With that in mind, I write to request that you correct the record and to implore you to be truthful with the American public about matters related to Obamacare going forward."

Issa focused on Sebelius' testimony about launching the healthcare.gov federal exchange website despite the existence of technical problems that marred the Obamacare rollout.

“Providing false or misleading testimony to Congress is a serious matter,” Issa writes. “Documents and testimony obtained by the Committee, including information provided by Teresa Fryer, the Chief Information Security Officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and the MITRE Corporation, a contractor hired by HHS to conduct security assessments of healthcare.gov, show that your testimony was false and misleading.”

HHS promised to respond to the letter. "Regarding the issues raised in the partial transcript excerpts referenced in the letter—as we have said repeatedly, including when these issues were first reported several weeks ago—the HealthCare.gov components that are operational have been determined to be compliant with the Federal Information Security Management Act, based on standards promulgated by the National Institutes of Standards and Technology," Joanne Peters, the national press secretary for health care at HHS, told the Washington Examiner in an email.

Sebelius' claim that MITRE conducted "ongoing testing" of the Obamacare website was false, Issa said, citing Fryer's testimony to committee staff that the company only did testing by rounds, with the last pre-launch round taking place on Sep. 20. The next round did not begin until Dec. 10.

Issa also said that Sebelius' claim that MITRE recommended HHS proceed with the launch of the website was also false, because MITRE says it was never consulted.

The Republican investigator also disputes Sebelius' statement that “no one… suggested that the risks outweighed the importance of moving forward."

"[Fryer] was very concerned about the problems raised by MITRE during its security testing of the system," the letter states.

Issa also quotes from a Sep. 24 memo written by Fryer, who concluded that the health care website "does not reasonably meet the CMS security requirements," adding that "there is also no confidence that Personal Identifiable Information will be protected."

"There have been no successful security attacks on Healthcare.gov and no person or group has maliciously accessed personally identifiable information," Peters countered in her email. "An independent security control assessor tested each piece of the Healthcare.gov system that went live Oct. 1 prior to that date with no open high findings. All high, moderate and low security risk findings listed on the SCAs for the portions of the website that launched Oct. 1 were either fixed, or have strategies and plans in place to fix the findings that meet industry standards."

Related:

Is This the Alarming Reason Kathleen Sebelius Hasn’t Been Fired?

Obamacare Hype - ' The Land Of Oz ' Lies! - Judge Jeanine Pirro Opening Statement

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New House GOP Bill Delays ObamaCare By 1 Year–Updated

Video:  New House GOP Bill Delays ObamaCare By 1 Year

House Passes GOP Plan to Delay ObamaCare

The Blaze: Story by the Associated Press; curated by Dave Urbanski

UPDATE 12:44 a.m. Sunday: The Republican-run House has voted to delay President Barack Obama’s health care law. The House also lifted a tax on medical devices as another condition for averting a federal government shutdown, CNN reports.

Since the White House has promised the overall legislation will be vetoed, that means the two sides are edging closer to a shutdown of many federal services Tuesday morning, with no obvious solution in sight.

The House sent the legislation to the Democratic-run Senate early Sunday by 231-192.

The bill would delay much of the 2010 health care overhaul for a year. It would also repeal a tax on medical devices that helps finance the health care law.

The shutdown bill may never reach Obama because the Senate’s majority leader, Nevada Democrat Harry Reid, says his chamber will reject the measure first.

Original story below:

The House Saturday night began debating Republican-backed amendments to delay ObamaCare for a year and repeal a tax on medical devices, continuing a standoff that threatens to force a government shutdown, CNN reports.

Locked in a deepening struggle with President Barack Obama, the Republican-controlled House pushed legislation toward passage Saturday night requiring a one-year delay in parts of the nation’s new health care law and repeal of a tax on medical devices as the price for avoiding a partial government shutdown in a few days’ time.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., arrives for a closed-door meeting with fellow Republicans as the House of Representatives works into the night to pass a bill to fund the government, at the Capitol in Washington, Saturday, Sept. 28, 2013. (Credit: AP)

Senate Democrats pledged to reject the measure even before the House began debating it, and the White House issued a statement vowing a veto in any event. Republicans are pursuing “a narrow ideological agenda” that threatens the nation’s economy, it said.

Undeterred, House Republicans pressed ahead with their latest attempt to squeeze a concession from the White House in exchange for letting the government open for business normally on Tuesday.

“I think we have a winning program here,” said Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, after days of discord that pitted Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and his leadership against tea party-backed conservatives.

Another Republican, Rep. Darrell Issa of California, reacted angrily when asked whether he would eventually support a standalone spending bill if needed to prevent a shutdown. “How dare you presume a failure? How dare you? How dare you?” he said.

Apart from its impact on the health care law, the legislation that House Republicans decided to back would assure routine funding for government agencies through Dec. 15. A companion measure headed for approval assures U.S. troops are paid in the event of a shutdown.

The government spending measure marked something of a reduction in demands by House Republicans, who passed legislation several days ago that would permanently strip the health care law of money while providing funding for the government.

It also contained significant concessions from a party that long has criticized the health care law for imposing numerous government mandates on industry, in some cases far exceeding what Republicans have been willing to support in the past.

GOP aides said that under the legislation headed toward a vote, portions of the health law that already have gone into effect would remain unchanged. That includes requirements for insurance companies to guarantee coverage for pre-existing conditions and to require children to be covered on their parents’ plans until age 26. It would not change a part of the law that reduces costs for seniors with high prescription drug expenses.

Instead, the measure would delay implementation of a requirement for all individuals to purchase coverage or face a penalty, and of a separate feature of the law that will create marketplaces where individuals can shop for coverage from private insurers.

By repealing the medical device tax, the GOP measure also would raise deficits — an irony for a party that won the House majority in 2010 by pledging to get the nation’s finances under control.

The Senate rejected the most recent House-passed anti-shutdown bill on a party-line vote of 54-44 Friday, insisting on a straightforward continuation in government funding without health care-related add-ons.

That left the next step up to the House — with time to avert a partial shutdown growing ever shorter.

For a moment at least, the revised House proposal papered over a simmering dispute between the leadership and tea party conservatives who have been more militant about abolishing the health law that all Republicans oppose.

It was unclear whether members of the rank and file had consulted with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who has become the face of the “Defund ObamaCare” campaign that tea party organizations are promoting and using as a fundraising tool.

In debate on the House floor, Republicans adamantly rejected charges that they seek a government shutdown, and said their goal is to spare the nation from the effects of a law they said would cost jobs and reduce the quality of care. The law is an “attack and an assault on the free enterprise and the free economy,” said Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas.

Democrats disagreed vociferously. “House Republicans are shutting down the government. They’re doing it intentionally. They’re doing it on purpose,” said Rep. Donna Edwards of Maryland, as Republican lawmakers booed from their seats on the floor.

In the Senate, there was little doubt that Reid had the votes to block a one-year delay in the health care program widely known as “ObamaCare.” He said the same was true for the repeal of the medical device tax, even though 33 Democrats joined all Senate Republicans in supporting repeal on a nonbinding vote earlier in the year.

The 2.3 percent tax, which took effect in January, is imposed on items such as pacemakers and CT scan machines; eyeglasses, contact lenses, hearing aids and other items are exempt. Repealing it would cost the government an estimated $29 billion over the coming decade.

If lawmakers miss the approaching deadline, a wide range of federal programs would be affected, from the national parks to the Pentagon.

Some critical services such patrolling the borders, inspecting meat and controlling air traffic would continue. Social Security benefits would be sent and the Medicare and Medicaid health care programs for the elderly and poor would continue to pay doctors and hospitals.

The new health insurance exchanges would open Tuesday, a development that’s lent urgency to the drive to use a normally routine stopgap spending bill to gut implementation of the law.

This is a developing story; updates will be added.

Technorati Tags: ObamaCare,Delay ObamaCare,Darrell Issa,GOP,standing up,stand up and fight,government shutdown,Defund ObamaCare,TheBlaze,Congress,solutions

Darrell Issa: Obama can't break his own health care law

The Examiner: Three years after its passage, the unpopularity of the president's health law is complicating his administration's attempt to implement it. In the absence of support once predicted by the law's supporters, a majority of state governments are declining to establish their own health insurance exchanges, the primary vehicle through which many of the law's subsidies and taxes will affect the American people.

To combat the sticker shock of Obamacare's numerous requirements on health insurance premiums, the law creates expensive subsidies, which take the form of tax credits, for individuals who purchase a government-approved insurance plan. In order to avoid the appearance of a federal takeover of health care, the law ties the availability of these premium tax credits to an "Exchange established by the State." Importantly, the way the law was written, if tax credits are not available within a state, then the expensive employer mandate tax does not apply to companies within that state.

With so many states refusing to play the role the law's drafters envisioned, the Obama administration has embarked on a legally dubious effort to bypass the plain language of the law. Obama's IRS has issued a rule that delivers the expensive subsidies through federally run exchanges as well. If it stands, this extralegal rule will undermine the decision-making role offered to states by Obamacare, and cause hundreds of billions of dollars of taxes and spending not authorized by the president's health care law.

Although Obamacare requires the federal government to establish an exchange in states that decline to do so, a legal analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service found, "[t]he plain language of [the law] suggests that premium tax credits are available only where a taxpayer is enrolled in an 'Exchange established by the State.' A strictly textual analysis of the plain meaning of the provision would likely lead to the conclusion that the IRS's authority to issue the premium tax credits is limited only to situations in which the taxpayer is enrolled in a state-established exchange."

Simply put, Obamacare does not authorize tax credits unless states set up their own health insurance exchanges.

The IRS rule would, without legal justification, compel businesses in states without state-based exchanges to comply with the employer mandate or else face stiff tax penalties. This has prompted the state of Oklahoma to sue the federal government. The Sooner State's attorney general argues that the rule retroactively eliminates a policy option explicitly given to the state under the law, and denies the state the benefit of its decision not to establish an exchange.

Treasury officials have defended their extralegal rule by saying it was consistent with assumptions made by the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation. However, Treasury officials have not pointed to a single piece of legislative history that supports their interpretation of the law, other than the assumptions made by the CBO and the JCT. And both of those organizations have made clear that they did not conduct a legal analysis or form a legal opinion on this issue. Their analysis was focused exclusively on the law's economic impact.

The language that limits tax credits to state-established exchanges should not now shock Obamacare's supporters. Early in 2009, legal scholar Timothy Jost, one of Obamacare's leading proponents, explicitly suggested linking the tax credits to state-established exchanges as a way to encourage states to set up the exchanges.

The Obama administration may be surprised and disappointed that many states have not found the refundable tax credit to be a sufficient incentive to set up their own exchanges, exposing their citizens to the other taxes and penalties associated with the law. But this does not justify the administration's effort to ignore the plain language of the law that Obama championed and signed.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., is chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Technorati Tags: ObamaCare,ObamaTax,taxes