Do....Label Her A Liar

HHS Oberfuehrer Kathleen Sebelius on Obamamath:

Both the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Congressional Budget Office have said that the Obama administration cannot claim that the Medicare cuts they are enacting will simultaneously finance the new health care law, which is supposed to cover thirty million uninsured, and extend the solvency of the existing Medicare program.

But that hasn’t stopped the administration from continuing to make both claims anyway. And when I asked about this on a Monday conference call held to tout Medicare savings, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius dismissed the conclusion of the CMS actuary, and falsely claimed that the CBO had taken a different view.

Oh, you want a direct quote?  Here 'tis:

[Phil Klein:]“It’s a budget convention, but in reality, the $575 billion can’t be used to extend the trust fund for twelve years and simultaneously used to finance coverage for thirty million people. Is that correct?”

At this point, Sebelius jumped in to say I was wrong.

“Actually, that is not correct,” she said. “There are two different operating methods of looking at this, and the CMS actuary in the report that you cite differs in his strategic opinion from every accounting methodology that’s used for every other program in the federal budget, that has traditionally used for Medicare. And he has a different interpretation that is not agreed upon by either the Congressional Budget Office or the OMB or traditionally in Congress.”

Set aside the irony that in a conference call held to highlight CMS estimates on Medicare, Sebelius was questioning CMS methodology. Her statement that the CBO had taken a different view on this is demonstrably false. On several occasions, the CBO has determined that you can’t double-count Medicare savings.

Um, speaking as a professional accountant, if you double-count financial numbers in the private sector, they call that "fraud" and you end up going to jail for a long, long time.  And lying animals like Sebelius would be calling for worse penalties than that.

But Obamunists are above such trivialiies as law and facts and the reality that fungibility of money doesn't mean the same dollar can be spent in two places at once.  And, as a matter of political practicality, they've made this shat-in bed and now they have to sleep in it.  The wheels of substance have been flying off the ObamaCare behemoth ever since it was rammed down our throats four and a half months ago, lugnut shrapnel flying every which direction, but they're going to keep it barreling forward no matter what.

Why?  Because they have no choice.  As fierce as the public demand for repeal is, that's how fiercely they're going to resist it, because if they start admitting that, yeah, all our arguments were basically garbage, and this wasn't really about health care at all but a blatant, radical, extremist, massive Donk power play designed to permanently and violently shove America institutionally to the hard-left, the repeal movement will become a rout, and O-Care will die in the proverbial cradle.

As is always the case with leftwingnuts, the truth is lethal to them, so they must declare it "non-functional" and bend reality by main force to match The Narrative.  Even if they have to insist up and down that two plus two equals five, and viciously demonize anybody that calls them on it.

Which makes this story all the sweeter, and expressible in only one possible way: Two words - Republican appointee:

A judge on Monday refused to dismiss the state of Virginia’s challenge to President Barack Obama’s landmark healthcare law, a setback that will force his administration to mount a lengthy legal defense of the overhaul effort.

U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson refused to dismiss the state’s lawsuit which argues the law’s requirement that its residents have health insurance was unconstitutional, allowing the challenge to go forward.

A political decision?  Not on your knickers:

“While this case raises a host of complex constitutional issues, all seem to distill to the single question of whether or not Congress has the power to regulate – and tax – a citizen’s decision not to participate in interstate commerce. Neither the U.S. Supreme Court nor any circuit court of appeals has squarely addressed this issue. No reported case from any federal appellate court has extended the Commerce Clause or Tax Clause to include the regulation of a person’s decision not to purchase a product, notwithstanding its effect on interstate commerce. Given the presence of some authority arguably supporting the theory underlying each side’s position, this court cannot conclude at this stage that the Complaint fails to state a cause of action.”

The Obamunists argued for dismissal on...well, any grounds they could - lack of standing, plaintiffs have no case, friviolity, whatever.  They sought a political decision to protect their greatest political triumph.  Judge Hudson made the only proper ruling he could - one based on law and the Constiution.  That precisely because O-Care takes the Commerce Clause where no Commerce Clause has gone before, there is plenty of room for court adjudication of the issues the regime created with their "Great Leap Backward".

And Oberfuehrer Sebelius offered the only rebuttal she could - whistling even louder past the political graveyard:

“The decision is a procedural step that just means there will be a full hearing on the arguments," she said. "We remain confident that the case is solid and that there is a full constitutional backing for the passage of the Affordable Care Act. So this is just a step to move us to the debate on the merits of the case.”

A far cry from the unsufferable crowing she'd have mau-maued forth if Judge Bolton had been presiding.  Which is why, apart from the stiff-upper-lipping, this was the least mendacitious thing she said all day.

Beats me why they want to fight for the individual mandate, though.  That was, after all, a bone thrown to the EEEEEEEEVIL insurance companies to keep them in business a while longer on the road to single-payer extinction.  If/when the IM is struck down, there's no more hugely expanded risk pool, private insurance collapses immediately, and Endgame arrives right behind it.  Isn't that what the fever swamps, which the Dems desperately need to turn out in November to avoid their own electoral extinction, most vehemently want?

How's that for an "alternate" point of view?  "Judge Harry Hudson, socialized medicine....obstructionist."