Uncle Sam’s Books Would Land CEOs in Jail

[Geee]

National Review:


Imagine that Uncle Sam suddenly morphed into Samuel Smith, CEO of Federal Enterprises, Inc., a conglomerate with 2.8 million employees in 2009, $2.2 trillion in revenues in 2010, and a proposed budget of $3.7 trillion for 2012. If this private company were run the way Washington works, newspaper headlines soon would scream: “MR. SMITH GOES TO ATTICA.”

Washington’s routine accounting methods would trigger indictments against similarly behaved business executives. In fact, people have been convicted for operating as Washington has for decades.

• Consider the Obama administration and the previous Democratic Congress’s mishandling of $500 billion in Medicare funds. If Republicans proposed to reduce Medicare’s cotton-ball budget by 1 percent, Democrats would scream, “Dachau!” And yet Democrats, of all people, swiped half a trillion dollars from Medicare to finance Obamacare. Democrats also claim that this sum will underwrite Medicare benefits. Which is it?


Rep. John Shimkus (R., Ill.) grilled Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius about this before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health. He wondered how, in essence, the Obama administration could move $500 billion from its left pocket (Medicare) to its far-left pocket (Obamacare) and somehow finance $1 trillion worth of Medicare and Obamacare.
“Your law cuts $500 billion in Medicare,” Shimkus reminded Sebelius at a March 3 hearing. “Then you’re also using the same $500 billion to say you’re funding health-care [reform]. Your own actuary says you can’t do both.”