Obama now raiding the treasury

Good day all. This story came out last week, but went under the radar. Considering the crime wave called the Obama Administration, this isn’t surprising. Apparently, Obama spent funds that weren’t lawfully appropriated by Congress and the Treasury Department, when asked, refused to answer Congresses questions.

Now if we had a truly functional, independent congress, the United States Treasury wouldn’t even be contemplating ignoring Congress. However, we are living in the Age of Obama, and all the federal agencies have started ignoring Congress. Here are the details of the Treasury’s arrogance from the Washington Examiner:

The U.S. Treasury Department has rebuffed a request by House Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, R- Wis., to explain $3 billion in payments that were made to health insurers even though Congress never authorized the spending through annual appropriations.

At issue are payments to insurers known as cost-sharing subsidies. These payments come about because President Obama’s healthcare law forces insurers to limit out-of-pocket costs for certain low income individuals by capping consumer expenses, such as deductibles and co-payments, in insurance policies. In exchange for capping these charges, insurers are supposed to receive compensation.

Once again, we see just what a disaster Obamacare is for everyone.

What’s tricky is that Congress never authorized any money to make such payments to insurers in its annual appropriations, but the Department of Health and Human Services, with the cooperation of the U.S. Treasury, made them anyway.

Can we say “Constitutional Violation?” Sure we can! These agencies are absolutely forbidden from spending money that hasn’t been authorized by Congress. I suspect that they know this and that’s why they don’t want to answer any questions. If they tell the truth, they are screwed. If they lie, they are still screwed. And what was the answer by Congress? About what you would expect from that worthless speaker of the House, Crybaby Boehner.

Health and Human Services spending on these cost-sharing payments is one of the issues named in House Speaker John Boehner’s lawsuit against the Obama administration’s executive actions on Obamacare.

Typical of that craven coward. The correct answer would be a subpena to the relevant people and a willingness to send the police after them to drag them up to Capital Hill. Now here’s how this all started.

In a Feb. 3 letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, Ryan, along with House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., asked for “a full explanation for, and all documents relating to” the administration’s decision to make the cost-sharing payments without congressional authorization.

A typical oversight request, which is exactly what the Congress is supposed to do. The response? The Treasury department pretty much ignored what Congress wanted.

n response, on Wednesday, the Treasury Department sent a letter to Ryan largely describing the program, without offering a detailed explanation of the decision to make the payments. The letter revealed that $2.997 billion in such payments had been made in 2014, but didn’t elaborate on where the money came from. Over the next decade, cost-sharing payments to insurers are projected by the Congressional Budget Office to cost taxpayers nearly $150 billion.

And as I understand it, not one penny has yet to be appropriated for that purpose. So what did the Treasury Department do?

Instead of detailing the basis for making the payments without appropriations, Treasury officials cited the ongoing House GOP litigation, and referred Ryan to the Department of Justice.

Ahh, I see, they used the old “Talk to my lawyer” excuse. And what did that pack of Mafia Consigliere say to the Congress?

In a brief filed on Jan. 26, DOJ lawyers wrote that the Boehner lawsuit was incorrect in saying that the payments required annual appropriation. “The cost sharing reduction payments are being made as part of a mandatory payment program that Congress has fully appropriated,” the brief read. But this argument is undercut by the administration’s own previous budget request.

The argument that annual appropriations are required to make payments is also backed up by a report from the Congressional Research Service, which has differentiated between the tax credit subsidies that Obamacare provides to individuals to help them purchase insurance, and the cost-sharing payments to insurers.

Well, that seems pretty straightforward. Congress has not appropriated money, so the Obama Regime is not allowed to spend it. Of course, that would mean that Obama and his stooges actually care about the law and constitution, which we know that don’ts.

In a July 2013 letter to then Sen. Tom Coburn, Congressional Research Service wrote that, “unlike the refundable tax credits, these [cost-sharing] payments to the health plans do not appear to be funded through a permanent appropriation. Instead, it appears from the President’s FY2014 budget that funds for these payments are intended to be made available through annual appropriations.”

As San Fran Nan said, “We have to pass the bill in order to know what’s in the bill.” Well, it looks like they forgot to actually pass a law that allows Obama to raid the treasury to pay off his cronies in the Insurance business. Now, will that twerp Ryan and that knothead Boehner actually use the tools at their disposal to deal with yet another out of control bureaucracy? What do you think?

Thatisall

~The Angry Webmaster~

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