"War Room" Notes Describe IT Chaos At Healthcare.gov

dcblogs writes "U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has released 175 pages of "War Room" notes — a collection of notes by federal officials dealing with the problems at Healthcare.gov. They start Oct. 1, the launch day. The War Room notes catalog IT problems — dashboards weren't showing data, servers didn't have the right production data, third party systems weren't connecting to verify data, a key contractor had trouble logging on, and there wasn't enough server capacity to handle the traffic, or enough people on the help desks to answer calls. To top it off, some personnel needed for the effort were furloughed because of the shutdown. Volunteers were needed to work weekends, but there were bureaucratic complications."

Comments

Re:Furloughed workers

[_Sharp'r_]

The problem with your analysis is that you have the facts wrong.

If you look at a chart of revenue and spending in constant dollars, you'll see that after the 1998 tax cuts, revenue increased until the dot.com bust in 2000. Revenue was down until the 2001 & 2003 Bush tax cuts, after which it increased until the housing bubble burst in 2007/08. Tha major tax cuts in the era you're talking about weren't followed by revenue decreases in the years right after they took effect. Revenue right now is about average for the last 15 years, down a bit because it follows the state of the economy and the economy overall is still down. Minor changes in tax rates don't affect revenue that much. Annual revenue is UP about a trillion dollars since 1980, so it's not like we've suddenly had less revenue than ever before.

Spending is the the obvious issue. Since 1980, spending is up $1.8 Trillion (still constant, i.e. inflation adjusted dollars). Since 2000, it's up over a Trillion dollars.

Bottom line, revenue is way up. Spending is just way, way more up. Revenue has gone in the desired direction. The issue is that Spending has gone in the wrong direction if we want to solve anything related to debt and deficits.