During his pregame Superbowl interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, the president claimed that one of the reasons the IRS Director Douglas Shulman had visited the White House 157 times was to discuss the financial reforms that would prevent taxpayer funded bailouts in the future.
Transcript via Fox News:
O’REILLY: Douglas Shulman, former IRS chief, he was cleared into the White House 157 times, more than any of your cabinet members, more than any other IRS guy in the history, by far.
OK, why was Douglas Shulman here 157 times?Why?OBAMA: Mr. Shulman, as the head of the IRS, is constantly coming in, because at the time, we were trying to set up the, uh, HealthCare.gov and the IRS…O’REILLY: What did he have to do with that?OBAMA: — and the IRS is involved in making sure that that works as part of the overall health care team.O’REILLY: So it was all health care?OBAMA: Number two, we’ve also got the IRS involved when it comes to some of the financial reforms to make sure that we don’t have taxpayer funded bailouts in the future. So you had all these different agendas in which the head of the IRS is naturally involved.
The reason that jumped out at me is because conservatives like Charles Krauthammer have been sounding the alarm about the “risk corridor” in ObamaCare that is found in the law. The risk corridor is a euphemism for the taxpayer funded bailouts that are predicted to happen within the next few years to prevent an ObamaCare “death spiral” from happening.
The law depends upon the voluntary participation of insurers. Private citizens are compelled to purchase insurance, but insurers are free to walk away from Obamacare. To prevent that from happening, congressional Democrats put in place guarantees to cover insurance industry losses for the first few years of the program. The total cost of this bailout could feasibly run into the tens of billions of dollars.
Conservative thought leaders have begun to sound the alarm. In a Washington Post column in early January, Charles Krauthammer argued that ending the bailout should be the “first order of business” for conservatives in 2014. Similarly, James Capretta, Yuval Levin, Ramesh Ponnuru, and others have argued that the bailout should be a focus of conservatives looking to stop Obamacare.
Yet, according to Obama, Shulman visited the White House to prevent taxpayer funded bailouts? Does anyone believe this?
O’Reilly, for his part explained Obama’s deceptive answers by saying “he’s a true believer who “believes truly that’s what he is doing is what’s best for the country.”
And, you are not going to shake him out of that no matter how many stats you put on him, no matter how many circumstances you put on him. He believes it…
…Evasive I think is the word. He just does not want to tell you about why the IRS chief went to the White House. He says it’s Obamacare. Does anyone believe the guy shows up 157 times for a primer on Obamacare. Anybody? Buhler? I mean, come on…
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