Mike Lee: Lack of Meetings Between Obama and Sebelius ‘Inexcusable’

Mike Lee: Lack of Meetings Between Obama and Sebelius ‘Inexcusable’

On Wednesday, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) said it was “inexcusable” and “unpardonable” that President Barack Obama did not meet one-on-one with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius since Obamacare passed over three years ago. 

On Fox News’s Hannity, host Sean Hannity referenced the shocking Government Accountability Institute report when asking Lee whether he knew if Sebelius has met with Obama in one-on-one meetings. 

“Not to my knowledge,” Lee answered, before saying, “this is inexcusable” and “absolutely unpardonable.” 

Lee, who was the architect of the strategy to defund Obamacare and one of the fiercest opponents of the healthcare overhaul, continued by saying “there was this little oversight in the launching of this significant an enterprise” and Obamacare is “so much more than about the website.” Lee said ultimately Obamacare is about the “fundamental unfairness and unworkability of the law.”

At a House subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, Sebelius was flustered when asked to give specific evidence that she and Obama have met “regularly.” Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA), who is on the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, exclusively told Breitbart News that he will ask Sebelius for specific dates of those alleged meetings. 

The White House and the Health and Human Services Department have claimed Obama and Sebelius meet “regularly,” but have not provided any firm dates except for an alleged meeting last Thursday, which was a day after the GAI report was released. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said there are many meetings between Obama and cabinet secretaries that are not on the public record. 

When Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer broke the GAI report on Fox News’s Hannity last Wednesday, though, he mentioned that GAI examined the White House visitor logs and found that whenever Sebelius went to the White House, it was for social functions with “dozens or hundreds of people.” He noted on Hannity that if Obama met with Sebelius and left the meetings off the books, Sebelius would be the only cabinet secretary whose meetings with the White House were concealed.

The Government Accountability Institute report found that since Obamacare was signed into law on March 23, 2010, Obama met with “various Cabinet secretaries a total of 277 times,” but his presidential schedule did not “document a single one-on-one meeting” with Sebelius. There was “one instance of Secretary Sebelius meeting jointly with the President and Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner.”

According to the White House schedule, Obama “met with secretaries from the Departments of Defense, State, and Treasury for 263 (95%) out of his 277 face-to-face meetings.” Obama also had meetings with “secretaries from the Departments of Agriculture, Education, Justice, Energy, Homeland Security, Interior, Labor, Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs… [including] two meetings with the Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus (not an official Cabinet level post).”

Schweizer had previously said there was no evidence on the White House schedule that showed Obama cared about Obamacare.

“In the case of President Obama, if you look at his calendar, there is no evidence whatsoever that he is focused or has much interest in health care at all,” Schweizer said on Hannity on Wednesday.

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