This is how Republicans deal with a problematic website rollout during a Democratic administration:
Congressional hearings to find a 'bad guy' and a fall guy, maybe take somone's scalp. Definitely make Democrats look bad if nothing else.
Call for HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius's head:
WASHINGTON — Promising to press investigations into what went wrong, congressional Republicans on Sunday said that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius should leave over the website problems that have crippled the rollout of the Affordable Care Act.
"The president has been poorly served in the implementation of his own signature legislation," said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
"If she cannot reorganize to get the kind of team in consistently to meet his agenda, then she shouldn't be there," Issa said on CBS's "Face the Nation."
And issue subpeonas
Not to mention their stalling tactics are at least partially responsible for the website design getting started late, ensuring a less than successful rollout, then blame President Obama for the problems.
And ensuring that millions won't get any coverage despite their sudden professed "concern" for those milliions.
By contrast, let's recall what happened with the Bush adminstraiton rollout of Medicare Part D, an acknowledged disaster:
As Americans should recall, the Bush administration rollout of the Medicare drug benefit for 43 million elderly Americans was a disaster. Ohio Congressman John Boehner admitted as much to Fox News in February 2006 when he lamented that two years after its passage, "The implementation of the Medicare plan has been horrendous."
Much like Republican opponents of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, most Democratic Senators and almost all Democratic House members voted against Bush's Medicare Rx plan because they considered it an unnecessarily expensive, unfunded giveaway to insurance companies and pharmaceutical firms. But unlike Republican obstructionists who went to the Supreme Court, attempted to repeal and defund the law, blocked the expansion of Medicaid, refused to set up their own state health care exchanges, sought to cut-off funds for Obamacare "navigators," tried to halt spending on outreach and customer service, and even proclaimed they would refuse to answer constituent calls, Democrats at all levels helped save Bush's signature health care achievement from its disastrous roll-out.
Democratic Senator Kohl:
When Wisconsin Senator Kohl, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Aging asked his colleagues "to put aside any partisan thoughts to work together to get this program running," Democratic governors were already spending billions of dollars to help out.
About 20 states, including California, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania and all of New England, have announced that they will help low-income people by paying drug claims that should have been paid by the federal Medicare program.
Among the governors taking action were future Obamacare foes Tim Pawlenty and Mike Huckabee, who declared a health emergency in his state of Arkansas
Democrats who voted against the unfunded deficit busting program put aside their partisan differences and did everything possible to ensure the program's success, which it is now considered to be.
After all, when President Bush's Medicare prescription drug program nearly crashed and burned in late 2005 and early 2006, Democrats in Washington and in the states stepped in to save it.
Fast forward to today and we see how very different Republican obstructionsm - and partisanship - is:
Alas, it is on that last point where the paths of Part D and Obamacare diverge. Unlike Democrats then, Republican officials at all level are trying to sabotage a health care reform designed to help millions of Americans. Rooting for its failure--precisely what was unthinkable for Democrats in 2005 and 2006--is now standard operating procedure for Republicans.
It's obvious that Republicans root for Obama to fail, and would rather see the country come to harm if their party 'wins' the point. So what do you say, Republicans? Put aside your obstructionism, and partisanship. Forget about repaying a favor to Democrats, how about doing something that's right for the country, and Americans, for a change?