Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is in quite the bind these days. He's got a
troubled reelection campaign and a very real need to prove his teabaggie bona fides in a primary back home. And he's got a
kamikaze crew of 2016 wannabes trying to force him to wreck the party's prospects—and hurt his own general election outlook—for 2014 by shutting down government. What's an unprincipled, embattled and weakened politician to do? Try to find a
compromise that he can try to sell to the crazies—delay Obamacare because it's evil.
Aug 12 (Reuters) - Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on Monday called on the Obama administration to delay the Oct. 1 opening of exchanges where uninsured Americans will be able to buy health insurance until the U.S. government can guarantee the protection of people's personal data. [...]
In a letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency taking the lead in implementing the law, McConnell said that "Americans should not be forced into the exchanges, and certainly not without these assurances" that personal and financial data will be safe from "hackers and cyber criminals."
"If you rush to go forward without adequate safeguards in place," McConnell added, "any theft of personal information from constituents will be the result of your rush to implement a law to meet the agency's political needs and not the operational needs of the people it is supposed to serve."
Will it work? No. The administration isn't going to delay the opening of the exchanges. Which means it won't work to appease the defund or bust crowd, either. McConnell is going to have to decide whether or not he'll try to shut down government to save his own primaried ass, or do the right thing for the GOP's long-term prospects. Given it's McConnell we're talking about here, we'd better get ready for the shutdown.
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