In other words, the IRS is getting more goodies so that they can better get the goods on you if you don't follow the health care laws.
From the article:
The Obama administration has plowed ahead despite the legal and political challenges.Although we won't know how the Supreme Court will rule on ObamaCare until June, it's almost as if the Obama administration is trying to push through implementation of much of the law while they still can.
It has moved aggressively to get important policies in place. And, according to a review of budget documents and figures provided by congressional staff, the administration is also burning through implementation funding provided in the healthcare law.
The law contains dozens of targeted appropriations to implement specific provisions. It also gave the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) a $1 billion implementation fund, to use as it sees fit. Republicans have called it a “slush fund."
HHS plans to drain the entire fund by September -- before the presidential election, and more than a year before most of the healthcare law takes effect. Roughly half of that money will ultimately go to the IRS.
Or to borrow a cancer metaphor from David Catron, they're trying to get the bad law to "metastasize" as quickly as possible into as many nooks and crannies of Americans' lives in order to make it harder to undo in the future.
Radical excision of ObamaCare can't come soon enough -- either by the Supreme Court or at the ballot box. (The Hill link via Dr. Matthew Bowdish.)
Update: Investor's Business Daily offers their own observations in, "Army Of IRS Enforcers Can't Make ObamaCare Legitimate":
Cost: Half a billion dollars, paid for off-the-books by taxpayers through a massive $1 billion Health and Human Services slush fund that got tucked into the bill.
The only conclusion from this stealth move is that the Obama administration expects massive noncompliance from taxpayers with its unpopular mandate.
And that raises questions about its legitimacy as a law. Passed through trickery, bribery and without a bipartisan majority, ObamaCare is already on shaky ground...
When vast numbers of people refuse to obey a law, there's a problem with the law... ObamaCare ultimately boils down to the public's willingness to accept its mandate. That they haven't and that President Obama's only weapon of persuasion is to threaten them speak volumes about the law's viability.
