The Unilateral Awesomeness of Kathleen Sebelius

Senator Tom Coburn (no relation, presumably, to the famous Saved by the Bell character Charlie Coburn) recently received a memo from the CRS which details the authority of the Secretary of Health and Human Services in the matter of IPAB legislation:

Under section 3403(d) of the Act, the special "fast track" parliamentary procedures governing House and Senate committee consideration, and Senate floor consideration, of legislation apply to both a proposal developed by the IPAB and one developed by the Secretary in the absence of IPAB recommendation...In short, should the IPAB fail to submit a package of recommendations in a required submission year, the Secretary is required by law to do so. In either event, such legislation would be governed by the "fast track" procedures established by the Act.

Ugh. Got that? Kathleen Sebelius, or whatever yo-yo assumes the position after her tenure is up, will essentially be a one-bureacrat IPAB. That's just incredible. The law that was supposed to save the world gets comically worse and worse every single day, and its supporters are just totally fumbling to try and cover it up.

A few months before Obamacare scurried its way through cloture, I attended a press conference in Washington at which Sebelius spoke in favor of the monstrous legislation. Even with consideration to the perpetual jaundice of Washingtonian political culture, she seemed a sour, largely unpleasant person; the compassion and nobility which people so often apply to "public servants" was nowhere to be found. I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with her possessing unilateral power over my car's transmission repair, let alone 1/6th of the United States economy. Then again, I wouldn't trust anyone with the latter. So it's not just her. It's the whole damn system.