Health reform may have finally become law, but the partisan wars over the bill continue to rage -- and the latest flash point is a debate about whether the $940 billion overhaul means thousands of new government workers are about to bloat the federal payroll.
Republicans lawmakers are warning the law would put as many as 16,000 new Internal Revenue Service agents and workers on the streets. They claim Democrats tucked dozens of new departments and boards into the bill. And Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) predicts a massive expansion of the federal work force.
"There are going to be tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, before this is all over," DeMint told POLITICO. "We are going to be looking for the real truth of what this means. Just on something as simple as having 16,000 IRS agents chasing them around, that is going to open a lot of eyes."
There's just one problem: Experts say the figures are highly speculative.
Administration aides, who were cognizant that creating massive new bureaucracies would be bad politics, have sought to minimize the potential for a major expansion, sources said.
But the Obama administration has done little to quiet this tempest, as the key players who will implement the new law have provided few specifics on how it may increase the federal payroll.
Most of the burden for implementing the law rests with the Department of Health and Human Services. But in a video interview with POLITICO, Secretary Kathleen Sebelius could not provide an exact figure of additional workers, estimating it at only in the hundreds.
"Some of what is anticipated is new responsibilities potentially, not necessarily new people or new bureaucracies," Sebelius said. "I'm a big believer that you start with assuming that you do more with less. You know we have new responsibilities, but we've got to figure out what within our resources we have the capacity to take on immediately." |