Commentator Thomas F. Schaller's recent column about the Obamacare rollout played footloose and fancy free with the facts of the president's $800 billion "stimulus" plan in 2009 ("Obamacare rollout shockingly rough," Dec. 10).
For example, Mr. Schaller gushed over "how deftly and proficiently Barack Obama and his advisers managed the implementation of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act." The truth is, the Democrats simply rammed the measure through Congress in much the same manner they later did with Obamacare.
Mr. Schaller also asserted that the Obama administration made sure that "funding for shovel-ready projects were timely, targeted and temporary."
That's a half-truth at best. At the time, President Obama boasted that his stimulus plan would "immediately jump start job creation with shovel-ready projects to rebuild the nation's crumbling infrastructure." Unfortunately, as the president later admitted, there's no such thing as "shovel-ready projects." So why did Mr. Schaller neglect to mention that?
Other problematic statements in Mr. Schaller's column: "The stimulus is this president's great and overlooked policy triumph;" "Mr. Obama has a keen eye for technically proficient, visionary managers;" "Energy Secretary Stephen Chu recruited 4,500 relevant experts;" and "every agency had to report on every program, every week."
And so on. In other words, a typical Schaller column by a writer who has chutzpah to spare.
Richard T. Seymour, Baltimore
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