Health and Human Services

Today, Our Dear Leader nominated Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius to serve as the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

I spent some time crawling around the grand website for the largest-among-large Federal bureaucracies to see what kind of empire she is inheriting.

Some facts that I pulled off of this website:

• The mission of the HHS is: To protect the health of all Americans and provide essential human services, especially to those with the greatest need. The Department of Health and Human Services sponsors medical and social science research, approves the use of new drugs and medical devices, manages infectious disease prevention and response programs, administers Medicare, Medicaid and other programs that provide financial assistance and services to low-income families.

• The FY2008 budget of $716 billion represented almost a quarter of ALL Federal expenditures. HHS administers more grant dollars than ALL other Federal agencies combined!
  

• The Department of HHS was selected as the 18th best place to work in the US Government in 2007 and employed 52,799 persons in 2006. Assuming that this number did not grow between 2006 and 2008 (haa haa haaah haaa) this means that each highly trained member of the HHS team oversaw over $13 million in hand-outs. No possibility for corruption, graft, waste, fraud with these kinds of numbers...
  

On the GovBenefits.gov link with the HHS website we find all sorts of quick-links for the growing population of Americans who are living the dream of becoming wards of the state. Let's see..

• "GovBenefits.gov is the official benefits website of the U.S. government, with information on over 1,000 benefit and assistance programs." (are you kidding me? Over 1,000? And the site is boasting about this?)
  

• "There's truly something for everyone!" (everyone is entitled to the wealth earned by someone else)

There is a questionnaire that contains the request to document the number of times you have been married (a number 0 - 10). I wonder how many people type "9"?

On question 14, the questionnaire asks to identify your profession and "manufacturing" is not listed, but "practicing artist", "published writer / poet", "federal employee" and "aquaculture operator" do make the list.

Question 39 is a classic: "How much do you earn each month from working?" [I'm sorry, is this to differentiate the money I've made robbing liquor stores or the money I've gotten from other handouts? Apparently this question seeks to understand how much of one's income was actually earned the only way wealth can be earned - through work]

So, I filled out the questionnaire and was presented with a menu of 24 different hand-outs for which I may be qualified. Going on the dole, has never been easier...

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on the objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."

--- James Madison, Father of the US Constitution, 1792, in disapproval of Congress appropriating $15,000 to assist some French refugees