Botching F-35 dwarfs ACA website

By Daniel Ruth

There isn't enough lipstick in the world to make the Affordable Care Act's website pig look like a Vogue model. Little wonder then Roget's Thesaurus is groaning under the weight of Washington's ire to describe perhaps the worst inept debut since The Lone Ranger.

How else to characterize a $300 million (and counting) federal government website that turned out to be the bureaucratic equivalent of Donkey Kong?

Fiasco? Check. Boondoggle? You betcha. Train wreck? Yep. Blunder? No doubt. Farce? Absolutely. Let's all pile on. Congressional hearings are in full outrage, high dudgeon. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is being fitted for the public stocks. The criticism, the dismay, is all very fair.

But the congressional crusade for fiscal accountability would seem to be somewhat selective. If the Beltway is going to fulminate over $300 million wasted to create a website, surely there must be some froth to spare for the $400 billion already flushed away to develop the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which after years of delays and cost overruns has yet to shoot so much as a pea against an adversary in combat.

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