Citing documents uncovered by Judicial Watch, a group of United States Senators has launched an investigation into the Obama administration’s plan to skirt normal government hiring procedures to enlist 1,814 highly-paid, top-level administrators to expedite the president’s healthcare law.
In late July JW obtained internal documents outlining the secret arrangement granting the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) authority to cast aside normal government hiring protocol to allow a high-level hiring surge on the day Obamacare passed. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the agency responsible for recruiting and hiring the federal workforce, gave HHS extraordinary “direct-hire appointing authority,” in order to bypass normal channels and “hire quickly” to execute Obama’s healthcare reform directive, according to the documents obtained by JW.
In all, HHS was granted permission to utilize what is known as a “valuable human capital recruitment tool” to enlist 1,814 top-level government employees making annual taxpayer-funded salaries between $70,000 and $130,000. More than 1,100 of the new employees would start at the higher pay scale of nearly $100,000 annually, the documents reveal. JW’s investigation into this scandal is ongoing, but now six United States senators are looking into the matter.
