As Kathleen Sibelius prepares to testify at today’s Congressional Hearing, word has gotten out that she plans to blame the horrible roll-out of the President’s Signature Legislation, Obamacare, on CGI Federal, the Canadian Firm who designed the horrendous technical disaster of a website, known as Healthcare.gov.

I was going to advise the clueless Secretary of HHS to tread lightly, but I changed my mind:

Let it all hang out, Kathy-Baby.

As I reported back on October 19th, the awarding of a no-bid contract to CGI Federal was the result of political shenanigans.

Allow me to introduce you to Mr. George Schindler…

Mr. George D. Schindler has been the President of United States and Canada at CGI Group Inc. since January 2013 and served as the President U.S. Operations since October 2011. As a member of CGI’s Management Committee, Mr. Schindler also participates in the development and execution of CGI’s global strategy. Mr. Schindler served as the President of Stanley, Inc. since August 2010. Mr. Schindler served as the President of CGI Federal Inc. from 2006 to October 1, 2011, where he led CGI’s business with the Civilian, Defense, and Intelligence Sectors of the U.S. government. Under his leadership, CGI Federal was named the 2010 Greater Washington U.S. Government Contractor of the Year (greater than $300 million) by the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce, PSC and Washington Technology. CGI was also named one of the “9 Hot Companies to Watch” by Federal Computer Week.

In August 2012, Schindler donated $1,000 to Obama’s Re-Election Campaign,according to opensecrets.org. However, by then, his company had already secured the contract to build the website.

That donation was made at the very same time that a bunch of business leaders, including Schindler, met with the president at the White House, to talk about “insourcing”, a pleasant little term which the Administration made up to describe their pleading with American Corporations not to move their assets out of the country to get away from all the taxes that the same Obama Administration was penalizing them with.

Informationweek.com reported at the time that…

“You’ve heard of outsourcing. Well, these companies are insourcing,” the president said. “That’s exactly the kind of commitment to country that we need–especially right now, when we’re in a make-or-break moment for the middle class and those aspiring to get to the middle class here in the United States.”

Obama added: “When a lot of folks are still looking for work, now is the time for us to step on the gas.” And while he gave a nod to what he said were the “the bottom line” benefits of sourcing domestically, Obama asserted “a moral case” for insourcing.

Great sound bites, especially in a political season where attention is focused on 99 percenters, Occupy protesters, and general class warfare. But here’s the reality: There’s no broad trend toward insourcing, but there is a recognition that the pressure to cut costs over the past decade led many companies to push the envelope on offshoring a bit too far, and that it’s time for some rebalancing.

…CGI Group is a midsize tech services company based in Quebec, with offices in more than 40 U.S. locations as well as centers in Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Mumbai, India. CGI employs roughly 10,000 workers in the U.S. and 20,000 elsewhere.

Of late, the company has been opening development centers in small U.S. towns such as Belton, Texas, Lebanon, Va., and Troy, Ala. CGI U.S. president George Schindler, who attended Obama’s insourcing summit, told me that such locales are becoming more cost competitive with India and offer a pool of untapped IT talent that can add some geographic balance to CGI’s workforce.

“These are areas that have been harder hit by the downturn than others, but they offer a set of dynamics that are working in our favor,” Schindler told me following his visit to the White House. “They offer a great cost of living, they are motivated from a local government perspective, and there’s partnerships with community colleges that can train people in the skills we need. It makes an attractive cost case, whereas the opposite is happening in some other parts of the world.”

As for creating jobs in the U.S., Schindler says it’s great to be able to contribute to local communities. “But it’s business first–the economics have to be there,” he says.

Since I reported on the president’s connection to CGI Federal, it has come out that the First Lady, not-so-affectionately known to average Americans as “Mooch”, has ties to CGI Federal, as well.

Fox News reports that

Toni Townes-Whitley, a senior vice president at CGI Federal, is also a Princeton University classmate of first lady Michelle Obama — and a political donor.

Mike Caddell, a spokesman for Princeton University, confirmed to FoxNews.com that Townes-Whitley went to the school and graduated in 1985. According to a Princeton alumni publication in 1998, Townes-Whitley also volunteered for the Peace Corps and was stationed in West Africa. She raised six children before returning to work.

Both Townes-Whitley and Michelle Obama are members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni.

According to Federal Election Commission Records, Townes-Whitley gave $500 in 2011 and 2012 to Obama’s reelection campaign, and another $1,000 to the Obama Victory Fund.

Shenanigans aside, what was CGI’s reputation before Obama hired them?

According to a website, out of Fairfax County, VA,fairfaxunderground.com…

Canadian provincial health officials last year fired the parent company of CGI Federal, the prime contractor for the problem-plagued Obamacare health exchange websites, the Washington Examiner has learned.

CGI Federal’s parent company, Montreal-based CGI Group, was officially terminated in September 2012 by a Ontario government health agency after the firm missed three years of deadlines and failed to deliver the province’s flagship online medical registry.

The online registry was supposed to be up and running by June 2011.

The CMS officials refused to say if federal officials knew of its parent company’s IT failure in Canada when awarding the six contracts.

It wasn’t just those contracts. As mentioned earlier, Obama dumped huge amounts of money on CGI.

CGI Federal is a subsidiary of Montreal-based CGI Group. With offices in Fairfax, Va., the subsidiary has been a darling of the Obama administration, which since 2009 has bestowed it with $1.4 billion in federal contracts, according to USAspending.gov.

HHS is by far the single largest federal contractor of CGI, showering it with $645 million in contracts. The Defense Department pays the Canadian company $254 million, the EPA $58 million and the Justice Department $36 million.

In comparison, in 2008, under President George W. Bush, CGI contracts totaled only $16.5 million for all federal departments and agencies.

The interesting question is why Obama dumped 1.4 billion in taxpayer money on a company this incompetent and ignored all the warnings.

It’s one more thing that ought to be investigated.

Well, heck, there is no time like the present, for a good investigation.

So, today, I hope Secretary Sibelius throws the entire Administration under the bus. 

She would be well-advised to land the first punch.  Heck, she might as well walk into the hearings wearing a baseball cap with the word “SCAPEGOAT” written across the front of it.

Because, it any heads are going to roll of the failure of Obamacare, her’s will be the first to hit the floor.

Certainly, you don’t believe that “the smartest guy in the room” is going to accept any responsibility for this Legislative Train Wreck, do you?

Being Obama means never having to say you’re sorry.

Until He Comes,

KJ