[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 138 (Monday, October 7, 2013)]
[House]
[Page H6326]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  A PREVENTABLE TRAIN WRECK: WHITE HOUSE BUILT SLOPPY IT ARCHITECTURE

  (Mr. BURGESS asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the administration finally began 
to acknowledge what many have been saying for some time: healthcare.gov 
is having major problems.
  The administration spent most of last week boasting about the high 
number of visitors to the Federal site, but it conveniently left out a 
very important statistic: how many people actually were able to 
purchase insurance.
  Unlike the initial claims that the sites were crashing because demand 
was so high, it is clear now that the exchanges were failing because 
they appear to have major structural flaws. According to technicians 
and people at The Wall Street Journal, the site appears to be built on 
a ``sloppy software foundation.''
  To make matters worse, even the information the Web site collected 
may be useless thanks to a security problem that corrupted a lot of the 
data. According to one estimate, 99 percent of the applications 
submitted may be facing data problems that will stop these 
applications.
  Members of the administration need to come to the Energy and Commerce 
Committee and start telling us the truth about this information 
architecture. Taxpayers have spent money, a lot of money, to build 
these sites. If they have been sold a pig in a poke, they need to know.

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