"Inconsistencies" have been found in the data supplied by 2.9 million of the 5.45 million people (53 percent) who enrolled in Obamacare via Healthcare.gov, the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services reported in June. About 1.3 million concerned whether the applicant was a U.S. citizen, a million more whether the applicant qualified for a subsidy. About 2.6 million (89 percent) were unresolved as of the May 27. The IG report covers only applicants through Feb. 23, doesn't cover the 2.57 million (47 percent) who enrolled on state exchanges. A chart presented to the House Energy and Commerce Committee by SERCO, a contractor which handles Obamacare paperwork, showed 4.099 million "inconsistencies." It will be many months, if ever, before these can be resolved, because HHS launched Healthcare.gov without establishing a system to verify eligibility, SERCO said. People who got subsidies to which they weren't entitled will have to repay them. Up to a million could get a nasty surprise at tax time next year.  This is only one of a multitude of reasons why Obamacare -- better named Zerocare -- is in an irreversible death spiral.

Did you know that the portion of the federal budget that Congress actually votes on (the discretionary budget) has been falling for years? The so-called "entitlements," such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and Obamacare, take a larger and larger portion of the total federal budget each year. Former U.S. Treasury economist Eugene Steuerle, now at the Urban Institute, has created a Fiscal Democracy Index, which measures "the extent to which past and future projected revenues are already claimed by the permanent programs that are now in place." In 1965, these programs claimed about 35 percent of the federal budget; now they claim about 85 percent of the budget, and they will soon claim more than 100 percent of total tax revenue. Mr. Steuerle is now out with a new book, "Dead Men Ruling," which explains how we got into the budget mess and the consequences of it. He writes:

Children and teenagers chiefly from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador have been crossing into Texas at a rate of 35,000 a month, the Los Angeles Times reported in June. About 240,000 illegals - 52,000  unaccompanied minors - have crossed into the Rio Grande Valley in recent months. Up to 300,000 more are on their way, WOAI Radio in San Antonio reported Monday (7/7). Many come with infectious diseases such as scabies and tuberculosis, which appear to be spreading into the local population. Doctors and nurses caring for illegal alien children at Lackland AFB in San Antonio have been threatened with arrest if they divulge information about contagion. The refugee camp is like "a giant emergency room," said a psychiatric counselor who talked to Fox News despite the threat.  "We have so many kids coming in that there was no way to control all of the sickness," said a nurse, who told Fox News she was "horrified" by what she saw. The administration knew they were coming, did nothing to stop them, prepared inadequately for their arrival. The border crisis is President Obama's "Katrina moment," said USA Today reporter Susan Page.  I have a modest proposal on how to get Zero to put an end to this. 

July 1 might go down in history as the beginning of the end of the comprehensive, progressive income tax. A progressive income tax, in which the government attempts to tax all labor income and capital income, such as interest, dividends and capital gains more than once, cannot help becoming so complex that it eventually dies of its own weight. This is particularly true when the government attempts to tax the worldwide income of its "tax persons" rather than the income located in its own territory. The complexity is caused by the never-ending attempt to define what income is and what should be exempt (loopholes). Press reports now state that the U.S. tax code is more than 77,000 pages and growing at a rapid rate. Obviously, no one individual or even teams of lawyers and accountants can fully understand all of this, including people at the Internal Revenue Service. When laws are too complex and increasingly subjective in their interpretation, it inevitably leads to corruption. All but the willfully blind now understand that the IRS has both become corrupt and incompetent.  It's time to end it, not mend it.