The Health and Human Services (HHS) Department on Friday claimed that HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius meets frequently with President Barack Obama and just had a meeting with him on Thursday, one day after a report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Institute revealed that Obama and Sebelius have not had a one-on-one meeting since Obamacare passed.
That was the only specific date that either HHS or the White House mentioned while claiming Sebelius and Obama “regularly” meet.
The Health and Human Services Department released a statement indicating that Sebelius “has been to the White House countless times since becoming Secretary.”
“She is frequently at the White House for meetings related to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, including dozens with the President in the last year alone. In fact, she met with the President just yesterday,” an HHS spokesperson said.
On Friday, White House Press Secretary also claimed that Obama “regularly” meets with Sebelius and that cabinet secretaries do not get frequently entered into the visitors logs.
As Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer noted on Fox News’s Hannity on Wednesday, though, GAI examined the White House visitor logs and found that whenever Sebelius went to the White House, it was for social functions with “dozens or hundreds of people.” He noted on Hannity that if Obama met with Sebelius and left the meetings off the books, Sebelius would be the only cabinet secretary whose meetings with the White House were concealed.
The Government Accountability Institute report found that since Obamacare was signed on March 23, 2010, Obama met with “various Cabinet secretaries a total of 277 times,” but his presidential schedule did not “document a single one-on-one meeting” with Sebelius. There was, though, “one instance of Secretary Sebelius meeting jointly with the President and Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner.”