Saturday, October 26, 2013

5 other botched rollouts of government programs

The Obama administration's struggle with debugging the HealthCare.gov website is causing critics to ask whether ObamaCare is "Obama's Iraq War," and to dismiss Obama's signature policy achievement a "quagmire."

Media coverage is becoming increasingly hysterical, meaning some historical perspective is in order. Many large-scale government programs that are now embedded in American society also began with rough rollouts that are now mostly forgotten.

Here are five programs that are humming along today, despite their rocky beginnings:

1. Social Security
In the program's early days, many employers failed to include worker names and their new Social Security numbers in their earnings report, leaving the government without the basic information needed to calculate benefits and cut checks.

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