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Obamacare Architect Confesses
Jonathan Gruber is known as one of the architects of Obamacare. Soon, he might be known as the guy who brought it tumbling down.
Last summer, as a federal appeals court considered Halbig vs. Burwell, a 2012 video surfaced of Gruber denying the Obama administration’s current position on the issue. HHS insisted that exchanges “established by the State” was a mere “typo;” Gruber’s old video insisted that precise phrasing was by design. The court ruled against the administration, creating panic among the progressive commentariat.
Now as a related case is being considered by the Supreme Court, another inconvenient video has been uncovered. The Daily Signal found 2013 footage of the loose-lipped architect which could make things tough for Obamacare
My transcription:
“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay? So it’s written to do that.
“In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said healthy people are gonna pay in — made explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed. Okay?
“Lack of transparency’s a huge political advantage. And basically, you know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to get anything to pass.
Gruber concluded his confession with, “yeah there’s things I wish I could change, but I’d rather have this law than not.”
Published in General
Among all the other things these Gruber videos teach us, one truth we must not overlook is that Obama’s victory put the power of the government into the hands of some really, really narcissistic twits.
“The stupidity of the American voter”
You call someone who has no source of information ignorant. You call someone who has information but refuses to use it wisely stupid. The American voter, in the vast majority, has no credible source of information. MSNBC? ABC? CBS? CNN? NBC? FOX? As a result, he gets led down the garden path. This past election was an indication that the garden path is getting a little too well known.
A succinct admission that when push comes to shove, for Liberals, the ends justify the means. Democracy be damned. Constitution be damned. They know what’s best for us and they’ll give it to us no matter what it takes.
Herr Gruber is one of the most frightening guys I’ve seen in a long time…and he’s just the tip of the iceberg.
God help us.
And Mr Justice Roberts got bamboozled by a political hack like this.
The ends justify the lies.
So now we have it. Leftist technocrats using every trick in their slick little book of political legerdemain foisting Obamacare upon us by abusing the reconciliation rules and inserting Obamacare into a gutted House spending bill to avoid a filibuster (they later gutted the filibuster rule as well.) Now they’ve admitted that the bill was written to obscure its intention and hoodwink the Congressional Budget Office and the American people (but not the Supreme Court.) How can the Supreme Court possibly feel that this law should stand, now knowing that they were a pawn in its intended deception?
Obama’s likely direction at the time? “I don’t care how you do it, just get it done.”
Fool me once, 2008; fool me twice, 2012…
This is what happens when some public finance econ prof talks about sales.
These are the people we want on record, btw. Ambushing Dem pols/bureaucrats/activists like some Conservative Michael Moore is fine, but it has a limited upside.
Asking intellectual policy architects simple question followed by simple question is an almost bottomless goldmine. They want to talk, they want to explain, this is what they do. Let ’em.
You’ll get “Little Eichmanns” and the like surprisingly often.
Yes. Liberals think they are smarter than everyone else, but many of them are not quite smart enough to realize when to shut up.
Jon,
Let’s sum up.
Gruber: Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage.
Translation: Fraud is profitable.
Now that’s the Obama Administration, always innovating and pushing the envelope in new lying technology. Just amazing.
Regards,
Jim
Calling our opponents “frightening” increases peoples anxiety. Scared people may become too frightened to think and vote rationally. Actually, Gruber’s candid confession was pretty funny, which is the angle we should play. Let the Left call us “frightening” and try to scare people into voting against us. We should be encouraging people to join with us in laughing at such stupidly dishonest leftist tactics. It’s better politics.
Obfuscation = malfeasance
I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
Jonathan is worse than his brother Hans.
What this man describes is actually called fraud if it was not done by politicians.
An MIT professor who is so smart that he didn’t know a video recording would end up on YouTube.
No wonder Mr Obama wants to control the Internet.
Why would you imagine that he cares? As if this venal toad will suffer some repercussions for the sin of briefly speaking the truth, it is laughable.
Kind of like Todd Akin.
It’s too bad these videos cannot emerge just BEFORE elections and not afterward.
I wonder how much else is out there?
What was the forum for this candid commentary?
I heard the audio of Gruber on Christian talk radio yesterday (the American Family Association network). They pointed out that this deliberate duplicity did not fool any American voters.
This sham legislation also did not fool any Republican senators or congressmen.
The people who were fooled by these lies were Democrat senators and congressmen.
It appears that they badly wanted to be fooled. There were a couple of hundred pages added to the bill for the purpose of blowing enough smoke to make a suitable fig leaf for Democratic senators and congressmen.
Last week’s election results demonstrate that there are many American voters who are discerning enough to withstand the media obfuscation of Democrat actions.
I’m stuck on this point as well. What is the forum wherein it is acceptable to say that if the truth were known, the law would not pass, but since I wanted the law to pass, I had to exploit the stupidity of Americans and withhold the truth.
Where, exactly, does Gruber feel confident of acceptance and accolades for this admission?
This forum is stuffed with very bad people, and maybe only one decent person (the videographer)
To steal a quote and thought from Churchill, the Obama years will be known as the “The Years the Locust Hath Eaten’.
Yep. This is fraud, and had it been done in any business, people would have gone to prison for it.
But these are politicians. Democrats. The President. And so nothing will happen to the fraudsters.
And that is the biggest tragedy.
What is even more frustrating is the smug grin he wears while explaining his deception. It’s as if he is inviting his audience to join in laughing at all the stupid proles.
There is an interesting distinction about bargaining embedded in this discussion. A lack of transparency is a political advantage. For instance, the Constitutional Convention had a secrecy rule (that Jefferson hated, I should add). It permitted the Convention to formulate a document that could then be sent to the states for ratification. But just criticism can be lain on Gruber and the other Obamanauts for the way they achieved opacity. The strategy Gruber applauds is sinister: phrasing something to explicitly camouflage the truth (“[if the law had said] healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed”) within a fairly non-transparent legislative process (“You have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it”). There really wasn’t much of a “debate” about the passage of Obamacare. The Constitution, on the other hand, gave us the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers.
Oiko,
You are too kind. This is more than just a lack of debate or open exposition of the principles involved. This an active disinformation campaign.
1.) You can keep your Doctor & your Health Insurance.
2.) The ACA will reduce the cost of everyone’s Heath Insurance.
Drew is quite correct. These claims widely advertised made by a private corporation would have brought the FTC down upon all.
Fraud.
Regards,
Jim
Several people have asked what the firum was fir Fruber’s remarks. My understanding is that it was at a conference of Health Economists hosted at the University of Pennsylvania. Oct 17-18, 2013. 24th AHEC at the Wharton School. Attendance was invitation-only
Thanks. My opinion of Health Economists just slipped.