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Something I Don’t Understand About Grubergate

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So, you’ve got this guy,  Jonathan Gruber, the architect of Obamacare, and he’s in trouble for getting caught on video admitting that he and the Democrats lied about what was in the law and that they lied about the law because of the “stupidity of the American Voter.”

I get all that. It comes as no surprise, really, that Democrats think of Americans as stupid; consider their voters, for example.  But what doesn’t ring true is Gruber’s explanation for why they lied about Obamacare.

“It would have made more sense to do Obamacare the way we did in Massachusetts, which would be to just give people money to offset the cost of their health insurance,” Gruber said. “That was politically infeasible and so instead it was done through the tax code.”

But wait. There was a filibuster-proof 60 Democrats in the Senate, and a massive Democrat majority in the House when Obamacare was written. Why would it have been “politically impossible” to just do a straight-off health-insurance subsidy aligned with the Democrat philosophy of “We will take money away from people you don’t like and buy you stuff with it?”

Republicans would have resisted, of course, but their resistance was meaningless; they had absolutely no power. Obamacare was a Democrat deal… end-to-end… His assertion that they had to be tricksy and deceptive to get the bill passed makes no logical sense.

Unless Democrats just lie out of simple habit about everything, I don’t buy it that it was necessary to lie to get Obamacare passed.

Update (from Jeff): More lies from Nancy Pelosi. In an interview in 2009, she touted Gruber’s work and authority – as did many Democrats. Nowadays, Pelosi tweets “I don’t know who he is. He didn’t help write our bill.”

Comments

  1. Not only did the democrats have overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress and the Presidency, but they ignored the will of the people. My recollection is that the people were melting the phone lines (and other means of communication) telling their so-called representatives “no!” Something like 60% opposed is the number that sticks in my mind.

    I think the lies and dirty tricks were signs of their contempt for the American people.

  5. In today’s WSJ, James Taranto sites another Gruber quote that may explain things a bit:

    “This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO [Congressional Budget Office] 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 that healthy people are going to pay in—you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed. . . . Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical for the thing to pass. . . . Look, I wish Mark [another panelist] was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.”

    Perhaps, there were some Democrats in both houses of Congress actually opposed to new taxes. And if I recall, Obamacare started in the Senate and all tax bills must start in the House.

    Lies are tough to parse.

  7. The WBUR-FM/NPR program On Point on Wednesday (available for download as a podcast) had a discussion on the new SCOTUS challenge to the subsidies part of the ACA; several of Mr Gruber’s comments were highlighted and one of the guests, who claims to personally know JG, said that ‘he speaks too fast (quickly) and sometimes confuses the meaning of what he is trying to say’. So perhaps he has a habit similar to the 41st & 43rd presidents in that what comes out of his mouth is not what he intended. In which case, he would do well to not make any in-person appearances where he comments on the law.

  8. It’s simple, really. They panicked. Kennedy (Ted) died ahead of schedule threatening their supermajority, so they just passed the work-in-progress version instead a more polished (and potentially defensible) one.

    I’m still not a fan of an interventionist deity, but we really got thrown a bone that day. The next couple of years could have been far, far worse.

  9. It was designed to be a clusterf–paves the way for single-payor. Remember the article in the NYT a few weeks ago, the lady that had brain cancer but allegedly couldn’t afford the check ups? Well, if it’s in the NYT and it’s against the ACA, you know something is wrong. Sho nuff, she was a plant, just another prog hack, used her story to push for single payor.

  10. The reality is Ocare is a way of taking away money from Asians and whites who naturally live longer and giving it away to illegals and blacks. Asians and whites where better off with catastrophic policies until they passed 50yo or had kids.

  11. the only people that were stupid enough to believe the lies were the smart democrat politicians and the democrat party-media complex. most of the dumb americans opposed this law.

  12. I was 21 at the time it was passed but had read enough to know ACA was a hoax. Not only that — remember, “you have to vote on it before you can see what’s in it.” ??? Republicans in the Senate and House didn’t vote on it and were obviously not fooled. Obviously the people who were fooled were Democrats/liberals in the Senate. *We*all*know*there’s*no*such*thing*as*a Democrat*who’d*knowingly*lie*to*the public*don’t*we*?

  13. The Progressives see Obamacare as the necessary confused mess which will lead to their actual goal of government run healthcare. They have to sink the insurance companies first.

    Obamacare was designed to be a mess that can only be cured in their DemonizingRat minds by a total government take over of all health care.

    The question is whether the backlash to Obamacare is enough of a wake-up call to kill the baby in the crib or whether some stupid patch work will keep the monster alive and growing.

    The little that Gruber has let slip from a continent-sized pack of lies and lies of omission is nothing compared to what is still buried in this monstrosity. Obamacare has its own Stuxnet-like virus which is worming its way into every nook and cranny of the nation’s healthcare world.

    The chances of pulling Obamacare out by its roots are daunting.