Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber admits to deceiving the pubic in order to pass Obamacare.
From The Daily Signal
In a newly surfaced video, one of Obamacare’s architects admits a “lack of transparency” helped the Obama administration and congressional Democrats pass the Affordable Care Act. The conservative group American Commitmentposted Jonathan Gruber’s remarks, reportedly from an Oct. 17, 2013, event, on YouTube.
“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” says the MIT economist who helped write Obamacare. “And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.”
HKO
The over riding principle of modern progressivism is that the ends justify the means. That is the essential point of Gruber’s message.
Also tips to Instapundit.
PS from The Daily Caller
The Daily Caller’s Patrick Howley reported Sundaythat Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber had said at the University of Pennsylvania’s 24th Annual Health Economics Conference that it was a good thing that Americans never realized what was in the Affordable Care Act, because “the stupidity of the American voter” would have otherwise killed the law.
But for unexplained reasons, the University of Pennsylvania has pulled its video of the event, which took place in October of 2013. ”This video has been removed by the user,” a message now reads. “Sorry about that.” The video is still embedded on the conference page, but playing the video gives a similar error message.
One person who was angry to hear of the apparent cover-up was Bloomberg columnist Megan McArdle. “This is pretty shocking behavior by my alma mater,”she tweeted, “Why would @Penn pull down a public video that has political implications?”
Phil Kerpen, president of the organization that first found the video, American Commitments, also claimed that the Ivy League university refused to give Fox News permission to use the video.
@asymmetricinfo They also refused to give Fox permission to use on-air.@jadler1969@Penn@PennLDI@instapundit
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) November 10, 2014
PSS
PPPS
From Commentary, Obamacare Lies and Democracy
Excerpt:
In a sense, Gruber’s statement doesn’t exactly break new ground. After all, if then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could say that ObamaCare had to be passed before its contents could be understood, it’s not much of a revelation if one of its designers fesses up about the deceptions involved in the project and the breathtaking cynicism of its Democratic backers. Like the president’s repeated lies about consumers being able to keep their existing health insurance and doctors if they liked them, Gruber’s confession makes it clear that deception was at the heart of the debate on a law that overturned a key sector of the American economy.
These remarks should weigh heavily on the consciences of the Obama administration and its allies who rammed it through Congress on a narrow party-line vote without knowing what was in it. Nor should it escape the notice of the Supreme Court as it weighs the arguments in King v. Burwell this session as it struggles with the question of whether the text of the law should be ignored in order to justify the administration’s efforts to roll out the health-care scheme. Liberals argue that the true intentions of the law’s authors should trump the fact that it was drafted so sloppily that it can easily be interpreted in such a way as to render the implementation of the legislation illegal. But since those who did the drafting are now being revealed as having deliberately lied about its contents, it seems quite appropriate that the Court stick to the text and the public arguments made at the time, not the secret agenda behind the law.
Though he came into office pledging the most transparent administration in history, what he has presided over is the one that is the most opaque, both in terms of its attitude toward the press as well as its belief that it can lie to the American people with impunity. Nations often believe that ends justify the means. Indeed, it would be impossible for wars to be fought otherwise. But however questionable such practices may be, it is one thing to rationalize wartime decisions, quite another to turn a blind eye to a philosophy that treats the American people as the enemy to be deceived.
But the true legacy of ObamaCare may not just be the mess it has made of the health-care industry or the benefits some may have derived from it. It may instead mark another watershed moment in the history of American politics in which citizens came to understand that those who claim to have their best interests at heart would not scruple about lying to them about their intentions. The ends here not only did not justify the means but they also degraded American democracy in a way that we may never entirely recover from.
Recent Comments