Obama 'knows exactly who Gruber is'

'It's just so sad that the president believes that the American people are naive'

Jonathan Gruber

President Obama says Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber was “some adviser who never worked on our staff” and said the lengthy debate over the law proves there was compete transparency with the American people, but Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., calls the president’s characterization of events “fiction” and “deceitful.”
A political firestorm erupted last week when a frustrated American citizen began posting videos of MIT economist and Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber boldly explaining how the law was passed due to a lack of transparency on key issues. In the videos, Gruber said the administration deliberately hid the fact the individual mandate amounted to a tax and that young and healthy people would pay higher premiums to cover the cost of care for older, less healthy people. Most damaging was Gruber’s assertion that the “stupidity of the American voters” allowed the sleight of hand to work.
Last weekend, President Obama addressed the controversy during a press conference at the G-20 Summit in Australia. In response to a question from Ed Henry of the Fox News Channel about whether his administration misled the American people, Obama quickly distanced himself from Gruber.
“The fact that some adviser, who never worked on our staff, expressed an opinion that I completely disagree with in terms of the voters, is no reflection on the actual process that was run,” Obama said.
But that wasn’t always Obama’s story.
In a video of the future president speaking at a 2006 Brooking’s Institution conference, Obama boasted about having “stolen ideas” from Gruber, among others.
“You have already drawn some of the brightest minds from academia and policy circles, many of them I have stolen ideas from liberally, people ranging from Robert Gordon to Austan Goolsbee; Jon Gruber; my dear friend, Jim Wallis here, who can inform what are sometimes dry policy debates with a prophetic voice,” Obama said.
The following is a brief video of the 2006 remarks:

Price said Obama is vigorously trying to rewrite history. He said Gruber was “instrumental” in the drafting and marketing of Obamacare.
“This wasn’t a peripheral actor. I’ve shared the stage with Jonathan Gruber when we were debating this piece of legislation in 2009 and 2010,” said Price, who asserted all key players at the time knew Gruber was at the forefront of the Obamacare effort.
“He was a principal adviser, paid over $400,000 by this administration,” Price said. “He wasn’t on the White House staff but he was a contract employee to the administration for this piece of legislation. We would make these accusations that, ‘You weren’t being honest, weren’t being truthful with the American people. You’re trying to say the taxes won’t be increased when we know that they will.’ They were just being deceitful.”


Price said Obama’s attempt to deny the obvious following Gruber’s admissions is especially infuriating.
“The president then continues this fiction that he didn’t know who this guy was. That’s nonsense,” Price said. “Jonathan Gruber has been to the White House on over a dozen occasions over the past couple of years, and the White House knows exactly who he is. He was their individual, who helped be the architect for Obamacare. It’s just so sad that the president, again, believes that the American people are naive and aren’t able to handle the truth.”
Listen to the WND/Radio America interview with Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga.:

In Australia, Obama insisted there was no way the health-care debate, which lasted more than a year, was anything less then completely transparent.
“We had a year-long debate,” Obama said. “Go back and look at your stories.  The one thing we can’t say is that we did not have a lengthy debate.”
Price said Obama is right about the drawn-out debate but not much else.
“Well, it was a long debate,” he said. “The problem is that one side of it, his side, the president’s side, wasn’t telling the truth.”
Price added, “When one side isn’t bound by the truth, they can say anything they want. That’s exactly what the president did. That’s exactly what his administration did, and that’s why it was able to pass the House of Representatives. They were not transparent and the American people were hoodwinked, and I believe many in Congress didn’t know what they were voting on and should be held accountable.”
Come January, Republicans will have a commanding majority in the House and either a six- or eight-seat majority in the Senate. Price wants to see the whole law scrapped, but said there are many things the Republicans will look to peel away from the law as long as Obama is in office, including the employer mandate and the medical device tax. He said he’s an eternal optimist about Obama conceding to some changes in the bill, but he ultimately isn’t sure if Obama will show any cooperation on the issue.
As for the overall GOP strategy, some party leaders say a full repeal effort is a waste of time because they cannot muster the votes to override a presidential veto. Others, including Price, believe a vote on full repeal is essential toward keeping the promise of Republicans to repeal the law, in addition to efforts to remove individual components of the law.
“I think you’ve got to pass a full repeal piece of legislation though both the House and the Senate so the American people know who the good guys are on this issue and who’s standing in the way of what the American people want,” Price said. “The American people want this law repealed.”
The congressman is the leader of the effort to draft legislation designed to replace Obamacare when and if the current law is repealed.
“We call it the ‘Empowering Patients First Act.’ We’re currently working on the next iteration of that, that we will introduce shortly after the first of the year,” he said. “So there are ways to solve the challenges of health coverage, health costs, the insurance difficulties that people have and we can decrease the costs significantly in the health-care arena. We can do all of that without putting Washington in charge of a doggone thing.”

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