Official bio ties Gruber to crafting of Obamacare

As White House seeks to distance itself from MIT professor

Jonathan Gruber

While the Obama administration has sought to distance itself from MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, WND has found the professor’s official bio at a university project known to be close to the White House boasts that Gruber helped to craft Obamacare.

Gruber’s bio at the Hamilton Project, an economic initiative launched by the Brookings Institution in 2006, reads: “During 2009-2010 he served as a technical consultant to the Obama Administration and worked with both the Administration and Congress to help craft the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.”

Obama himself spoke at the 2006 launch of the Hamilton Project, where he stated he had stolen ideas “liberally” from Gruber.

Obama is quite familiar with the Hamilton Project. Not only did he speak at the project’s launch event, some of its experts wound up in his administration.

Hamilton Project Director Peter Richard Orszag served under Obama as director of the Office of Management and Budget, the largest office within the executive branch.

Video recently unearthed by the Washington Free Beacon shows Obama speaking at the 2006 Hamilton Project launch event praising Gruber and other liberal economic policy experts as some of the “brightest minds” in academia.

“Many of them I have stolen ideas from liberally, people ranging from [economist] Robert Gordon to [economist] Austan Goolsbee [to] Jon Gruber,” Obama said.

Last weekend, however, Obama attempted to distance himself from Gruber.

“The fact that an adviser who was never on our staff expressed an opinion that I completely disagree with in terms of the voters is not a reflection on the actual process that was run,” Obama replied when asked about Gruber at a news conference in Brisbane, Australia, after the G-20 summit.

Gruber, an economics professor, has been making headlines for candid statements on Obamacare captured on video.

He said regarding the passage of Obamacare that “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 to get anything to pass,” he said.

Gruber conceded the bill might have lost support if voters had known that healthier individuals would pay more to subsidize the sick.

In an interview with MSNBC, Gruber apologized for remarks documented in the first of a number of videos that recently surfaced.

“The comments in the video were made at an academic conference,” Gruber said. “I was speaking off the cuff. I basically spoke inappropriately. I regret having made those comments.”

With additional research by Brenda J. Elliott.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/11/official-bio-ties-gruber-to-crafting-of-obamacare/#zY4CgyLu0GCvb8Is.99