Academia, Congress, Media, Politics

The Purging of Professor Gruber: ACA Architect Disavowed In The Beltway

Screen Shot 2014-11-13 at 8.45.49 AMPelosi-denies-Gruber-2014nov-fullIt appears that friends (albeit a dwindling number) of MIT professor Jonathan Gruber may soon have to put his face on milk cartons to locate the economist. After a series of frank but embarrassing statements on the strategies behind the Administration’s passage of the Affordable Car Act (ACA), Gruber has moved from the status of “disfavored” to “disavowed” to “disappeared.” This week, Democratic minority leader Nancy Pelosi expressed a complete lack of knowledge of who Gruber is, was, or will be — even though she previously cited his work and he was paid $400,000 as one of the architects of Obamacare and has made over $2 million from HHS. Such roles are often difficult for scholars in moving between the political and academic worlds, but it is rare to find an academic become such an issue in a national debate.

Gruber had already previously attracted controversy with statements where he endorsed the theory at the heart of the recent decisions in Halbig and King by challengers to the ACA: to wit, that the federal funding provision was a quid pro quo device to reward states with their own exchanges and to punish those that force the creation of federal exchanges. That issue will now be decided by the United States Supreme Court. Gruber caused uproar when, after he had denounced the theory as “nutty” during the arguments in Halbig and King, he was shown later to have embraced that same interpretation. Gruber has become a major liability in the litigation. Gruber then was back in the news with an equally startling admission that the Obama Administration (and Gruber) succeeded in passing the ACA only by engineering a “lack of transparency” on the details and relying on “the stupidity of the American voter.” Now a new videotape has surfaced from Gruber speaking at the University of Rhode Island in 2012 and expressing the same contempt for the intelligence of citizens — suggesting again that they were hoodwinked to “the lack of economic understanding of the American voter.” In another view taken from at an October 2013 event at Washington University in St. Louis, Gruber also refers to the “Cadillac tax,” and says “They proposed it and that passed, because the American people are too stupid to understand the difference.” His comments of working in Massachusetts (with Mitt Romney) are no less insulting to an array of people.

That is when the Beltway machine kicked into high gear to erase all memory of a professor named Gruber. If this trend continues, we will need dental records just to confirm his identity.

The Washington Post noted after Pelosi’s press conference that she cited Gruber’s work by name in support of Obamacare:

PELOSI: We’re not finished getting all of our reports back from CBO, but we’ll have a side by side to compare. But our bill brings down rates. I don’t know if you have seen Jonathan Gruber of MIT’s analysis of what the comparison is to the status quo versus what will happen in our bill for those who seek insurance within the exchange.

Her office also relied on Gruber when fighting to pass the law.

Before he was “disappeared,” he was widely cited as an architect of the act. The New York Times said in 2012:

After Mr. Gruber helped the administration put together the basic principles of the proposal, the White House lent him to Capitol Hill to help Congressional staff members draft the specifics of the legislation.

Nevertheless, the White House used an anonymous official to disavow Gruber’s role as an architect of the Act and insist that he never “worked in the White House” — a comment that may refer to the location of his actual desk.

He was widely sought as one of the architect of the law, which ultimately proved his undoing since many of these comments came in the same 2012-13 period. Supporters of the White House have even challenged the $400,000 figure paid out for Gruber. However, the Washington Post not only affirmed the figure used by Republicans but found that he had received $2 million on various contracts. Pretty good for a guy who must not now be named.

The tempest swirling around Gruber is difficult to watch. He is an accomplished scholar with a long list of accomplishments to his credit. The frankness with which he has spoken is a signature of an academic, though his view of the intelligence of the American people is quite shocking. It will remain a cautionary tale for those traveling between the academic and political worlds.

244 thoughts on “The Purging of Professor Gruber: ACA Architect Disavowed In The Beltway”

  5. “..what the country was supposed to be”

    I’m afraid these days I find the whole thing too depressing, knowing that that idea is really most sincerely dead.

  9. There is going to be a steady stream of scandal about much of what this Administration has done over the past 6 years. The Dems better do some searching and come up w/ a fresh face.

  10. Haz, She has too much baggage w/ her failed healthcare, which was even more radical. Plus, you notice all doing the Alinsky playbook, ridiculing BENGHAZZZI. I think they will be choking on that ridicule in the nest year or so. Maybe not. She may have covered her very wide ass. But, there will be blood.

  13. If you are STILL touting ACA polling data then you really are grubered. They expect Gruber ‘ s ‘idiots to completely ignore the greater point that Big Government Progressivism will not be stopped as long as they have the idiot class to enable them. You will rue the day when this monster is doing something you don’t support.

  15. A question for the commenters:

    Would Hillary Clinton skate her way to being elected president if she stated that ObamaCare was a broken mess, and that if elected, she’d support its repeal, and replacement with a far better health insurance system?

    I think she would.

    I believe politicians are highly calibrated to the direction the breeze is blowing at any specific time. After the beating at the polls earlier this month, I expect that Congressional Dems will soon begin to run away from ObamaCare. They’ll hang that albatross around Obama’s neck as they look to their next election.

  16. There’s a reason Letterman suggested Colbert replace him. Both are hardcore haters. Colbert used to be much funnier before he started getting more and more adversarial. I watched him for years, but have seen him slowly become a caricature playing a caricature. Letterman also used to be funny until he went very dark. Now, that’s not all political. He is a harasser of women and was forced to get married when his girlfriend got pregnant. Letterman took a number one show he built and drove it right into the ground w/ his smug and angry political humor. I’m no fan of Palin, but he was despicable in going after her kids. All part of preaching to the choir.

    The past 10 days has been a fascinating psychological study. Most have passed from denial[except for Botox Nancy and Barry] to anger. I doubt most will ever get to acceptance. Many liberals are angry and negative by nature so I suppose they find some weird comfort remaining in that phase of grief.

  17. “Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments, the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents. “- James Madison

    “When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.”
    Thomas Jefferson

    “A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both.”- James Madison

    “There is no maxim, in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which, therefore, more needs elucidation, than the current one, that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.”
    James Madison

    “A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both.”- James Madison

  20. “We have citizens who want, but don’t give. Think about it, people collecting thousands of dollars because Democrats give them things so they don’t have to work!”

    Next Friday there will be many millions more of this ilk when Obama gives amnesty to illegal aliens who want to flout our laws but love to belly up to the bar to get benefits.

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