So how come such a smart guy buys global warming bunk, takes Fannie Mae money, is in favor of health mandates and calls the Ryan plan “social engineering”?
Smart or slick?
"We do agree that our country must take action to address climate change," he said, sitting on a sofa with Pelosi in front of the U.S. Capitol. The former House speaker recently said that the ad was "the dumbest thing I've done in recent years." - Newt
GINGRICH on Fannie Mae: Well, I'm not sure of the exact amount, but the reports are it's about $1.6 million. We were trying to work that out. I just don't have the numbers in the campaign because I'm no longer at Gingrich Group.
It was only from Freddie Mac. We never got anything from Fannie Mae. It was over a number of years. I think it started in 1999 and ran up into I think 2007 or 2008. So you'd have to -- we're trying to pull that together. And I think that we'll have that information probably by tomorrow. But we've asked the people at the Center for Transformation who run Gingrich Group to pull all that together. But it's money paid out over a period of time.
Gingrich Group has had as many as 30 employees at any one time. We've had offices in Atlanta, where the headquarters are, in Washington and in St. Louis, Missouri. It has -- with the Center for Health Transformation, it acquired a very large number of members. And I think that the Freddie Mac payments were actually a relatively small percentage of the total income of Gingrich Group over the last 10 or 11 years.
Gingrich on health mandates. - “I just wanna make one point that’s historical. In 1993, in fighting HillaryCare, virtually every conservative saw the mandate as a less-dangerous future than what Hillary was trying to do. The Heritage Foundation was a major advocate of it.
After HillaryCare disappeared it became more and more obvious that mandates have all sorts of problems built into them. People gradually tried to find other techniques. I frankly was floundering, trying to find a way to make sure that people who could afford it were paying their hospital bills while still leaving an out so libertarians to not buy insurance. And that’s what we’re wrestling with.
It’s now clear that the mandate, I think, is clearly unconstitutional. But, it started as a conservative effort to stop HillaryCare in the 1990s.”
Gingrich on the Ryan plan -"Remember, we all got mad at Obama because he ran over us when we said don't do it. Well, the Republicans ought to follow the same ground rule. If you can't convince the American people it's a good idea, maybe it's not a good idea. So let me start there."