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Jonathan Gruber: Obama personally asked me to help disguise unhelpful Obamacare facts
Hotair ^ | 11/17/2014 | Guy Benson

Posted on 11/17/2014 10:00:19 AM PST by SeekAndFind

That’s not quite his verbatim quote, but it’s pretty darn close:

CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO

“The problem is it’s a political nightmare, and people say ‘no, you can’t tax my benefits’…so what we did a lot in that room was think a lot about well how could we make this work? … And [Obama] is really a realistic guy. He was like, ‘look, I can’t just do this.’ He said ‘it’s just not going to happen politically. The bill will not pass. How do we manage to get there through phase-ins and other things?’ And we talked about it. He was just very interested in that topic.”

And why was Obama so keen on obscuring the nature of his signature law’s taxes? Perhaps because he’d just recently spent months relentlessly hammering John McCain over a proposal to tax health benefits “for the first time.” So he needed MacGruber to swoop in and help craft a strategy of evasion and deflection. Noah mentioned over the weekend that in his response to Grubergate, Obama insisted that he’d never misled the public on Obamacare (which virtually nobody really buys at this point, and for good reason) and disavowed Gruber’s seemingly endless damning comments. One formulation that stuck out to me was his assertion that Gruber “was never on our staff.” This is exceedingly weak spin. The video above contains evidence that the president was personally huddling with Gruber on the Obamacare sales pitch, charging him with fashioning accounting tricks that might provide a politically-necessary fig leaf — which Paul Ryan dismantled at the pre-passage “health care summit.” It’s impossible for the White House to just divorce itself from this guy. He was very much their guy. Not only did they furnish Gruber with $400,000 for his services, they made him a leading point person for “drafting the specifics” of the law with Congress. Via the New York Times:

Along with these credentials, Mr. Gruber’s position as an adviser to the influential Congressional Budget Office also left him perfectly positioned to advise the White House on health reform. “The most important arbiter of everything was the C.B.O.,” said Neera Tanden, who was a senior adviser for health reform at the Department of Health and Human Services. The C.B.O.’s assessment of a bill’s efficacy and costs strongly influences political debate, but the office does not publicly reveal how it calculates those numbers. “We knew the numbers he gave us would be close to where the C.B.O. was likely to come out,” Ms. Tanden said. She was right. 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.

That 2012 profile also quotes Gruber cheerfully describing himself as a “card-carrying Democrat” who routinely holds election night “victory parties” with friends. (How did this year’s celebration go, I wonder?) Obama can try to pull a Pelosi with Gruber. Good luck with that. Alternatively, he can keep lying about not having lied, but only the hardest-core of partisans will believe him. Even Obamacare supporters like Ron Fournier are throwing in the towel, conceding that the law was constructed on a “foundation of lies.” Indeed.


TOPICS: Breaking News; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: cborico; gruber; grubergate; gruberingdemcongress; gruberrico; liarcbo; liargruber; liarobama; obama; obamacare; obamacarerico; obamagruber; obamagruberingusa; obamalyingpos; obamarico; reidrico; wow
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To: nikos1121

...”wow!”...

Oh you see him too??? Sheesh I thought it was just my imagination Guber working with Obama there in those chairs....after all for the Pres. to say something we are expected to trust his word....all the rest is our imaginations.


141 posted on 11/18/2014 12:14:31 PM PST by caww
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To: fatez
It will be interesting to see if John Roberts opinion that the ACA was Constitutional because it was a tax will now get another look by conservatives. I was very disappointed by the Roberts ruling, but Obama essentially painted himself into a corner. He probably colluded with Reid and Pelosi to disguise the tax, denounced Roberts ruling that it really was not a tax but welcomed his opinion.

What Roberts pointed out was that contrary to popular opinion, the income tax is not applicable to everybody, and in fact has fairly strict legal requirements. And that within those requirements there is a second way of adding to that income tax based on performance, which was already part of the tax code, and had been in use for some time.

What Obamacare did was position itself inside that second way of adding to the income tax through performance (i.e. buying Obamacare). So Roberts pointed all of that out, and then showed that for people who owe the income tax, such a performance-based addition was already legal.

Since everyone presumes that everyone owes the income tax, everyone screamed at Roberts as being unconstitutional. But Roberts was pointing out - as the Chief Justice, no less - that everyone is not liable for the income tax.

That is what made the ruling so astounding. That's why he polarized the court - both sides wanted him to address Obamacare, but he had the balls to actually rule on the actual law that Obamacare relies on - namely, the income tax. And he warned against its misuse, and showed where the limitations in the applicability of the income tax could be found in Title 26.

In other words, he laid freedom on the American table, and Americans kicked it over and cursed him.

Nevertheless, his ruling is just common sense. Ask yourself, since Obamacare is so huge, why doesn't it have it's own Title in the US Code? Why isn't it, for example, "Title 99 Obamacare"? Answer: Because it needs the income tax. And why would it need that? Because it CAN'T apply to a free people and the income tax doesn't. That's what Roberts pointed out. He just said, "Hey, IF you've already lost your freedom by having to pay the income tax, then - and ONLY then - is Obamacare legal, because you don't have any right to your money under the income tax laws anyway."

People didn't want to hear that.

So, they didn't hear it.

142 posted on 11/18/2014 12:38:00 PM PST by Talisker (One who commands, must obey.)
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To: SeekAndFind
Don't Gruber Me, Bro @mrgeology 5h5 hours ago

Obama: "I have only just learned of . Don't show that photo of us, or the WH visitor's log."

143 posted on 11/18/2014 1:13:46 PM PST by Lucky9teen (Justice will not be served until those who r unaffected r as outraged as those who r. B Franklin)
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To: Sacajaweau

They can’t kill pre-recorded video.


144 posted on 11/18/2014 1:14:39 PM PST by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter admits whom he's working for)
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To: Lucky9teen

145 posted on 11/18/2014 1:23:02 PM PST by Lucky9teen (Justice will not be served until those who r unaffected r as outraged as those who r. B Franklin)
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To: SeekAndFind

Obama...You lie like a rug!!!


146 posted on 11/18/2014 2:38:34 PM PST by AngelesCrestHighway
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To: OKSooner

147 posted on 11/18/2014 2:41:03 PM PST by AngelesCrestHighway
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To: SeekAndFind

bookmark


148 posted on 11/18/2014 8:17:33 PM PST by aquila48
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To: SeekAndFind

Save for later


149 posted on 11/19/2014 12:30:59 AM PST by Gay State Conservative (Jimmy Carter;No Longer The Worst President In My Lifetime)
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To: Beagle8U

Well worth bumping.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxZK0spa1yI#t=0m14s

How can Obama say he has no clue who Gruber is with a straight face when the damn campaign had an infomercial featuring him as an architect of this POS law in 2012.

Liar, liar, pants on fire.


150 posted on 11/19/2014 12:55:13 AM PST by NYRepublican72 (Democrats -- it's always someone else's fault.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Fall Guy, Fall Guy story, designed to distract the gullible public attention away from the Extortion-Care Lobby and the Exempt Ones Gang and Gang Members.


151 posted on 11/19/2014 1:01:43 AM PST by Varsity Flight (Extortion-Care is the Government Work-Camp: Arbeitsziehungslager)
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To: Grampa Dave

For all the misguided incorrect rhetoric form the left that W misled the country on the Iraq war, they sure are quiet now. Hypocritical times a 1000.


152 posted on 11/19/2014 1:05:47 AM PST by catfish1957 (Everything I needed to know about Islam was written on 11 Sep 2001)
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To: GrandJediMasterYoda

Obola has accumulated a dossier of scandals that has exceeded in volume his previous 43 predecessors combined.


153 posted on 11/19/2014 1:07:57 AM PST by catfish1957 (Everything I needed to know about Islam was written on 11 Sep 2001)
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To: Lucky9teen

18 visits over a 5 year period, and Obolo doesn’t know who he is? LMAO!!!


154 posted on 11/19/2014 1:39:32 AM PST by catfish1957 (Everything I needed to know about Islam was written on 11 Sep 2001)
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To: catfish1957
I wonder if his ancestors changed the name from “Schickelgruber” to “Gruber”.
155 posted on 11/19/2014 1:47:59 AM PST by exnavy (Fish or cut bait ...Got ammo, Godspeed!)
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To: Varsity Flight

Let see— Since the beginning, the majority according to the polls have been anti Obamacare. Not one Pub in the House or Senate voted for it. So -— who were all the “stupid” Americans who were so gullible to buy the lies? Hmmm?


156 posted on 11/19/2014 10:54:37 AM PST by acsrp38 (Obama lied, people died, VA)
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To: nikos1121

.

- It was posted MUCH SMALLER on a FR thread

- I grabbed the URL at GOOGLE Image Search and doubled the size of it

- It was mentioned this morning on Fox News Channel - they said Obama and Herr Gruber were sitting close together in the Ovary Office with Gruuby Gruber sitting a long sofa like the one on Fox News

- It is very effective but Obama is attempting to scrub info and photos on the internet -

- Obama needs to have a little more BLOW and BOOZE - he has a world of hurt coming his way

.


157 posted on 11/19/2014 4:03:01 PM PST by devolve (- barter &/or trade items &/or services - let the IRS and DOJ get their money from illegal aliens -)
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To: Sybeck1

Agreed.

To what end? They can’t prosecute him. They can’t put him in jail. They’ve shown with Benghazi, F&F, IRS, etc etc etc, that they don’t really care. We all know what was dumped on us. In other countries, they riot over the cost of a loaf of bread increasing by .10 cents.


158 posted on 11/19/2014 7:08:45 PM PST by qaz123
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To: Lucky9teen; devolve
Brilliant!


159 posted on 11/19/2014 8:16:39 PM PST by Fred Nerks (fair dinkum...)
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To: OKSooner

Which RINOs voted for Obamacare?


160 posted on 11/20/2014 8:57:24 AM PST by acsrp38 (Obama lied, people died, VA)
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