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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: SeekAndFind; All
None of this is ever going to amount to jack.

The RINO leadership is in on it, along with the media, and the fix be in.

101 posted on 11/17/2014 1:51:38 PM PST by OKSooner
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To: riverdawg

Sorry.. I wasn’t referring to the visitor logs, but whether he could validate the wordage of the conversations he supposedly had with Obozo.


102 posted on 11/17/2014 1:52:14 PM PST by VideoDoctor
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To: Sybeck1

Put this Grub in front of Trey Gowdy and watch the Grub squirm.


103 posted on 11/17/2014 1:58:08 PM PST by bkopto (Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.)
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To: SeekAndFind

104 posted on 11/17/2014 2:00:39 PM PST by Fresh Wind (The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away)
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To: SeekAndFind
Gruber: the gift that keeps on giving ...

Did he ever have one thought that he left unexpressed?

105 posted on 11/17/2014 2:01:16 PM PST by x (Phew. you had me worried there for a moment. I thought you were going to change everything on me.)
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To: Sybeck1
He needs to be in front of a congressional committee

... and we need to demand it!!!!!!!!!

106 posted on 11/17/2014 2:51:21 PM PST by pollywog ( " O thou who changest not....ABIDE with me")
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To: Diana in Wisconsin; Grampa Dave
Great Freeping, Grandpa Dave! Thanks!

DITTO!!!! Thanks.

107 posted on 11/17/2014 2:54:20 PM PST by pollywog ( " O thou who changest not....ABIDE with me")
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To: Grampa Dave

PFL


108 posted on 11/17/2014 3:18:14 PM PST by Batman11 (Obama is not American.. he has no clue what it is to be American.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Boy, he’s the gift that keeps on giving!


109 posted on 11/17/2014 3:27:21 PM PST by Chickensoup (Leftist totalitarian fascism is on the move.)
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To: Chickensoup

RE: Boy, he’s the gift that keeps on giving!

The thing that puzzles me is why couldn’t he shut up then? What the heck was he trying to prove by doing this?


110 posted on 11/17/2014 3:31:51 PM PST by SeekAndFind (If at first you don't succeed, put it out for beta test.)
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To: Lazamataz

Perhaps, you are correct.


111 posted on 11/17/2014 3:31:55 PM PST by RedHeeler
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To: SeekAndFind

The thing that puzzles me is why couldn’t he shut up then? What the heck was he trying to prove by doing this?

_____________

ego


112 posted on 11/17/2014 3:34:44 PM PST by Chickensoup (Leftist totalitarian fascism is on the move.)
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To: onyx
Obama: I Have Stolen Ideas from Jon Gruber Liberally
113 posted on 11/17/2014 3:55:56 PM PST by RedMDer (May we always be happy and may our enemies always know it. - Sarah Palin, 10-18-2010)
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To: Art in Idaho
I hope he has a full blown, off-the-TOTUS, on camera melt down. In fact, I may be prompted to invest in Orville Reddenbacher stock for the occasion.
114 posted on 11/17/2014 4:09:03 PM PST by fhayek
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To: Sybeck1

They can’t blame anyone but themselves. They DIDN’T READ the bill either. None of them did. They just voted to pass it.


115 posted on 11/17/2014 5:22:31 PM PST by RetiredArmy (MARANATHA, MARANATHA, Come quickly LORD Jesus!!! Father send thy Son!! Its Time!)
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To: Sybeck1

He needs to be in front of a congressional committee


He needs to be in front of a firing squad.

I am sick of these treasonous freaks.


116 posted on 11/17/2014 5:26:11 PM PST by SaraJohnson
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Support Free Republic
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Keep freedom ALIVE!!

Thank you all very much!!

God bless.

117 posted on 11/17/2014 5:57:04 PM PST by RedMDer (May we always be happy and may our enemies always know it. - Sarah Palin, 10-18-2010)
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To: SeekAndFind

Impeach the Kenyan bastard!


118 posted on 11/17/2014 6:50:53 PM PST by Red in Blue PA (Compared to obama, Jimmy Carter looks like Winston Churchill.)
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To: Diana in Wisconsin

barrack insane obama is up to his ass in gruber. This was the smoking gun for the ages. As the Supreme court strikes down the Treasury department attempting to legislate , this whole piece of crap goes into the bin of history but the gruber nightmare agmission of lies will resound for centuries!!


119 posted on 11/17/2014 7:23:58 PM PST by iowacornman (. He is the father of government health care.)
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To: McGruff

120 posted on 11/17/2014 8:23:56 PM PST by Travis McGee (www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
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