Posted on 11/18/2014 2:07:18 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
President Obama said in 2006 that he had stolen ideas "liberally" from the professor under fire for saying voter “stupidity” aided ObamaCare’s passage.
Video unearthed by the conservative Washington Free Beacon Monday showed Obama praising Jonathan Gruber and other liberal 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 in the clip.
Gruber is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose past criticism of voters has gone viral in the last week. He served as a consultant during the passage of the healthcare law and its counterpart in the Bay State under former Gov. Mitt Romney (R).
The Obama administration and congressional Democrats are trying to distance themselves from Gruber as more videos emerge.
Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell said Monday that she was "extremely offended" by his comments, and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said last week she doesn't know "who he is."
The latest video was filmed at an event held by the Brookings Institution in 2006 to mark the launch of a policy initiative known as the Hamilton Project.
"I know that there are going to be wonderful ideas that are generated as a consequence of this project," Obama said.
The president pushed back hard on Gruber's comments over the weekend, arguing that each provision of ObamaCare was debated openly.
"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 told reporters at a news conference following the G-20 summit in Brisbane, Australia.
"We had a year-long debate,” Obama said. “Go look back at your stories. The one thing we can’t say is that we did not have a lengthy debate about healthcare in the United States of America, or that it was not adequately covered. Every press outlet here, go back and pull up every clip, every story. And I think it’s fair to say there was not a provision in the healthcare law that was not extensively debated and was fully transparent.”
The biggest question to me is: “Who started first?” We know that both Gruber and Obama are lying PsOS. I think that Gruber was simply a quivering metrosexual living in his parents basement, while Obama was out in the world honing his skills at lying and deceiving.
0 is a liar. If he were Republican, the media would be all over this. However, the media are nothing but slavish lapdogs for the democrats.
And people (including many here at FR) still wonder why Justice Roberts decided the case in the manner in which he did!
Obamacare architect in 6th video: 'Mislabeling' helped us get rid of tax breaks
"It turns out politically it's really hard to get rid of," Gruber said. "And the only way we could get rid of it was first by mislabeling it, calling it a tax on insurance plans rather than a tax on people when we all know it's a tax on people who hold those insurance plans."
“I think it’s fair to say that Obama is extensively and fully incapable of ever telling the truth.”
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He not only merely lies
He really most sincerely lies
It is amazing how many people now believe that it IS ACTUALLY POSSIBLE to have something drop by 3000%. Ignorance spreads faster and faster. Some who post on FR use such absurd terms and don’t seem to understand that they are speaking gibberish with no meaning. To have a dingbat who uses such terms occupying the highest office in the land is terrifying. Anyone who uses such language in a serious tone as opposed to just joking around needs to go back to the first grade and start over.
I don’t wonder at him calling the penalty for not buying health insurance a tax but I am astounded that he could actually claim that the fact that it is a tax makes it constitutional! Such a decision implies that the government can require us to do just about anything and simply levy a tax on the failure to do so. If this monumental piece of coercion is constitutional then there is no reason to have a constitution and in fact we DON’T HAVE a constitution, just a relic which has been thrown in the trash. They could just as well require everyone to buy an electric toothbrush and tax anyone who fails to do so. It makes no sense whatsoever.
Hello, astounded.
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