During a press conference while he was in Brisbane, Australia, President Obama was asked the following penetrating question by Fox News reporter Ed Henry, “At your Burma town hall a couple of days ago, you tried to inspire young leaders by saying, ‘governments need to be held accountable, need to be responsive to the people.’ I wonder how you square that with your former adviser, Jonathan Gruber, claiming you were not transparent about the health care law because in his words, the American people, the voters are stupid. Did you mislead Americans about the taxes, about keeping your plan in order to get the bill passed?”
Mr. Obama responded: “No, I did not. I just heard about this. I get well-briefed before I come out here. The fact that some adviser who never worked on our staff expressed an opinion that I completely disagree with in terms of the voters is no reflection on the actual process that was run.”
But the truth, as radio personality Rush Limbaugh quickly pointed out, is that MIT Professor Gruber did, in fact, participate in meetings with Obama when the measure was being written. Gruber himself bragged about being there and was not just a distant consultant but a key member of the group that crafted the entire bill. As the president later pointed out, Gruber was in attendance at meetings and was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for his work.
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The president continued: “We had a year-long debate and I advise every press outlet here to go back and pull up every clip [about the Affordable Care Act] and there was not one provision in the health care law that was not extensively debated and fully transparent.”
But as Professor Gruber stated during those taped panel discussions, he wished that the language in the measure was “all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.” He claimed that the measure “was written in a tortured way to make sure the CBO [Congressional Budget Office] did not score the mandate as taxes.” Because if it had known to be a tax measure, said Gruber, “the bill dies.” The bill, he claimed after it was passed, was written “to do that.”
To do what? To deceive the public and the Congress from knowing what he and President Obama knew about the measure.
There are two major problems here. The first is that critically important facts about the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) were kept from the American people and the Congress in order to get it enacted. That’s fraud pure and simple. And the second is that President Obama has confirmed that he is loose with the truth. Professor Gruber, a major player in creating this law, may be reprehensible for participating in the fraudulent selling of ObamaCare. But President Obama has removed all doubt that he is untruthful.
Arriving at the conclusion that the president of our nation can’t be trusted is sad indeed. All Americans should be made aware of this. And Congress should repeal the ObamaCare law in its entirety.
John F. McManus is president of The John Birch Society and publisher of The New American. This column appeared originally at the insideJBS blog and is reprinted here with permission.
