The White House has described Mr. Gruber as having a limited role in crafting the law. President Barack Obama in 2014 said Mr. Gruber was “some adviser who never worked on our staff.” Mr. Gruber told Congress last year he disagreed with the widespread characterization of his role as the “architect” of Mr. Obama’s health-care plan.
“His proximity to HHS and the White House was a whole lot tighter than they admitted,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah), chairman of the House oversight committee. “There’s no doubt he was a much more integral part of this than they’ve said. He put up this facade he was an arm’s length away. It was a farce.”
June 22, 2015
"MIT Economist Jonathan Gruber Had Bigger Role in Health Law, Emails Show."
Says The Wall Street Journal. (Google some of the text to get a link if you don't have a subscription.)
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32 comments:
Chaffetz!?!?
Ha, good one.
Ahead of Supreme Court ruling, Republicans start to point fingers and distract.
This is just more partisan war, on the eve of a loss. Yawn.
Machine goes straight to Alinsky.
Ha, good one.
It is significant that the Democrats have tried hard to minimize the damage from the Gruber revelations, they're clearly running from the smoke while hoping we don't notice the fire. But the bottom line is, Gruber doesn't speak for the people who voted on the bill and, if the court decides the language is ambiguous, those are the opinions that matter.
Why is it that some people still think that truth can be had? It can't.
We tried truth, and it just didn't work.
We now live in a post-truth because it's good for you world.
Our next president will be the person who does the best job of not telling us the truth.
We've earned it.
"Just a guy in my neighborhood."
Obama lied? It seems so unlike his admin.
I have a strong feeling the Court is going to rule for the government, because the Justices aren't immune from public opinion and probably believe a ruling against the Government will unleash chaos as the states and feds scramble to either fix the law (unlikely) or erect their own exchanges (which may be a disaster).
It doesn't really matter, except of course the billions wasted, because this law will never work. It is badly drafted and does not correspond to the reality of medical care. The Supremes read the election results, as Mr Dooley said, and those results are that the GOP has more elected offices in the country than anytime since the 1920s. Plus, of course, a lawless president and his administration.
Bizarre comments. "Republicans" & "the Government." No mention of the "Republic," the "People," or the "Constitution."
Very sad.
The White House lied, and subsidies died?
Hoping the Supreme Court follows the law today strikes the federal subsidy in 37 states.
I'm sure Barack was working on a fix while playing golf in Palm Springs this weekend.
tim maguire said...
...if the court decides the language is ambiguous, those are the opinions that matter.
My understanding* of Chevron deference is that if the court decides the language is ambiguous then the IRS gets to decide. The opinions of those who voted on the bill are irrelevant.
* I am not a lawyer, though I play one on the internet.
The Democrats are finding that a scapegoat is now necessary.
This whole thing is about preventing or allowing the Congress that was elected by the people of the United State in response to Obamacare from getting a say in it.
Democrats are pretending that there is no way to deal with a loss on this because a loss on this would force them to cut a deal with Republicans that the American people elected. No compromise is allowed or "The American people will have won."
Whoa, wait. Are you saying... they LIED to us?
I've read the relevant sections and some of the arguments. I just don't see how a plain reading gets you anywhere near what the government is saying. Which is basically: "We made an oopsie, don't punish us! We were sloppy and working hard, but we all know that we meant what we didn't say."
Which isn't how law is supposed to work. You write it one way, it works that way. If you screwed up, then it gets overturned or amended.
So Obama lied when he discussed Gruber's role? Oh, well, at least it was a pleasure listening to him!!
I'm glad to see machine has fully recognized his/her limitations and is sticking to the 1-to-5 word postings.
Anything beyond that and, as we saw a few weeks back, it becomes quite hilarious quite quickly.
If the government wins this case, then we know we have a government of men, and not of laws, full stop.
The SCOTUS already told us that politicians are perfectly free to lie to us "It's not a tax" when passing a law. And that they may tax anything, even, apparently, abortion.
I think Oklahoma ought to implement an abortion tax. That would be interesting in light of the fact that the "right to privacy" between a persona and their physician has been steamrollered by O'care.
I find it almost impossible to believe that obama and the lefties are lying about something related to obama-care.
It's nearly unfathomable how anyone could believe they were anything less than completely transparent.
It's probably Walker, Rove and the Koch brothers fault.
I'm glad to see machine has fully recognized his/her limitations and is sticking to the 1-to-5 word posting.
I have long noticed that liberal posters quickly discover that many facts they take for granted as true get shot down, but they don't change their opinions, they just shy away from posting checkable "facts."
Once in a while though, you get somebody who won't give up on a "fact" no matter how many ways you shoot it down. The "Goddamned piece of paper!" quote about George W. Bush and the Constitution is one of those sacred beliefs.
Who is the bigger liar? Bill Clinton or Barack Obama?
This is how I would analyze it if I were on the Court. The statute is ambiguous. It says X in plain english but can be interpreted to mean Y. Both X and Y are plausible interpretations. There is nothing in the legislative record to suggest that Congress meant X or Y. Outside of the legislative history (i.e., what congressmen or senators said or wrote), there is some contemporaneous language (Gruber) suggesting that X was intended. Whatever the Court does, Congress can fix it if the Court has made a mistake since this a statute and not the Constitution. I would go with the plain meaning of the statute as a default rule where there is nothing in the legislative history contradicting that and it's a perfectly plausible interpretation. Political considerations are not relevant.
If it says X in plain English then it is not ambiguous. If the court decides that it is ambiguous then the precedent is clear that they must defer to the IRS interpretation.
Douglas: "There is nothing in the legislative record to suggest that Congress meant X or Y"
This is false.
The language which would have allowed subsidies under Federal Exchanges was in the Law during drafting until that language was specifically removed when different versions of the law were merged (by democrats only, not that the left won't complain it's the republicans fault).
Most revealing, the obamacare law itself DEFINED what constituted a state exchange:
Snip: "Any hunt for the congressional intent behind a piece of legislation should start with the actual language of the law in question. And in this case, the language is unambiguous. Tax credits—that is, subsidies for health insurance—are limited to “Exchanges established by a State.” In case there was any confusion, the law defines “State” as “each of the 50 states plus the District of Columbia.” These qualifying exchanges must further be established under Section 1311 of the law, the section which deals with state-based exchanges. The federal exchanges are set up under the authority of a different section, 1321.
That’s it. That’s what the law says. That’s what Democratic members of Congress, in both the House and Senate, voted to pass, despite some initial disagreement over whether states or the federal government should be in charge of the exchanges. That’s the language that President Obama signed into effect."
So, to summarize, if you disagree with what the enlightened and brilliant and diverse democrats created, all by themselves, with no hindering by those evil republicans, then you are clearly and unambiguously a racist, misogynistic, homophobic, bible-thumping, under-educated fascist.
Straight-up.
This is how I would analyze it if I were on the Court. The statute is ambiguous. It says X in plain english but can be interpreted to mean Y. Both X and Y are plausible interpretations.
Whatever. So if one side pretends to believe something for the sake of getting the decision they desire, their interpretation is automatically "plausible." I don't think so. The statute is clear, and we have contemporaneous evidence that the clear meaning of the statute was the intended meaning of the statute.
We also have other coercive parts of the law, since struck down for overreach, which also attempted to force the states to create exchanges.
What we have is plain English and a lot of motivated reasoning to pretend it doesn't mean what it clearly says it means.
Reminds me of my sister who used to come up with all these scenarios of ways that Bush vs Gore should have been settled, every one of which ended up with Gore winning.
Of course the Constitutionally clear method, of giving each representative, congressmen or senator, one vote, would have resulted in a Bush win, so that was thrown out, of course.
"It says X in plain English..."
Then it can't be interpreted as Y. If it says X, but someone tells you it could mean Y, you'd think it is odd.
If I said, "The wine is red," you could be right in assuming that it was a red wine. If however someone said, "Well, wait. Maybe it is a white wine that has been dyed red."
You might t say: "Well, both of those are equally likely to be the original intent. Let me look at what was written about this."
If you then see the menu has me serving a red wine. If you see the bottle is clearly saying it is a red wine. If you see that a previous draft of the menu had a white wine on it, but the menu had been changed with a specific note "Serve a red wine," and you insist, insist that I must mean this is a white wine dyed to look red, everyone would think you're deliberately trying to misinterpret what the plain facts say.
"There is nothing in the legislative record to suggest that Congress."
-- As said above, this is completely false. I feel like people don't know enough about the case to really be talking about it, since I see conservatives have to correct people on basic facts like this constantly.
I feel like people don't know enough about the case to really be talking about it, since I see conservatives have to correct people on basic facts like this constantly.
Well, the Daily Kos is more authoritative than the text itself. It's called "winnerism" and it is what the Democrats have become. I am sympathetic to them on many issues, I just don't trust them not to create a de-facto dictatorship that changes figureheads every eight years.
Now, now, every smart person knows that Gruber was only the guy sent to fetch coffee!
to clarify:
The discussion of the King v. Burwell case too frequently omits the words immediately following those four - "under 1311." So the statutory language is clear that subsidies are for those exchanges established in accordance with Sec. 1311 of the PPACA. That section deals exclusively with exchanges established by the individual states. Exchanges set up by the Federal Government fall under Section 1321. There is no equivalent language in that section that would create an expectation that subsidies are or should be made available for customers of Federal exchanges.
More than once Professor Gruber's contemporaneous statements confirm that this was a "design feature" of the PPACA that was intended to incentivize the creation of an exchange at the state level. His, and others, attempts to rewrite that history should be seen for what they are.
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