There are now three videos of Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber talking about the “stupidity of the American voter.” In the latest, he says Obamacare is a “very clever, basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter.”
First video
At an academic conference in 2012 at the Wharton School University of Pennsylvania, Gruber said:
“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure that CBO [Congressional Budget Office] did not score the mandate as taxes. If they score the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay? So it was written to do that.”
Gruber:
“In terms of risk-rated subsidies, you get a law which said healthy people are going to pay in, [if] it made explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed. Ok? … lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, you know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically, that was really, really critical to getting this thing to pass.”
Gruber is an MIT economist helped create the Obamacare law. The Obama administration had paid Mr. Gruber $380,000 in 2009, cited him several times in hearings and White House blogs, and even dedicated a webpage to his expert analysis. Visitor logs show Gruber meeting repeatedly with senior officials at the White House including one meeting with the President.
Though Gruber made these remarks in 2012, they were only recently uncovered, buried in an hour-long video on Youtube. A firestorm erupted, and Gruber went on MSNBC to say the remarks were “off the cuff” and that he “basically spoke inappropriately and I regret having made those comments.”
It should be noted that even in his MSNBC apologia, Gruber says Obamacare passed in the Senate with “typos” and:
"It's not entirely clear if you look at it, what the [law's] language actually means.”
Second video
“The American voters are too stupid to understand the difference.”
Third video
He says:
“We just tax the insurance companies, they pass it on in higher prices. That offsets the tax break we get; it ends up being the same thing. It’s a very clever, you know, basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter.”
Anyone who buys Gruber’s apology may, indeed, be “too stupid.”