Posted on 12/09/2014 12:21:30 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
The Jonathan Gruber show is coming to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, with House Republicans set to grill the former ObamaCare adviser for his controversial remarks about the “stupidity” of voters who let the law pass.
The hearing is likely to be a spectacle, with cable news networks planning heavy coverage, as Gruber takes the witness stand to answer questions about his ties to the Obama administration and his consulting work for the Health and Human Services Department.
“Tomorrow is all about giving him the opportunity to say something stupid,” a Republican aide said. “It’s going to be a lot of fun.”
Gruber’s connections to the White House, as well as his nearly half-million-dollar federal contract, are likely to be the dominant focus of the hearing, one of the last for outgoing House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).
Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), who has served on the Oversight Committee for more than 20 years, said he wants to know exactly how closely Gruber worked with Democrats on ObamaCare and how much money he made doing so.
“Within the administration and the White House, there’s plenty of ties to this guy,” Mica said in an interview.
Mica said Democrats have left Gruber “high and dry” after multiple videos surfaced in which he suggested the administration took advantage of an ill-informed public to pass the Affordable Care Act.
In one video, Gruber said voters were “too stupid to understand” the law’s main tax; in another, he said the legislative process relied on “the exploitation” of the public.
After the videos went viral last month, President Obama dismissed Gruber as “some adviser who was never on our staff,” while House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she didn’t even know who he was.
Opponents of ObamaCare say Democrats are changing their story.
They note that Gruber has been to the White House 21 times and met with multiple members of the administration, including Obama, according to visitor logs. Pelosi’s office also cited his work in a 2009 policy analysis.
“Why was Mr. Gruber called an ‘architect’ of ObamaCare by The Washington Post, someone who was lauded by President Obama and cited by then-Speaker Pelosi, and is now just ‘some advisor’? ” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said in a statement.
As Gruber steps into the line of fire on Tuesday, he might find little protection from Democrats who once paid him nearly as much as the presidential salary for his consulting work.
Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the committee’s top Democrat, said he would use the hearing to mount a defense of the healthcare law, not Gruber.
“If the Republicans want to take time and throw darts at Mr. Gruber, so be it,” Cummings said. “I think he has put himself in a position to be asked almost anything.”
Democrats signaled their strategy for the hearing with their choice of witness: Ari Goldmann, who bought health insurance through the federal marketplace and who struggled to find coverage for his pre-existing condition before the law took effect.
Cummings said the witness would offset what he called the “major distraction” caused by Gruber over the last month.
Republicans will also use the hearing to raise other problems with ObamaCare, such as last month’s misreported enrollment tally.
Marilyn Tavenner, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, will be pressed to explain why she provided an inaccurate enrollment count to the committee earlier this fall. The figure was off by nearly 400,000, a miscount that was just enough to push the number over the administration’s initial target of 7 million enrollments.
Tavenner and the Department of Health and Human Services say the error was unintentional, but Republicans, such as Issa and Mica, have said they are skeptical.
Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) said he is also planning to grill Tavenner on how the CMS plans to help customers who might see their tax bills increase if their federal healthcare subsidies change.
The issue, little known outside of policy circles, will pose a problem for many of the people who signed up for a benchmark plan in 2014 through the insurance marketplace but choose not to switch their coverage in 2015.
If the new yardstick plan is cheaper, people will qualify for fewer subsidy dollars and find themselves unexpectedly owing money to the IRS the following tax season.
“The significance of this is troubling to me, when you realize what CMS is doing and not doing to inform people that they will get a tax bill [if they do not actively re-enroll],” Meadows said in an interview Monday.
“There’s a difference between telling people ‘you might get a better premium price’ — which is true and everyone should do that — and telling people they’re about to get the wrong subsidy if they don’t re-enroll.”
Gruber became one of the most reviled individuals in America---as Americans watched him asserting that voters' "stupidity" and a "lack of transparency" helped get Obamacare pass.
Nervous Democrats, who lock-stepped behind Obamacare in an historic party-line vote, claimed they never heard of Gruber.
Now Gruber's insulting remarks have become a new flashpoint amid stunning midterm elections results that dumped Democrats into the ash heap of history.
Why doesn’t the House when he is present arrest this vile piece of excrement. Get rid of this crap put him in jail and let the cretins in jail deal with him. Watch the guy squeal like a stuck pig when put in a jail cell. A MIT professor whom lied and defrauded so many Bernie Madoff is serving Life in Prison, why not Gruber?
9:30 on C-SPAN 3
I find it hard to believe there will be any kind of “heavy coverage” of this at all by the cravens in the media.
I suspect that this hearing will be overshadowed by the release of the senate democrat report on what spy agencies did.
My expectation is that Gruber will make a mockery out of the proceeding with his answers.
This guy is so full of himself. It should be interesting to watch.
The problem for Gruber (Obama) is that his characterization about his healthcare architecture is all on video.
So the question must be, “Were you lying then (and then and then and then and then) or are you lying now?”
....."You may have noticed those new lime green pedestrian signs sprouting across the fruited plain, in many cases where no pedestrian has been glimpsed in years. Some new federal regulation requires them to be posted wherever pedestrians are to be found, or might potentially be found in the years ahead. I just drove through Barre, Vermont, which used to be the granite capital of the state but, as is the way, now offers the usual sad Main Street of vacant storefronts and non-profit community-assistance joints and whatnot. For some reason, it has faded pedestrian crossings painted across the street every few yards. So, in full compliance with the Bureau of Compliance, those new signs have been stuck in front of each one, warning the motorist of looming pedestrians, springing from curb to pavement like Alpine chamois.
The oncoming army of lurid lime signs uglies up an already decrepit Main Street. They dominate the scene, lining up in one's windshield with the mathematical precision of Busby Berkeley's chorines in Gold Diggers of 1935. And they make America look ridiculous. They are, in fact, double signs: One lime green diamond with the silhouette of a pedestrian, and then below it a lime rectangle with a diagonal arrow, pointing to the ground on which the hypothetical pedestrian is likely to be hypothetically perambulating. The lower sign is an exquisitely condescending touch. A nation whose citizenry is as stupid as those markers suggest they are cannot survive. But, if we're not that stupid, why aren't we outraged?
What's the cost of those double signs — 300 bucks per? That's the best part of four grand wasted on one little strip of one little street in one small town. It's not hard to see why we're the Brokest Nation in History... American Inertia
I won’t be cheering, yet. This opens the door for Gruber to simply say he was misunderstood, and then proceed to lay out a defense of Obamacare. This will provide video for Holder to play at the Supreme Court, countering previous video where he said the opposite. Which do you think the lib sycophants will choose to believe?
We shall see.
Gruber is a lose cannon.
Bfl
I guess this is as close as we will ever get to getting the answer to our questions about who wrote the law.
We were correct in that it was behind the curtain but I don’t ever remember the Gruber name in all our work.
Hey...... it’s ok
Not only is it ok but commendable.
A little pre Christmas entertainment by a lame duck congress should be enjoyed for the pure theatrical event it is
All he has is a simple Excel spreadsheet. He enters a few state specific numbers into it, and then pontificates for a few hours on the glorious consequences of the Great Obamacare. The numbers he gets from the spreadsheet have been shown over and over again to be wrong. It matters not! What matters is that his words have been blessed by The One.
A spectacle today does not preclude that for which you wish
Likely true about the spreadsheet. My contention, however, is that pricing, equitable estimating, reasonableness prices for consulting, etc. regardless of whether or not the contract is just “given” by Obama or his lackey’s or not.
In the end, the execution of getting money to him, there are contract guidelines, pricing actions, statements and justifications, reviews and audits that have to be completed. This is pretty much standard throughout government. You just can pull an hourly rate out of your keester and get paid for it. I’m saying I bet there is likely a way to catch this guy doing something illegal.
You’re exactly right. The format of these hearings is to the disadvantage of the Republicans. Each “questioner” gets only five minutes. Most use it for their “five minutes of fame” on national TV by bloviating endlessly on irrelevant self-serving topics. Only one or two republicans actually pose cogent questions and Gruber simply needs to filibuster the answer. The liberal press will chose the most supportive ten seconds of his entire day and show it on the “news” tonight.
No, it doesn’t. True....I’m just saying the best way to get him to tell the truth is to fully audit all the contracts which he got and see if there was some multiple dips at the pool.
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