New evidence suggests that the White House was strategically and misleadingly distancing itself from MIT economist and Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber after video emerged of him attributing the passage of the healthcare law to the “stupidity of the American voter.”
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal Sunday, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has provided 20,000 pages of emails sent by Gruber between January 2009 and March of the following year.
The electronic messages demonstrate that Gruber, who was paid about $400,000 by the Department of Health and Human Services for his consultant work on the Affordable Care Act, was in close and frequent communication with the White House and federal officials during the period.
From the Journal:
These revelations are surprising in relief of the fact that President Obama shrugged Gruber off as “an adviser who was never on our staff” after illuminating video surfaced of the economist touting Obamacare’s “lack of transparency.” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) also claimed not to “know” Gruber despite the fact that she had previously cited his work.
“He didn’t help write our bill,” she alleged last November.
House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah) emphasized the White House’s refusal to cop to its “proximity” to Gruber, who has since been fired from multiple consulting gigs and endured consistent public shame.
“His proximity to HHS and the White House was a whole lot tighter than they admitted,” explained Chaffetz. “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.”
A spokeswoman for HHS, on the other hand, dismissed the emails as “old news.”
“As has been previously reported, Mr. Gruber was a widely used economic modeler for administrations and state governments run by both parties — both before and after the Affordable Care Act was passed,” said spokeswoman Meaghan Smith.
