This week Jonathan Gruber was a witness in an Oversight hearing where he refused to answer questions regarding his compensation from several sources for his expert financial and economic consultations regarding the Affordable Care Act.
While being coached by his lawyer and likely several others to be contrite over his offensive views on the stupidity of voters regarding the implications of corruption and criticisms, Gruber was told to fall on the sword to save the Democrats who voted for the law. The Democrats during the hearing, were happy to pin blame exclusively on Gruber saving their own credibility while still endorsing a failed law.
Enter Congressman Darrel Issa, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee who carried out his threat from the hearing to subpoena Gruber.
Issa Subpoenas ObamaCare Architect Jonathan Gruber
December 12, 2014
Last night, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., subpoenaed ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber for all documents and communications with federal, state, or local government employees related to aspects of his work on the President’s health care law.
“As one of the architects of ObamaCare, Jonathan Gruber is in a unique position to shed light on the ‘lack of transparency’ surrounding the passage of the President’s health care law, however he has so far been unwilling to fully comply with the Oversight Committee’s repeated requests,” Chairman Issa said in a statement. “This week, Dr. Gruber repeatedly refused to answer several key questions, including the amount of taxpayer funds he received for his work on ObamaCare. The American people deserve not just an apology, but a full accounting, which Dr. Gruber must provide.”
On Tuesday, Dr. Gruber testified before the Committee about his role in developing the President’s health care law. During the hearing, Dr. Gruber received bipartisan criticism for boasting in 2012 that ObamaCare passed because of a “lack of transparency” and the “stupidity of the American voter.” Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Marilyn Tavenner also testified at the hearing about the inflated ObamaCare enrollment numbers CMS reported in September and November 2014.
The subpoena schedule is as follows:
1. All documents and communications to or from any federal, state, or local government employee, including, but not limited to, any document or communication referring or relating to the Affordable Care Act or federal and state health care exchanges.
2. All documents and communications referring or relating to funding, for research or otherwise, from any federal, state, or local government agency, including, but not limited to, any contract(s) with a federal, state, or local government agency.
3. All documents and communications referring or relating to work product produced to any federal, state, or local government agency, for any purpose, including, but not limited to, the results of any and all economic models or simulations.
Gruber clearly views his own world of policy as a place of idealism and integrity. Politics, in contrast, is a realm where “lack of transparency” and “mislabeling” are sad necessities to persuade low-information voters to pursue their own interests. Purposely employing such tactics in an academic paper, for example, would be a scandal (and presumably a firing offense) at Gruber’s Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But liberal academics expect politicians to have greater cunning and lower standards. In fact, academics depend upon the rougher talents of politicians to turn their ideas into reality.
