National Review’s Deroy Murdock uncovered an interesting list of Jonathan Gruber’s consulting-gig customers…
$103,500 from the U.S. Department of State
For those of you interested, that makes better than FOUR MILLION DOLLARS in consulting fees this man received from arms of the federal government, plus another $1.7 million or so from four state governments.
For a grand total of just under SIX MILLION DOLLARS paid to Gruber, who Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry have all been on record as applauding as an expert on Obamacare. Pelosi and Obama have since denied any knowledge of who Gruber is – we haven’t heard any roosters crowing just yet, but at some point anything is possible.
Obama’s Organizing For America also had references to Gruber’s expertise on Obama on its website – though those were scrubbed when Gruber’s statements about the mendacity of the health care law and the stupidity of the American public started becoming known. TeaParty.org found and saved those references, though…
It’s going to be very difficult to pass the public’s indignation at Gruber’s statements and what they say about Obamacare off this time. After all, the Gruber revelations come as the Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments in the coming weeks about a central piece of Obamacare that Gruber’s recently-unearthed statements speak directly to – namely, the question of whether the drafting of the bill’s individual mandate and subsidies as they are was a drafting error or conveyed legislative intent.
Because the mandate to purchase health insurance, and the subsidies to assist those to do so who can’t afford it and the penalties for those who refuse to, is set up as limited to those states which have set up exchanges. Some 36 states haven’t done so, and by the letter of Obamacare the IRS can neither impose a fine for not purchasing health insurance nor provide subsidies for those who buy a plan. The IRS is doing it anyway, and that’s what’s at issue in both the Halbig and King cases.
Gruber, in his arrogant statements, has not only said the mandate was a tax and the law was drafted to mask that fact so the Congressional Budget Office wouldn’t score it as such and Congress wouldn’t vote to pass it as such (a position that was quickly corrected once Obamacare went to court on the issue of whether the federal government has the Commerce Clause power to force someone to buy a product, which was the crux of the NFIB v. Sebelius case), he’s also said that the law was drafted the way it was specifically to pressure Republican governors in red states to create exchanges and therefore give Obamacare the patina of bipartisan support at the state level it didn’t receive in Congress.
Having let that cat out of the bag, Gruber could well have eliminated any doubt that the law doesn’t cover people in the 36 states without exchanges. The Supreme Court might well destroy Obamacare on that basis; there is very bright-line, unmistakable language in the law the IRS is currently violating.
Meaning that Gruber might well end up the man who kills Obamacare.
And that would be well worth $6 million.
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