Can anyone tell me why this Congress and Senate want to keep Obamacare when it came into existence by illegal means?

Just the sheer  arrogance of Obama, the Democrats and how they manipulated this  bill thru should be the main reason to rid the country of  a law that was built on a lie.

AND, NOW, GRUBER FINALLY GOT CAUGHT IN HIS OWN LIES.

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July 22, 2017

Vermont Attorney General T.J. Donovan alleges Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber submitted at least two false invoices in connection with a $400,000 contract he had with the state to provide economic consulting services.

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Jonathan Gruber, the so-called “Obamacare architect” and consultant on implementing the Affordable Care Act (ACA aka Obamacare), has had his contract terminated by the state of Vermont.

The reason — those “stupidity of the American voter” comments that have made frequent appearances in the media as of late.

Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin’s spokesman Lawrence Miller issued the following statement.

“As the Governor and I have said, the comments by Mr. Gruber are offensive, inappropriate and do not reflect the thinking of this administration or how we do things in Vermont… As we have also said, we need solid economic modeling in order to move forward with health care reform.”

Miller related to Gruber that “I expect his team to complete the work that we need to provide the legislature and Vermonters with a public health care financing plan. I’ve informed Mr. McGruber [sic] that we will not be paying him any further for his part in completing that work.”

Fox News reports that the original contract in Vermont was worth $400,000, and that Jonathan Gruber has thus far collected $160,000 of that money.

The contract termination reveal was made at an info session for Vermont legislators.
Governor Shumlin was prompted to action by the state’s Senate Minority Leader, Joe Benning.

“I join with my Senate colleague, Sen. Kevin Mullin, in urging the governor to terminate his contract,” Benning, R-Caledonia, said in comments to Vermont Watchdog. “If the powers that be attempted to trick them like that, then those people should be immediately removed from positions of authority, be they elected officials or hired contractors.”

Gruber’s pay is for “policy expertise, research, and economic modeling related to the implementation of Green Mountain Care.” His final report is expected on January 15.

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Jonathan Gruber has been a sore spot for Democrats still reeling from the Election Night defeat at the hands of Republicans. Obamacare is the signature domestic achievement not only of President Obama, but also the Democratic-led House and Senate.

Since its passage, Democrats have fallen into the minority in the House (in 2010), and on November 4, they lost the Senate. Starting January 1, both houses will be controlled by Republicans for the first time since President George W. Bush.

Repealing Obamacare has been a big motivator for Republicans, and the comments by Gruber as well as the subsequent denial that he had much to do with building the law from both President Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has reignited that desire

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Thanks to Jonathan Gruber for revealing Obamacare deception

Correction: An earlier version of this column incorrectly stated that Justice Samuel Alito asked Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, “Why do you keep saying tax?” Justice Stephen Breyer asked Verrilli that. The following version has been updated.

By Marc A. Thiessen November 17, 2014

Democrats are desperately distancing themselves from Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber. He “never worked on our staff,” President Obama said this weekend in Brisbane, Australia, (even though Gruber was paid almost $400,000 by his administration, is the intellectual author of the individual mandate and met in the Oval Office with Obama and the head of the Congressional Budget Office to pore over the bill). “I don’t know who he is,” Nancy Pelosi declared on Capitol Hill (even though she repeatedly cited him by name during the Obamacare debate).

The reason Democrats are running from Gruber is the same reason conservatives should be thanking him: Gruber has exposed what liberals really think of the American people.

As of this weekend, there are now seven Gruber videos, in which he mocks the “stupidity” of American voters and boasts of the Obama administration’s ability to take advantage of it. In a new video that surfaced Friday, Gruber explains that the Obama administration passed the so-called “Cadillac tax” on high-value employer health plans “by mislabeling it, calling it a tax on insurance plans rather than a tax on people, when we know it’s a tax on people who hold these insurance plans.” Americans would not support a tax on individuals, so “We just tax the insurance companies, they pass on the higher prices . . . it ends up being the same thing.” The ruse, Gruber says, was “a very clever . . . basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter.”

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BY:   CNN

Obamacare architect in 6th video: ‘Mislabeling’ helped us get rid of tax breaks
By Jake Tapper, CNN

Updated 3:07 PM ET, Fri November 14, 2014

MIT economist Jonathan Gruber is considered the architect of Obamacare.

Videos where Gruber insults voters and explains the law have recently emerged
Opponents of Obamacare see this as evidence of the law’s ill will

In a 2011 conversation about the Affordable Care Act, MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, one of the architects of the law more commonly known as Obamacare, talked about how the bill would get rid of all tax credits for employer-based health insurance through “mislabeling” what the tax is and who it would hit.
In recent days, the past comments of Gruber — who in a 2010 speech noted that he “helped write the federal bill” and “was a paid consultant to the Obama administration to help develop the technical details as well” — have been given renewed attention.

In previously posted but only recently noticed speeches, Gruber discusses how those pushing the bill took part in an “exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter,” taking advantage of voters’ “stupidity” to create a law that would ultimately be good for them.

The issue at hand in this sixth video is known as the “Cadillac tax,” which was represented as a tax on employers’ expensive health insurance plans. While employers do not currently have to pay taxes on health insurance plans they provide employees, starting in 2018, companies that provide health insurance that costs more than $10,200 for an individual or $27,500 for a family will have to pay a 40 percent tax.

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“Economists have called for 40 years to get rid of the regressive, inefficient and expensive tax subsidy provided for employer provider health insurance,” Gruber said at the Pioneer Institute for public policy research in Boston. The subsidy is “terrible policy,” Gruber said.

“It turns out politically it’s really hard to get rid of,” Gruber said. “And the only way we could get rid of it was first by mislabeling it, calling it a tax on insurance plans rather than a tax on people when we all know it’s a tax on people who hold those insurance plans.”

(The White House press secretary said at a press briefing in 2010: “I would disagree with your notion that it is a tax on an individual since the proposal is written as a tax on an insurance company that offers a plan.”)

The second way was have the tax kick in “late, starting in 2018. But by starting it late, we were able to tie the cap for Cadillac Tax to CPI, not medical inflation,” Gruber said. CPI is the consumer price index, which is lower than medical inflation.

Gruber explains that by drafting the bill this way, they were able to pass something that would initially only impact some employer plans though it would eventually hit almost every employer plan. And by that time, those who object to the tax will be obligated to figure out how to come up with the money that repealing the tax will take from the treasury, or risk significantly adding to the national debt.

“What that means is the tax that starts out hitting only 8% of the insurance plans essentially amounts over the next 20 years essentially getting rid of the exclusion for employer sponsored plans,” Gruber said. “This was the only political way we were ever going to take on one of the worst public policies in America.”

Unions and employers who object in 2018, he noted, “at that point if they want to get rid of it they’re going to have to fill a trillion dollar hole in the deficit…It’s on the books now.”

(When the Cadillac tax was first rolled out, it was explained by Obamacare backers as a tax that would only impact those with “high end plans” — not all employer sponsored plans. A White House economic adviser in 2009 set “the record straight” by saying “the excise tax levied on insurance companies for high-premium plans, the so-called ‘Cadillac tax,’ will affect only a small portion of the very highest cost health plans — a total of 3% of premiums in 2013.”)

Gruber’s are at about the 30:38 mark here.

Former White House press secretary Jay Carney told CNN that Gruber’s remarks in general were “very harmful politically to the president.”

Gruber “speaks from the Ivory tower with remarkable hubris about the American voter and by extension the American Congress,” Carney told The Lead with Jake Tapper. “Any health care reform that sought to control costs and expand insurance would involve winners and losers. And that’s always going to be the case.”

Many of the videos were discovered by a Philadelphia-area financial adviser named Rich Weinstein who has spent the last year researching Obamacare after his family insurance premiums doubled. Weinstein told CNN that he had assumed, incorrectly, that since he liked his health insurance plan and he had insurance, he wouldn’t be much impacted by the new law.

It is time to bury Obama’s Obamacare baby.

kommonsentsjane