RUSH: Just a little more on the outrageous discovery that Jonathan Gruber, the architect of Obamacare, admitted Sunday (and still this hasn’t shown up in the Drive-By Media) that they lied. They had to lie. They proudly lied, happily lied, laughingly lied, in order to get this monstrosity, this disaster passed and signed into law because the American people were too stupid to understand it.
We’ve found another Gruber lie, by the way, and I’ve got a little bit here on Gruber and subsidies, which is the subject matter of the latest case the Supreme Court has agreed to hear on Obamacare. We just found another Gruber lie. Back on December 28, 2009, Gruber wrote a Washington Post op-ed, the title of which was, “Cadillac Tax Isn’t a Tax; It’s a Plan to Finance Real Health Reform.”
Now, bear in mind, we have him on tape saying the Cadillac tax is a tax, and I want you to hear it. It’s audio sound bite number 11. This is the one I only played partially because I demanded the tape be stopped when he accuses the Republicans of trying to confuse people about the bill.
The man who admits lying about it is now accusing, on Boston television last night, the Republicans of trying to confuse you about this. Let me tell you, folks: There’s a lesson here. I don’t care what the bill is, I don’t care what the legislation is, if it comes from the Democrat Party, you had better damn well assume they’re lying to you about that, too.
Something they want that does not have popular support, you can rest assured they’re lying about it! That would only be the smart thing to do. Now, here first is the sound bite. This is Gruber last night, the second phase of his “apology” for a poor choice of words on WGBH in Boston.
GRUBER: I think this comes to a master strategy of Republican Party which is to confuse people enough about the law so they don’t understand that the subsidies they’re getting are because of the law. It goes back to the old Jimmy Kimmel bit where he asked people if they liked Obamacare, and they said, “No,” and he asked people if they liked “the Affordable Care Act,” and they said, “Yes.”
RUSH: Now, this subsidy business, this is something that is at the Supreme Court now. Let me just briefly explain — and we’re gonna go to your phone calls in due course, too, all coming up. The only Americans that qualify for subsidies are those that get Obamacare through a straight exchange. That is the law. Well, the Regime encountered a problem. Most states didn’t set one up.
Many states that were run by Republican governors said, “We don’t want any part of this,” because Obamacare is, among many other things, a massive shift of expense from the federal government to the states. It’s the federal government mandating that the states spend all of the new money or the vast majority of it so that Obama could get a score from the CBO of Obamacare being less than a trillion bucks.
Because they were off-loading all the spending on the states, and a bunch of Republican governors said, “No way! We’re not doing this.” So if you don’t live in a state that has exchanges, you can’t get a subsidy. Well, when they found that out at the Regime, they set up their own exchanges, which the law does not permit. The law specifically states that, to qualify for subsidies, you have to get Obamacare through a state exchange.
They started offering subsidies from their own federal exchanges, HealthCare.gov. Can’t do it, it’s a violation of the law, and this is what the Supreme Court has just agreed to hear. Now, Gruber’s op-ed back on December 28, 2009 in the Washington Post is entitled, “Cadillac Tax Isn’t a Tax; It’s a Plan to Finance Real Health Reform.” But we have him on tape, and the second video has him on tape as saying that the Cadillac tax is a tax.
GRUBER: They said, “Look, what you economic nerds want to do is you want to say that, for people with expensive health insurance plans, they will no longer get a 40% tax break. What if we instead just levied a 40% tax on the insurance companies that sell these terribly expensive Cadillac plans?” We said, “Well, that’s pretty much the same thing.” They proposed it and that passed and that passed, ’cause American voters are too stupid to understand the difference.
AUDIENCE: (guffawing laughter)
GRUBER: Okay?
AUDIENCE: (laughing)
GRUBER: (chuckling) So basically we now have the Cadillac tax!
RUSH: Yeah, that’s it. That’s the second discovery. If you didn’t hear that, let me quickly repeat what he said here. “They said, ‘Look, what you economic nerds want to do is you want to say that, for people with expensive health insurance plans, they will no longer get a 40% tax break. What if we instead just levied a 40% tax on the insurance companies that sell these terribly expensive Cadillac plans?’
“We said, ‘Well, that’s pretty much the same thing.” They proposed it and that passed and that passed, ’cause American voters are too stupid to understand the difference,” and they started laughing. “So basically we now have the Cadillac tax!” He is on tape saying the Cadillac tax is a tax, but he had an op-ed in the Washington Post in 2009 saying it isn’t.
He lied in the op-ed in the Washington Post in 2009, if he was telling the truth last year. He’s calling it an off-the-cuff remark that ended up in his routine, as though he’s a stand-up comic running around. “Eh, it’s an off-the-cuff remark that the American people voters are too stupid. It’s just a joke. It’s an inside joke. I don’t really think that.” Yes, you do. You mentioned it five times, and it’s not only you.
It’s something that you believe about everything. It’s something that every Democrat believes about the American people, particularly elected Democrats. They all think you’re stupid. They all think you’re incompetent. That’s why they want so much power to run your life. You’re not qualified. You’re not capable. They hold you in contempt! He’s being brazenly honest here when he talks about how stupid he thinks you are.
But in 2009, in an op-ed in the Washington Post, he writes, “The Cadillac tax isn’t a tax. It’s a plan to finance real health reform.” But we’ve got him on tape saying the Cadillac tax is a tax. So apparently Gruber thought that Washington Post readers were too stupid and he had to lie to them, too. It’s still, still… The Washington Post has evidence on their own pages of this man brazenly lying to the readers of that paper, and it doesn’t matter.