Closer Than Obama Cares To Admit – At Least Publicly
While the Obama administration has sought to distance itself from MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, this reporter has found that the professor’s official bio at a university project known to be close to the White House boasts that Gruber helped to craft Obamacare.
Gruber’s bio at the Hamilton Project, an economic initiative launched by the Brookings Institution in 2006, reads: “During 2009-2010 he served as a technical consultant to the Obama Administration and worked with both the Administration and Congress to help craft the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.”
Obama himself spoke at the 2006 launch of the Hamilton Project, where he stated he had stolen ideas “liberally” from Gruber.
Obama is quite familiar with the Hamilton Project. Not only did he speak at the project’s launch event, some of its experts wound up in his administration.
Hamilton Project Director Peter Richard Orszag served under Obama as director of the Office of Management and Budget, the largest office within the executive branch.
Video recently unearthed by the Washington Free Beacon shows Obama speaking at the 2006 Hamilton Project launch event praising Gruber and other liberal economic policy experts as some of the “brightest minds” in academia.
“Many of them I have stolen ideas from liberally, people ranging from [economist] Robert Gordon to [economist] Austan Goolsbee [to] Jon Gruber,” Obama said.
Last weekend, however, Obama attempted to distance himself from Gruber, describing him as an adviser who was never on our staff.”
Gruber, an economics professor, has been making headlines for candid statements on Obamacare captured on video. He said regarding the passage of Obamacare that “lack of transparency is a huge political advantage” and that “the stupidity of the American voter” was “really, really critical to get anything to pass.”
Don’t Confuse People With The Facts
KleinOnline has found that the lead pollster and main crafter of the marketing campaign for Obamacare, Celinda Lake, once explained that when selling healthcare reform to the public, “perceptions are more important than facts and reason.”
Lake, director of Lake Research, tested Americans for which messaging would work best to market and brand President Obama’s healthcare law.
The marketing campaign was highly criticized after President Obama infamously told the American public, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.” The claim received the “Lie of the Year” award from the Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact.com.
Focus on Lake is instructive. She conducted the research for the Herndon Alliance, a little-known group that has been the driving force in selling Obamacare to the country.
Politico reported that when Obama repeatedly announced Americans could maintain their choice of doctors and insurance plans, “he [was] using a Herndon strategy for wringing fear out of a system overhaul.”
In 2008, Lake wrote an article in the Health Affairs journal about branding healthcare reform. Lake’s piece was co-authored by Robert Crittenden, the Herndon Alliance executive director.
Lake and Crittenden wrote that rather than presenting a blueprint for healthcare reform to the public for discussion, reformers should start “by exploring voters’ own perceptions and the core values that shape their views on health care.”
“Through segmented focus groups and a national telephone survey in 2006, we identified a set of values that drive these swing voters’ perceptions of reform,” wrote Lake and Crittenden.
They asserted that “values” and “perceptions” are more important than “facts” when selling healthcare reform.
Tough Sheriff Wary Of Obama’s Plans
In a radio interview on Sunday, Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, said that he is worried President Obama’s recent executive actions on immigration will only increase the number of illegal aliens crossing the southern border, including those who commit violent crimes while in the U.S.