ObamaCare architect Gruber set to testify at December House hearing

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ObamaCare architect to testify before Congress

Wendell Goler reports from Washington

WASHINGTON – Jonathan Gruber, the controversial MIT professor and ObamaCare architect caught on video calling the American people stupid multiple times, has agreed to testify before the House Oversight Committee next month on the lack of transparency surrounding the Affordable Care Act.

In a letter to Gruber, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House committee, asked him and Marilyn Tavenner, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service administrator, to appear and answer questions on repeated transparency failures and outright deceptions involving the Affordable Care Act. The hearing will be held Dec. 9 at 9:30 a.m.

“From the outset, the health law has been the poster child for this administration’s broken transparency promises,” Issa said in a written statement.

“Jonathan Gruber, one of ObamaCare’s chief architects, publicly lauded the ‘lack of transparency’ that was necessary to pass the law and credited ‘the stupidity of the American voter’ that allowed the administration to mislead the public,” Issa said. He added, “CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner testified before our Committee that the administration met its goals by enrolling 7.3 million individuals; however, we now know that wasn’t the case.”

Issa says the numbers provided by CMS were deceptive and wants both Gruber and Tavenner to explain themselves.

Although Obama has downplayed Gruber's role in crafting the Affordable Care Act, White House logs show he visited 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. more than a dozen times and was paid $400,000 for his work on the project. That followed several years of work with the state of Massachusetts, where a universal health care system implemented under former Gov. Mitt Romney has been hailed as the model for ObamaCare.

Since the passage of ObamaCare, eight states, including Vermont and North Carolina, gave Gruber's firm six-figure contracts to create computer models, crunch numbers and analyze data to help them implement the law. But those two states have now canned Gruber and canceled the deals in the wake of a spate of videos showing the loose-lipped academic saying the law was written in an intentionally obtuse manner and crediting “the stupidity of the American voter” with helping pass the law.