Gruber wasn’t about to get a defense from Democrats. “Stupid — I mean absolutely stupid comments,” the panel’s top Democrat, Elijah Cummings (Md.) told the witness. “They were irresponsible, incredibly disrespectful and did not reflect reality.”
I disagree with some of what Gruber has said about both the substance and the politics of health care policy, and I think that his “micro-simulation model” of health insurance take-up was over-valued. However, I deplore the personal attacks on him. And I hate that he was made to grovel before Congress.
If the sin is arrogance, then it is an understatement to say that Congressmen should not cast the first stone. They should be the first to be stoned.
I am not a fan of Congressional committees that pillory ordinary citizens. In my personal files, I have the clippings from a front-page story about another Congressional hearing, held 57 years ago. It was the House Un-American Activities Committee, and the witness that they were using to try to advance their careers was my mother. Because she refused to name names, she was going to be prosecuted. She was saved by the Watkins case.
I don’t like Congressional committees either, even in this case, but Gruber is not an ordinary citizen. Unless ordinary citizens pull in 7 figures from tax payers consulting on how best to take in more money from tax payers.
It was not, by the way, convincing voters of some pareto improvement public good for the general welfare. It was lying that it was that when it was the opposite. So, it was in fact worse than just marketing higher taxation to voters.
I understand your concern. My dad as an oil company executive got put through the wringer by a Senate committee twice in the early 1970s. The first time was to criticize him for the greed of being too aggressive in increasing oil supply, in the context of trying to build the Alaska pipeline. The second time was less than a year later, with the same committee, where he was criticized for the greed of supposedly holding oil off the market to increase prices, in the context of the Arab oil embargo and its aftermath.
That being said, Dr. Gruber is in this case as close to being a public official as one can be without actually having a job with the government. He was a well-paid government contractor and, despite all the bizarre rewriting of history today, a critical influence on policy-making. In that role, he showed zero concern for my individual liberty and contempt for my ability to make decisions for myself. So as far as I am concerned, he can squirm a little. My father eventually looked back on the experience as strengthening.
This is the key fact that cannot be emphasized enough.
As Maury Levy remarked to Orlando Blocker in the Baltimore City Jail: “You wanted to be in the game, right? Now you’re in the game.”
Apparently, Arnold has no problem with what Gruber admitted that he did – foisting a policy on the public that was contrary to the interest of the vast majority of the working class and middle class voters, so that the bureaucracy and technocratic elite could increase their already vast power over the economy for their own benefit and the (marginal) benefit of the underclass (including millions who should not even be here), with the paid-off cooperation of corporate America. I don’t see how the sins of Republican Congressmen exonerate Gruber, and the rest of the charlatans and fixers who pushed through this garbage barge of legislation, for the harm they have done to ordinary working Americans, the prospects of middle class young people, and the deceit they perpetrated to accomplish their despicable goals. Gruber deserves the personal attacks on him, not for his moments of honest confession, but for the fraud to which he confessed, and for which he has not apologized. And all who had anything to do with the passage of this legislative toxic waste deserve the same contempt.
No. Of course Arnold is correct, and not just because his mother was a victim of these grand-standing, sociopaths.
I’ve never liked these smoke and mirror shows, and not just because individuals are sacrificed publicly.
It is not that it Gruber deserved better. I’d go toe-to-toe with these clowns for far less than $5M. Note how the Republicans did not even score any points. They are incompetent and allowed Gruber to let Obamacare off the hook by apologizing for one man’s unacceptable opinion.
That the Republicans are idiots who are not intelligent enough to use Gruber’s admission that Obamacare was a fraud to indict the whole program does not excuse what Gruber and all his co-conspirators did. The incompetence of the LA County prosecutors did not make O.J. worthy of sympathy. I fail to see how the incompetence of congressional Republicans makes Gruber worthy of sympathy. Does the fact that he has admitted defrauding most of the voting public (ie., those foolish enough to continue voting for Democrats) count for nothing? The class solidarity of the technocratic/wonk class, regardless of ideological outlook, is appalling. I fail to see why a man who admits taking part in the largest fraud in US history deserves sympathy just because the congressmen attacking him are mentally deficient and have committed sins – much less ones – of their own.
I meant to say “lesser ones” above in the last sentence of the above rant.
I agree with you on everything except the part on Congressional hearings.
Gruber may even deserve worse. But we deserve better.
If you are a masochist, read my opinions on it below.
I think the Congressional hearings are part of the ongoing fraud, and at best Republicans, if not complicit, are cooperating.
For example, in hindsight it is now clear to me why they didn’t want that chick sitting next to Gruber. They made it sound like they wanted to distance themselves from Gruber. That is about half-right. What they wanted was Gruber on an island so this was a trial of Gruber rather than a trial of Obamacare and the flawed legislative process.
Republicans in their haste to get Gruber on the hot seat fell for it.
I agree entirely that (1) the Republicans are idiotically blowing a chance to explain what a disaster Obamacare is for middle class voters and (2) the failure is not entirely idiotic – most of their big donors are probably either benefiting from Obamacare or else have made their peace with it and don’t want to rock the boat – thus the GOP establishment does not really want to re-litigate Obamacare. They’re happy to make Gruber, not the ACA, the issue. For that, they richly deserve contempt. I am not defending them. I just say Gruber does not deserve sympathy.
I guess it is like if I witnessed a piano fall on his head. I’m not sure if he would deserve it or not, but it would be painful to watch knowing that it’s such a waste of a perfectly good piano.
Let’s beat a dead horse. Why not?
I think what is lacking these days is a concern for process. The legislative process for Obamacare was an example of this very problem. I don’t think Arnold is okay with Gruber getting away with his role in exemplifying this lack of concern for process (no Mr. McGruber, full-court spin is not the same thing as thorough debate, and may be the opposite), but that Congressional Hearings (of this particular variety) can also be indicative of a lack of concern for process.
There are times when adversarial situations approximate good incentives (trials) and times when individual incentives align with process (legislators writing legislation), and then times when they don’t (e.g. prosecutors becoming defense attorney’s for cops before grand juries and politicians grand-standing by browbeating individuals under threat of contempt of Congress). Let’s allow ourselves a bit of schadenfreude at McGruber’s expense, but let’s also ponder whether Congressional Hearings are really part of the rational process.
The premise of the original post is incorrect. Gruber was not “made to grovel”.
He chose to voluntarily testify, and he chose to begin his testimony by grovelling in his opening statement.
“Chairman Issa, Ranking Member Cummings, and Distinguished Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify voluntarily today. . . . I would like to begin by apologizing sincerely for the offending comments that I made.”
Of course, once he began grovelling, his political opponents on the committee took full advantage of their opportunity.
He isn’t actually sorry, of course. It is another misdirection. See, because if it is not just some arrogant academic shooting off his mouth (which it was that too) then we would be talking about why what he was stupid enough to say in public was actually the truth.
Yeah, Gowdy brought that out when he asked (paraphrased), “Are you sorry that you said it or are you sorry that you got caught?”
Upon cursory review, Gowdy seems to have done the best job, although still pretty useless.
Btw, point of info, one does not simply “choose to voluntarily testify” into Mordor.
Andrew’: you get the zing! of the day award.
I’d bet all my future government contracts that a Democrat strategist got to him and told him that going the mea culpa route was the optimum spin.
Dr. Gruber invited personal criticism himself, when he boasted about his acumen in deceit for the purpose of obtaining approval of “his” bill. In the videos, he was not objectively discussing the economic benefits and costs of the law. The benefit was taken as a given; the costs & foreseeable negative consequences were irrelevant to him. He was taking credit for his opportunistic manipulation of the law’s provisions and its language so as to ensure its acceptance by universal healthcare/insurance agenda-driven politicians and media. He was “smarter than the av-er-age bear,” in his own opinion.
And, oh by the way, has anyone actually seen his model? This blogger has been asking that question repeatedly:
http://rwcg.wordpress.com/2014/12/10/wrong-dr-gruber-someone-has-questioned-the-quality-of-your-model/
The list of appeals to authority went Cutler and Gruber a close tie, followed a distant 3rd by Zeke Emanuel. On the right it was basically just Goodman. Weird that few people remember this. Was anyone else paid anything like $5Million to help sell the law?
I savaged Gruber back when people actually trusted him, back when they were for him before they didn’t know him. I assumed that like most academics he simply believed his own hogwash, but in hindsight was too kind. I keep having to re-learn the lesson to think even less of these people than I do.
I’d like to have the broader conversation about academia and science when the “scientist” think fooling the reader/public makes them smart and the victim of the fraud stupid. I won’t hold my breath on that one, certainly not from the party that supports science.
Maybe we could have some discussion over how much we should pay academics to market to voters and what it means for democracy when the government uses our money to lie to us- again, not going to wait around for it.
Perhaps at least we could have some critical revision of the numbers for this law and have the rational debate that never actually took place. But of course, not having that was the whole point of the exercise.
I would agree that most of these Congressional hearings are simply opportunities for posturing by publicity-seeking politicians. I recall the auto companies’ CEOs being taken to task by politicians who likely had never run a business or ever needed to find money to make a payroll. Who were castigated for flying to D.C. on company aircraft, for heaven’s sake.
But, please recall that HUAC’s assertions that there were Communist Party supported influential employees in government (specifically, the State Department) were, in fact, correct.
If you have not read “Witness” by Whittaker Chambers, might I suggest it for your Christmas vacation reading list?
Yes, some of the HUAC was correct. But the point is these dog and pony shows are just games and on that one they took a loss. With Gruber they took a loss as well. Noone thought ahead to say, “wait, what if he just says he was boneheaded.” Now, all we have is Gruber’s pound of flesh. Big whoop. Always know the answer to the question before you ask it.
He was never going to publicly confess to his chicanery, any more than IRS chief Koskinen, or IRS dufus Lerner. “Glib.” “Trying to look smart.” He and his lawyer came up with the least personally harmful & most deflective explanation & defense. BTW, the Scooter Libby lesson has been well-learned: never say anything under oath that could prove actionable.
To me, the positive value of the Gruber hearing lies in substantially the same basis as the Gruber videos: to expose the perfidy of all the people (elected politicians, lobbyists, consultants, media) who supported, enabled, and enacted ACA, in blatant contempt for the long-term individual and collective economic best interests of the American public and taxpayers.
Charlatans. The whole lot of ’em.
“the positive value of the Gruber hearing”
And anything that keeps them off the streets.
Yes, multiple comments are a pain. I get that. What is far more important is that on every issue the Republicans are outmaneuvered by the Democrats. That is what is getting frustrating to me. I hate Republicans but I kind of need them to win roughly half the time and stop shooting themselves in the foot.
I’d venture that just not even having the hearings would have allowed the issue to draw out longer and give Republicans more mileage out of it. Never mistake an individual Republican looking out for himself as looking out for you.
Arnold’s sympathy for the McGruber is part of their calculus. And it worked.
Make him(self) out to be a poor shlub (again, I suspect a strategist got to him- so the deception ironically continues WHILE he is handwaving it off as just being politically inept) and that defuses considerations such as asking whether this meme that “everything was fully debated” actually makes sense. The problem is not that Gruber mis-spoke, it is that he was caught telling the truth (except the part about voters being stupid when they believe a government who is paying handsomely for sophisticated lies- that part really does betray an impressive stupidity and arrogance and lack of self-awareness from Gruber).
To whit: If I tell you a bald-faced lie, and then you call bull-# on it, and then I just repeat the lie (or just ignore your objection), is that a debate? Is it fully-debated? Or is that a fraud? Do we let frauds get away with apologies? Or do we investigate for the actual truth?
But, Gruber isn’t really the problem, either. There is a near endless supply of people willing to take millions of dollars from the government in order to lie to voters. Gruber just was too dumb to realize he was window dressing. For academics, consider it a cautionary tale.
Here is how the Republicans are going to flub up the Supreme Court case on the exchanges. They are going to over-reach, swing for the fences, and strike out.
Here is how they could, but won’t win. Just fix the law.
Now, the Democrats don’t want to just fix the law, because it is a highly unpopular law that was hoodwinked over the voters by Gruber et. al.
There are so many moving parts to this law, and so many of those parts that are either unworkable or provide perverse incentives… I’m not sure it can be “fixed.”
How would you fix it? Which parts would you salvage?
I just mean here that the law says federal exchanges don’t get subsidies. If it were a popular law that had passed above board then fixing that alleged typo would be a formality. But since it wasn’t really passed in good faith and transtransparent debate reopening it is a can of worms
The funny thing is that everything Gruber said prior to yesterday in all the videos was basically the truth as either understood by him, or on any objective level, and he only started lying again once they put him under oath.
What I was trying to say just in thousands more words.
Brevity is not my strong suit, so here goes.
For example, he said some stupid comment about when Obama said you could keep your plan that he interpreted that to mean that the majority of people wouldn’t be affected. Well, then why was he so wrong. Almost everyone has already been effected. Out here they have hand-painted yard signs offering to help people get signed up. People who already have insurance are getting the ominous e-mails from their human resources departments about who can be classified as part-time, etc.
Why would the guy who got millions of dollars to determine who would be effected be so remarkably wrong in his estimations?
This comment wins the thread
As an aside, don’t you just love how everything is a Beta release nowadays? Laws we have to pass them to decide what is in them, and I’ve spent a few hours asking other customers how Disney Infinity works.
Maybe congressional hearings about recent legislation is just part of the new normal.
The groveling is important because he is being deceptive, ONCE AGAIN, out of political necessity of course. He has to say that he wasn’t sincere and was totally mistaken when he revealed the cynical truth to his fellow academics. What a terrible set of incentives the political world faces!
Since he is lying now to Congress, I’m happy to see our congress critters make him squirm and debase himself to do so. I’d much rather he crack and actually tell the truth. A modern day Col. Nathan Jessup falling on his sword — we can handle the truth!
I would have liked to know if he meant voters were stupid because they acquiesced to the law or because they would not had they known the hidden purpose was expanding coverage and eliminating the employer health insurance tax incentives. Nobody seems to have discussed this.
Wow, turns out there is another reason to pity the McGruber. It seems he made about 40 times less with his sweetheart no bid deal than the torture psychologists did consulting for their ineffective government program!
I agree with Yancey Ward 12:56 pm, and will go further.
Gruber didn’t fool the public, he advised politicians, including Obama. He gave very good advice about how politicians could fool the public. He was an economic information contractor. I see him as similar to an arms manufacturer. The government (politicians) buys arms to kill people. The government bought Gruber’s advice in order to fool people.
Gruber advised them about the difference between tax assessment and tax incidence. For example, the governemnt could tax health insurance companies, they would pass along the tax in higher rates, the public would pay the tax implicitly, and most of the public would not blame the government. The insurance companies wouldn’t care, because they would become government bureaus selling standardized and mandated products.
Michael Kinsley said “A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth”. Gruber is in trouble for telling the truth about politicians and how he advised them. He is also hated for his superior tone and bragging, never palatable in the politics of a democracy.
Politicians have responded by further fooling the public. They pretend that Gruber was the deceiver, as if the politicians are innocent. This is a ploy to divert blame onto Gruber, and it is mostly working.
The public does not like to hear it. A good fraction are stupid, and a majority are economically ignorant and too trusting. That is what I see, and I agree with Gruber.
Should Gruber have been more pure than to make money advising the government? He is only one of a huge collection of economists who do that regardless of how that information is used. After all, politicians should know what the effect of their policies will be.
The public should be more skeptical about the lies that politicians tell them.
Gruber should be put, unwilling, on a pedastal and praised for his candor. Politicians should be questioned about their understanding of what Gruber told them.
Who gave the president the clever idea to peg the Cadillac tax to top line inflation? Was it gruber?
In 15 years this directly affects 50% of all employer plans. Gruber got paid 6 milion dollars to estimate that this is basically nobody. He allegedly discused this subterfuge explicitly with Obama directly.
Arnold,
Congress appears to have signed off on this law largely based on the fact that Gruber recommended it. As such, it seems appropriate to me that they quiz him, especially if he’s been lying to them.
Now, the process here is a big problem, too. Congress should really have some idea of what they are signing into law, instead of just going, I’m a Democrat, so I’m in favor of any giant health bill.