WASHINGTON - It's not exactly the Ems Dispatch (the diplomatic cable Bismarck doctored to provoke the 1870 Franco-Prussian War). But what the just-resurfaced Gruber Confession lacks in consequence, it makes up for in cynicism. This October 2013 video shows MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, a principal architect of Obamacare, admitting that, in order to get it passed, the law was made deliberately obscure and deceptive. It constitutes the ultimate vindication of the charge Obamacare was sold on a pack of lies.
"Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage," said Gruber. "Basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass."
First, Gruber said, the bill's authors manipulated the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which issues gold-standard cost estimates of any legislative proposal: "This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes." Why? Because "if CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies." And yet, the president himself openly insisted the individual mandate was not a tax.
Worse was the pretense Obamacare wouldn't cost anyone anything. On the contrary, insisted President Obama, the "typical family" would save $2,500 on premiums every year.
Skeptics like me pointed out the obvious: You can't subsidize 30 million uninsured without someone paying something. Indeed, Gruber admits, Obamacare was a huge transfer of wealth -- which had to be hidden, because "if you had a law which ... made explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed."
Remember: The whole premise of Obamacare was that it would help the needy, but if you were not in need, if you liked what you had, you would be left alone. Which is why Obama kept repeating -- Politifact counted 31 times -- that "if you like your plan, you can keep your plan."
But of course you couldn't, as millions discovered. Millions more were shocked when they discovered major hikes in their premiums and deductibles.
Obama knew the falsity of this claim as far back as February 2010 when, at a meeting with congressional leaders, he agreed millions would lose their plans.
It gets even worse. Last week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case claiming the administration is violating its own health care law, which specifies subsidies can be given only to insurance purchased on "exchanges established by the state." Just 13 states have set up such exchanges. Yet the administration is giving tax credits to plans bought on the federal exchange -- serving 37 states -- despite what the law says.
If the government loses, the subsidy system collapses and, with it, Obamacare itself. Which is why the administration is frantically arguing that "exchanges established by the state" is merely sloppy drafting, a kind of legislative typo.
Re-enter professor Gruber. On a separate video in a different speech, he explains: "If you're a state and you don't set up an exchange, that means your citizens don't get their tax credits." The legislative idea was to coerce states into setting up their own exchanges by otherwise denying their citizens subsidies.
This may have been a stupid idea, but it was no slip. And it's the law, as written, as enacted and intended. It can be changed by Congress only, not by the Executive. Which is what the plaintiffs are saying.
It's refreshing "the most transparent administration in history," as this administration fancies itself, should finally display candor about its signature social change. Inadvertently, of course. But now we know what lay behind Obama's smooth reassurances -- the arrogance of an academic liberalism that rules in the name of a citizenry it mocks, disdains and deliberately, contemptuously deceives.
Washington Post Writers Group