Both Parties Guilty of Using Voter 'Stupidity'

MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, an architect of the Affordable Care Act, has found himself at the center of an Obamacare controversy—again—after the Daily Caller unearthed comments he made at a 2013 academic conference about the legislative history of Obamacare. “This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure [the Congressional Budget Office] did not score the mandate as taxes,” he said. “If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies, ok? … [L]ack of transparency is a huge political advantage and basically, you know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically, that was really, really critical to getting this thing to pass.” Conservatives have claimed these comments are definitive proof that Democrats and partisan journalists lied to the public to pass the bill—an accusation they have made, over and over again, during Obama’s presidency.

That argument has always been overstated. As policymaking goes, the process of writing and debating Obamacare was actually pretty transparent. But Gruber’s comments, inartful as they were, reveal a dirty little secret about legislating: Congress uses budget gimmicks all the time to hide the cost of bills and limit their political repercussions.

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