Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
While the deception of Jonathan Gruber and the Democrat leadership in passing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is on full display, the real story is not being discussed. The depth of loyalty to the liberal agenda rises to a cultic following; liberalism has become one of the largest religions in America.
The message that propelled all Democrats and no Republicans to approve the massive overall of 1/6 of the United States economy was that every American should have healthcare coverage and that the ACA would make that coverage affordable. The Obama administration relied on Jonathan Gruber, the “architect” of the Massachusetts healthcare law and M.I.T. economist, to make the liberal dream of universal health care come to life across the country. Using the Gruber Microsimulation Model, Gruber received nearly $400,000 from the administration, has sold his services to no less than eight states to set up state exchanges, and has earned in excess of $2 million in taxpayer dollars over the past seven years from Health and Human Services for his services, reported the Washington Post. His lucrative business model could be applauded but for the fact he’s peddling deceit to his clients and to the American people.
No less than three videos were released this week where Gruber said, “This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure” the Congressional Budget Office “did not score the mandate as taxes.” He also said that “lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” and added, “Call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass,” reported the New York Times.
Of course, we now know the individual mandate is indeed a tax, as adjudged by the U.S. Supreme Court. That such creative tricks occur in Washington on a bi-partisan basis is not news, and I am not mad at Gruber. He exposes the underbelly of politics, but more specifically, the willingness of liberal devotees, in this case, to lie to the American people to accomplish their agenda “by any means necessary.”
The haze of liberal deceit is so thick that it’s nearly surreal as we watch House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi act like she’s never even heard of Gruber, notwithstanding her six references to him on her own Speaker of the House website in December 2009 and her praise of Gruber as a “noted MIT economist.” Now the White House says, “The process associated with the writing and passing and implementing of the Affordable Care Act has been extraordinarily transparent.” What else would we expect from the One who said: “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, period.”
Religion is defined in multiple ways. One of those ways is to say it is a “cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith.” The only way to describe the left’s inability to respond to the Gruber matter in a forthright way is to understand their belief system as a religion. They have a level of devotion and faith in their liberal agenda that exposure of their deceit means absolutely nothing and only begets more deceit. To my Democrat friends: is this what you signed up for as a Democrat?
Marc Little is the author of The Prodigal Republican: Faith and Politics. His web site is The Prodigal Republican.
“….Gruber received nearly $400,000 from the administration, has sold his services to no less than eight states to set up state exchanges, and has earned in excess of $2 million in taxpayer dollars….”
No wonder this egoist is prancing around like some oversexed stallion – living large off of more taxpayer “redistribution!” Gruber should be referred to one of our wigged framers, James Madison:
“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”
― James Madison
Are you being too kind to call the agenda liberal. That term has been hijacked by the left. Their agenda is progressive and even communistic or Marxist in some cases. You are on target when you call their devotion religious.