(Westfield, MA) Progressives must denounce this statement by Jonathan Gruber in no uncertain terms:<\/p>\n
This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure the CBO [Congressional Budget Office] did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. So it\u2019s written to do that.<\/p>\n
In terms of risk-rated subsidies, in a law that said health people are gonna pay in \u2014 if it made explicit that healthy people are gonna pay in, sick people get money, it would not have passed. Okay \u2014 just like the \u2026 people \u2014 transperen\u2014 lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever<\/em>, but basically that was really, really critical to get anything to pass.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I see partial defenses from the likes of Jonathan Chait,<\/a> Kevin Drum<\/a>, and Sarah Kliff<\/a>, but they won\u2019t do. Calling the American people “stupid” in this context is unjust and deeply damaging. It reflects a subsidiary stream of progressive politics but a real one. When your political movement harbors discreditable views, you must denounce them or you will be associated with them. Michael Kinsley once defined a gaffe as “when a politician tells the truth \u2013 some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.” We can’t let this be a gaffe for the whole progressive movement, whatever Dr. Gruber may privately believe.<\/p>\n