In a claim shown to be patently untrue, Rep. Nancy Pelosi told reporters that she had never heard of John Gruber, a man widely thought to be one of the architects in helping create Obamacare.
Gruber entered the news this week when controversial comments he made last year about the Affordable Care Act incited Republicans to discuss whether he should be called to the Hill to be questioned.
In a 2013 video, Gruber, who is an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the ACA went through because of “the stupidity of the American voter.”
That comment, and others, antagonized Republicans in Washington, and when a reporter
asked Pelosi about Gruber, she said, in a press conference published on C-SPAN, “I don’t know who he is. He didn’t help write our bill. So, with all due respect to your question, you have a person who wasn’t writing our bill commenting on what was going on when we were writing the bill, who has withdrawn some of the statements that he made. So let’s put him aside.”
But the media and many others immediately pulled out proof that Pelosi did, indeed, know who Gruber was, and quoted him in the past.
Syndicated columnist Phil Kerken, on his Twitter page,
linked to an Internet archive of Pelosi’s own website, where she answered a question about ACA and quoted Gruber.
Although The Washington Post pointed out that Pelosi probably didn’t write the press releases citing Gruber, it quoted comments she made in 2009 where she referred to the economist.
Pelosi’s spokesperson told the Post that the senator meant she didn’t know Gruber personally.
"We've cited the work of dozens upon dozens of economists over the years. As the leader said today, Mr. Gruber played no role in drafting our bill,” Drew Hammill said.
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