In an effort to distance himself from MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, President Barack Obama has sought to play down the economist's role in creating Obamacare. Asked about the subject at the G20 Summit in Australia, the president dismissed Gruber as "some adviser who never worked on our staff."
But a video posted Monday shows the president discussing his policy ideas, which he said came from some of the "brightest minds from academia and policy circles,"
The Daily Caller reports.
The video, posted by the conservative organization American Commitment, shows Obama in a speech at the Brookings Institution, declaring that Gruber was one of a group of academics whom "I have stolen ideas from liberally."
Gruber has visited the White House at least a dozen times during the Obama presidency, and received a contract of close to $400,000 for providing advice about Obamacare.
During the president's 2012 re-election bid, his campaign website touted Gruber's roles in devising both Mitt Romney's Massachusetts healthcare overhaul and Obamacare.
The Daily Caller noted that in an Oct. 3, 2012, press release after an Obama-Romney debate, the Obama campaign "depicted Gruber as a full-fledged architect of Obamacare in order to take a hit at Romney’s anti-Obamacare rhetoric."
Obama's 2012 campaign website reads as follows: "Jon Gruber Who Helped Write Obamacare And The Massachusetts Health Care Law: 'The Federal Reform Is Simply A More Ambitious Version Of The Massachusetts Reform.'"
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