Jonathan Gruber is one of those people who thinks he's smarter than he actually is.
He clearly believes that you don't know what's right for you. But he does.
The problem with all of this is that he was one of the architects of the ACA. And as such, he's talking about the intention of creating the exchanges. Its clear what that is:
What’s important to remember politically about this is if you're a state and you don’t set up an exchange, that means your citizens don't get their tax credits—but your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill. So you’re essentially saying [to] your citizens you’re going to pay all the taxes to help all the other states in the country. I hope that that's a blatant enough political reality that states will get their act together and realize there are billions of dollars at stake here in setting up these exchanges.How much more explicit can you get that this wasn't a "typo", but that the law was trying to extort states into going along?
Imagine this. Imagine that you were going to buy a car from someone. They tell you that if you don't buy it, you'll get a penalty. Later, when a court challenges them, they call it a tax. They explain that they 'misspoke'.
Okay.
At the same time you bought the car, the salesperson tells you that you're eligible for a dealer exchange... where you get money from the dealer for your car. Again, its bought to the court, and you find out that the dealership never went along with the "dealer exchange" deal. The dealer tells the court that it was a car manufacturer exchange... not a dealer exchange. He says it was a typo.
But then you find the person who created the plan calling it a dealer exchange.
Would you start to disbelieve everything that the salesperson says?
I would. But hey, that's just me. I'm an actual intelligent person. I'm not Mr. Gruber.
So you might wonder what Gruber is saying about all of this now?
In order to understand this, you have to go to the alternate-world-reality of The New Republic, where Gruber told them:
I honestly don’t remember why I said that. I was speaking off-the-cuff. It was just a mistake. People make mistakes. Congress made a mistake drafting the law and I made a mistake talking about it.I'm going to cut Gruber off there, because like a witness who painstakingly lets you in on their motivation, he's just stated it outright:
He made a mistake by talking about it.
Not that he was wrong. But that he made a mistake by saying it out loud.
Which leads us to more Orwellian-speak:
My subsequent statement was just a speak-o—you know, like a typo.
Here's the thing about when people say something that doesn't make sense to them, accidentally: they don't go on and on about it.
Gruber was explicit in the intent.
Which means, that if the Supreme Court wants to actually interpret intent, they have to listen to what McGruber (sorry, had to do it) said. Because the best way to determine intent is to listen to someone's... you know... intentions.
Or, the Supreme Court can just pay attention to the letter of the law, and skip all of that.
Either way, the intent was clear; to extort states into setting up exchanges.
