This weekend, President Obama dismissed MIT professor Jonathan Gruber as “some adviser who never worked on our staff.” But back in 2006, the president struck a much more laudatory tone while addressing the future architect of Obamacare.
At a Brookings Institution meeting in 2006, Obama praised the policy accomplishments of the man who would later imperil the Affordable Care Act through repeated comments belittling the intelligence of American voters.
In the video provided by conservative group American Commitment, the president calls Gruber one of “the brightest minds from academia and policy circles,” claiming he’s one of a small group of experts from whom he’s “stolen ideas liberally.”
As president, Obama continued to steal ideas liberally from Gruber. Health-care-policy observers claim the professor’s favored policies were instrumental in forming what would eventually become Obamacare.