A Guide to Thanksgiving Dinner Debates

By Ed Hoffman

If you’re accustomed to arguing your way through Thanksgiving dinner and you need the latest, greatest hot button issue to bring to the table, here it is: Jonathan Gruber.

I’m not talking about quarreling with your relatives over the Affordable Care Act; no matter how you feel about the employer mandate or any other aspect of Obamacare, debating the merits of the law itself is so Thanksgiving 2013. Now that most informed people have seen economist Jonathan Gruber boasting about his role in writing the law, and doing so in a way that would easily pass because of the “stupidity” of the American people, it’s time to shift the focus of the debate to Gruber’s comments – and there are plenty of them to go around. They include:

• Admitting the law was designed to be complicated, so as to circumvent the rules of the Congressional Budget Office. “This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure (the CBO) did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay? So it’s written to do that.” 
• Admitting the bill was deceptive. “In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said healthy people are going to pay in – you made explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money – it would not have passed. Okay? Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage.” 
• Calling us stupid. “And basically, you know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to get the thing to pass.”
• Calling us stupid again, and admitting to the exploitation of said stupidity. “We just tax the insurance companies, they pass on the higher prices (and) that offsets the tax burden we get. It ends up being the same thing.” It’s a very clever, basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter.”

Of course, Gruber presents a major dilemma for the left-leaning media, whose natural instinct must be to make excuses for his comments rather than hold him accountable for them. Case in point, MSNBC’s Ronan Farrow. After asking Gruber whether he stood by his comments, Farrow helped him out by calling his remarks “nuanced” – the left’s favorite label for anything they say that comes off as totally offensive. Farrow probably should have taken a cue from Rep. Nancy Pelosi instead: Pretend like you’ve never met Gruber. In fact, pretend like you’ve never even heard of him.

If your relatives fail to see how insulting Gruber’s comments are, they may be beyond any help. But you can give it a try anyway, maybe with something like this: “The man who has gone around the country bragging about the role he played in Obamacare is calling you stupid and admitting to exploiting you. Let that sink in for a minute.” And if you’re worried about offending your family members with this heavy-handed dinner discussion, don’t be. Just follow Jonathan Gruber’s lead by telling them you were “speaking off the cuff.” All will be forgiven.

Ed Hoffman is the host of the Main Event on AM590 which airs Saturday 9:30AM- 10:30AM and Sunday 4:00PM- 5:00PM. Follow him on Twitter @EdHoffman, and like him on Facebook by searching The Main Event AM590.