With today’s Gruber auto de fe, it’s worth stating again something that is obvious and really indisputable: Obamacare is almost certainly the most deeply scrutinized, discussed and argued over piece of legislation of the entire 20th century and early 21st century. Jonathan Gruber saying something silly at a conference doesn’t change that.
If you look at Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, various New Deal programs, the Social Security reform of the early 80s, tax reform in the late 80s, welfare reform in the mid-90s and Medicare expansion a decade ago none of them had more extensive legislative and public debate and none had a media culture where a wider range of criticisms or alternative proposals were canvased.
There are many reasons why this are the case. One is just a different media culture. Another is that – given the realities of the filibuster – Democrats only barely had the votes to pass the legislation in the Senate, which forced a lengthy period of fairly public horse-trading. And Americans simply demand more information about legislative sausage-making than they did or were permitted to in the past.
But for present purposes the ‘why’ has to take a backset to the reality of the ‘did’. As part of their unified phalanx of opposition to the bill, Republicans have long claimed that the bill was “rammed through”, not read and generally forced on the public in stealth and illegitimacy. And it’s in that curdled stew of deception, bad faith and aggravated derp that the Lord of the Flies remake which is “Gruber-gate” has taken flight.
Yes, the GOP and Fox News has addled a good bit of the country with this nonsense. But look at the history, the contemporary news reports or simply your own memories on the off chance you were paying attention. It just ain’t so. Nope. No way. Sorry. It ain’t.
