Key Romney Adviser: Yeah, ObamaCare Is "The Massachusetts Bill With Three More Zeros"

Mostly.

One point for Romney here, sort of, is that this adviser seems like a liberal, and is all too willing to say things to knock down a GOP front-runner; but then, Romney isn't going to want to defend himself by claiming the bulk of his senior health care advisers were liberal, pursuing a liberal agenda.

On Romney's claim that no taxes were raised. Well, no Massachusetts taxes.

Gruber: "Yeah, that is just technically true but intellectually not really straight forward. Basically, in Massachusetts, the financial for our bill came half from the federal government and half from an existing tax that former Governor and presidential candidate Michael Dukakis had put in, in 1988 to finance care for the uninsured. You see, we didn't have to raise taxes in Massachusetts because money was already there. At the federal level we didn't have that luxury. It wasn't like China was going to come and pay half the cost of the Affordable Care Act. There was no bigger government coming to help us out. And so we need to raise taxes so we can finance it."

posted by Ace at 11:28 AM

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