Where’s the Outrage?

Statistically speaking, Americans do not like Obamacare.

According to RealClearPolitics’ polling average, only 37.7 percent of citizens support the law, while a majority opposes it. Add to this scores of protests and calls from populist politicians to “repeal and replace” the legislation, and you have a thoroughly disapproving public.

Anecdotally, this disapproval seems to have skipped over the ivory towers of our campus. Like the president himself, Harvard students are keen to move on to other topics, such as LGBT rights and immigration.

But new issues should not stop us from being vigilant about the actions of our government—even ones that took place five years ago. As Americans, we have supervisory responsibility over our elected officials. This responsibility is exactly what makes the recent revelations about the intellectually dishonest origins of Obamacare so disheartening: Our policymakers deceived us to achieve their goals, and even those of us Harvardians who agree with the Affordable Care Act and its ramifications must put up a fight against this culture of arrogance.

The deception essential to the passage of Obamacare is particularly striking because it comes from an administration purportedly dedicated to honesty. In 2008, one of President Barack Obama’s top advisers, John Podesta, promised “the most open and transparent administration in history.” In 2013, during a “Google Plus Fireside Hangout,” Obama reiterated, “This is the most transparent administration in history.” Perhaps Obama was merely calling prior administrations criminally opaque. Still, the sausage-making process behind Obamacare proves that calling the administration “transparent” is just one thread in the quilt of dishonesty woven by the Obama team.

The recent revelations about the extent of these lies start with one Jonathan Gruber, an economist right down the river at MIT who, as the so-called “architect of the Affordable Care Act, earned about $400,000 for his consulting work on the law. Recently, a Philadelphia man—personally affected by Obama’s false promise that “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan,” period—dug up videos of Gruber speaking at various symposia across the country.

These videos demonstrate the twisted thought processes that went into crafting the bill. For one thing, Gruber made it clear that, “This bill was written in a tortured way to ensure the CBO did not score the mandate as taxes.” He continued, “If the CBO scores the mandate as taxes, the bill dies.” Gruber also bragged about how “lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” saying, “Basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter, but that was really critical to getting the thing to pass.” On a different occasion, Gruber praised his work in writing a bill that could pass as a “very clever basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter.”

This is not okay.

Contrary to the Obama administration’s supposed transparency, the president owes his signature achievement to a man who jokingly lamented, “I wish we could make this all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.” Regardless of what one thinks of the Affordable Care Act, this is not how our government should function, and it is not how it should view its relationship with voters.

The average employee may occasionally try and sneak a fast one over her boss, but that does not mean she can lie about the work she is doing. In the modern workplace, such a transgression would likely get her fired.

We missed our chance to fire Obama two years ago, and his contract runs up soon enough. But that does not mean we should allow him to spend these next two years with the same outlook on his job and on his role in this country’s vast political framework that has characterized his tenure so far.

It is imperative that Americans—even the 38 percent who appreciate Obamacare’s merits—fight back against the culture of deception in the White House, both in this administration and in those forthcoming. Lack of transparency should never be seen as a huge political advantage.

We should have learned our lesson 40 years ago, when the Committee to Re-Elect the President attempted dirty tricks to cement Richard Nixon’s place in history. The Obama administration’s own disdain for the American people and the democratic political process may have avoided the realm of illegality. But it reigns king over the realm of dishonesty. For the sake of posterity we should not let this president’s legacy escape unscathed.

John F.M. Kocsis ’15, a Crimson editorial executive, is a government concentrator in Eliot House.