WASHINGTON — ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber faces intense grilling in Congress next month for saying the “stupidity” of American voters was critical to the passage of the national health plan.
Gruber has accepted a Dec. 9 invitation to testify before the House Oversight Committee at a meeting that is sure to spark fireworks in the waning days of the lame-duck congressional session.
A spokeswoman for the committee confirmed that Gruber will attend, as will Marilyn Tavenner, administrator for the agency that rolled out ObamaCare.
The hearing is likely to get stormy — it is the final one for outgoing Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, the California Republican who has led an unrelenting charge against the Obama administration from his perch.
“From the outset, the health law has been the poster child for this administration’s broken transparency promises,” Issa said in a statement calling for a hearing to review “health-law deceptions.”
Gruber has been under fire for a series of videos in which he says a “lack of transparency” and the “stupidity of the American voter” were key to pushing through Obama’s signature initiative.
The brash comments energized GOP critics, who had railed against the administration’s lack of transparency in ramming through the legislation and executive actions to delay unpopular parts of the health-care law.
Tavenner, who heads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, will be in the hot seat for an embarrassing admission that ObamaCare enrollment figures had been inflated by 400,000 because of the incorrect inclusion of those who had signed up only for dental coverage.