House Republicans are considering a hearing over
Obamacare consultant Jonathan Gruber's blunt assertion that the "stupidity of the American voter" helped get the healthcare reform law through Congress.
"We may want to have hearings on this," Ohio Republican Jim Jordan, a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee,
told The Washington Post.
"We shouldn't be surprised they were misleading us."
The comments have been widely assailed by congressional Republicans who are already targeting a dismantling of the law in the next GOP-dominated Congress. The controversy stems
from a video that surfaced Monday in which Gruber, in a panel discussion at the University of Pennsylvania in 2013, suggests the law passed Congress because of the "stupidity of the American voter" and a "lack of transparency" in its funding mechanisms.
"This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes," said Gruber, one of the law’s architects and a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the 'stupidity of the American voter' or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass."
Gruber apologized Tuesday, saying he was speaking "off the cuff" at the time.
Mediaite reports Fox News' Megyn Kelly aired a second video Tuesday night of Gruber calling voters stupid, also from 2013.
Jordan told the Post the controversy has not escaped the attention of House Republicans, who have been in contact with one another, and that he expects the interest in "bringing [Gruber] up here to talk" will gain traction as members return to Washington.
"Hearings are a possibility, but nothing has been planned yet," Jordan's spokesman, Darin Miller,
told The Hill.
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