Obama: We didn't mislead on health care

BRISBANE, Australia — President Barack Obama denied Sunday that his signature health care reform law was deceptively marketed, rejecting statements by a consultant on the plan who said aspects of Obamacare were designed to take advantage of the “stupidity” of voters.

“The fact that an adviser who was never on our staff expressed an opinion that I completely disagree with in terms of the voters is not a reflection on the actual process that was run,” Obama declared at a press conference here, speaking for the first time about the comments by MIT economist Jonathan Gruber.


When the president was asked whether he had intentionally misled the public in order to get the law passed, he replied: “No. I did not.”

Obama said the notion that any provisions in the bill were hidden is absurd given the intensity of news coverage of the subject when the bill was being drafted and debated in Congress.

“I would just advise every press outlet here: Pull up every clip and every story. I think it’s fair to say there was not a provision in the health care law that was not extensively debated and was fully transparent,” the president declared. “It was a tough debate.”

While Gruber was not a staffer, he was a paid consultant whose models were used to help assess the impact of various policy changes being considered as part of health care legislation. Official logs show he visited the White House about a dozen times between 2009 and this year.

Despite Obama’s dismissive tone toward Gruber, the president has acknowledged that some of his own statements about the law were ill-advised, in particular his repeated promises that if Americans liked their health care plans they could keep them. In fact, many plans were deemed inadequate under the law, leading people to get notices that their plans were being canceled.

The question about Gruber was just a taste of the challenges Obama faces back home from newly ascendant Republicans, as they consider how to use control of both chambers of Congress to try to frustrate the president’s agenda on issues ranging from health care to climate change to immigration.

After a week in Asia and Australia, Obama preferred to focus on the achievements of his trip, which included a deal with China to limit greenhouse gas emissions and broader agreements to boost growth and limit corporate tax-avoidance schemes.

“If you asked me, I’d say that’s a pretty good week,” he told reporters at the conclusion of the final summit meeting — the so-called G20 meeting. “The American people can be proud of the progress that we’ve made. I intend to build on that momentum when I return home tomorrow.”

The problems awaiting Obama in Washington include the possibility of a government shutdown when current funding expires Dec. 11. Conservative Republicans want to pass legislative provisions the president is sure to oppose, such as budget riders that would make it impossible for Obama to issue work permits as part of the executive actions on immigration he has promised to carry out.

Asked whether another shutdown could be in the offing, Obama noted that Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has appeared to rule it out.

“I take Mitch McConnell at his word when he says the government is not going to shut down,” Obama said, adding a blunt warning that such a move would direct voters’ ire at politicians of all stripes. “There’s no reason to shut down the government. We’ve traveled down that path before. It was bad for the country and bad for every elected official in Washington.”

The president did not say explicitly what he would do if faced with legislation that sought to block his planned actions on immigration, but he warned: “That’s not going to be productive.”

Instead, Obama urged Congress to pass an immigration reform bill that improves border security and provides a “pathway to citizenship” for many of those in the U.S. illegally.

“There is a very simple solution to this perception that somehow I’m exercising too much executive authority: Pass a bill I can sign on this issue,” the president said. “Give me a bill that addresses those issues, I’ll be the first one to sign it. And metaphorically I’ll crumple up whatever executive actions we will take and toss them in the waste basket because we will now have a law that addresses these issues.”

Obama declined to say whether he plans to act on immigration soon after getting back to Washington or whether he plans to wait until after Congress completes work on government funding.

I take Mitch McConnell at his word when he says the government is not going to shut down.”

The president also disputed assertions that he’s expanding presidential authority in areas like climate change, where he struck a deal with China last week to limit emissions.

“The record will show I have actually take fewer executive actions that my predecessors,” Obama said. “What I think has change is the reaction of some of my friends in Congress to exercising what are normally a frankly fairly typical exercise of presidential authority.”

While Obama said “nobody disputes” that he’s taken fewer executive actions, many experts say efforts to quantify executive orders, memoranda and regulatory actions are pointless because the categories are too malleable and each action can have impacts that range from trivial to enormous.

The president did concede that there’s nothing to prevent a future president from undoing any of his unilateral moves. “The very nature of executive authority means future presidents can reverse those actions,” he said.

Obama also discussed for the first time several discussions he had with Russian President Vladimir Putin both at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Beijing and here in Brisbane. The two men appear to have a frosty relationship and they held no formal talks, but instead engaged only in what the president called the conversations that occur “naturally” on the sidelines of summit meetings.

“I would characterize them as typical of our interactions which are businesslike and blunt,” Obama said.

However, while Obama aides suggested last week that new sanctions against Moscow were likely as a result of continue shipments of weapons into Ukraine, the president indicated Sunday that the current set of trade and financial restrictions are adequate.

“At this point, the sanctions that we have in place are biting plenty good,” the president said. But he added that his advisers are always looking at “mechanisms” to put more pressure on Russia over its actions in Ukraine.

Despite stepping back from talk of new sanctions, Obama implied that the movement of arms and personnel into Ukraine amounted to an invasion, although he stopped short of explicitly making that claim.

“We’re also very firm on the need to uphold core international principles,” the president said. “One of those principles is that you don’t invade other countries or finance proxies or support them in ways that break up a country that has mechanisms for democratic elections.”

On Syria, Obama denied that a broad review of U.S. policy is underway, saying that he holds weekly meetings with top military officials to refine the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

While Obama has previously flatly ruled having U.S. ground troops fighting in Iraq or Syria, he said Sunday that under certain extraordinary circumstances he might allow it. Asked about comments by Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey that he might recommend the use of ground troops, the president said that Dempsey was simply keeping open all possibilities.

Obama said his thinking on ground troops “has not changed currently,” but that if he “discovered that ISIL had gotten in its possession a nuclear weapon,” he would authorize ground troops to try to seize it.

“There are always circumstances under which the U.S. might need to deploy ground troops. … The question ends up being what are those circumstances” where ground troops might be necessary, the president said. “I’m not going to speculate on those.”

As he prepared to head home, Obama also reached across the Pacific for some good news. He said that the 2nd annual open enrollment period for Obamacare got underway Saturday with few signs of the problems that plagued the original roll-out over a year ago.

“So far, there were half a million successful log-ins on the first day. Healthcare.gov works really well now,” the president said. “There were 23,000 applications completed in just the first eight hours and tens of thousands more throughout the day. … Health care is working.”