As Jonathan Gruber entered a Capitol Hill hearing room on Tuesday, Republicans were hoping that the famously blunt consultant would give them new fuel to attack the transparency of ObamaCare. He delivered.
In a House Oversight hearing to examine the “transparency failures of ObamaCare,” the embattled healthcare adviser repeatedly refused to say how much money he received from the government. He also would not agree to provide documents and data related to his consulting work.
{mosads}“The committee is welcome to work with my counsel on that,” Gruber said more than a dozen times in tense exchanges with lawmakers.
The GOP seized on Gruber’s reluctance to disclose his payments and documents with both the incoming and outgoing chairman of the committee threatening to subpoena him.
“What are you hiding? Why won’t you give those to us? Why are we not entitled to those?” Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), the committee’s incoming chairman, shouted across the room to Gruber. Read more here.
Side by side: Gruber and a top federal health official were required to sit next to each other at a House hearing Tuesday despite pleas from the administration that the two remain separate. The decision by House Republicans meant that Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Marilyn Tavenner was questioned sometimes in the same breath as Gruber.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who led the hearing, explicitly denied the administration’s request at the start of the event.
“We believe this is a perfect pairing, a pairing of individuals who are responsible for what we know and don’t know [about ObamaCare],” he said. Read more here.
‘A mistake’: The health official under fire for misreporting ObamaCare enrollment numbers insisted Tuesday that the error was “inadvertent” and not a scheme to inflate the figures. “I do not believe anyone tried to deceive the American people. I do believe the error was inadvertent,” Tavenner told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “This was an inadvertent mistake for which I apologize,” she said.
It was Tavenner’s first public appearance since the committee’s investigation last month revealed that the agency inflated the number of enrollments by about 400,000, by counting customers with dental-only plans. Republicans have accused Tavenner of trying to inflate enrollment totals to reach ObamaCare’s initial 7 million target. The actual figure was 6.7 million, officials from HHS said. Read more here.
Wednesday’s schedule:
HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell will meet with African-American leaders about the Affordable Care Act.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on the federal regulations for genetically modified food.
The Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on African Affairs will hold a panel on how to improve the global response to Ebola.
Sens. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) will hold a press conference on their bipartisan legislation to prevent military suicides.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will join Connecticut lawmakers for a press conference about background checks shortly before the second anniversary of the Newtown, Conn. shootings.
State by state:
Audit: Colorado exchange lacks financial controls
Oregon to use Kentucky Medicaid system
GOP legislators file abortion restrictions in South Carolina
Lawmakers change course on Medicaid reform in North Carolina
What we’re reading:
Stephen Colbert assists President Obama with ObamaCare propaganda
Half of doctors listed as serving Medicaid patients are unavailable
Surgeon general nominee’s fate rests with red state Democrats
Mitch McConnell’s ObamaCare gambit
What you might have missed from The Hill:
House passes breast cancer prevention bill
Dems push to revive failed gun-control legislation
HHS doles out $36M in grants for patient care improvements
HHS hands over 19,000 ObamaCare documents
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