I barely even know what Paul Krugman is arguing here. In both of his posts attacking anyone calling into question the lack of disclosure on the part of Jonathan Gruber, he acknowledges that Gruber should have disclosed his relationship. That’s really the end of the game here. Nobody is really saying that Gruber didn’t come to his conclusions honestly (though I’ll return to this in a moment) or isn’t saying now what he wouldn’t have said if he was not under contract. The problem is that the White House repeatedly used Gruber as an “objective source” while he was under contract, and neither the White House nor Gruber bothered to disclose that fact for months.

The White House is placing a giant collective bet on Gruber’s “assumptions” to justify key portions of the Senate bill, which they allowed people to believe was independent verification. Now that we know that Gruber’s work was not that of an independent analyst but rather work performed as a contractor to the White House and paid for by taxpayers, it should be made publicly available so others can judge its merits.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) today sent a letter to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius in reference to Jonathan Gruber’s failure to disclose his financial relationship with the Obama administration when he was testifying before the Senate Finance Committee. It appears that, at the time, Sen. Grassley was unaware Gruber had been given a lucrative, sole source contract by the HHS to do analysis of the “President’s health reform proposal.”

It’s understandable Krugman would be defensive of Gruber. He’s cited him many times. And when Rahm Emanuel touted “progressive” support for the Senate bill in the Wall Street Journal, noting that “what you’re seeing is the progressive backlash against the progressive backlash,” he pointed to a Krugman column as well as “another coming from National Journal writer Ronald Brownstein pressing for passage of the Senate health bill.”

Economist and NYT columnist Paul Krugman suggests (though he doesn’t say it directly) that Gruber has been exaggerating. Yet Gruber has, in some way, provided the basic assumptions behind the Administration’s plans. Did he use more realistic assumptions when he did his simulations? Or did he exaggerate the benefit of the excise tax in his assumptions? And what is the relationship between the JCT prediction about the excise tax and any simulations Gruber did before them?

Firedoglake has been researching the relationship of MIT economist Jonathan Gruber with the Obama administration with regard to health care reform. We’re still looking at the money – yes, follow the money, as Deep Throat once said – paid out to Gruber by the government. OUR MONEY, our tax dollars, paid out to Gruber under three administrations.

Saturday, DDay pointed out that the NYT, after issuing a fairly pointed correction revealing Jonathan Gruber’s ties with the Administration, then used a quote from Gruber without disclosing his role in the Administration. DDay was focusing on the NYT’s actions.

The New York Times published a very harsh correction today, based largely on FDL reporting about MIT professor Jonathan Gruber’s failure to disclose a financial relationship with the Obama Administration while writing op-eds and giving quotes for stories in support of key elements of health reform preferred by the White House.

So, this Gruber scandal disappoints. Let me focus on one example.

Remember, back in November, when everyone inside the Beltway was all a-twitter (in both senses of the phrase) about how Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, was making practically every White House staffer read an Atlantic article by Ron Brownstein? That piece, touting what FDL’s own Jon Walker called “free market economagic,” relied heavily on the work of Jonathan Gruber—then billed as “a leading health economist at MIT,” now well-understood to be a super-remunerated contractor in the employ of several parts of the Obama Administration.

OMB director Peter Orszag and MIT economists Jonathan Gruber are both very smart, successful individuals. While I may not agree with them on every policy, that does not mean I don’t respect their intelligence. Both have knowledge and perspective to add to the health care debate. The problem is that it turns out they have the exact same insider perspective.