It’s scandalous that economics professor Jonathan Gruber has been caught on video saying that Obamacare was pushed through Congress on the basis of a pack of lies because Gruber is rightly acknowledged as an “architect of Obamacare.”

What is even more telling is how long we have known that deception was involved in the “Affordable” Care Act’s expansion of government power.

The Wall Street Journal pointed out that there are now four videos on which Gruber tells insider audiences that Obamacare’s real costs were hidden from Americans who couldn’t be trusted with the truth. There’s the video where he says the “stupidity of the American voter” meant the costs had to be concealed to pass the bill. Then another emerged in which Gruber praised the way then-Sen. John Kerry figured out how to deceive voters about taxes on their insurance:

“So, basically, it’s the same thing: We just tax the insurance companies, they pass on higher prices that offsets the tax break we get, it ends up being the same thing,” he added. “It’s a very clever, you know, basically exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter."

CNN’s Jake Tapper uncovered another in which Gruber admired the way President Obama deceived Americans about the nature of the bill.

It’s understandable, then, that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi now claims she doesn’t know who Gruber is.

But it was the left-wing Huffington Post that in 2010 told everyone who Jonathan Gruber was. The economist was the consultant paid $392,000 by the Obama administration to help “develop proposals” and to serve as an well-credentialed supporter of President Obama’s scheme.

Huffington Post blogger Jane Hamsher unearthed the high-dollar connection between Gruber and the Obama administration at a time that the proposed Obamacare was under fire from liberals for not being left-wing enough. Liberals wanted a totally government-owned system, like Canada’s, while in Obamacare the government simply controls what private-sector players do. Hamsher pointed out the unseemly way Gruber’s connection to the president’s plan was hidden even as he wrote op-eds and talked to reporters to say the plan would work just fine.

Hamsher wrote:

“What was Gruber's role in crafting the Senate bill? Nobody will say. Is he in effect grading his own work when he praises the bill? We don't know. What we do know is that the White House engaged an expert who was quite likely to reach the conclusions he reached, because he'd been making similar claims for years. And they worked hard to promote his work as independent validation of their plan, when in fact he was an integral part of it.”

Deception and misdirection from the start, in other words. Again, this is no surprise. The president sold the plan on the promise that if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor, which proved to be a lie. The president promised a plan that would lower the typical family’s health insurance premium by $2,500 and instead produced one that raised it by more than $2,500. The name of the bill is the “Affordable Care Act,” an Orwellian deception as the program causes double-, even triple-digit percentage increases in costs.

I got an email from a couple in DePere the other day. It reads:

"Dear Senator,

"We just received notice from our marketplace health care provider of the rate increase for 2015. +28% !!!! Senator, this is not only outrageous it is ridiculous!!

"This redistribution of wealth and financial raping of hard working citizens is unacceptable. While we know you are not personally responsible for this disaster, you are now in a position to begin to put an end to Obama's destruction of our country."

Putting an end to unacceptable costs starts with honest information. Obamacare, we now see, started with dishonesty. It’s time for more of the first and an end to the other.