Hmmm…

Via Noah Rothman:

GRUBER: The problem is it’s a political nightmare, and people say ‘no, you can’t tax my benefits’…so what we did a lot in that room was think a lot about well how could we make this work?  … And [Obama] is really a realistic guy.  He was like, ‘look, I can’t just do this.’  He said ‘it’s just not going to happen politically.  The bill will not pass.  How do we manage to get there through phase-ins and other things?’  And we talked about it.  He was just very interested in that topic.