Watch as CBS Reporter Hammers Away at President With Tough Obamacare Questions

CBS News' Major Garrett wasted no time Thursday hammering President Barack Obama during a press conference over his failed “you can keep it” health insurance promise.

“You said while the law was being debated, ‘If you like your plan, you can keep it.’ You said after the law was signed, ‘If you like your plan, you can keep it,’” Garrett said. “Americans believed that when you said that over and over.”

“Do you not believe the American people deserve a deeper, transparent accountability from you as to why you said that over and over when your own statistics published in the federal register alerted your policy staff, I presume you, the fact that millions of Americans would in fact probably fall into the very gap you're trying to administratively fix now?” he asked.

Obama answered: “There is no doubt that the way I put that forward unequivocally ended up not being accurate. It was not because of my intention not to deliver on that commitment and that promise.”

But Garrett pushed the president to more fully explain his now-infamous insurance promise.

“Did you decide, sir, that the simple declaration was something the American people could handle?” he asked. That “the nuance you gave now was something (they) couldn’t handle and (you) didn’t trust the American people with the fuller truth?”

“No,” the president said.

Obama later added: “There are a bunch of folks up in Congress and others who made this statement and they were entirely sincere about it. And the fact that you’ve got this percentage of people who have had (their insurance canceled), I want them to know that, you know, their senator or congressman, they were making representations based on what I told them and what this White House and our administration told them. So it’s not on them, it’s on us."

You can watch the full exchange here:

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