Hatch Calls Obamacare Supporters ‘Stupidest, Dumbass People’
83-year-old Republican retiring at end of term next year
One of the Senate’s chief dignitaries is apparently done mincing words when it comes to policies — and those who back them — he disagrees with.
Supporters of President Barack Obama’s 2010 health care overhaul are “the stupidest, dumbass people” Sen. Orrin Hatch has ever met, he said Thursday at a conservative think tank lecture, CNN reported.
The 83-year-old Utah Republican, who is retiring at the end of his term next year, was delivering remarks about the GOP tax code overhaul at the American Enterprise Institute when he shifted gears to torch the Affordable Care Act.
“[We] finally did away with the individual mandate tax that was established under that wonderful bill called Obamacare,” Hatch said. “Now, if you didn’t catch on, I was being very sarcastic. That was the stupidest, dumbass bill that I’ve ever seen.”
Same goes for the people who championed the law, he said.
“Some of you may have loved it. If you do, you are one of the stupidest, dumbass people I’ve ever met,” Hatch added. “There are a lot of them up there on Capitol Hill from time to time.”
The new Republican tax law eliminated the individual mandate to have health coverage, a key feature of Obamacare.
Yet most Americans don’t know that the individual mandate was repealed, the latest Health Tracking Poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation found.
The provision’s repeal is part of an eight-year GOP crusade to dismantle the ACA, which Republicans were unable to achieve last year despite controlling both chambers of Congress and the White House.
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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has signaled that health care repeal will not be on the legislative agenda in 2018 after it failed to pass in a Senate chamber where Republicans held a two-seat advantage. When Democratic Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama defeated his GOP opponent in the Alabama Senate special election in December, the math became even more grim for Republicans.
“Well we obviously were unable to completely repeal and replace with a 52-48 Senate,” McConnell said in December. “We’ll have to take a look at what that looks like with a 51-49 Senate. But I think we’ll probably move on to other issues.”
