House Republicans 'glorifying freeloaders' with Obamacare repeal

John Boehner wonders what Eric Cantor has gotten him into with this one. (Larry Downing/Reuters) Undeterred by public opinion, House Republicans are spending today holding their breath and stamping their feet and voting on Rep. Eric Cantor's bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act. They say that there's nothing more important.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican who chairs the House Republican Conference, said on CNN's "Starting Point." the series of votes on "the seminal issue of our time" was justified. Hensarling said previous landmark laws'including major civil rights legislation and welfare reform in the 1990s'faced repeated votes that went nowhere before finally passing.

Good to know that repealing universal access to health insurance is more important to Republicans than jobs. We've known that by the nearly three dozen votes they've had on it in the past 18 months, but this is the first time they've admitted that they consider it up there with civil rights. (Really?)

Of course, they keep twisting it to try to say their opposition has something to do with the economy, using the hook Chief Justice John Roberts gave them: it's a tax! To which Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) has the perfect answer:

Democrats countered that the penalty for not buying insurance was directed at people who could afford it.

"Otherwise you're passing the cost on to us," said Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash. "You're a freeloader. The Republicans are glorifying freeloaders."

Republicans used to call them freeloaders, too, back when the Heritage Foundation was crafting the whole idea of an individual mandate to buy health care, and Mitt Romney was touting it in Massachusetts. Next thing you know, those former Republican "freeloaders" are going to be come "freedom fighters."