Do you support ObamaCare? Orrin Hatch thinks you're a 'dumb-ass.'
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) is retiring at the end of this year, and now at the end stage of his political career, he has reached the point where he doesn't mind calling people dumb-asses during speeches.
Speaking at the American Enterprise Institute on Thursday, Hatch brought up the Affordable Care Act, saying Republicans "finally did away with the individual mandate tax that was established under that wonderful bill called ObamaCare. Now, if you didn't catch on, I was being very sarcastic. That was the stupidest, dumb-ass bill that I've ever seen." He wasn't done. "Some of you may have loved it," Hatch continued. "If you do, you are one of the stupidest, dumb-ass people I've ever met. And there are a lot of them up there on Capitol Hill from time to time."
With that logic, there are quite a few dumb-asses in the United States — a Kaiser Family Foundation poll out Thursday found that 54 percent of the public holds a favorable view of the Affordable Care Act, the highest number since 2010 when the ACA was enacted. Hatch's spokesman Matt Whitlock told The Deseret News the comments were "obviously made in jest."
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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