Unlike a good many of his Republican colleagues, Utah's Sen. Orrin Hatch isn't unintelligent. He's spent enough time in policy-making, particularly in working across the aisle with people like Ted Kennedy and Ron Wyden, to have a solid understanding of health care, its problems and solutions. Which makes him also completely unprincipled in trying to keep his job in the face of a likely tea party challenge.
Think Progress's Igor Volsky has the details on Hatch's latest, this press release which includes a call for repealing the Affordable Care Act:
"We all knew that ObamaCare was going to be disastrous for our economy and every day that goes by proves that point," Hatch said. "Whether it be the trillions of dollars in tax hikes or the sheer number of job losses directly from ObamaCare itself, it's clear that repealing ObamaCare must be on the table during any talks to slash our nation’s debt and create much-needed jobs."
Inside Health Policy confronted Hatch's office with the numbers from the Congressional Budget Office that estimate that repealing the Affordable Care Act would increase the deficit by $230 billion in the next decade, and that repeal would "raise the number of uninsured by 32 million, eliminate subsidies, and force millions of American families to pay higher premiums, and increase premiums for employer-based coverage." The response from Hatch's office?
Hatch spokeswoman Julia Lawless called its projections "gimmicks." "That includes all of ObamaCare's gimmicks," she said in an email. "The true cost of the bill is $2.6 trillion and that’s a real budget-buster."
Again, Hatch knows better. He just suffers from an utter lack of principle when it comes to telling the truth.