WASHINGTON -- The Republican lawmakers who are pushing to repeal health insurance reform delivered 1.6 million signatures to Capitol Hill Wednesday to highlight the effort, while others accused President Obama of lying about the law and jobs.
Arguing that everything the president said about the Affordable Care Act has had the opposite effect, nearly a dozen conservative lawmakers said it was time for Obama to stop pushing his jobs bill and simply repeal the health care law.
"He said it would help our economy and employment," said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). "It's obvious, the president has done harm to health care, to our economy, and to the American people."
"You'd have to be hard pressed to find a more economically destructive law than this one, and I think everybody in this country has that feeling, and yet the administration keeps pushing like it's a really good piece of legislation," said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). "This is one lousy bill."
The senators, as well as the group Repeal It Now, point to a slew of statistics compiled by Hatch that say the health reform law will boost the deficit, even though the Congressional Budget Office estimates the oppositie: that repealing the law will add more than $200 billion to the deficit.
While the senators focused more on the legislation, some House members directed their anger over the reform law squarely at Obama.
"Everything good he said it was going to do, we got the inverse of the president's promise on this," said Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), one of Congress's most conservative members. "What they really designed this to do was create a socialized medicine policy -- that's what drove them."
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), one of the more outspoken lawmakers in the House, said Obama lied about health care and was lying about what his jobs bill would accomplish.
"The president's out there running around plugging his jobs bill, so-called, saying this is going to cause people to be hired," Gohmert said. "Whoever's putting those words in his teleprompter is lying," he said, before blaming Obama directly.
"The things he's saying is simply not true," Gohmert added. "It wasn't true about Obamacare, it's not true about his 150-page so-called jobs bill."
Health care advocates were not impressed by the display, noting that major parts of the law don't even take effect until 2014, and that while some costs go up in the short-term, they go down overall.
"Evidently it’s opposite day up on the Hill!" said Eddie Vale, a spokesman for the Democratically aligned Protect Your Care.
He noted that the politics of repeal are getting harder as more parts of the law kick in and become popular.
"Already millions of seniors are getting prescription drug donut-hole assistance and preventative care," he said. "Over a million new young people under 26 are signed onto their parents' insurance, and pre-existing conditions are going to be gone."
"Those are all concrete benefits, with more coming each month, they want to take away from people," he added.
Still, the Republicans predicted that the results of the next election would spell the end of the reform.
'We will be able to repeal this once America speaks next November," Gohmert said.