GOP senator: ‘Stupidity’ remark ‘offensive’

An ObamaCare consultant who argued the “stupidity of the American voter” contributed to the law’s passage confirms people’s “greatest fear about government,” GOP Sen. John Barrasso (Wyo.) said Wednesday.

“I find his comments very offensive,” Barrasso said on “Fox & Friends.”

{mosads}Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Jonathan Gruber apologized on Tuesday for the remarks, which were originally made last year.

He argued that a lack of transparency about what was in the bill helped secure its passage through Congress.

“And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass,” Gruber said.

On Tuesday, Gruber said that he had been speaking “inappropriately” when he made the comments at an academic conference.

“I regret having made those comments,” he said on MSNBC.

Barrasso said Gruber’s statements were evidence Democrats had purposefully written the law in a complicated way to secure its passage.

“We knew it was written in a way that it was really deliberately written to deceive the American people,” he said, adding that Republicans were hoping to repeal the “entire piece of legislation” or at least remove certain components of the law.

Barrasso is the chairman of the Republican Policy Committee and the fourth highest-ranking Republican in the Senate.

Since capturing the Senate majority last week, Republicans have committed to going after the healthcare law. A day after the election, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and House Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) wrote in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal that following the voters’ will meant “renewing our commitment to repeal ObamaCare.”

The president has said he is open to making changes to the law, but he will not cross certain lines — including ending the individual mandate, which is one of the lynchpins of the policy. While Republicans now have the ability to pass repeal bills in both chambers, their majority in the Senate could not override a presidential veto.