GOP says health care repeal also stops a tax

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans, stung by the Supreme Court decision upholding President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, are seizing on one wrinkle to bolster their election-year case for repeal — the court's judgment that the penalty for failing to get insurance is a tax.

The House has voted more than 30 times to scrap, defund or undercut the law since Obama signed it in March 2010, political moves that went nowhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate. Republican opponents cast the law as government overreach, socialized medicine and an unaffordable approach to the nation's system of health care.

Two weeks after the conservative-led court's ruling, the House GOP leadership pushed for another symbolic repeal vote today with a fresh argument. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his majority opinion that the law was constitutional because it imposes a tax — not a penalty — on people who refuse to buy insurance.

Republicans who repeatedly pressed for repeal said a "yes" vote would not only overturn the law but spare some 20 million Americans from an unnecessary tax.

The law's onerous burdens and taxes, Republicans complained, were stifling small businesses now reluctant to hire because of the additional expenses. This represented a clear obstacle to the country's economic recovery.