Video taken by YouTube user Fireezdragon (Courtney C Horne)
Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) appeared at a town hall in a local library in East Baton Rouge Parish on Thursday, where he made some news by saying he favored a complete shutdown of the US government over funding Obamacare.
Near the end of the event, Vitter responded to a audience member’s criticism of the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, with a comment of his own that veered awfully close to Mitt Romney’s infamous “47 percent” moment, when he said at a private fundraiser that 47 percent of Americans were Obama-loving government mooches who wouldn’t take responsibility for their lives.
Here’s what Vitter had to say in response to a questioner’s criticism of Obamacare:
The only thing I’d add is, I wish you were right that nobody wants Obamacare; that’s not true. And in fact, the other side, who absolutely wants it, most of whom are getting something for nothing, came out in droves for the last election and our side sat at home.
Vitter didn’t expand on what he meant by “getting something for nothing”—free health care? Free food? Free Obamaphones?—but the gist was clear enough. By “the other side,” he means Obamacare supporters and also those people, most of them Democrats, who voted for President Obama last November. These Obama backers, Vitter seems to say, are mostly deadbeats living off the government.
There’s been plenty written about how accusing Democrats of being government leeches, as Romney and now Vitter have, isn’t fair or accurate. These kinds of comments also ignore the fact that Republicans rely on the welfare state, too. A recent Bloomberg News analysis found that Romney won 213 of the 254 counties in the United States where the number of food stamp recipients doubled from 2007 to 2011.
In Louisiana alone, 914,196 people receive food stamps. That’s 20 percent of the state’s population. Does Sen. Vitter think all of those people are Obama-loving government mooches?
