Cook: GOP Legislators Hate Admitting They Passed Obamacare in Arkansas

Republican legislators just hate admitting they voted to implement Obamacare in Arkansas when they voted for the Medicaid private option. The “Did they or did they not pass Obamacare?” debate has even seeped into the U.S. Senate race, such as it is so far without an announced Republican opponent.

Last Friday, Democratic Senator Mark Pryor said by voting for the private option, Arkansas Republican legislators had joined him in making the right vote.

Pryor told the Arkansas News Bureau:

“It really affirms that the vote I cast for it [Obamacare] was the right vote, because they joined me in that. When the chips were down, the Republicans in Arkansas joined me.”

Pryor reiterated the comment in an interview with Talk Business’ Roby Brock on Capitol View.

Rep. John Burris (R-Harrison) took umbrage with the Pryor comments:

“He [Pryor] voted to add 250,000 Arkansans to a failing government system, and all he did was vote for legislation that put in place a lot of the harmful policies that I believe the private option helped to negate.”

Burris didn’t like being lumped into the category of supporting Obamacare. But the fact is he did – along with many other Republican legislators – vote to accept hundreds of millions of federal dollars only made possible by the passage of Obamacare.

Arkansas Republicans could have taken a strong stand against Obamacare and refused to accept any federal dollars to insure poor folks, like Republicans are doing in Texas. But to their credit, Arkansas Republicans and Democrats understood it was the right thing to do both morally and financially to accept money made possible by Obamacare.

Without the Medicaid private option crafted by Arkansas Republicans, there would be no insuring of low-income citizens and a linchpin of Obamacare would not have been implemented in Arkansas.

But Arkansas Republican legislators are taking serious heat from members of their own party and are using smokescreens and dodges to avoid admitting to the fact they passed Obamacare in Arkansas.

Check out Arkansas-based social media to see Republican activists call the private option vote “the largest expansion of government in Arkansas history” and how it’s implementing Obamacare in Arkansas.

A lot of Republican legislators voted to implement Obamacare in Arkansas. They just hate to admit it.