WASHINGTON July 9 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Senate finance committee ranking member Orrin Hatch on Monday continued to sound the Republican Party (GOP) battle cry to repeal the controversial Obamacare law.
"I think it's fair to say that the Supreme Court's majority threw the nation a curve ball," the Republican senator said of the Supreme Court's decision last month to uphold U.S. President Barack Obama's health care reform law.
In a speech from the American Enterprise Institute, he said repealing the entire bill is the "first order of business" for Obama's GOP rival Mitt Romney, should he win the White House in November.
Hatch added that repealing the law would be his "first, second, and third priority" if his party re-takes the Democrat-controlled Senate.
The law should be replaced with "pro-market alternatives," the senator said of the legislation that opponents slam as an unwieldy and costly big government policy.
The speech came on the heels of last month's Supreme Court ruling that upheld Obama's landmark healthcare overhaul, which Democrats tout as paving the way for health care coverage of millions of uninsured Americans.
As Republicans slam the president's biggest first-term legislative achievement, Obama has called on Congress to move on from what he said was a debate that happened two years ago.
Indeed, repealing the law could be tricky. While a repeal would no doubt find support in the GOP-dominated House, it would not likely pass the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Darrell M. West, vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, said as long as Democrats control the Senate, Republicans will not be able to repeal the health care legislation.
"It is the signature piece of Obama's administration and Democrats will not allow the GOP to do it," he said.
Still, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said earlier this month that the Republican Party would push for a Senate vote on repealing the law before the November presidential election.
McConnell said he would use a legislative loophole known as "reconciliation," which would allow a majority to pass a repeal of the health care law instead of the usual 60 votes in the 100-member body.
Democrats used the same tool to pass the legislation two years ago, and McConnell blasted them for doing so.
In an interview earlier this month with NBC's "Meet the Press," House minority leader Nancy Pelosi called Republican attempts to roll back the law "unrealistic."
Voters want a solution to the health care issue, and do not simply want to revert to the unpopular pre-Obamacare system. So far, Republicans have failed to lay out an alternative vision to fix the country's health care system, analysts note.
Health care is also unlikely to be a strong card for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, considering the challenger's reputation as a flip-flopper for mandating in 2006 that nearly everyone purchased health insurance during his tenure as governor of Massachusetts.
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