President Barack Obama, campaigning for Hillary Clinton in Miami, took time Thursday to defend Obamacare, amid news of skyrocketing premiums, saying his signature health law would be fixed had it not been for Republican obstruction in Congress.
“You can’t just be against something,” Obama said about Republicans at Florida International University. “You gotta be for something. You can’t spend eight years being against me. And now you’re gonna be against Hillary but you haven’t been for anything. Come on.”
Obama acknowledged that premiums have gone up but added it is better than the alternative of not having insurance at all.
Obama also strongly ridiculed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers for calling for the repeal of Obamacare, saying they are offering “nothing, zero, nada” to replace it.
A light-hearted but fiery Obama seemed to take pleasure in ad-libbing many parts of his speech to the college crowd. At one point he led the crowd in a call-and-response of his favorite campaign quip, “Don’t boo … vote!”
It was the President’s third trip to Florida in three weeks. Later Thursday, Obama is set to deliver remarks in Jacksonville, also a campaign stop for Trump.
At one point, while touting his accomplishments in office, Obama remarked on the low gas prices he noticed while driving in North Carolina Wednesday, and shouted to the crowd, “Thanks, Obama,” a nod to a viral meme of the President that began as a Republican critique.
Obama also employed one of his most used catch phrases “come on, man!” multiple times in his speech in the Sunshine State to address what he called Washington’s “gridlock,” again pointing to GOP obstruction on making improvements to Obamacare.
“Can I talk to the press for a second? What happened? Do we ever run back the tape?” Obama asked the audience. “Do we ever kinda go well what happened? That’s what they said, and now they’re saying something entirely different? Come on, man!”