Just as he did last August, Grassley averred today the government is a predator (that’s the government of which he’s a part).

Still arguing the Rockefeller amendment to create a public insurance plan at the Senate Finance Committee markup, we’ve moved into the phase of ideological bickering. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) just blasted the public option as the first step toward single-payer health care, and Sen. Orrin Hatch is reiterating the argument now. The comments riled Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who asked Grassley if he supports another government-backed health care program, something called Medicare.

“Medicare is part of the social fabric of America,” Grassley responded. “[But] to say that I support it is not to say that it’s the best program that it can be.”

Grassley then shifted back to the contention that the public option is just a disguise for a single payer system that “denies the American people choice.”

“The government is not a fair competitor,” Grassley added. “It’s a predator.”

The bad news is that it’s not even noon.

How did this person ever become senator? Is he not at all civic-minded? Does he have no sense of the commonweal? Is he not responsible for what government does? Does he not draw a salary from the government? Does he not have a public health plan?

As someone at TPM suggested re the previous instance of this bout of Tourette’s, it’s a classic case of Freudian projection — the Freudian concept defined as "the unconscious act of denial of a person’s own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are ascribed to the outside world, like the weather, the government, a tool or another person or people."

For several hours today, particularly, during Senator Rockefeller’s commendable attempt to add a modest public insurance plan to the Baucus bill, it was established unequivocally for all sentient beings present that the extreme predatory nature of the private health insurance industry was so prevalent, only a knuckle-dragging baboon would attempt to deny it.

As it happens, Grassley was there at that time and the rest is history.