WASHINGTON (AP) -- House Republicans pushed an election-year vote Wednesday to repeal President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, casting it as not only a rejection of an unpopular law but a surefire way to block a tax on the middle class.

"The intent of the president's health care law was to lower costs and help create jobs. One congressional leader promised it would create 400,000 jobs," said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. "Instead, it is making our economy worse, driving up costs and making it harder for small businesses to hire."

The House has voted more than 30 times to scrap, defund or undercut the law since Obama signed it in March 2010, political moves that went nowhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate. The House GOP leadership staged another symbolic repeal vote with a fresh argument courtesy of the Supreme Court.

Two weeks ago, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his majority opinion that the law was constitutional because it imposes a tax not a penalty on people who refuse to buy insurance. Republicans who repeatedly pressed for repeal said a "yes" vote would not only overturn the law but spare some 20 million Americans from an unnecessary tax.

Democrats mocked Republicans for insisting on repeal without offering a replacement.

Standing on the House floor, Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, held the 2,700-plus page bill in one hand and said he had the GOP alternative in his other hand. He waved an empty right hand.

"Empirical evidence against the invisible evidence," Green said.

The Affordable Care Act, Obama's signature domestic achievement, would extend coverage to about 30 million of the estimated 50 million uninsured. But two years after its enactment, polling shows that it remains unpopular and highly divisive among the American people. The law contributed to the defeat of many House Democrats in the 2010 elections and the party's loss of majority control.

Still, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi dismissed the election-year implications.

"The politics be damned. We came here to do a job," Pelosi told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference in which various individuals, including some with illnesses, offered their gratitude for the law.

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GOP says health care repeal also stops a tax