“We’ve got 70 [sic] 17 new members who have not had an opportunity to vote on the president’s health care law,” Boehner said. “Frankly they’ve been asking for an opportunity to vote on it.”

Why are Republicans holding yet another futile, time-wasting and taxpayer-money-wasting Obamcare repeal vote next week? House Speaker John Boehner explains Well, then. By all means. It's not like it's costing American taxpayers something like $1.45 million to have that meaningless vote.

Oh, wait. Yes, it is! It's exactly like it's costing us $1.45 million for that repeal vote. Last July, when CBS News tallied it up using the CRS figure of $24 million per work week in the House, they figured that the House had spent 80 hours on 33 repeal votes, for a grand total of $48 million. That's $1.45 million per vote. There have been another three repeal votes since then, for another $4.4 million to the tally.

So, we're at a grand total of $52.4 million wasted on futile Obamacare repeal votes, just in the House. And that's being generous to the Republicans, not counting committee time wasted on this, the opportunity cost of delaying other work, etc. It's probably a lot closer to $55 million.

And if you ask those 70 new GOP members who are insisting on having their turn to cast a meaningless vote on settled law why they want to be in Congress, they'll tell you it's to stop big government from wasting taxpayer dollars.