During an appearance on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show on Tuesday, Sen. John Thune (R-SD) pledged that Republicans would kickstart the process of repealing the Affordable Care Act shortly after the November elections and predicted that the party would be able to undo the law through the budget process “by sometime in the spring.”

Unimpressed by the timeline, Hewitt pressed Republicans to move faster. He compared the urgency of repeal to Congressional action in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and argued that people are already “dying” from the law. Thune seemed to agree with the sentiment:

HEWITT: Yeah, the reason I balk a little bit is only because I know people are out there dying under the burdens of this thing.

THUNE: Yeah.

HEWITT: And they expect, you know, the light speed for Congress is like molasses for the rest of the real world.

THUNE: Yeah.

HEWITT: And so it just seems to me that after 9/11, you guys moved fast, and I would hope it would happen again.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that if Republicans eliminated Obamacare in its entirety, more than 30 million Americans would go without coverage, “people would end up paying more for health insurance,” “the average insurance policy in this market would cover a smaller share of enrollees’ costs,” “premiums for employment-based coverage obtained through large employers would be slightly higher,” and the deficit would grow by $230 billion.

Earlier this week, Mitt Romney’s top campaign adviser broke with the entire Republican party and insisted that the individual mandate at the center of the Affordable Care Act and Massachusetts’ 2006 health care law is “not a tax.” “The governor disagreed with the ruling of the Court. He agreed with the dissent, which was written by Justice Scalia, which very clearly stated that the mandate was not a tax,” Eric Fehrnstrom told MSNBC’s Chuck Todd.

But on Wednesday, in another sign that the Romney campaign doesn’t appear to speak for its candidate, Romney told CBS News that he agrees both with the Supreme Court’s dissent striking down the law and also its majority opinion upholding the mandate as a tax:

Q: Do you now believe that it is a tax at the federal level, that the Supreme Court has said it’s a tax, so it is a tax?

ROMNEY: Well, I said that I agreed with the dissent. And the dissent made it very clear that they felt it was unconstitutional. But the dissent lost — it’s in the minority. And so now the Supreme Court has spoken. And while I agreed with the dissent, that’s taken over by the fact that the majority of the Court said it is a tax, and therefore it is a tax. They have spoken. There is no way around that.

Watch it:

Republicans have seized on the Supreme Court’s decision to claim that the mandate is a “massive tax hike” on the middle class, labeling it the “largest tax increase in history.” But Romney — who instituted a similar requirement in Massachusetts — insisted as governor that the penalty is a way to discourage free-riders, though he has previously referred to the penalty as a “tax” penalty.

Earlier this week, Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul claimed “Governor Romney thinks it is an unconstitutional penalty.” Today, it’s clear that Romney disagrees.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) reiterated the GOP’s commitment to taking away health care insurance from millions of Americans who are expected to receive coverage as part of the Affordable Care Act, if Republicans win Congressional majorities in November.

The senior senator from Kentucky, who himself enjoyes government-subsidized insurance as a federal employee, told the National Review on Tuesday that the party would do little to help the 129 million people who could be denied insurance because they suffer from a pre-existing condition should the law be repealed. “I’m not convinced that issue needs to be addressed at the federal level,” he said, before praising Republican governors for refusing to implement a provision of the law that expands health coverage to lower-income residents through the Medicaid program.

During the interview, McConnell also confirmed that he planned to repeal Obamacare’s main provisions — like the individual mandate — through reconciliation, a process that allows the Senate can pass budget-related bills with a majority vote:

MCCONNELL: Repeal of Obamacare will be the first item up in the Senate if I am majority leader. If we have a president who will sign the bill, we will do everything we can to get it off the books, and we’ll be looking for every angle that could be pursued. There has been a lot of talk about reconciliation. The Chief Justice said this is a tax, and we take him at his word, so that certainly makes this eligible for reconciliation. But that may not be the only avenue that we pursue.

But Republicans had lambasted Democrats for using the reconciliation process to pass the law in 2010, arguing that it would be “ripping a piece of the fabric of America off.”

McConnell himself bemoaned the practice. “Reconciliation has never been used to do anything as massive as restructuring 1/6 of our economy,” he said. For Democrats “to step in and use this little-used parliamentary device never intended to do something of this magnitude.” Now, his party is prepared to “undo” the measure and revert “1/6 of our economy” back to that status quo of unsustainable health care costs and limited access.