Barack Obama vs. Bill O'Brien?

In a speech on Thursday, President Barack Obama referenced a state representative "somewhere" who said Obamacare was "as destructive to personal and individual liberty as the Fugitive Slave Act.

"Think about that," Obama said, according to the Wall Street Journal. "Affordable health care is worse than a law that lets slave owners get their runaway slaves back... I mean, these are quotes. I’m not making this stuff up."

The "somewhere" Obama referenced was, in fact, New Hampshire, and the state lawmaker in question was former House Speaker Bill O'Brien (R-Mont Vernon).

The remark was made back on Aug. 1, when O'Brien spoke at an Americans for Prosperity New Hampshire picnic at the Statehouse in Concord.

"It’s a law as destructive to personal freedom and individual liberty as the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850,” O’Brien said, “that allowed slave owners to come to New Hampshire and seize African-Americans and use the federal courts to take them back to slave states.”

New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Raymond Buckley sent out a fundraising email hours after Obama's speech, asking for donations.

"The President has had it with out of touch Republicans and their shockingly inappropriate rhetoric and so have I," Buckley said. "For too long New Hampshire Republicans have been making national news for their embarrassing and extreme positions and it's time for us to once and for all to put a stop to it."

[To watch a video of O'Brien's Aug. 1 speech, click on this link.]