AUGUSTA — Democratic lawmakers are calling on Maine Gov. Paul LePage to apologize for his remarks comparing the Internal Revenue Service to the Gestapo.

The Democratic leaders of the House and Senate issued a statement Sunday calling LePage’s language “intentionally offensive.”

Rep. Emily Cain and Sen. Justin Alfond said Holocaust survivors and Word War II veterans who witnessed the terror of the Adolf Hitler’s secret police “should not be trivialized for political shock.”

In his weekly radio address Saturday, LePage attacked the Supreme Court’s decision that upheld President Barack Obama’s health care law.

LePage said the court’s decision has “made America less free” and that people have no choice but to buy health insurance or “pay the new Gestapo — the IRS.”

LePage previously told the NAACP to “kiss my butt,” called protesters “idiots,” referred to state government middle managers as “corrupt” and while campaigning for governor,  said he’d tell Obama to “go to hell.”

Democrat Ethan Strimling, a political commentator, said Monday that the Gestapo remark represents the first time the governor has used such racially-charged language.

The Anti-Defamation League’s regional director called the governor’s remark “hurtful and inappropriate.”

Derrek Shulman says comparisons to the Nazi police force have no place in politics or anywhere else.