Posted on 12/17/2009 5:01:58 PM PST by GOP_Lady
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On Today's Show... |
December 17, 2009
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"In Copenhagen, it is a blizzard on loan from God-d, my friends.
I always believe God has a sense of purpose and I always have believed that God has a sense of humor."
"There's no way anybody's health insurance costs are going to go down when the government's involved in any aspect of this."
"I, frankly, think if more people really knew what the Democrat plan is, to cut $500 billion in Medicare -- Whew!
That alone would cause the senior citizens of this country to rise up."
"Did Social Security reduce the budget deficit?
Did Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, did they keep the country from going bankrupt,
or are they contributing factors to the country nearing bankruptcy?"
"I think the White House is pretty happy with Dean doing what he's doing, despite what they say.
I think the media and the White House are in an effort here to make Obama look centrist and reasonable,
when he is as leftist and irrational as Howard Dean is."
"In the mix of all this talk about global warming and glaciers melting these people in Copenhagen are being blanketed with snow.
Copenhagen surprisingly does not get a lot of snow, but they're getting dumped on today."
"If you want to bring down health care costs, Senator Sanders, get the hell out of the health care business once and for all, in toto."
"Anybody who trusts Barack Obama and the Democrats does not want to know the truth.
The economy is being held up by phony promises.
It is a sham economy."
"Do you know who got the biggest ovation yesterday at Copenhagen?
It was Hugo Chavez.
Hugo Chavez received thunderous applause when he ripped into capitalism."
"We, the American people, have been lied to and cheated on like only Elin Nordegren could appreciate."
"What is it with this constant surprise and shock?
It's gotta be a template.
Do they not realize what fools they look like?
Whatever the economic news is, it's 'unexpected'."
"They've been mad at Lieberman since the 2008 campaign when he was out there campaigning for McCain,
and to see Harry Reid throw everything the left wanted in this bill out in order to get Lieberman's vote has sent them into a tizzy."
"Most Americans understand full well the effects of competition: makes everybody better, lowers prices.
It's inevitable. It's the way free markets work, but not what Democrats want."
"The real big question is how many people are unemployed and thus lost their insurance because of Democrat policy,
because of Barack Obama, because of Harry Reid?"
"I actually hate thinking this way. I despise it. But, damn it, it's required because of who these people are.
Just because the government announces some figure on anything, your first reaction has got to be from now on suspicion."
"The same bunch that couldn't predict how bad the swine flu would turn out to be, the same bunch that couldn't
even make the vaccine at proper strength, is now telling us how many people didn't have insurance."
"How many people had health care when Obama became president and how many lost their health care since he became president?
I want to know what that number is."
"How in hell can Obama say that the economy is revived?
How can he say we're coming back from the brink?
Housing, ditto. Insurance, ditto. Unemployment, ditto."
"The Senate is a revered institution. It's the greatest deliberative body in the world, it has a tremendous reputation.
To see it treated so shabbily by the people who populate it is an instructive and frightening thing."
"The Republicans fear that if they jumped on board and started criticizing, say, Harry Reid in public -- or Bernie Sanders --
that that would stop the flow of independents from the Democrats to the Republicans.
Because they've bought the notion that these independents are somehow the nicest, sweetest, purest people and at the
first sign of partisanship, they run to the Democrat Party. It's bogus, but that's what they believe."
"If this were the great health care reform that a lot of people in this country do want, I happen to think they'd be all for it,
if it actually did just the two things that people are worried about, lower costs, expand access, but everybody knows now
except the media that it doesn't do this. And the media doesn't really care what's in it.
All they care about is how it's going to influence Obama."
"We know that the independents are fleeing the Democrat Party in droves over health care and a number of other things.
Imagine how much more movement there would be away from the Democrats if there was something those people could move to.
The opportunity to contrast who we are with them and what they're doing has never, ever been better."
"I've always scored big points when I give flowers at the most unexpected time of the year, just to give them,
not because there's some tradition or holiday or standard that dictates they be given."
"If you want to understand why problems exist in the country today, if you have questions about it,
your first answer should always be it's gotta be something the government's doing that's screwing me up, because it is."
"The answer to the disaster that is Obama and his policies is not to expand his policies even more.
The answer is to change course."
"Being ideological is the epitome of being informed. Being ideological, understanding what a Marxist is,
understanding what a liberal is, understanding what a socialist and fascist is, if you understand those things,
you understand the modern-day Democrat Party."
"There's no difference in liberals wherever they are. There's no difference in Marxists wherever they are.
There's no difference in socialists wherever they are. They all hate capitalism.
And that means they have to have a degree of dislike for the largest capitalist country in the history of human civilization: us."
To be added or removed from the "Rush In A Hurry" Ping List, FReepmail GOP_Lady.
The politics of this are very simple. People ask me constantly, "Why are they in such a hurry?" A lot of people still are of the impression that all of this that's done in Washington is done with good faith and good intentions. People who are not steeped in the, shall we say the swamp and the minutia of politics don't understand why the hurry, why the rush. Let me explain it to you. There are five elements to why they're in such a big hurry here. The longer it's in the news, the more people are going to learn about what's being proposed and the more people end up being against it, and they're already way, way down in the polls. There is not one single poll that shows the American people in any way, shape, manner, or form for this health care reform. Most are dead set against it.
The second element of why the rush now: The Democrat leadership knows that when the Congress, senators go back home for Christmas they're going to catch holy hell just like they did at the town halls in August, but 2010 is the real factor here. When Congress comes back it will be 2010, and that's an election year. That will shift their interest and their attention. They'll be much more seriously concerned about their fundraising and their reelections and not doing things that will harm their reelection, and clearly voting for a health care bill will. The fourth element of why they are in such a hurry. They have to get health care passed before they can pass amnesty for illegals and before they can pass cap and trade. They have to get that done first. They can't do amnesty first because that would raise the price of health care too much. They do amnesty, that means all these illegals are now legal and they would qualify. Right now the health care reform bill in the House and the Senate, while they make allowances, if you know how to read the bills for covering illegals, that cost has not been figured in. The CBO has not been asked to score what the cost would be providing insurance for whatever number of illegals you want to use, 12 to 20 million. So they've got to do health care, they gotta get that passed and signed into law before they get into amnesty. And they're going to do amnesty in 2010 because that's important to them for the November elections. They can't do amnesty first. It would raise the price of health care too much and it would just raise the opposition. So they want to have amnesty in time for the 2010 elections.
Delaying health care even further also means delaying other initiatives like cap and trade because they can't talk about new taxes when they're still trying to sell the health care taxes. Now, nothing has changed in terms of the scope of health care and how bad it is and so forth other than you got a lot of people now defecting, Bernie Sanders saying, "I'm not voting for the bill," last night. Today he says, "I'm undecided." Everybody is focusing on Ben Nelson again, too, and now the governor of Nebraska has come out and urged Senator Nelson to not vote for this thing, in other words, to vote against it because the governor says, "It's going to wreck our state's economy." And Schwarzenegger basically said the same thing about California yesterday, "It's going to wreck our economy." Hey, Arnold, it's already wrecked. We're just trying to limit the damage here a little bit. Now, as if that wasn't enough, listen to this. This is Obama last night on ABC's World News Tonight with Charles Gibson, and Gibson said, "There's even some Democrats saying now that we've got a bill that's so compromised, it's not worth signing."
OBAMA: If we don't pass it, here's the guarantee, that the people who are watching tonight, your premiums will go up, your employers are going to load up more costs on you, potentially they're going to drop your coverage 'cause they just can't afford an increase of 25, 30% in terms of the cost of providing health care to employees each and every year, and the federal government will go bankrupt because Medicare and Medicaid are on a trajectory that are unsustainable, and this actually provides us the best chance of starting to bend the cost curve on the government expenditures on Medicare and Medicaid.
RUSH: Now, this is where the president is tone deaf or living in an entirely alternative universe. The people of this country think we're already bankrupt and that passing health care is going to destroy the future for children and grandchildren. They already think we're bankrupt, Mr. President, and we are! You continue to spend money we don't have. It is being printed, and the inflation rate, the producer price index, is going up. A lot of economists think, folks, that we're on the verge here of a huge uptick in inflation. Now, some of these economists may well be surprised if that doesn't happen. You know the rule. Whatever economic news there is, the media's experts are always surprised. Health care premiums are going to go up no matter what, whether we pass this or not. Employers are going to have to off-load their health care plans or go out of business, regardless whether this happens or not. "The federal government will go bankrupt." The world really wants to hear that, don't they?
So the Obama administration is continuing to try to frighten and scare everybody into this. Gibson's next question was, "You thought you had a compromise last week that was gonna expand Medicare to younger people." By the way, their health care bill does expand the problems we already have in Medicare and Medicaid, even without the Medicare buy-in. You have to understand that the long-term objective here is to nationalize single payer health care. They just want to get something passed so they have a starting point. They're taking out all these things they think people object to so they make it appear as though they are responsive to public opinion on this. But Gibson said, "You thought you had a compromise last week that was going to expand Medicare to younger people. Senator Lieberman says, 'Well, I'm not sure I want that,' then all of a sudden we hear it's out of the bill. Do you feel as if individual senators are holding you hostage?"
OBAMA: The opposition party has made a political decision that we are going to say no to everything, we going to not be at the table, we are gonna just not get involved.
GIBSON: Which leaves you needing all 58 Democrats and two independents.
OBAMA: What that means is...
GIBSON: Every one of them.
OBAMA: Every single one of them.
GIBSON: Every single one.
OBAMA: Every single one of them.
RUSH: Again dumping on the Republicans when he's got his 60 votes. It's the Democrats that can't get unified on this. "The opposition party's made a political decision, gotta say no to everything," and that's wise. Damn straight they have to say "no" to everything. Everything in this administration, just say "no." It's not worth compromising on this. Cap and trade, amnesty, this, just say "no." But here's Charlie Gibson, so sorry, individual senators are holding Obama hostage. Remember, there is no bill. He talks about the Republicans don't want to get involved. Harry Reid won't let 'em be involved, Pelosi won't let 'em be involved.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here is the relevant passage from a press release put out today by Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate: "And here’s the most outrageous part: at the end of this rush, they want us to vote on a bill that no one outside the Majority Leader’s conference room has even seen. That’s right. The final bill we’ll vote on isn’t even the one we’ve had on the floor. It’s the deal Democrat leaders have been trying to work out in private." And it involves, by the way, Senators Bennett and Wyden. It's a disguised bill to make it look like insurance will be taken care of in the private sector. It does just the exact opposite, and that's why they're holding it. So this process has been totally corrupted, 100% totally corrupted. Look, we have rules in the Senate; we have rules in the House. One of the reasons this country has held together is respect for those rules. That's all been thrown out the window now.
I just was watching MSNBC. Can Obama save the day at Copenhagen? Can Obama get a deal? This is all about Obama and nobody but Obama. It's not about you; it's not about anybody else. Obama says that the country will go bankrupt without health care reform. Well, now, wait a minute. Isn't the real reason GM was going bankrupt was because of their health insurance and benefits? Not the whole reason but it was a large part of it, was it not? Yes, it was. So what was the solution for General Motors? When General Motors was facing bankruptcy in part because of their health insurance and benefit costs, what did they do, did they decide to give more people health insurance and benefits? That's not the way I remember it. They tried to cut 'em back. They off-loaded the pension plan to a government agency. They were going bankrupt because of all these costs and yet Obama says we're going to go bankrupt unless we add to these costs?
END TRANSCRIPT
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Checking the e-mail again during the break and this is a good question. I'm glad I got the question so I can explain it to you. A lot of people are saying, "Rush, why is it guaranteed that insurance premiums are going to go up even in the private sector, even if the public option's gone, and even if the Medicare buy-in is gone, what is guaranteed about premiums going up?" Great, great question. And I, El Rushbo, ladies and gentlemen, am happy to provide you the answer. If the bill were signed as it is today, everybody would be mandated to buy insurance from a private insurance company in your state. And right there people say, "Why does that mean prices are going up automatically?" Because of what else is in the bill. The bill mandates that people with preexisting conditions be covered. The bill mandates that people who are gonna die in two weeks be able to get insurance three weeks prior to that.
It's just economic common sense. Insurance companies are not social programs. Insurance companies don't give it away. If you mandate that they cover people who are a guaranteed loss for them, they go out of business. So they have to raise their prices to accommodate the mandates that exist elsewhere in the bill. Now, for some poor people, in the bill there are subsidies for them if they cannot afford to buy insurance on their own, because the bill requires everybody to do so. But if they can't pay the premium based on their medical condition and their health at the time from a private insurance company, if they meet a test -- and, of course, that's a new bureaucracy that's going to get all gummed up -- but if they meet the test, then they get subsidized. By who? Who subsidizes them? The insurance companies. Well, who pays the insurance companies? We do, the rest of us. So the reason prices are going to skyrocket is because of what else is in the bill, the mandate to cover everybody regardless of what their health is. This is like an insurance company being told that they must sell homeowner fire insurance after the house fire has started.
You're away, you come home, you don't have adequate fire protection in your homeowner policy. When you drive up to the block in which your house is, you see it's going up in flames. You call the insurance companies. "I want an insurance policy to cover my house being burned down." And the insurance company says, "What's the situation now?" "Well, it's half gone." And if the government says that the insurance company has to sell somebody fire insurance when their house is burning, guess what they're going to charge for it? Through the roof. This is exactly what's happening in this bill. And the reason it differs is because health now is considered some God-given right that nobody should ever get sick, and if they do get sick, that they should never die, they should always get well. Well, the market doesn't work that way. No entity works that way. You know, I've talked to football coaches. In fact, we talked to Jimmy Johnson once. We interviewed Jimmy Johnson when he was coaching the Dolphins, did an interview with him for the Father's Day issue of the Limbaugh Letter.
I asked him, "Do you treat every player the same on the team?" He said, "No, you can't. Some of them don't have the same ambition. Some of them don't have the same drive. Some of them you don't have to worry about their commitment, others you have to do certain things. If a guy screws up during the week in practice and you delist him that week and put him on the inactive list, some players are going to react positively to that and say, 'Oh, gotta impress the coach more,' or they're gonna pout. You have to know who you're dealing with." No two people are the same. No two life circumstances are the same. But yet to have some generalized policy on health coverage and insurance coverage mandated by the government is just an excuse, folks, it's a fuse. You lighten the fuse and costs are going to skyrocket.
The dirty little secret is the same truth would exist if there were a public option. If that were the only place you could go, because the rest of the bill mandates that people with preexisting conditions be covered. If you don't even have a preexisting condition, there are even circumstances in both these bills where if you are diagnosed without any indication you're sick, if you're diagnosed with something that could lead to your death in a matter of years, you are able to go out, the insurance companies have to sell you coverage when you haven't had any prior to that. So that's why the prices are going to go up, the federal government, pure and simple, in the health care bill. There's no way anybody's health insurance costs are going to go down when the government's involved in any aspect of this.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Look at it this way, ladies and gentlemen. When you are covering known illnesses, you are no longer insuring against something, you are paying a monthly fee so others will cover your existing illness. You're no longer a risk; your illness is a reality. And this is not insurance. It's being called insurance but it's not. It's something entirely different.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, about the premiums going up and my brilliant dissertation on why prices will go up in the private sector even if the public option is not there and even if the Medicare buy-in is not there, it's not just preconditions that are mandated to be covered in the health care bills in either the House or the Senate. There was a recent amendment that added mandating private insurers to provide mammogram and other women's issues coverage, including spousal abuse! Insurance for spousal abuse and mammograms, even though the mammogram age is going to be raised to the age of 50. Now, you think of all the mandates that will be added on to private insurance, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. For example, if an insurance company cannot discriminate against preconditions, if they can't do it, if you got a preexisting condition, they have to cover you. The premium has to go up. But if they can't discriminate against preconditions, can they still charge more for smokers? Can they charge more for mountain climbers? Can they charge more for race car drivers? Can they charge more for knife thrower assistants? I don't know. If they can, why?
If the insurance companies cannot discriminate against a precondition -- a precondition could be defined as, you smoke, fine, your premium is going to go higher. But if they can't discriminate against preconditions, they have to cover the high risk people who are smoking 18 packs of cigarettes a day? If they do, if they're forced to cover those kinds of people, if they're forced to cover mountain climbers and race car drivers and other risky life behavior, what do you think the price is going to do? It's gonna skyrocket. And this is a little indication of what this bill is really all about. It's not about health care; it's about controlling your life. And if you can't get insurance because you're a race car driver, what are you going to do? If the insurance companies can discriminate against you then who are you going to sue when they don't discriminate against preexisting conditions? This thing is just an unbridled mess.
Now, I want to expand on this. When you are covering known illnesses, you are no longer insuring against something, you are paying a monthly fee so others will cover your existing illnesses. You're raising prices for everybody. You are no longer a risk, because your illness is a reality. So this really isn't even insurance. It is redistributing wealth, pure and simple. I have always tried to impress upon everybody that this is not about health care. It is about the redistribution of wealth via the controlling of behavior of people and the ability to charge them more for whatever it is they do in their lives that is in the unapproved list that some bureaucracy comes up with. Now, I don't want to be misunderstood here because saying things like this can make people think that I, El Rushbo, am heartless. And of course this is the exact opposite. I have a huge heart. Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom. I am not dumping on people who have illnesses. Many of us have various illnesses and so forth. But what is being discussed here is not insurance. If using my "your house is on fire" example, if you were allowed to buy a rider to your homeowners insurance that covered fire only after your house fire had started, we're not talking insurance. You're not being insured because the risk is already happened.
We're talking about something entirely different. We're talking about the redistribution of wealth. And this is why, in case you're also asking, "Why does Obama not care? Just get the bill now, just get the bill now." This is why Obama wants anything he can get, any bill that he can get. He sees this as a control issue. If the bill is not as radical as he would like, they'll go back and they'll fix that, they'll make it worse in subsequent years. This bill is horrible, it is very bad, but they're not going to stop there, just like they didn't stop with Medicare. Do you think when they came up with Medicare that they ever intended it to get this big? Probably they did but did they tell us it was going to happen? No. Social Security, ditto. Did Social Security reduce the budget deficit? Did Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, did they keep the country from going bankrupt, or are they contributing factors to the country nearing bankruptcy? Well, we all know the answer to that, and of course what will health care, if passed, end up being but more of the same?
END TRANSCRIPT
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: To Copenhagen: Hugo Chavez has the biggest applause line of the whole conference showing you what the global warming conference is really all about. This has a translator, by the way, because he speaks Spanish.
CHAVEZ: There's a ghost lurking. And Karl Marx said - a ghost running through the streets of Copenhagen. And I think that ghost is silent somewhere in this room amongst us coming through the corridors underneath. And that ghost is a terrible ghost. Nobody wants to name him or her. It's capitalism. Capitalism is that ghost. (applause) Nobody I don't think wants to name it. Capitalism.
RUSH: I wish we'd have left the applause in there because it went on and on and on. That was the biggest applause line of the entire conference so far. The ghost in the room is capitalism. And we're supposed to fork over our money. We are forking over our money to these people! Hillary Clinton announced today a hundred billion dollars a year to these people so that they can come out of this with saying they had some sign of success. This is a conference that is designed purposely, primarily to destroy the United States. This is about the destruction of capitalism, free markets, the United States of America. It gets the biggest applause of any line so far in the conference. Hugo Chavez delivers it. His people are starving. His people are practically in chains in Venezuela. These people applaud his reference to capitalism as a ghost. This tells you exactly what this whole global warming snafu is about. It's about attacking and destroying capitalism and the United States, all these protesters that are over there and all these conference attendees, doesn't matter, they could be at a WTO meeting, they could be at a climate change meeting like they're at now, they could be at any other meeting the UN's in charge of, and all it is about is the destruction of the United States. Then Chavez took a shot at Obama.
CHAVEZ: What they're saying in the streets is if the climate was a bank, they would already have saved it. I think it's true. If the climate were a bank, a capitalist bank, one of the biggest ones, they would have saved it, the rich governments. I think Obama isn't here yet. He got the peace prize, the Nobel Peace Prize almost the same day as he sent 30,000 soldiers off to kill innocent people in Afghanistan.
RUSH: And they applauded that as well. So, you know, Obama may think he's cultivating friends among these people. Who knows, he may share their desires. He's certainly taking his stabs at capitalism. He certainly is doing it. What I'd like to see, I'd like Obama to show up actually as Casper the ghost. When it's time for Obama to show up and make his speech, show up as a ghost and send a little signal to all these attendees that he gets it. That he understands. (interruption) If I can address them, what would I tell 'em? I'd tell 'em to shut up, disperse, go home and take care of themselves. There is no global warming, it's a hoax, and every one of you in this room know it's a hoax. All you want is what the United States has achieved because you're jealous, you know you can't achieve it on your own; you don't want to free your people so that you can create mini-United Stateses in your own countries. You want to control 'em; you want to keep them in bondage, and they can't produce anything that way, therefore you can't get personally rich.
The only way you can get personally rich is to make us feel guilty and have our Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over there write you a check for a hundred billion dollars. Well, we the taxpayers are through paying for it. In this world you take care of yourselves. If there's any destruction of climate going on, it is you poor countries who are not investing in clean technology and so forth like we've done. We are not the problem in the world. We are the world's solution. And until you find a way to be on our side of things, you are shut out, not a penny more for you little Marxist dictators. And I walk out of the room. That's what I would tell 'em.
END TRANSCRIPT
Interest rates from the Federal Reserve to banks are near zero. They're not near zero for you, at a mortgage or at a credit card, but the interest rate that exists between the Fed and the banks is zero, or pretty much. So the banks can get free money by lending to the government. Now, the government has to borrow from someplace. What the simple explanation is, is that the government is borrowing money from the banks, there's zero interest on that. In exchange for it they're buying Treasury bonds, that's how you borrow or lend to the government, those bonds are a guaranteed 3% return. It's that simple. If you can lend to somebody that's guaranteed to pay you back 3%, as opposed to lending to somebody risky out in the private sector, who may not even be able to collateralize the loan, why would you do it? You got in trouble doing it once on the subprime mortgage business and you were forced to do that if you're a bank. So, if Obama really wants the banks to start lending to people in the private sector, the simple answer is to stop giving banks eliminated amounts of money for essentially free.
Now, let's say as an example, let's say a bank lends the government a million dollars by buying a Treasury bond. Now, the bank's wealth has not gone up a million dollars, but there is a guaranteed 3% return on the loan being paid back. If the Federal Reserve would make a change and raise interest rates to where the banks were not able to get essentially free money from the government, then you might have somebody at a bank interested in loaning some money to somebody other than the government. But as long as the interest rate from Fed to bank is pretty much zero and you get a 3% return on it, why screw with that? And so, again, the answer when Obama goes up and calls the bankers in and wails and moans and everybody else is wailing and moaning, "I can't get a loan, nobody will lend me any money," again the answer is Obama.
The answer is Obama and the Federal Reserve and free money. Stop giving the banks unlimited amounts of money for free in the form of interest free loans at a guaranteed 3% and, bammo, the way you would do this would be to raise short term rates for government money to 3%, exactly what the return is now, so that the banks zero out. If it costs them 3% to lend it, and they're only going to get 3% back when the government pays it back, then they zero out. They'll look for other places because nobody lends money without wanting to make money on it unless it was the subprime thing which, again, was the federal government. So the bottom line with all of this is the reason you can't loan money or borrow money, the reason it's tough to is because of your government's policy. And all the while this is being done, guess who Obama continues to beat up? Fat cats on Wall Street, most of whom voted for him. None of this is complicated. Once you understand the underlying base lines of what's going on, none of it's hard to understand.
I can make it simple for you. You just have to trust me and you have to trust yourself. If you want to understand why problems exist in the country today, if you have questions about it, your first answer should always be it's gotta be something the government's doing that's screwing me up, because it is. I'm going to ask these questions again: How many people had health care when Barack Obama became president, and how many lost their health care since he became president because they lost their jobs. What is that number? How many people had homes when Obama became president, and how many have homes today? How many people had homes that were worth something when Obama became president, and how many of those people's homes are now under water since he became president? How many people had jobs when Obama became president, and how many have jobs today? How many had savings accounts with actual money in the savings accounts when Obama became president, and how many people have savings accounts with money in them today?
The answer to the disaster that is Obama and his policies is not to expand his policies even more. The answer is to change course. The answer to understanding what's going wrong is Obama and the Democrats in the House and the Senate. That is what is going wrong. Who they are ideologically matters. It's not hard to figure out who they are. You just have to believe it. Once you understand that liberals do things as you're seeing them do now, you also have to come to the conclusion that liberals lie. Because they never told you this was going to be the result of what they said. In fact, they said it was going to be the opposite, unemployment would never get higher than 8%. The financial system would be saved. Small business would be able to borrow money. Roads and bridges were going to be repaired. Schools were going to be repaired. Instead now, none of that's happened, but the solution to all that is to go caulk your windows. So it's very simple. It just takes courage to admit what you see. And a lot of people don't want to get ideological.
A lot of people think being ideological is ideology ideological closed minded. No, no, no, no. Being ideological is the epitome of being informed. Being ideological, understanding what a Marxist is, understanding what a liberal is, understanding what a socialist and fascist is, if you understand those things, you understand the modern-day Democrat Party. We're not saying that's what JFK is, we're not saying that's what LBJ was although you could probably peg the beginning of all this to LBJ, and we go to Jimmy Carter and we double down. And now we got Jimmy Carter on steroids, except Carter, he was just a bumbling, doddering old idiot. This is being systematically done on purpose by the so-called progressives.
Let me tell you something. Hugo Chavez, thunderous applause when he attacks capitalism at the climate change conference in Copenhagen, thunderous applause. You can read various chapters on Barack Obama's book and find that he has the same view of capitalism. His first job was as some minion I think at a law firm somewhere or some publication, and he writes of sitting in his cubicle in this private sector business feeling like he'd crossed enemy lines. There's no difference in liberals wherever they are. There's no difference in Marxists wherever they are. There's no difference in socialists wherever they are. They all hate capitalism. And that means they have to have a degree of dislike for the largest capitalist country in the history of human civilization: Us.
END TRANSCRIPT
| Read the Background Material... |
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| • AP: Obama demands top bankers increase lending? |
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Hal in Carrollton, Virginia, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. Mega dittos.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Merry Christmas. It's a privilege to finally get to speak to my professor.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Yeah. I have a question, though, that I don't quite know how to answer. I heard on one of the Sunday talk shows a couple weeks back -- and then I had it repeated to me in a discussion I was having -- that Republicans or conservatives are hypocrites because we're against the big Medicare cuts that are in the current bill that's in the Senate. And, you know, I was kind of blindsided because if conservatives are against big government, and it's breaking the bank, why are we conservatives so angry about the big cuts in the current bill?
RUSH: That happens to be the question of the day. You have called the right person to get the answer.
CALLER: (laughing) I'm glad I did.
RUSH: Now, you're right theoretically. The Republican Party is against big government, the expansion of big government, and turning people into total dependents of the government and wards of the state. However, here we have a political situation that's reared its ugly head. Here is a health care bill with which the Democrats have promise that they're going to insure everybody at lower cost, and yet while they are doing that they're going to cut Medicare by $500 billion. Now, Medicare is the health program for the elderly in our country. If you cut $500 billion out of it, it's going to have a disastrous effect on senior citizens. Senior citizens are the largest voting bloc. Now, the next element of this goes back to the guy that called here earlier who works for the Senate. He talks about the rules of the Senate being sacrosanct and how they're being blown up. There are certain agreements that we have as a society made with people, and one of those agreements, via legislation, is Medicare. So the elderly, knowing that the program is there, have ordered their lives according to that. You can't blame them. Medicare was devised to provide health coverage and health care for the elderly at a point in time when their earnings disperse. It's the same thing with Social Security. So people have been living their lives and planning their lives based on that promise made to them by their government.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: So here comes this bill that's going to cut $500 billion, and what I hear you saying is that a clean and pure-as-the-wind-driven-snow Republican, conservative, would stand up and say, "I support the cuts."
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: "I support the cuts because we need to reduce the size of government," and it is a tricky thing, but at this point doing that would be breaking a rule. Doing that would be breaking a promise, a commitment you've made to people. In fixing this stuff going forward -- and this is what so many of us had a problem with the Bush administration with the new Medicare entitlement -- is you don't expand it. You reform the system, not expanding Medicare, not expanding Medicaid but ultimately replacing them, knowing it can't be done overnight. But the political component of this is that the Democrat Party is gonna cut $500 billion out of Medicare, after making these promises to the elderly. Politically, that must be known. The elderly must know what's going to happen to them if the Democrats succeed here because we want their opposition to it so that it doesn't succeed. It's a real dilemma. I know exactly what you're talking about.
Go back to the tax cuts of 1986, the last round of tax cuts. Those tax cuts really caused the savings and loan bubble. They caused the S&L crisis and a real estate crisis because the rules of the game were changed. We took the top marginal rate down to 28% in 1986. In exchange, a whole lot of deductions vanished. The deal was: "We're going to take most of the deductions away but it's going to be worth it to you because you're only going to get charged 28% on the last dollar you earn." There were two rates, 15 and 28. For some there was a bubble rate of 31. Well, that was all well and good, but it did affect people in the real estate business who had built condos and other things based on the depreciation and deductibility of their investments, which all of a sudden -- Pfft! -- vanished. So the rules of the game that they were playing by were changed on them in the middle of the game, the middle of their projects, the middle of the season, if you will.
So it's akin to that. I happen to be in favor of the trade-off. The S&Ls, we bailed 'em out. We ended up bailing out some of the S&Ls and that gave us the Keating Five if you remember that McCain was a part of. You know, the standard, ordinary, everyday corruption that exists throughout any large government bureaucracy. So in this case it's just a matter of, "Okay, we made the promise. We promised the season citizens Medicare is going to be there for them. If you take $500 billion away from it, it ain't going to be there for them," and we want those seniors to know who's taking it away from them. We may not have agreed with it, but we lost the battle. In fact, some of our people back when Medicare was being continually expanded, I betcha most Republicans voted for the expansion. It's the senior citizen voting bloc. So I hope the answer explains it. You may not like it, but I hope that explains. I'm glad you called, Hal. Thanks very much for waiting. I appreciate it.
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RUSH: One more comment on the guy who just called and said, "Isn't it sort of hypocritical that we believe in smaller government and yet we don't agree with the Democrats' Medicare cuts?" It's a false premise, and if any of the others of you in this audience are asked that question, "Well, you guys, how come you're so worried about the Medicare cuts? You say you want smaller government! Why are you not in favor of Medicare cuts?" The Republicans never call for Medicare cuts. The dirty little secret here is that it's Democrats who are the hypocrites. It is the Democrats who are always accusing the Republicans of cutting Social Security, of cutting Medicare. They're always charging us with cutting Medicare, always charging with wanting to cut Social Security. Throw seniors out of their homes! Make seniors eat dog food! The Republicans are never the ones who start talking about these cuts. It's all the Democrats accusing us of that -- and when it comes to time to actually cut this stuff, it's the Democrats that do it. Now, I, frankly, think if more people really knew what the Democrat plan is, to cut $500 billion in Medicare -- Whew! That alone would cause the seasoned citizens of this country to rise up.
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| Read the Background Material... |
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| • Heritage Foundation: Obamacare Cuts Medicare, Home Health Care and Entitlements |
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RUSH: My friends, be very careful out there, be very careful indeed. It's not time to start celebrating and go, "Oh, boy, the left is cracking up." I specifically referred to this Howard Dean going on the attack on Obama on health care, saying he's not going to vote for Obama for reelection and so forth. Howard Dean does not realize it, but he is being used. Greetings, my friends, and welcome, Rush Limbaugh, back at it on Thursday on the EIB Network as we come to you from the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
We got the news all over the place. Howard Dean continuing on the rampage. He's on the media. He's got an op-ed in the Washington Post today beating up on Obama, beating up on Obama's health care, and I'll tell you what this is all about. Dean is getting access because the media wants Dean to have that access. I believe -- and don't doubt me on this, my friends -- there's an effort by the media and the White House -- in fact, I think the White House is pretty happy with Dean doing what he's doing, despite what they say. I think the media and the White House are in an effort here to make Obama look centrist and reasonable, when he is as leftist and irrational as Howard Dean is. They are more than happy to give voice to Howard Dean or some of these other whack jobs out there because it makes Obama look like a centrist. Now, I don't know that they're going to be able to pull it off, but I think this is what the strategery is.
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RUSH: Now back to the audio sound bites. This morning on PMSNBC, David Axelrod called into the show. This is about the White House at war, not just with Howard Dean, but with the kook-fringe base. And this does worry 'em. Dean doesn't, but the kook-fringe base worries them a little bit because they know that individual members in the House and Senate listen to the kook-fringe base, they go to kook-fringe base conventions. So Mika Brzezinski says, "I'd like you to characterize, if you could, the White House reaction to Howard Dean's criticism, which has been extremely pointed and sharp at this plan, he says he tried, he tried to go to the White House privately and behind the scenes to talk about this, to talk about his concerns, he has no choice but to lay this all out on the public stage. To his criticism you say what?"
AXELROD: He got on the phone with Nancy-Ann DeParle, our point person on the health issue, went through point by point. She explained why he was wrong. And he simply didn't want to hear that critique. I saw his piece in the Post this morning, and it is predicated on a bunch of erroneous conclusions.
RUSH: And he was then asked, "Well, what was wrong about it?"
AXELROD: He said this legislation allows insurance companies to charge older Americans up to three times as much as younger Americans. The fact is in many states, they charge five times as much today, and this would help reduce that disparity. They believe that they can charge more because there are greater expenses associated with caring for older Americans, but this at least shrinks that ban down for many people in many states.
RUSH: Well, the dirty little secret here is that by the time Axelrod and Obama get through with them, there aren't going to be any old people being charged anything. That's a dirty little secret. Next question: "People in this country right now, the progressives, they don't believe that the White House has stood up to the insurance industry."
AXELROD: Ed, let me ask you a question. Why is the insurance industry so vigorously opposing this bill? If it's just such a gift to the insurance industry, if they don't believe that this is going to force competition and force them to adhere to some standards in terms of how they treat patients -- by the way, let me just add parenthetically we fought for years as progressives for a patient's bill of rights. Everything that was in that patient's bill of rights is now enshrined in this legislation, and yet people say, "Let's just throw it away, we don't need it anymore."
RUSH: Let me answer the question. Why is the insurance industry so vigorously opposing the bill? Because they know that ultimately this bill puts them out of business, Mr. Axelrod. There will be no private insurance at the end of the day once this bill gets rolling. That's what they know. It has nothing to do with wanting to overcharge customers. It has nothing to do with anything other than they're trying to keep their businesses open, which a lot of people face that challenge, Mr. Axelrod with you and Obama. Everybody's just trying to keep their business open. Some people can't find jobs and this is not going to improve any of that. So then the next question: "On top of this frustration from progressives, David, with a name that makes them all PO'd like Joe Lieberman, I mean, you're just waving the bloody flag in front of people, Keith Olbermann, all these people. Who's writing the bill? Is Lieberman writing the bill or you guys writing it?"
AXELROD: Look, no, he's certainly not writing this bill. But the notion that we would let our personal feelings about one person defeat a bill that would deliver to people who don't have insurance the opportunity to get it at a price they can afford, that would defeat a bill that has patient protections that we've fought for for decades for people who do have insurance, to defeat a bill that will bend the curve on -- on -- on this inexorable rise in health care costs is insane.
RUSH: It will not deliver insurance to people who don't have it at a cheaper cost, just the exact opposite. But he's calling his own people on the left insane, folks.
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| Read the Background Material... |
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| • CBS News: Howard Dean: Scrap the Senate Health Bill? • Dick Morris: Coming next year: Obama's inflation • Howard Dean: Health-care bill wouldn't bring real reform |
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RUSH: Here's more Bernie Sanders. This is where it starts to get funny. Now, he was on MSNBC this morning, and, remember, yesterday he said, (paraphrasing) "I'm not voting for the bill. I'm struggling with this. I'm not voting for it. I'm going to do my best to make this bill a better bill." This morning he kind of changed his tune. Question: "Howard Dean yesterday compared the health care bill mandating new health insurance customers without breaking up the insurance monopoly without introducing the public option or any other competitive aspect is a bigger bailout for the insurance companies than the one that Ben Bernanke provided to AIG and Goldman Sachs. Do you agree with that?"
SANDERS: I am not there yet in terms of voting for it. I'm not there in terms of voting against it. Right now I am dealing with the White House, dealing with the Democratic leadership trying to make this bill as good as it can possibly be. It is not my view that passing anything is better than passing nothing.
RUSH: Really? He doesn't think that? Really? I wonder if he means it. Now, interestingly, this whole imbroglio, ladies and gentlemen, has been brought up, the reason the left is unhappy with this is the bill does mandate that everybody buy health insurance, everybody has to, and if you don't buy it, you face a fine and the IRS will be administering the fines, and you also might go to jail. Well, that was all fine and dandy with the left if there was a public option or if there was an expansion of Medicare, because then, being forced to buy into it was okay because you're buying into a government-run plan. That's fine and dandy with them, but Lieberman and a couple of others said, "Look, we're not voting for this thing with a public option in it, and we're not voting for this thing with a Medicare expansion."
So in order to get Lieberman's vote they took those two things out and that's when the left erupted because what it means to them now is that the requirement, the mandate to buy insurance means the only place you can buy it is from the evil, mean private sector insurance companies, which are a hated industry, and that's why's Dean's upset, that's why all the kook fringe left-wing bloggers are upset, and that's why they consider it a sellout and that Big Pharma has won, along with Big Insurance. They've been mad at Lieberman since the 2008 campaign when he was out there campaigning for McCain, and to see Harry Reid throw everything the left wanted in this bill out in order to get Lieberman's vote has sent them into a tizzy. So make no mistake, they don't mind everybody being forced to buy insurance as long as you have to buy it from something run by the government. This notion that the public option, which has always been misnamed because the public option may be an option for a couple years but after that it won't be because private insurance will have been run out of business.
The way it would work under the original plan, the public option would be very, very cheap, on purpose, and by design. The purpose of making it cheap was to see to it that businesses off-loaded their current health care program and plans, their benefits plan to the public option. Businesses would love to do that. And then after a while the price would then come up, and it would spiral out of control and there would be no competition after that. So the Democrats talking about the need for competition, we gotta have a public option. I don't know how many thousands of insurance companies out there there are. The idea that there's no competition in private insurance is foolhardy. It's sophistry. And the idea that adding a government-run option to the thousands of existing private options is gonna add to competition is absurd because the end result was it would limit competition because it would shut down the private sector health insurance industry, in toto. That was its purpose. That was its point. And that's another reason the people on the left are upset, because they think that their leaders are simply giving up on the idea of eventually having a single payer health plan.
Now, there's this story from the Los Angeles Times: "'Democrats Take Aim at Healthcare Bill Provision' -- Thirty-one lawmakers, including 29 from California, object to a facet of the House and Senate bills that would allow insurers in one state to sell policies in many other states." That would increase competition even more. Right now, if you live in Florida you can only buy private health insurance from a Florida company. Same thing in Alabama, California, what have you. Now, anybody who understands free market economics and competition understands that if somebody in Florida can shop around the whole country for a health insurance policy and doesn't have to be restricted to selecting one from Florida, you've got competition wide open. So, 31 lawmakers, all Democrats, including 29 from California, object to allowing people to buy health insurance across state lines. What was that they were saying about competition? They want more competition in this? They want the public option to be in competition with the private sector insurance companies? And yet the one thing that would really provide competition they are opposed to?
The Democrats are taking aim at allowing more competition in the private sector. That's the bottom line here. And there's another reason they don't like this, and listen to me on this. They don't like the idea of competition across state lines, buying private insurance across state lines. They also don't like what might go by the wayside, and that is state mandates. We've had plenty of people that work at insurance companies call here and explain they would love to offer policies that they cannot offer because the states have restrictions on what they can offer, what they can charge. If you have a piece of legislation that allows individual citizens to purchase health insurance policies from any company in the country, regardless where they are and regardless where the customer lives, then you also are wiping out the whole notion of state control and state mandates, or you're putting a dent in it. And what are states? They are government.
So no matter where you look at this, even the latest iteration of throwing out the Medicare expansion, or throwing out the public option, wherever you look at this, what you find is the only thing they want is anything that empowers government, be it federal, be it state. They want to disempower you. They want to disempower the private sector insurance companies, pure and simple. They don't have any desire for competition, none, zilch, zero, nada. Competition is fundamentally part of capitalism, and we know that they hate capitalism; they want no part of it. So don't buy this. This is Alinskyite, this is the way Alinsky advised Obama and taught all these radicals. Look, you can't go out there, Alinsky said, and tell everybody who you really are. You can't say that what you want is the overthrow of the US government. You can't say you want the destruction of the private sector. You can't say you want to go out and get social justice. What you have to do is speak in the language that your audience understands and make them think that you're talking about things they're interested in.
So when Obama comes along and says, "Yeah, we want a public option because we want to increase competition because everybody knows the private sector insurance agencies are a bunch of cheats and liars and thieves," they demonize the agency just like they demonize Big Oil, just like demonize Big Pharma, they demonize Big Insurance, say we need this government option, we want competition. In fact, it's just the opposite. They know that most Americans understand full well the effects of competition, makes everybody better, it lowers prices. It's inevitable. It's the way free markets work, not what Democrats want. But they can't come out and say, "What we really want to do is control every aspect of your life and we're going to do it by making you buy health care from us and you're going to have to live a certain way and vote a certain way in order to get covered." They can't say that. Well, Bernie Sanders did. This is why Coburn read Bernie Sanders amendment, which was essentially a 767-page amendment saying just that. So they had to stop the reading of the bill. They had to stop it. He was panicking, he went down there and had it stopped even though he violated Senate rules to do it.
So you hear Obama and Reid and whoever it is on the Democrat side talking about competition, common sense, folks. You know they hate the capitalist system. They hate the private sector. When they start talking about competition, you have to scratch your head and say, "Wait a minute, that's part of capitalism, that's part of free market, we know you guys don't like that." So they have to speak in terms that they think you understand and lie to you in the process so you go along with it. And, see, that's not what's working anymore. Thank goodness to the so-called New Media or the alternative media. We've got over 60% of the American people in a Rasmussen poll who oppose this. How do those 60% who oppose it know what the hell is in it? F. Chuck Todd's not telling them, Chris Matthews is not telling them, CNN's not telling them, the New York Times is not telling them, the Washington Post is not telling them, TIME, Newsweek, whatever, not telling them, the Los Angeles Times is not telling them. But how are they finding out?
This is why everybody is so shook up on this. It wasn't long ago that something like this would have sailed through in a matter of months with hardly any waves, any problem whatsoever. So now they're up against an opposition media they don't know how to deal with other than to demonize, but the facts of what's in this bill are getting out and more and more people don't want it, which then closes a loop and explains in part why they're in such a hurry to do this. Now, back to Bernie Sanders. We're gotta let you hear exactly what happened on the Senate floor yesterday. This is Bernie Sanders interrupting the reading of the clerk on the Senate floor reading his amendment. And you'll also hear the acting president of the Senate here, Senator Ben Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland.
SANDERS: Mr. President? (gavel bangs)
CARDIN: The senator from Vermont.
SANDERS: I withdraw my amendment. And Mr. President...
UNIDENTIFIED SENATOR: Regular order, Mr. President.
CARDIN: Senate, Senator... The senator has that right. The amendment is withdrawn.
RUSH: That was Cardin, and he has the right to remove it, but it can't be stopped, it can't be removed, it can't be recalled until there's unanimous consent, every senator must agree, and they bypassed that step. I know, Snerdley, I'm not surprised. These are Democrats, to hell with rules, to hell with the parliamentary process. This is full-fledged fraud and deceit. Bernie Sanders submits his amendment and Coburn says, wow, they're being honest here, let's go read this so people know what he's talking about, and he showed up and he was livid. He continued with this.
SANDERS: We have a $12 trillion national debt and the best the Republicans can do is try to bring the United States government to a halt by forcing a reading of a 700-page amendment. That is an outrage.
RUSH: I love it. I absolutely love it. The outrage is that you wrote the amendment. The outrage is that your stupidity brought it to the floor. The Democrats have to know that the Republicans have threatened, they've promised they're going to read this bill once it comes there. So they actually did it. And to say there's a $12 trillion national debt and the best the Republicans can do is try to bring the US government to a halt. We're trying to stop the debt from piling up even further, Senator Sanders. We are trying to protect the United States from people like you.
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RUSH: We're going to start in Hartford, Connecticut, with Farris, thank you, sir, for calling, great to have you with us.
CALLER: Under water dittos from Hartford, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: And thanks for reading and recounting all the stitches on this fast curveball called health care reform. Very few hosts can see through the deceptions that are contained in all these gyrations and just God help us if anything passes because we all understand now, thanks to you, that if we get this it's just another step down toward the eventual single payer system.
RUSH: Exactly. But we have a plan B. We talked about that yesterday, there must be a plan B to break this thing up in a thousand pieces, the spending doesn't start 'til 2014, plenty of time to roll back some provisions of this thing, so all's not lost even if it does pass.
CALLER: I'd like to recall that being from Connecticut, our Senator, Joe Lieberman, had a chance to put an end to all this and back up what he said but he chose to let it go ahead knowing that the tradeoffs would lead it where it is, but I'd like to single out Tom Coburn. Here's a man who I don't know, I stay pretty well tuned in as much as I can, not very much lately and I'd like to ask for the prayers of your listeners for my mother, but I've been distracted recently by Coburn's comments, he seems to be a real leader and not only by calling for the reading of this 700-page Bernie Sanders amendment -- by the way, he's not a Democrat or a socialist, he's further to the left than that. But before that, Coburn sat with a sign above his desk that just said "no" and somebody has to start saying no. This man sounds like a real leader, somebody we can get behind, somebody like the fellow who spoke up in the speech that Obama gave and called him what he was, a liar.
RUSH: That would be Joe Wilson. Well, that's why this was a seminal moment yesterday for the Republicans. It really was. This was where they finally sprang into action and started obstructing this thing, and both McConnell and Jim DeMint and Coburn say when they get this real travesty, whenever it shows up, they're going to demand that it be read, too. Now, whoever's names are on the final health care bill will probably have a fit and demand the clerk stop reading it 'cause they're pulling the bill. If that happens just remember Senate rule is that every bill will be read. The Senate rule is that every bill will be read by the clerk. Somebody always makes a motion to dispense with the reading. By unanimous consent, they dispense with the reading, meaning they don't even take a voice vote, everybody says, yeah, dispense with the reading. Now, if somebody -- and all it takes is one Senator to demand the bill be read, which is what happened yesterday. Now, that Senator must have a team with him to be on the floor at all times while the clerk is reading the bill.
And, by the way, don't feel sorry for the clerk because the clerks rotate in this process too. There wasn't going to be some poor schlub taking 24 hours to read the bill. They probably alternate every ten pages or so. So don't feel any sympathy for the clerks. It's their job, plus they've got health care if they get sick or something happens while they're reading the bill. Now, once the bill is being read, it requires unanimous consent to dispense with the reading, just as it required unanimous consent to dispense with the reading in the first place. What happened yesterday was Bernie Sanders went in there and pulled his bill and Ben Cardin, who was running the show in the Senate at the time, allowed the bill to be pulled without unanimous consent. So a Senate rule and process has been corrupted. The next time this happens, I expect the Republicans will object and say, "Nope, nope, nope, we're not going to stop reading this until you get unanimous consent to pull it and you're not going to get unanimous consent because we're not going to vote to pull it." So we'll keep a sharp eye on that.
RUSH: Steve in Fresno, California, hello, welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Hey, good morning, thank you for being there.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: My opinion is that health care or health insurance are not rights or privileges, they're products. And my question is, is why can't insurance companies do business nationally but the fact is that government insurance will be available in all 50 states?
RUSH: Well, the reason is that the states want control over what can and can't be included in a package. That's why they can't sell insurance across state lines because the states are not uniform in their mandates. But you're quite right. The public option will be available to everybody anywhere without any requirement that it be purchased from an agency within their state.
CALLER: It's the ultimate in economic hypocrisy.
RUSH: It's the ultimate in Marxism. It's the ultimate in socialism. We gotta start calling this for what it is. Thanks, Steve, very much.
RUSH: Potomac, Maryland, Kathy, great to have you with us. Hello today.
CALLER: Merry Christmas, Rush. It's always a privilege to be in your classroom.
RUSH: Thank you very much. Same to you.
CALLER: Rush, thank you so much. I believe that this entire health care debate has become the civil rights issue of our time, and if national health care passes I call on our fellow freedom loving citizens to take a page from the Saul Alinsky playbook and prepare for national civil disobedience.
RUSH: How do you see that it's akin to the civil rights struggle?
CALLER: Because it has to do with basic human dignity and human rights and freedom. And as far as I can tell these health care proposals will enslave us, not give us freedom. Just as the civil rights era was about giving people freedom and releasing them from slavery and --
RUSH: Yeah, I would say this is not akin to the civil rights because they're trying to take all that away. That's why I made just this point, that people are referring to it in ways that are just exact opposite. It is a restriction on freedom. It is not an expansion of freedom in any way, shape, manner, or form.
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RUSH: Harry in Washington, DC, you're next, great to have you on the EIB Network, sir, hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, thanks for having me. I actually work in the Senate, and I just wanted to call and comment on what happened yesterday on the floor. As you know, the Constitution says that each House can set their own rules. In the Senate, they decided way back when in 1789 that the rules would continue indefinitely. It's very difficult to change the Senate rules. It takes a supermajority. Unlike the House on the other hand, Rush, it's very easy to change the rules. The rules end at the end of each Congress. But what happened yesterday was just so over the top, it just destroyed over 200 years of precedent, and I have a book in front of me that has the Senate procedure and precedent, it's a 1600-page book and it says as clear as day what happened yesterday was against the rules of the Senate. Once a reading is demanded it cannot be stopped unless there's unanimous consent, and no further interruptions are in order. That was a precedent that was established in the late seventies, Rush, and it's just really disheartening that the Democrats are going to do anything possible to pass health care, even if it means throwing out the precedents of the Senate that goes back to our founding.
RUSH: Well, I agree with you, but I think it's not just happening in the Senate, I think it's all about getting rid of the structure and the systems, the traditions, the institutions that have kept this country great. I think all of this is about breaking all of them down. Now, what would have been the Republican option yesterday had they been aware of the rule?
CALLER: Well, Dr. Coburn did call for regular order, but someone should have made a formal parliamentary inquiry, and it would have been something along the lines of, "Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry. Is it not the precedent of the Senate that an amendment is read in full and cannot be withdrawn?" And it is a precedent in the Senate. They tried to change the precedent in the Senate yesterday, and the reason they did it, Rush, if the amendment was read, there was absolutely no way, at least most people believe that health care could be passed before Christmas.
RUSH: Right, exactly.
CALLER: And they had to find any way they could around it.
RUSH: Even if it means blowing up tradition, which means they don't even respect it. The people compromising the majority in the Senate today, the Democrats, don't even respect the Senate, don't even respect the institution they're part of.
CALLER: That's right. I have a great quote in front of me, Rush. It's from Thomas Jefferson, he was the second vice president, so that means he was a president of the Senate. And he said, "Whether a rule is rational or not is not very important. It is much more important that there's a rule to go by and that there's uniformity of proceedings in business not subject to the will of the leader." So the decorum of the Senate was destroyed yesterday, and it is just really disheartening. I know a lot of folks might not understand why it's such a big deal, but it's a huge deal because decorum was violated.
RUSH: Well, the Senate is a revered institution. It's the greatest deliberative body in the world, it has a tremendous reputation. To see it treated so shabbily by the people who populate it is an instructive and frightening thing. But, you know, you can take that example and extrapolate that into the private sector where we talk about rules. Obama's out there demanding that banks lend money. Obama's going to have another meeting with bankers. They're not lending. They're not listening to him. Go ahead and lend money. The problem is the banks can lend money to the government at zero percent, they can buy Treasury bonds, they can lend money to the government 'cause their interest rates are practically zero right now, the government guarantees a 3% return. So if you can lend money to the government, if the government can borrow money from you at 0% and you're guaranteed a 3% return, why would you take a risk of loaning money to anybody in this economy who may default on it, who may not be able to pay it back when you've got a 3% guaranteed return if the government borrows from you? That's precisely what's happening. So the banks -- I mean these are smart people at the banks, their business is to show a profit, not show a loss. Obama is demanding that they lend money.
Now, the people in the private sector, the small business sector, corporate sector, wherever, it's unrealistic to expect them to start out on a massive expansion when they have no idea what the rules of the game are going to become next year. So the rules here again matter in a different way, but one in which I think we can make a connection. They don't know what the tax increases are going to be with health care 'cause they don't know what version of it's going to pass. They don't know if cap and trade is going to pass. They don't know if amnesty is gonna pas. They do not know the rules, the tax rules and other rules they're going to be working under until all that stuff happens. And yet here's little man-child president leaning on them, making them the bad guy. You gotta lend. We gave you TARP money to lend, and you're not lending it. So they're the bad guys. When, in truth, they are lending. The banks are lending money to the government. It's not just the ChiComs buying our debt. Banks are buying it. And there's a 3% guaranteed return. In this economic climate that ain't bad.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Phil with in Tallahassee, Florida, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. Thanks for taking my call.
RUSH: You bet, sir.
CALLER: And I want to thank you for cutting through the minutia and getting to the truth on all this health care reform and all the other issuing with Obama. I've got an inconvenient truth for you on health care reform. We could basically reform health care by capping the lawsuits with tort reform. Also, my wife's a health care attorney dealing with Medicaid, Medicare, and the fraud that goes on in Medicaid by the filing of fraudulent claims, you could pay for health care just in cutting out the abuse that goes on.
RUSH: Yeah, I had a story yesterday about something like $40 billion in Medicare fraud that's found recently or something. It's rife. Fraud is rife.
CALLER: That's right.
RUSH: The food stamp program is rife with fraud. They all are, Social Security. We have a whole segment of our culture and society that exists explicitly and expressively to game the system, and they've figured it out quite well. Tort reform, obviously. Tort reform would be huge. The biggest problem is that one of the largest contributing groups to the Democrat Party is lawyers, trial lawyers. They're not going to do anything to risk angering that bunch. So don't look for tort reform while Democrats have anything to say about it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let's go Atlanta. This is Rob. You're up next on the EIB Network. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. It's an honor to speak with you.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Thanks for taking my call.
RUSH: You bet.
CALLER: My point is that the Republicans really need to get a backbone here. They need to get at least as angry as Bernie Sanders was about pulling the bill, because if they don't -- if they let this die in one news cycle, in a day, and they don't get some respect, then Harry Reid is going to let it go. He's going to be able to let it go on reconciliation, and it will be a new story for a day and nobody will care.
RUSH: Well, to a point I agree with you, although I don't want to shortchange them of credit on this because Coburn and DeMint actually did this. They actually voted against the unanimous consent and started reading the bill, and they forced the Democrats into breaking the rule. Nobody is saying the Democrats broke the rule except us here on this program. However -- and this is not to make excuses for them. I'm just telling you I know where are they. The Republicans really believe something. They've been snookered by another faulty premise put forth by the left. They really believe that if they are too critical of the Democrats and their policy, that independents are gonna hate them and that independents are gonna get mad because independents don't like partisanship. They really believe this. Somehow, this has been etched into their souls and it is one of the most frustrating things to go through, because the independents are leaving Democrats in droves right now. The Republicans aren't doing anything. But the Republicans fear that if they jumped on board and started criticizing, say, Harry Reid in public -- or Bernie Sanders -- that that would stop the flow of independents from the Democrats to the Republicans because they've bought the notion that these independents are somehow the nicest, sweetest, purest people and the first sign of partisanship they run to the Democrat Party. It's bogus, but that's what they believe.
END TRANSCRIPT
"While the CDC's findings largely backed that figure, they also found 58.4 million lacked coverage at some point in the year prior to the survey, while 31.9 million -- or nearly 11 percent -- did not have insurance for more than a year."
What convenient timing. Later in the story, one bright spot in the report, "more children received health coverage largely through the government." How convenient. What an amazing bit of timing for Reuters to come out with this story today. More children received health coverage largely through the government. I wonder would that be the S-CHIP program where children are calculated to be children up to the age of 25.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: So the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, whatever the hell they're called, say 60 million uninsured now. Who are they? Who were they? How many illegals? How many lost their jobs under the Democrats and lost health care as a result? What's that static, CDC? How many people don't have health insurance because of Barack Obama and Harry Reid and Pelosi and all the other Democrats and their economic policies? How many can afford health care but choose not to buy it right now? They talk about people unemployed. You notice they don't talk about citizens unemployed. And as for these numbers anyway, we're supposed to believe the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, about how many people go without insurance. When it was the CDC that couldn't even predict how bad the swine flu would turn out to be. Who couldn't give proper instructions on how to diagnose it. Who couldn't even get the vaccine program working right. Could not even make it the proper strength, for crying out loud and that is their day job, not figuring who is and who isn't insured. Who the hell are they?
Remember what I said earlier. I actually hate thinking this way. I despise it. But, damn it, it's required because of who these people are. Just because the government announces some figure on anything, your first reaction has got to be from now on suspicion. The same bunch that couldn't predict how bad the swine flu would turn out to be, the same bunch that couldn't even make the vaccine at proper strength, is now telling us how many people didn't have insurance. And getting vaccines right, telling people how to identify and diagnose the disease, that is their day job. What are they doing calculating the unemployed? When did they take over the job of the Labor Department? But the real big question is how many people are unemployed and thus lost their insurance because of Democrat policy, because of Barack Obama, because of Harry Reid?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: All right, I don't want to give up on this Centers for Disease Control statistic or number that 60 million people -- they didn't specify Americans, they didn't specify citizens -- have been without health care at one time or another, most of them for over a year between 2008 and the present. How many people had health care when Obama became president and how many lost their health care since he became president? What's that number? I want to know what that number is. If the CDC is going to abandon its day job and start counting up numbers of uninsured let them look at that. How many people have lost their health insurance since Obama was elected? How many people had homes when Obama became president and how many have homes today? How many have been foreclosed on? Look up that number, CDC. How many people had jobs when Obama became president? And how many have lost those jobs? How many have jobs today? We know what that number is. How many had savings accounts with money in them when Obama became president and how many have savings accounts with money in them today?
The answer, ladies and gentlemen, to the disaster that is Barack Obama and his policies is not to expand his policies even more. The answer here is to change course, because he is an utter disaster. He and his policies that are enacted by the Democrat Party in the House and Senate are disastrous, by any way you measure: how many people had jobs vs. how many have them now; how many people had health care before and how many don't have it now; how many had savings accounts with money in them, how many people have savings accounts with no money in them, since Obama was elected. He's out there insulting everybody's intelligence telling us the economy is reviving. Yet his administration continually releases information to show that it's not. Unemployment, housing insurance, look, he wants us to believe he's doing great things, great numbers, and he has the CDC put out this number of 60 million uninsured? We haven't heard that number before. How in hell can he say that the economy is revived? How can he say we're coming back from the brink? Housing, ditto. Insurance, ditto. Unemployment, ditto. These are the questions that CDC ought to be providing our statistics for.
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| Read the Background Material... |
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| • Reuters: 1 in 5 in U.S. lost health insurance since 2008 |
Rush in top form today. Go, Rush. Do NOT fall for the “Obama moving to the center” ploy. Right on.
Obama is taking what he can get.
Hello, dear La Enchiladita! :-)
Listen, humblegunner, if you want to act like a child, don’t do it here.
Start your own childrens’ playroom thread or something.
for reference
It’s a shame he can’t take the pay cut. Rush would make one hell of a sequel to RR.
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