Election year, amnesty, cap and tax all play a role.
December 17, 2009
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RUSH: I have a question for the president. We have learned, Mitch McConnell put out a press release today, and this, frankly, surprised me. I actually learned it yesterday but I did not know that there isn't a 2,000 page health bill in the Senate. There isn't one. The only people who have seen whatever it is are in the Democrat leadership who have been allowed into Harry Reid's office, but there isn't a bill. There is not something that the whole Senate has seen. It's incredible. And so I have a question for the president today. Since the Senate has not yet finished writing this health care bill and all kinds of deals are being made that will make changes to it, how can you say that you'll sign it when it hasn't even been written yet? And how can Pelosi -- well, she can say she'll sign anything because that opens the door for her not knowing what's in it, but I mean doesn't this prove that you don't really care, Mr. President, about what fate you impose on the people of this country with this debacle of a bill, it's just about scoring some political points, erecting a monument to yourself that you can brag about in the State of the Union show?
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.
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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?
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