Jan. 24, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:23
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| Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast. | |
| And hello, folks. | |
| Greetings and welcome to you. | |
| Nice to be back with you here on the EIB network. | |
| Rush Limbaugh and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. | |
| We have broadcast excellence straight ahead for you for the next three hours. | |
| You will be part of it when we go to the phones. | |
| Telephone number 800-282-2882, email address rush at EIB net.com. | |
| Now, ladies and gentlemen, as you all know, when I say something about anything, there's nothing left to be said about it. | |
| As such, I'm not going to start out here with an in-depth analysis of the State of the Union speech last night. | |
| I will wait for your input on this. | |
| I'm not going to deny you my, but if I start telling you what I think, there's no reason to take any calls about it because there's nothing left to be said once I say something about it. | |
| So I want to mix. | |
| Nancy Pelosi, everybody's commenting on the blinking rate 30 to 40 times a minute or whatever. | |
| You know, it used to be she uh was unable to blink. | |
| Uh now she can't stop blinking. | |
| I think it was Morse code. | |
| I think I think she was sending code to the Democrats as to when to applaud and when not to applaud, in addition to when she stood up, that was a signal for them. | |
| She also looked like she was chewing her cud to me. | |
| I don't know if she had chocolate or something stuck, breath mention in her in her mouth or something, but constantly um uh moving in a row. | |
| It was distracting. | |
| Uh I finally switched a network that didn't have uh Cheney and Pelosi in the background because it was it was uh it was odd. | |
| President was classy and and uh you should have seen this dawn you would have loved this, the way he opened the whole thing by acknowledging her and her dad, and she is the first female speaker of the house and so forth, and she was beaming and waving like a queen there when this happened. | |
| The whole thing last. | |
| You know, I people ask me, how come you don't go to the White House correspondent center? | |
| Because I'll tell folks, it's phony. | |
| One night a year, these uh people in the media get together and act like they love everybody and love the president and so forth, and you know they hate his guts. | |
| The same thing last night. | |
| The most interesting aspect of all this in terms of the show of this, and I'm just an average guy. | |
| I don't watch this stuff as a policy wonk. | |
| I just watch this as an average guy, and I get so I'm jaded. | |
| I mean, I hear Democrats and I've heard them for six years, literally trying to destroy this guy's life. | |
| I hear them doing everything making up some of the most outrageous insults, calling him names, and then he walks down the aisle, and they all can't wait to be in the front row or on the front edge there, so get their pictures taken uh with big smiles and handshakes and so forth. | |
| It just a bunch of phonies. | |
| Uh and and it it to me it doesn't sell. | |
| It's uh it may be a minor thing to you. | |
| But as a person of cultured refinement and manners, you know, I um uh I just I I think it's it's just it's just disingenuous. | |
| It just it burns me up to watch. | |
| And then, on the way out. | |
| Why all these people are asking the Democrats included for Bush to sign autographs of the program that they were all given. | |
| And Congress women couldn't keep their hands off of him. | |
| Both sides of the aisle. | |
| And he's walking, he's nice and he's gracious. | |
| He tells the Jesse Jackson Jr., you look just like your old man. | |
| He's chatting up Sheila Jackson Lee, who won't stop chatting, but she would not shut up as he's trying to walk out, runs into Dennis Kucinich, both in and out, telling Bush, God bless you, Mr. President, and so forth and so on, and in warm embraces Tom Harkin out in the hall after the thing is all over, uh, with Russ Feingold doing the same thing. | |
| And I'm sorry, I don't buy it. | |
| Some something here is not wrong. | |
| One of these two situations is phony. | |
| Either last night when their professed love, respect, and admiration for George Bush is phony or their behavior every day of the week other than last night, every day of the year other than last night is phony. | |
| But it's just it's unseemly to me. | |
| It is not natural, and I don't want to hear well, it's all about the collegiality, Rush. | |
| It's a state of the union show. | |
| Everybody stands up and applauds. | |
| Collegiality trying to put forth the image that we're unified as a country. | |
| Fine. | |
| Does it work? | |
| The Democrats and a bunch of Republicans today are back at it, complaining and whining and moaning about the Iraq policy. | |
| There's no plan. | |
| Chuck Hagel lost it uh during a Senate committee today. | |
| We've got the audio soundbite of this coming up. | |
| Uh it just I don't know, whole thing, it it whatever else happened, it it just it sort of sours the occasion for me. | |
| I thought one of the best parts last night when Bush introduces these real people heroes. | |
| The uh military personnel, uh the the woman that was an entrepreneur had her daughter there, uh the subway hero from New York, Wayne Autry, uh who was a highlight of the night for me. | |
| This guy gets introduced by Bush, he stands up and starts pointing at Bush, yo to man, you to man, and accepting all these accolades, just a real guy. | |
| And he was uh it was it was it was great, and Bush was amused by it, you can see it on his face. | |
| But I'll tell you something. | |
| The I and I I have taken uh I don't care, I'm just I'm just illustrating this to make the point. | |
| I've taken a lot of grief uh from people, even some of you who are quote unquote fans, supporters, listeners. | |
| When I have openly said the Democrats are invested in defeat, and some of you have written the find another way to say it. | |
| You're not gonna convince the American people that Democrats want us to lose. | |
| Well, I'm not gonna change the way I talk about it, certainly not after last night, when the president absolutely mentions that what this is all about is forging on to victory. | |
| Half of that room sat still. | |
| Half of that room did not applaud. | |
| Nancy Pelosi didn't make a move other than her dancing eyes. | |
| Now you can you can be critical of me for being uh too direct or whatever you think, brazen, but I just ask you to look at the video from last night if you saw it. | |
| The concept of victory is mentioned, and they sat still, and some of them had dour looks on their faces, such as Mrs. Clinton. | |
| Try as much as she can. | |
| She just can't pull off warm. | |
| She just she just can't. | |
| You look at her and you feel like, my gosh, I'm in one flu over the cuckoo's nest, and there's Nurse Ratchet following me. | |
| I can't get away from her. | |
| Now, you might say, okay, Rush, well, why do they want to lose? | |
| Well, look at have you have you noticed the latest that they're talking about? | |
| They now want us to start withdrawing in four months. | |
| Well, let's count four months. | |
| February, March, April, May. | |
| Hmm. | |
| May. | |
| What's interesting about May? | |
| Well, May happens to be the date, the month that General Preus says that we will begin to see signs of success or failure in this new surge by May. | |
| So they want us to pull out before there is even an opportunity for the surge to work. | |
| But see, it's not really about calendars, it's all about politics. | |
| Folks, here's the dirty little secret. | |
| Democrats cannot afford for this country to win this war now. | |
| They just after the position they've taken here. | |
| Uh the position that it's irr it's an unjust war, that Bush lied, that this is not even necessary, that Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11. | |
| I don't have to go through the whole litany for you. | |
| They have been invested in defeat. | |
| They've done what they can to sabotage victory over this enemy. | |
| They've done it consistently, they do it loudly. | |
| And they've they've and they've they've broken ranks with victory a long time ago. | |
| They've broken ranks with their own votes to support this war long ago. | |
| It is well understood where they're where they come from. | |
| And it's well understood by even average people that the Democrats are trying to get us out of there before any sense of victory has a chance. | |
| Especially with this latest strategy of sending reinforcements. | |
| Why would this be? | |
| Why is it not about the calendar? | |
| Why is it about politics? | |
| If this goes well, if Baghdad gets stabilized and Prey has said, we're going to do this, it's worked before, he said we've we've we uh pulled this off in uh Mosul, we've pulled it off a couple other places. | |
| And it's got a chance to work if it works. | |
| Can you imagine in 2008 as the presidential uh uh race uh is uh heating up and coalescing? | |
| And imagine if the stories coming out of Iraq are a hundred and eighty degrees different than that they are today. | |
| What if we're hearing and reading headlines like snapping victory from the jaws of defeat? | |
| What if Iraq and Baghdad in another two years end up tamed? | |
| What if this works? | |
| They are cooked. | |
| They are doomed. | |
| They cannot permit this. | |
| They cannot allow this to work, not after the position they have taken. | |
| And they also know, if you watched last night, the president mentions the concept of victory. | |
| And one of the greatest lines last night, by the way, was whatever you voted for, looking at members of Congress, whatever you voted for in this war, you didn't vote for failure. | |
| That's right. | |
| They didn't back then. | |
| Now they're invested in it. | |
| And when the concept of victory is mentioned and they sit still, they don't stand up and they don't applaud. | |
| The people watching this don't have to hear it from people like me. | |
| You they they saw it. | |
| They can't afford to applaud victory. | |
| Every time the troops were mentioned, they stood up and they rabidly applauded that. | |
| But if victory and the troops are mentioned at the same time, psh sat still. | |
| If they had if they had applauded victory, it would have destroyed everything they've been trying to do the past year, oriented toward troop withdrawal redeployment, whatever they want to call it. | |
| Plus, they would have started riots out there amongst factions of their um of their base. | |
| Anyway, a little long, quick timeout. | |
| We'll be back and continue. | |
| We got audio soundbites going at twenty-five of them here so far, and we're still putting together. | |
| You know, on Fox last night, I don't know if other networks did this. | |
| First time I'd ever seen it is the president's walking out after the State of the Union speech. | |
| They left the microphones on all the way up the aisle and out into the hallway outside the House chamber. | |
| And you could hear the president talking to people and people talking to him as he was signing autographs. | |
| Uh and and it was for me a first. | |
| And Fox wisely shut up. | |
| They uh they they got everybody out of the way, and it went on for like 10 or 12 minutes. | |
| And to me it was something new, and it was wow, look at this. | |
| And it it it would be able to hear what people are saying to the guy, especially from a Democratic side of the aisle, uh, it it was it presented even a more stark contrast to the daily dose of venomous rage and hatred we get from these people about George Bush to the way they acted last night. | |
| Anyway, uh sit tight, we're coming right back. | |
| Rush Limbaugh, America's real anchorman, truth detector, doctor of democracy, radio rock and tour, general all-round good guy, and harmless lovable little fuzzball serving humanity here on the uh EIB network. | |
| You know, I think uh as people assessed this last night, the human aspect of this sometimes gets overlooked, certainly by the uh drive-by media. | |
| Uh in many ways, uh President Bush was magnificent uh last night, and some people might think that it uh given circumstances that it uh could have been one of his finest hours. | |
| You know, we don't think about these things much. | |
| Well, I shouldn't say that. | |
| I'm sure some of you do. | |
| But very few of us can understand what daily life for George W. Bush is like and all about. | |
| I mean, we all are seeking happiness, and we all pursuing it. | |
| We all want contentment, uh, we all want to be liked, all you know, if any of these normal human emotions. | |
| Uh none of us ever pull that off, of course, because it's impossible. | |
| But here is a man who life is lived in public, every president's life is, and he's no different than any other president here in this sense, other than the ways I'm going to mention here in just a second. | |
| But vilified countless times a day. | |
| Ask yourself how you'd hold up under it. | |
| And I know you can say and you'd be right. | |
| But I look, Rush, I'm not seeking that, and he is. | |
| He wanted to be president, he wanted to be power, you of the power, and you know uh that he knows the rules that that it comes with it. | |
| Yeah, but still, they're all human beings. | |
| I'm leading up to somewhere with this or something with this. | |
| People are still human beings in the end, and I don't care who you are. | |
| I don't care how much power you've got, unless you're a dictator, um, you do not, as a human being, want to go through life being hated and despised and having things misstated about you and your character constantly maligned and this sort of thing. | |
| Uh that's that's that's you may sign up for the power of being president because you want to change the country for good. | |
| You believe in the things you believe in, you think the country can't do without you, that kind of ego is necessary, somebody to put up with all this, but it's still it can't be easy, and most of us would crack under it. | |
| Most of us was, I don't want to deal with this, and we'd slink back into a normal existence where nobody cares what we do or comments, certainly not publicly and so forth and so on. | |
| In that circumstance, you have the president showing up last night in what was a lion's den. | |
| There were hopes and dreams and expectations that he would crumble as a human being last night. | |
| Make no mistake about it, my friends. | |
| The drive-by media was hoping, and they still hope that they can crack this man's spirit and his emotions and his resolve and his confidence, and they hope to make that happen publicly. | |
| And they were hoping that last night Bush would finally realize just how ostracized and isolated he is and admit that he's made all kinds of mistakes and beg people's forgiveness and so forth, and he did just the opposite. | |
| He went into a room that is now controlled and dominated by Democrats. | |
| He went into that room during a crucial moment in the war on terror. | |
| Not just the war in Iraq, a crucial moment in the war on terror. | |
| He went into that room last night knowing that the left and the Democrats are emboldened beyond uh uh even their normal arrogance and condescension. | |
| He went into that room knowing that there's a bunch of wobbly need linguine-spined Republicans that are willing to sell him out within five minutes of his departure last night. | |
| He went into that room with a dozen odd sharks circling the room, circling in the waters for his job in 2008. | |
| And yet, take away the well, you can't take away the substance of the specifics, and yet he ended up dominating the room. | |
| He ended up controlling the room. | |
| He ended up getting the same kind of applause that presidents always do. | |
| Uh and he got his message out, and he didn't buckle, and he didn't waver on the thing that matters to him the most, and that's this nation's national security and defense. | |
| And he put the Democrats on the spot, and he forced them to sit on their hands when he mentioned the concept of victory, not just in Iraq, but in the war on terror. | |
| And then the guests of the first ladies sitting up in the uh in the gallery there added to the warmth of the night. | |
| He opened up with his uh classy warmth and graciousness and uh introduction of Nancy Pelosi and making her the focal point of the beginning of a State of the Union. | |
| It was the kind of class that we have yet to see from anybody in the Democrat Party today in elected positions. | |
| They simply aren't capable of it. | |
| They are too enraged, they are too twisted with with uh uh just venom, uh and so in light of all these circumstances, and uh and you could by the way see the proof of what I am saying if you wanted to waste your time after the speech and watch the post-speech analysis and commentary. | |
| Almost universally, drive-by media commentators on cable news had to begrudgingly, wow, this is far better than we expect. | |
| Why, this I I thought this guy would come in and crumble and be an emotional vegetable. | |
| He knows the country hates him, he knows uh we hate him, he knows they hate the war in Iraq, and they were stunned. | |
| They did not get what they wanted. | |
| In fact, the post-speech polls uh they were pretty positive too. | |
| In terms of people who watched the speech, it was so ridiculous that somebody, some CBS poster, I'm not sure who we got the video here, it's coming up. | |
| It was Bill Plant, had to talk about, well, but our poll is only a people who watch the speech. | |
| Even if it had to report the good news in the poll, but it is that it's only, remember now, this poll is only of people who watch the speech. | |
| Well, Bill, what good would a poll be of people who didn't watch the speech or what they thought of it? | |
| This is the kind of uh uh twisted logic and position that the drive-bys were in last night, uh, trying to explain their own polls. | |
| Bill Schneider did another masterful job of trying to dilute the effect of the upbeat nature of the post-speech polls, uh, as he is uh as he's wont to do. | |
| So overall, I think it was uh it was uh in terms of what people's expectations were. | |
| I mean, you know, going into last night, how many of you get the impression as you watch a news every day and just look at things, the whole thing's disintegrating in front of our eyes. | |
| That there's no cement, that there's no glue holding anything together, just seems like a bunch of renegades off the reservation running around on their own and uh expected last night to be seminally chaotic, and it wasn't. | |
| We'll be back. | |
| Your phone calls, audio sound bites coming right up. | |
| Mike, I'm not sure the IFB's working. | |
| Stand by audio soundbite number three. | |
| We have news on the minimum wage bill. | |
| The Senate has just rejected an effort to pass a minimum wage bill without accompanying tax cuts. | |
| Uh, House passed their minimum wage uh increase, and it went over to the Senate, and the Senate said, Well, we want to want some uh tax cuts for small businesses in there to help them defray the increased cost of the minimum wage. | |
| House Democrats says, screw that. | |
| I mean, that's never gonna happen. | |
| We're not gonna put a pass a minimum wage bill with uh tax uh tax cuts in it. | |
| The Senate said, Well, if you're not gonna pass a minimum wage increase with tax cuts, then there isn't gonna be a minimum wage bill. | |
| And that's what the Senate voted. | |
| So uh this I I asked, you know, early on, how long will it be before uh Dingy Harry uh becomes Nancy Pelosi's biggest thorn and she stops speaking to him? | |
| Uh she's not gonna like this. | |
| She's Queen B. Senate's supposed to bow down to what the House does. | |
| Make no mistake about it. | |
| I mean, now they are. | |
| I'm not talking about constitutionally. | |
| I'm thinking she's of the mind that you know the people elected the House and the House gonna dictate these things. | |
| Uh, although she knows that it needs sixty votes for anything in the Senate, nobody's gonna get sixty votes on something like this. | |
| So it'll have to go to a conference committee, and uh the question now is will the House cave on tax cuts for small business. | |
| You know, they've put themselves out there. | |
| They're praising themselves for already raising the minimum wage, even though the bill isn't even done. | |
| Uh so you think, well, maybe they're gonna have to cave and there will be a tax cut for small businesses in order for the Democrats to get their minimum wage increase. | |
| Are you people aware of how sensitive the Democrats are if you say Democrat Party, not Democratic Party? | |
| You know, they love it to be called Democratic Party because of the subliminal connotation to Democratic, i.e. | |
| fair. | |
| Um, but they are called Democrats. | |
| They are not called Democratics. | |
| And so uh people have started calling them a Democrat Party. | |
| It really upsets them. | |
| Uh last night on uh on on CNN, Anderson Cooper had the forehead. | |
| Paul Bagala on asked him what he thought of this. | |
| He congratulated the new Democrat majority, as he said. | |
| Now the White House transcript says democratic. | |
| There is a difference. | |
| My party's the Democratic Party. | |
| But the sort of kook right, not the responsible Republicans, but the fringe, the Rush Slimbaugh crowd likes to call my party the Democrat Party. | |
| They think it's some sort of an insult or something, and frankly, yeah, I guess it is insulting. | |
| So it's an insult. | |
| We just know you guys don't like it. | |
| I think being a Democrat would be insulting, but that's another thing. | |
| Anyway, did you hear, you know, there's this big argument going on between uh uh Fox News, CNN, over the Insight Magazine story that uh supposedly a Barack Obama was raised as a Muslim uh for some years when he was a single-digit guy of four or five, six years old, whatever. | |
| Uh and CNN just went out on they they sent a reporter over there and they've been lambasting Fox for discussing news rather than reporting the news. | |
| CNN says we report the news. | |
| Uh there's no truth to this story whatsoever. | |
| Insight magazine, part of the Washington Times, Sun Young Moon, it's just outrageous that Fox would devote a whole day to this. | |
| Well, the editors at Insight said, wait a minute, wait a minute, go back and read our story. | |
| We never said it. | |
| We reported that Hillary Clinton's camp is saying it. | |
| Now, I I told you that Hillary Clinton is gonna s it won't be long, systematically start to dismantle Barack Obama and make it look like the Republicans are doing it. | |
| This is a good example of that. | |
| Insight magazine simply reported, there she is up there on TV. | |
| You tell me that that looks warm, sitting right there behind uh Barack Obama. | |
| You know, if he would move a little to the right, uh his ear there would cover half her face. | |
| Somebody should have told him that. | |
| But I guess nobody got to him on the staging of sitting in front of Mrs. Clinton. | |
| At any rate. | |
| Insight magazine says, Well, we didn't we didn't assert it. | |
| We said this is Hillary Clinton's people are putting this out. | |
| Anyway, the Fox News channel issued a press release. | |
| This is this is fabulous. | |
| A Fox News spokeswoman, Irina Brigante, said that CNN was mainly looking for publicity and attacking its uh higher rated rival, the Fox News Channel of Anderson Cooper. | |
| She said uh this is just yet another cry for attention from the Paris Hilton of television news, Anderson Cooper. | |
| What a line. | |
| What a fabulous line. | |
| All right, to the phones. | |
| You've been patient long enough. | |
| Matthews, Virginia, this is Joe. | |
| Welcome, sir, to the EIB network. | |
| Great to have you with us. | |
| Tommy, great to be on your show. | |
| Thank you very much. | |
| You bet. | |
| After your uh last segment, though, uh giving uh kudos to the president uh and his speech, I'm not sure I can criticize him, but I do have some criticisms as a conservative. | |
| Now wait a minute now. | |
| Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute. | |
| I made it plain I was not going to talk specifics in my opening comments, is gonna wait for specifics for you all to weigh in because once I say something about it, uh there's nothing left to be said. | |
| If you and you're gonna you want to go get specifics. | |
| I'm I talked some specifics about the war, but the domestic stuff, I have some problems with it, but I was gonna wait for the program to unfold and let you all have your say before I shut you out. | |
| Here's my here's my specifics. | |
| Yes. | |
| He rolled on climate change, he rolled on the workers' program, we're going to have amnesty. | |
| And he rolled like his father did on taxes. | |
| We're gonna get taxed on health benefits. | |
| Now, any one of those things is a is a show in itself, but let me tell you about the taxes. | |
| If you're a producer, like I am, you know, I I I go out and work and I produce things and say my salary is uh uh middle class, which I am, and I get health benefits as part of my salary, they're gonna get taxed because I'm not gonna make a little more than the fifteen thousand he's gonna give us uh write-off on. | |
| Well, if it uh if it's a family of four, let me tell you, health benefits are more than that. | |
| And let me just go ahead and buy my own insurance. | |
| I'd like to do that. | |
| Well, that's the plan. | |
| And if you do, you're gonna get a deduction for it. | |
| Just as the stat just as the standard exemption for kids is. | |
| Yeah, but uh my company provides help. | |
| And that company provides help more than fifteen thousand dollars, and that's gonna get taxed. | |
| No, no, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. | |
| Hold it a second. | |
| You no, you you you're not gonna be in both circumstances. | |
| If you go buy your own health insurance, you're not gonna be employed or enrolled in an employer health care plan. | |
| Yeah, but I'm not thinking I'm not gonna get that uh salary either. | |
| You you recognize that health benefits are part of your salary. | |
| Well, y I do. | |
| Yes, me but. | |
| But it's it's not part of your take-home pay, it's you never see it. | |
| Well, no, no, no, no. | |
| It's part of your take home pay. | |
| You d you don't get it cash, but it's part of your take home pay. | |
| No, it's not. | |
| I don't have to I don't have to call out that bill later on. | |
| Take home pay is what your paycheck is. | |
| Other benefits you never see, it costs the employer that much to hire you, but you have no choice over the expenditure of that money you never you never see. | |
| Well, let's look at it this way. | |
| If I were offered a job, say, by a company that gave me full health benefits, and that was in an addition to my salary of a hundred thousand dollars, and another company gave me a hundred thousand dollar salary with no health benefits, and I had to fork it out of my own pocket. | |
| What what which com which job would I take? | |
| Well, that's a very interesting question. | |
| You bet provides an incredible insight. | |
| You bet. | |
| That's because a lot of people don't consider health benefits and all the other ancillary things to your salary as being salary. | |
| See, that's that's the baloney part of it. | |
| Here's here's the the problem that we face. | |
| The problem with particularly with health care. | |
| And by the way, I must tell you that if a Democrat had proposed this plan last night, the drive by media, and everyone would be all over it. | |
| You know, we keep clamoring in this country for new ideas. | |
| We you know nobody wants Hillary care. | |
| Do you want national health care run by the government? | |
| Absolutely not. | |
| I would just like to do this by myself in the marketplace. | |
| Well, that's the that's the Bush plan. | |
| Well, not quite. | |
| Yes, it is. | |
| You're you're you're you're it's it exactly is. | |
| And it the Democrats are saying it's dead on arrival precisely because it would involve the free market and market forces. | |
| It would take the employer relationship out of it for those who opted out of it. | |
| There's no requirement that you do either. | |
| It's up to you to choose. | |
| My gosh, freedom. | |
| How about that? | |
| A little liberty through. | |
| The Democrats, in fact, the Democrats are today talking about how can they destroy the employer-based health care? | |
| Well, you're going to because you're going to have the government run the whole thing. | |
| Yeah, well, I don't want the government to run a whole thing. | |
| And getting into the free market is not still not part of his plan. | |
| We can't sit here and complain and moan about guys, there's no new ideas on health care social. | |
| A genuine new idea. | |
| The Democrats aren't even willing to debate it. | |
| Well, of course not. | |
| They're not going to debate any of this stuff unless it's Hillary plan or government plan. | |
| Yet you call here and you want to dump on Bush. | |
| I'm not dumping on him. | |
| Yes, I am. | |
| I'm dumping on him because this is a tax. | |
| This is a tax event. | |
| I'm sorry, Rush, I don't agree with it. | |
| It's a tax event. | |
| It could be a tax look. | |
| Look at let's let's let's run through the details of this. | |
| And there are some people that have fears that that this is going to end up uh raising taxes along the line. | |
| Uh any time Washington does anything, that's a legitimate fear to have. | |
| You better. | |
| And a legitimate suspicion to have. | |
| Um but the health care system as it is now is out of whack for two reasons. | |
| A, the customer, the patient, doesn't pay for anything. | |
| And the patient, secondly, thus assumes it's all free. | |
| They assume the employer coverage that it gets as a benefit. | |
| Well, it's uh even though they don't see the money, it's good. | |
| It's a f it's free. | |
| Health care is free, other than the copay and the deductible and so forth. | |
| It basically free. | |
| But back to my example. | |
| So so if they if the guy was getting there. | |
| If the guys didn't give me my uh salary increase in lieu of health plan, what happens then? | |
| You see, they have to give me another twenty twenty thousand, twenty-five thousand dollars. | |
| Then thousand dollars so I can buy it in the market. | |
| Then they're buying it, not you. | |
| No, no, no, no. | |
| And under his health care, I go out to the market. | |
| Yes. | |
| You've got to pay for it to go. | |
| Yes, you do. | |
| Yes, you one of the underlying theories here is that there are people enrolled in health care plans that are far more than they need. | |
| They are lavish beyond what's necessary for normal everyday health care. | |
| Catastrophic is something else entirely. | |
| The point here is to get people buying their own health insurance like you buy your own car, like you rent your own hotel rooms, uh, like you shop at the mall. | |
| And when you do this, theoretically, you're gonna shop price. | |
| Mm-hmm. | |
| When you're paying for it yourself, this will bring competition into the mix and reduce prices. | |
| And in exchange for whatever you and and by the way, health savings accounts will be part of this. | |
| There still has to be a transition from the company paying this to the company paying for health care to the company paying salary. | |
| Sure. | |
| And that's gonna be the tough part to sell it. | |
| Nothing like this ever happens from a standing start. | |
| Uh uh, you know, there's of course there's gonna be a phase in if this thing ever saw the light of day. | |
| Look, I uh I'm gonna try to explain this to you one more time. | |
| I've got to take a break, though. | |
| Can you hang on? | |
| All right. | |
| All right. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Be right back. | |
| Stay with us, though. | |
| All right, we're back now to Joe and Matthews, Virginia. | |
| By the way, you know, Joe, your state's not producing some winners lately here. | |
| Jim Webb. | |
| Yeah, I know the response last night. | |
| My gosh. | |
| Uh well, we just had uh the other one go into the other column, too. | |
| Yeah, well, I know. | |
| There's no question a Democrats. | |
| I mean, this is who the governor gave the uh the governor, Tim Kane gave the response to something a year ago. | |
| Yeah, right. | |
| Um, it was not look, here's the way this is gonna work. | |
| This is this is the plan as it's offered, and as you know, if this were ever to be debated, and Fortney Pete Stark, the House Committee that would look at it's dead, he's not even gonna conduct hearings. | |
| He's not he's not even gonna let they're gonna open the book on it. | |
| But so this is all theoretical and academic here. | |
| Uh but but it in political sense it May not be. | |
| The Democrats, you know, the standing in the way of something here. | |
| Big idea, new idea. | |
| People say I'm tired of the same old, same old. | |
| The way this will work is. | |
| You go out, you family four, you go out and buy your own health insurance, and all of the in uh uh attached market force results occur for people who don't do that. | |
| And by the way, you get a a tax deduction for the total amount. | |
| No 15K. | |
| Well, you get an No, no, you're no wait just hold on a minute. | |
| I'm gonna get there to these two. | |
| You're combining two things that are separate. | |
| So you you um you get an exemption just like the standard exemption uh for for your for your kids. | |
| Now for people who don't do that, Joe, who stay in their employer funded health care plan, they are the ones who will get taxed on every dollar above $15,000 worth of benefit. | |
| But you can't possibly be taxed on your employer health plan if you don't have one. | |
| If you've gone out and bought your own. | |
| To that point. | |
| Now, we were talking about they're gonna somebody's gonna have to give me the additional 15K, right? | |
| To even it out. | |
| The company's no longer gonna go pay, so they can give that salary. | |
| No, so that I can buy my own in the free market. | |
| Okay I know what you're saying. | |
| They're gonna get a good idea. | |
| I know what you're doing. | |
| That's that's that's not that's where they help that's where the health savings account comes in. | |
| The health savings account does that in a way, but you're not gonna be equally your health savings account's gonna be based on your health care expenditures, not so much what the sum total of your employee benefits package is. | |
| Look. | |
| But look, listen, Joe, I wish you could hear you the way I hear you. | |
| All you're concerned is what somebody's gonna give you. | |
| And and and you know, you this is the it look it. | |
| If you're gonna consider the value of your health care plan from your employer to be income, then you gotta accept the concept that it is taxable, which it isn't now. | |
| And I've predicted that it would become taxable for many, many moons now. | |
| Little uh little Indian lingo there. | |
| That what what what you are illustrating, and I don't mean this personally or even negative, the the big problem with this, we have become a nation. | |
| We are what so many of us uh have become a nation that expects and now even demands that government do things for us. | |
| And that's one of the problems I had with the with the domestic portion of the speech last night. | |
| I thought it and all State of the Union speeches do this, but the first half of this speech was the government's gonna do this for you, so you don't have to do it. | |
| Government's gonna do that, government's gonna do this, they're gonna make sure you're drive less, you know, all the and and and this creates expectations and demands on part uh on the part of average citizen, not just people who are in entitlement programs. | |
| Uh and you know, it's that's why it's tough to reduce these things. | |
| We've got a health care system and everybody whines and moans about, while at the same time they think it's free. | |
| Other than the copay and the uh deduction. | |
| Always have to throw that in there. | |
| And then when anybody starts talking about taking away the worst health care plan, they screw you can't take my health care away. | |
| The concept of doing something on your own for yourself can enrage people when the concept has been established for decades that somebody else is gonna do it for you, and that it's somebody else's responsibility, like your employer or like the government. | |
| And so the the real problem that anybody who wants to propose a plan like this is going to have is that when people are told, you know what, go do it yourself. | |
| How dare you tell me that? | |
| Do it myself. | |
| What do you mean? | |
| Do you know how expensive it is? | |
| What do you mean go do it myself? | |
| And that worries me about the softness and the passivity of the uh of the country. | |
| Um, I know, understand. | |
| I mentioned this yesterday when talking about the going out and buying health insurance isn't cheap. | |
| Uh who has the money lying around to do that? | |
| I mean, you still have to spend it before you get the tax deduction. | |
| Hello, health savings accounts. | |
| But you have to understand what this is about. | |
| You folks, you're gonna have to do one of two things. | |
| Either stop griping about how expensive health care is, while it's apparently free to you, or roll your sleeves up and understand to get prices down. | |
| It's gonna take a little self-involvement responsibility. | |
| Sorry, didn't mean to insult you. | |
| Boston Globe just reported that John Kerry will not seek the presidency. | |
| Surprise, surprise. | |
| I am stunned. | |
| John Kerry served in Vietnam, uh, by the way, but he's out for 2008. | |
| Sit tight, folks. |
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