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July 29, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
31:31
July 29, 2009, Wednesday, Hour #3
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And welcome back once again, ladies and gentlemen, your guiding light.
Rush Limbaugh pointing the way, your beacon, your rock.
Great to have you here.
Telephone number 800-282-2882 and the email address lrushbaugh at eibnet.com One more thing here about all this healthcare stuff that we have learned today.
What could be done in terms of government policy to expand the use of health savings accounts, which are tax-free savings to be used for health care and tax credits that allow taxpayers to keep, say, $10,000 a year to be used to purchase private policies.
We have the people giving the government giving people $4,500 a year to trade in used cars.
It's a direct payment.
Why not give them some money for their own health savings?
The health savings account is very simple.
They give you the money.
And they're basically returning yours to you in the first place because they don't have any money other than printing it without taxing you.
So they give you $5,000, $10,000 a year.
You buy the health insurance you want.
You get to keep that which you don't spend.
It incentivizes shopping.
It incentivizes cost analysis.
And it puts the patient back in charge of the payment system.
And we're going to give people $4,500 a year to trade in their clunkers and go out and buy Obama mobiles.
We are giving people direct payments for all kinds of things.
Look at it this way.
If we move more toward individual policies, meaning you have your own policy that you buy, where the government lets taxpayers keep more of their money if they purchase their own policies or put it, say, in an expanded health savings account, just like think of it as your 401k.
Think of it as a 401k for health coverage.
Then employers would have more money to increase pay, compensation, salaries.
And you'd have more money to purchase a health plan that's more conducive to your particular situation rather than to have to find a group plan that somewhat fits, but maybe not all that you want.
Now, Obama opposes all of this because he wants to build a massive monument to himself.
That is what Washington is all about, monuments, not individual liberty.
And Obama is building a massive monument to himself with this disaster of a plan.
There are so many smart ways to do this, but they don't involve the government, and that won't do because then they can't regulate your behavior and tax you for it.
Stop and think of this.
Let's just go back to the 60s and let's start with the war on poverty and the great society.
Every one of these massive government social programs were authored by liberal Democrats.
In fact, do you know who invented the whole concept of the HMO, the health maintenance organization?
That would be one senator, Ted Kennedy.
One of the first things he did back in the 60s, Ted Kennedy devised as a government plan, the HMO.
25 years later, 30 years later, there's Ted Kennedy on the floor of the Senate ripping the hell out of HMOs, demonizing HMOs, making them out to be the bad guy he created them.
Now, my point here is virtually every program the liberals created.
I don't want to hear about their great intentions.
I want to look at results, and every one of them they create needs reform.
They pass laws.
They establish things and then they come around when they're falling apart and blame whoever is in this plan or program for not making it work when it was devised and put together in a flawed way in the first place.
So every one of these plans, every one of these ideas needs reform and then reform and then reform.
And we get candidates saying, I'm a reformer and we're going to reform this, we're going to reform that.
No, you're just going to break it more.
Take something that wasn't really not working all that well or wasn't broken and say we got to fix it.
This is the one group of people that comes along, breaks things when they fix them, gets mad at somebody else for supposedly doing the breaking, and then we need to reform.
Everything they do, every plan they put in never works.
It never costs what they say it's going to cost.
It always needs to be reformed.
And they end, it's just like, it's just like Katrina.
Congress getting to sit by like spectators, like they had nothing to do with the levee repair program down in New Orleans.
It just gets extremely frustrating.
And now we've got this egomaniac building monuments to himself in Washington, D.C., which is what this is all about.
Plus his, I mean, he's a radical.
He's a leftist.
I mean, he wants to control your life.
You are just, you're chump change.
You're an idiot.
He's the smart guy.
He knows better what's for you and for everybody else.
It's insulting.
It's just.
Here's another thing.
We've had a homeless problem for who knows how long.
And who's been in charge of dealing with it?
And all it's done has gotten worse and worse and worse.
And that leads us to Clarence Frogman Henry and an unbelievable homeless update.
Well, here's the headline.
Keep the song going, Marian.
The headline, New York City sending homeless to Georgia.
South Carolina, the story is in the Augusta, Georgia Chronicle.
They used to just move them down to the Bowery.
Now they're getting them out of town.
1956 vocal portrayal here.
Clarence Frogman Henry.
Up next, Clarence Frogman Henry as a frog.
All right, finale time.
From the Augusta, Georgia, I'm sorry, the Augusta.
Augusta, Georgia Chronicle.
New York City is buying one-way plane tickets for homeless families to leave the city.
Dozens of the families have landed in Georgia and in South Carolina.
It's part of a Bloomberg administration program to keep the homeless out of the expensive shelter system.
Why?
Because it costs the city $36,000 a year per family to keep them in the expensive shelter system.
More than 550 families have left New York since 2007 on one-way tickets.
All it takes is for a relative to agree to take them in.
Families have been sent to 24 states and five continents.
Puerto Rico is the most popular destination.
Georgia is now home to 38 of these families.
South Carolina, final destination for 31 families, relocated with a program.
Florida has taken in 100 of them, and 47 more now call North Carolina home.
Now, yeah, I know the families agreed to take them and so forth.
And I kind of hid that little tidbit from you throughout the, but think of this.
They have a shelter program.
New York City has a shelter program.
They've got a program to deal with this.
And they're giving these people one-way tickets out of town.
I wonder if they give them any cupcakes for the plane flight.
Treasuries fell after an auction of five-year government debt saw another tepid response.
Investors getting a yield of 2.689% on a swell of $39 billion in supply.
I told you yesterday they're going to be selling $200 billion or borrowing.
We're trying to get people to borrow $200 billion in government debt this week.
And the demand for it was unexpectedly low.
What do you mean, unexpectedly low?
And here's one of the taglines in this story.
And an unexpectedly sharp fall in new orders for long-lasting goods, durable goods, in June illustrated to investors the economy remains in dire straits.
And yet Obama's out there in North Carolina, hey, the end of the recession's begun.
How does the end of anything begin?
The end is the end.
It's either ended or it hasn't.
The end of the recession means economic growth is taking place.
It's not.
We can't sell a debt.
Any bragging about the economy out there?
An unexpectedly sharp fall in new orders for durable goods in June.
Lets everybody know the economy remains in dire straits.
Sarah, somewhere.
This is a trend I'm not enjoying seeing here.
We have more people calling who do not want it known precisely where they are.
This is Sarah lurking in parts unknown in Minnesota.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
Thanks so much for taking my call.
Yes, madam.
Well, I wanted to tell you that I've been a longtime listener.
This is my first time calling any national talk show.
But after hearing Barney Frank's comments on Monday, I just can't sit back anymore.
I really think I've reached my limit.
Which comment was that where it's just not his job to help you make money?
That's exactly right.
Yeah.
That comment just really incensed me more than anything I've heard lately because we have noticed my husband and I own and operate a small business in Minnesota.
It's a restaurant.
With the recent minimum wage increase, we are forced to give a raise to our tipped employees, most of whom, all of whom, make well over $30,000 to $40,000 a year just in tips alone.
And because of that, you know, we've had, we're a luxury business.
We've had a down downturn in our business because of the economy.
We were forced to close for a couple weeks due to flooding this spring.
We reopened from that.
We are struggling to keep our head above water.
And with this new increase that was not necessary, it feels like we are becoming enslaved to working in our business.
Yes, it was necessary to get Democrat vote.
Yeah, I get that.
It's very discouraging.
We have been in this business for nine years.
We have been honored to be employees.
We have run out of business and treated our employees like family.
And at this point, we are finding ourselves looking for ways to extricate ourselves from the burden of employership.
So what are you going to do?
I don't know.
I'm so upset.
You know, we are really, we've already this year had to cut two full-time salary positions with benefits equal to over $100,000.
You have to understand something, and I'm sure you may not put it in his terms, but once I explain it to you, Sarah, you're going to understand it.
People like Barney Frank, you're a demon.
You are a villain.
You are raping your workers.
You are not fair to them.
That's why they have to raise the minimum wage so that you will make them or pay them something they can live on because you are dastardly.
You're an employer.
You're a business owner and you take it all for yourself and you don't care about your employees.
And this is what Democrats have been telling their voters for years.
So the minimum wage comes along to punish you.
Barney Frank can say it's not, we're not here to help you make money, but he certainly is there to help you give it away when it's unwarranted.
And of course, always it's the unintended consequences that always end up bugging everybody.
Now, let me find a story here.
And I'm going to do this fat stuff before I end the program today, but I've got to find, ah, it's going to be in this stack.
Hang on out there, folks.
Hang on just a second.
It's from a weekly standard blog.
And I got this last night.
I didn't print the second page, so I can't credit the guy who wrote it.
I'm sorry about that.
Oh, maybe I did.
Nope, I didn't.
This is from the blog at the Weekly Standard.
Remember when it was rumored that some adult beverages in New York City were costing as much as $10?
Now, of course, cocktails can cost as much as $20 at a trendy bar, but in this economy, things couldn't possibly get worse, could they?
Well, they could, according to the beverage giant Diego.
I hope I'm pronouncing that right, D-I-A-G-E-O.
Diego owns Johnny Walker.
What else do they own?
They own, let's see, Baileys, Guinness, Smirnoff, Cuervo, Tanker Ray, Captain Morgan.
They're a big distiller of adult beverages.
Get this.
The U.S. Senate is considering a proposal that would dramatically raise what they call lifestyle taxes to pay for their health care program.
Under this proposal, you would be paying more for some of the simple things you enjoy, such as a soft drink or your favorite adult beverage.
The proposal calls for a staggering increase in federal taxes on alcoholic beverages of up to 229%.
Small businesses, your local wine, grocery, convenience stores, and restaurants will see sales plummet.
An estimated 160,000 people in the hospitality industry will lose their jobs in an industry already that's lost 540,000 jobs over the past year.
The last time the federal government raised taxes on distilled spirits, nearly 100,000 people lost their jobs.
Nearly 60% of the price you pay at the store for distilled spirits already goes for federal, state, local, and other government fees.
Do not let the government add more to an already hefty tax burden.
Now, you can go to axtaxesnotjobs.com, which elaborates on the pernicious effects of regressive taxes even further.
But these guys think that all they've got to do is raise taxes on lifestyle stuff, and the money's still going to keep coming in because you're still going to go out and do your lifestyle stuff.
And the great example here is the yacht tax, bill tax on millionaires and yachts.
And of course, people stopped buying yachts, and the people that made them got laid off.
229%, up to 229% tax increase on distilled spirits and adults.
229%, folks.
Well, I know the cigarettes, alcohol, bootlegging, and this sort of stuff.
That's it.
The unintended consequence, you know, they never look at these things in a dynamic way.
They always look at these things very statically.
The market will not change regardless of what they do, despite all the evidence of human history.
Look at you get the reason why people are making a madash, first-time homebuyers.
The reason why they're making, I know a guy.
I was talking to a guy today.
He had his house.
He's had it on the market, wanted to put it on the market, didn't do it on the market five hours.
He got the price he wanted because the government's subsidizing up to 10% of the mortgage or $8,000.
There's a tax incentive to buy a house, it's spurring activity.
If the Democrats were right about static activity, you could give away $8,000 or subsidize $8,000 a purchase, and it wouldn't matter to anybody.
It wouldn't incentivize anybody to buy, but of course it does.
By the same token, if you add $8,000 to the agreed-to-price of a house or add 10% to it as a tax, how many people are going to be rushing out to buy houses?
This isn't going to happen.
So they're raising taxes on all these lifestyle things and they do it thinking they're punishing the rich.
They're punishing our restaurant owner in Minnesota, Sarah, because she's evil.
She's a demon.
She's a business owner and she uses her employees.
She doesn't respect them.
She doesn't treat them well.
She underpays them.
This is a standard operating template that the left uses.
I'll be right back.
Sit tight.
Okay, here's that fat stuff: the fat tag.
I got two stories on this.
The first is from state-controlled CNNmoney.com.
Taxing the fat in your food is the headline.
The subhead new study argues that a tax on fattening foods could help pay for health reform and curb obesity and lower health costs.
Well, no, it won't happen.
We've cut smoking in half, if not more, and the health care costs have not decreased.
And by the way, preventive lifestyles that it doesn't, none of this has been shown to reduce costs at all.
The government is responsible for how much everything costs in this.
Healthcare costs keep growing fatter in part because Americans are too.
More than 25% of the increase in medical costs between 87 and 2001 is attributable to obesity and obesity-related conditions such as hypertension and diabetes, according to a new report from the Nonpartisan Urban Institute.
I read this about smoking 20 years ago.
Come 2015, it's estimated that 40% of American adults will be obese, which is more than double the rate 40 years ago.
And today, close to 20% of children are obese.
That's up from 4% decades ago.
Taking their cue from steep taxes on tobacco, which have helped reduce smoking rates, the health policy experts who wrote this report argue that a tax on fattening foods could not only raise a lot of revenue to paper health reform, but it also help curb obesity and thereby slow the growth in healthcare.
Taking their cue from taxes on tobacco, taxes on tobacco may be raising money for health care, but it hadn't lowered costs at all.
Is anybody telling you our health care costs have gone down anywhere, anything for any time?
Move on to the next story.
Well, depending on how it's set up, the authors of this study at the Urban Institute estimate that a 10% federal tax of fattening foods could raise up to $530 billion over 10 years.
No matter who buys them, you know what may happen?
It may just be a matter of time as part of the health care plan.
In addition to taxing fatty foods, which they're already doing in places like New York and a couple other places, you go get your fat percentage taken at your BAM-assigned doctor.
Whatever percentage body fat you have, you are taxed on that amount, whatever is above what they say it should be.
So your body fat should be no more than 10% and your body fats higher, you pay tax on it.
The doctor would be required to report the body fat content above the allowed federal limit to the IRS.
Then you go back to the doctor, and if you've lost body fat content, then your tax rate would be lowered.
Don't put anything past this bunch.
Now, this magazine that is published by Massachusetts General Hospital, it's a long piece.
I'm not going to even attempt to read the whole thing to you here.
But it's called protomag.com.
And it comes from Mass General.
And the subject of the article is this: Should obese people like smokers be barred from indulging in public places?
Should they be taxed on their habits?
Should they be targeted by public health campaigns?
Should they be shunned socially?
Banning the ugly.
In this case, the ugly happen to be fat people.
Once considered the quintessence of cool, lighting up has become a social faux pas, discouraged by withering glances and thank you for not smoking signs.
Ashtrays, once a fixture, have all but disappeared.
Manufacturers have been subjected to increased and ever more successful investigations and lawsuits.
And per capita consumption of cigarettes dropped from 4,435 in 1963 to 1,691 in 2006.
And the percentage of U.S. adults who smoke has fallen by more than half since 1965 is now about 20%.
And yet nobody's saving any money.
Nobody, it's not saving anybody.
Well, the people who are not smoking don't have to pay for the money, but in terms of healthcare costs, it has not helped, as we've documented.
So this magazine then asks, could a similarly concerted effort by government and health organizations make progress against another kind of epidemic, obesity?
So this magazine posits the idea that if you look a certain way or weigh a certain way, you're not going to be allowed in a restaurant.
There may be signs.
Obese patients not allowed entry.
Public parks, public swimming.
If you're fat, if you're a slob, you can't come in.
Then we'd have the fat police like we have the smoking police.
We still have a free society, and people are free to live the lifestyle they want, whatever the impact on themselves.
And fat is not illegal.
Being obese is not against the law.
Yet.
Exactly right.
All right, Mike and Bethesda, Maryland.
I'm glad you waited, sir.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Megadida's rush.
The Obama chair would be such a disaster.
I'm a doctor, and I wanted to tell you about the question of what kind of doctors would join HMO.
And they were doctors who couldn't get patients.
That's why they were getting someone else to send them to them.
So it would be a disaster to continue that.
and that's why it doesn't happen.
Wait a minute, I want to understand this.
There are doctors who couldn't get patients for whatever reason because they weren't any good, or they just...
Well, initially, it was a great way to get patients.
I didn't do it, but a lot of people did, and they found out there was no money in it.
You were losing money, so all the good docs who could get patients got out.
So you were just left with people who get patients who weren't very good.
Okay, so this is why Ted Kennedy began lamb basing the HMOs because the quality of care there declined.
Correct.
And then you have this bundling.
And what bundling is, is let's say as a doctor, you do three procedures.
So they bundle it until you actually only get paid for one.
So you're doing all these procedures on the patient that it might be necessary, but they'll only pay for one.
So that's a way of them doing the same thing, but instead of being an HMO, they're just bundling your payment.
Well, I still don't understand why any doctor would do this.
I can understand if at first I thought you were going to get a whole lot of patients and it was an easy way you had to advertise word of mouth.
But quality doc, why is any quality doctor going to put up with this way of earning a living?
And most docs are going to be, that's why most docs are being cash patients, or they're doing this new thing where you pay the doc $1,500 and they only take maybe 15 patients or whatever it is, and then that's it.
They close the door and they're just taking cash.
Yeah, I know that is a trend that has developed.
And if Obama died costs a little more than $1,500 to reserve a doctor to get one of those plans.
Yeah, I've heard of that happening.
That's Mike in Bethesda, Maryland.
Mike, thanks much for the call.
All this going on, the well, maybe they are hearing about this in Congress, just ignoring it.
But this is a disaster.
It's an utter disaster.
We got some interesting soundbites here on this fat stuff.
Let's go to CNN last night, Campbell Brown show.
She spoke, the National Action Against Obesity President Mimi Roth about obesity in America.
The skinny versus fat battle is heating up here.
Liberals fanning out to blame fat people for everything.
The new villain, I told you this.
Here's Campbell Brown to Mimi Roth.
Get to the heart of the problem in terms of what you think we ought to do.
If you wanted to make a nation fat, we have set our culture up to do exactly that.
It's like we're living in a brothel and no one's allowed to have sex.
Everywhere you go, there's one temptation after another.
I'm surprised there's anyone left in this country who isn't overweight.
We need to make good food, real food, produce available, cheap, accessible to everyone.
The economics of it are shifting.
Big pharma's made a bundle on obesity.
The weight loss industry has made a bundle.
Beverage and food have made a bundle.
Now we're seeing that we're picking up the tab and we're pushing back.
Holly, these people, they never change.
They just, it's none of your damn business, Mimi Roth.
It's not.
It's not costing you anything.
Foods and protein.
No, she wants cheap, affordable fruits and produce, like cheap, affordable health care.
cheap, accessible to everyone.
Well, I know, but apparently she wants later.
Some these fat people are being denied healthy foods.
And it's just whatever.
The whole thing's bullsnerdly.
This is who these people are.
Now, there was another person on the show, the Plus Magazine.
It's a large woman, editor-at-large, Mia Amber Davis.
Brown says, look, so Mia, is there, do you, a sense of blame the victim of scapegoating people who are overweight when you see a study like this?
Sizism is the last acceptable prejudice.
If you see someone who's overweight, automatically they're the reason for America's problems in the healthcare industry.
That's absolutely not true.
I know plenty of people who are normal size, who are straight size, as opposed to plus size, who have health issues.
I don't know anyone in my circle of friends, in my family, in the millions of women that I reach out to being a plus size advocate that have health issues related to being overweight.
Well, this didn't sit well with Mimi Roth.
If you're obese, you are unhealthy.
Reuters recently reported that only 8% of us don't smoke, drink moderately, eat the fruits and vegetables we're supposed to eat, and exercise regularly.
So, really, fat or thin, only 8% of us are even trying in this country.
But overweight does not mean I'm healthy.
I've been off the charts since I was 12 years old, and I'm perfectly healthy.
There's a higher incidence of infertility, pregnancy complications, I have a low sperm count, and there's even a higher incidence of birth effects when it comes to obesity.
So, don't argue me.
Argue with Darwin.
Well, you say arrogant or whatever, but this is who these people are.
Her statistics are wrong.
Only 8% of us don't smoke.
80% of us don't smoke.
Drink moderately, eat the fruits and vegetables we're supposed to eat.
Get that?
We're supposed to eat.
So, Mia Amber Davis, she starts getting back at her a little here.
I think that that's insulting, actually.
I work out four times a week, which you were supposed to be working out every day.
I'm not here to argue with you.
I'm here to say that stop blaming overweight people or obese people for America's problems.
It's not our fault.
If you are gay, you can play straight.
If you are a certain religion, you can play another religion.
You can't hide the fact that you're overweight, and nor do we want to.
I'm proud of the way I look.
I'm proud of my body.
I'm proud of all my friends and the hard work that we do to maintain our curves.
So, stop blaming us for America's health care issues because I am not a part of that plan.
The studies don't back you up, and nine times out of ten, obesity is the result of lifestyle choices.
Did you catch what this Roth BIH here said at the beginning of the bite?
You're supposed to be working out every day.
You're supposed to be working.
You're supposed to eat fruits and veggies.
You're supposed to be.
You're supposed to be.
And Mimi Roth, who nobody has ever heard of, is now the sole authority on what you ought to be doing.
I try to warn people.
This is the SUV all over again.
It's just who these people are.
Richland, Washington, Corey, great to have you.
EIB Network, hello.
Hey, Rush.
I just want to make a quick comment on the smoking and the obesity thing.
Yeah.
You know, it's kind of funny.
They put the taxes on the cigarettes and all that and drive people away from smoking.
Well, what happens when most people quit smoking?
They start packing on the pound.
So I kind of figured that that's one of the leading causes to the gain in a week.
You know, there may be some legitimacy to this.
It is a fact that people who go on diets still need that, you know, oral, or stop smoking, still need the oral stimulation activity and so forth, using their hands, using their mouths.
And so they do tend to eat more.
Yeah, so I was just kind of thinking that, you know, it just shifts from, you know, it shifts from one cost of the smoking to now they're saying it's to the obesity.
Right.
And it's none of their damn business.
Because the one thing they're wrong about is all the so-called costs we're going to save if we reduce all this activity these busybody little nannies don't like I detest these people.
I detest them.
They are standing in the way of our country's rebound in economic growth.
They are parasites.
We'll be back.
Stay with us.
And no, ladies and gentlemen, I'm not defending obesity.
I'm defending freedom and liberty.
Freedom and liberty, cornerstones of the United States.
It's not your business to tell people you don't know how to live.
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