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April 1, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:34
April 1, 2010, Thursday, Hour #2
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Time Text
Well, the latest opinion audit just arrived during the top of the hour break.
And it was very wise of my opinion auditing firm, the Sullivan Group, to delay and suspend for a while their assessment because it's now been documented to be almost always right 99.6% of the time.
It went up.
My accuracy rate went up.
It did not go down.
I was right that the Republicans should not have met with Obama at the healthcare summit.
So documented to be now almost always right 99.6% of the time.
Great to have you here, folks.
Rush Limbaugh back behind the golden EIB microphone here at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Telephone number here, 800-282-2882, email address, LRushbo at EIBNet.com.
It wasn't supposed to happen this way.
Obamacare was designed to fool you for a long, long time.
Focus on the goodies, the carrots, the talking points, and don't get blindsided by all of the taxes, bad stuff, for a while.
Hush up the costs, the real costs, to your premiums, your taxes, to job growth, and to the deficit until after the elections.
Just talk about all the good stuff that was going to happen.
All the uninsured that would be uninsured, insured.
All of the sick that would become healthy.
All of the wonderful things that were going to happen.
Your premiums being reduced by $2,500.
Most of next year's increases in healthcare premiums won't take effect until after the 2010 election because most business plans, corporate plans renew every January, so premium increases will not show up until January of 2011.
Most of the real harm won't come until after Obama's 2012 emaculation, if there is to be one.
It was dirty politics, but it was shrewd in a political sense.
I mean, to paraphrase Biden, this scheme was a big effing scheme.
But like most government schemes, unintended consequences hit the fan sooner rather than later.
And in this case, it all it took is a week.
The first multi-billion dollar disaster you were not told about is already big news.
Just one page of the 2,700 pages of Obamacare already costs at least $1 billion and up to $14 billion to businesses that are supposed to create jobs.
AT ⁇ T had to take a $1 billion charge.
Verizon, hundreds of millions.
Caterpillar, Ditto, John Deere, Valero Energy, AK Steel, and 3M announced the costs of Obamacare to their bottom lines on just one page.
And of course, the liberals and the White House and Obama, the media are furious.
The Grand Inquisitor Henry Nostrilaitis Waxman has called the companies to appear before his Inquisition.
That committee.
How dare they, how dare they tell the truth about this plan?
So what you have here, my friends, is the liberal dream, total chaos.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
If they announce the added cost, if they announce that they have to take this charge based on the tax rule that's being changed, then Henry Waxman will go after them.
If they don't announce this, then the SEC will go after them because they're not being honest and open with investors.
And something tells me this is only the beginning.
What was it, Pelosi said?
We have to pass the bill so the American people will learn what's in it.
Apparently, that was true.
Every day the American people are seeing what's in this bill.
This is just the first week.
And apparently, nobody read the bill.
Obama didn't read the bill.
He didn't care.
Nobody in Congress read the bill.
The bill was not posted and available to study even for five measly days, as promised.
So when the country's best accountants and tax attorneys working for America's best companies report the impact of a bill that Pelosi said they had to pass in order for us to know what was in it, they are deemed to be partisan liars and hauled before Congress.
And this won't work unless these companies do a stupak and sell out their principles.
I'd like to give some advice to these companies who reported, as required by law, the impact of Obamacare on the bottom line.
Learn from the oil companies the last time they were attacked by Congress.
Fire back with both barrels.
Learn from the Republicans at the propaganda summit at the Blair House.
They didn't sit there and take it.
Come prepared.
Leave as heroes.
Be clear and honest and firm because you will be embraced by the country and you will embarrass Congress, which has the lowest approval ratings in its history.
Take full advantage of this.
This is not a popular Congress, and Waxman epitomizes the old lore that politics is showbiz for the ugly.
Certainly nobody loves Henry Waxman.
Now, I know people get hauled before these committees get scared to death.
I mean, these guys can write laws to put them out of business, as the health care bill actually will accomplish when talking about the private insurance business.
But I think that the Democrats, politically speaking, if the pressure is kept on, are quickly approaching, in a political sense, room temperature here.
It's a great opportunity.
It needs to be seen as a great opportunity.
Don't back down, CEOs.
Embarrass.
Don't be like the auto company CEOs and go up there and grovel.
Look what happened to them.
Embarrass these leftists.
Set your companies free.
November is not that far away.
This Congress is not going to be in charge for long.
Don't treat them as they view themselves.
Obama, if you want to understand Obama, everything will fall in place if you just understand that he views himself as a ruler, not as a president.
And so do the Democrats on Capitol Hill and Congress and the Senate.
They view themselves as permanent rulers.
They are historically unpopular stewards working on borrowed time.
They occupy a reserved space in the universe of lies.
And that universe of lies will shrink if Americans tell the truth and don't fall victim to intimidation tactics of these kind of thugs.
Foxnews.com, the CEOs of some of the country's biggest companies are being summoned to Washington to defend claims the health care reform law would cost them millions.
A move that Republicans say amounts to intimidation.
Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, fired off letters last week to the heads of Caterpillar Verizon, ATT, and John Deere after they and other firms reported the health care overhaul would dig deep in their bottom lines.
Waxman called these estimates a matter of concern and said they appear to conflict with independent analyses, showing the law would lead to a decrease in premium costs for large companies.
Waxman called the CEOs to Washington to testify April 21st and requested full documentation from the firms dealing how they arrived at their estimates.
If you've ever heard me use the term Stalinist and you wonder what that means, you're watching it.
You guys have to come before me.
How dare you lie and embarrass the president?
How dare everybody knows we are cutting costs here.
And how dare you do this just to embarrass the president?
You come up here and you bring every bit of your financial data so we can go through it and prove you to be a liar.
Because we have independent analysts who've said that this shouldn't be happening.
So what the setup here, the setup here, there's nobody with any economic literacy whatsoever who doesn't understand the dire costs of this, the fact that insurance premiums are going to skyrocket, that there will be health care rationing, that the quality of service is going to plummet.
There's no other way this can happen.
That private insurance is going to be driven out of business.
Pelosi said last week, if they raise premiums, they're not going to be permitted in the government exchanges.
That's Stalinist.
That's certainly not the kind of thing that happens in a democracy or representative republic at all.
So when these things happen, as they are guaranteed by economic law to happen, prices go up, quality of service goes down, availability goes down, guess who's going to get to blame?
The American private sector.
That has been Obama's plan from day one.
He doesn't like the private sector.
His job is to redistribute as much wealth as he can from the private sector to people who don't work, to people he thinks are the nation's rightful owners.
The Democrats have spent years and years and years demonizing businesses, large and small, from big oil to big pharmaceutical to big retail.
I mean, take a look at their enemies list, and you'll see a business category at every stop on that list.
Because the private sector is the enemy of government wish, government desires to expand.
They want to take over the role of providing, creating dependence for as many people as possible.
So you set this all up, take years and years and years to demonize business, and then when they come out and tell the truth about what this plan is going to do to them, you blame them.
They're required by the FEC to report this.
And basically, it's the elimination of a tax break that they get on pensions, retired health care benefits they provide former employees.
There's a tax break they get for doing that.
Now, that tax break is gone.
And that's what's leading to all these new operating costs.
And if they don't report this, the SEC comes after them, says they're not being open and honest with investors.
If they do report it, as required by law, they get summoned by Henry Waxman.
But the bottom line, this wasn't supposed to happen.
We were supposed to be in sweetness and light.
We were supposed to be in shining countenance of Obamacare.
And instead, we've got utter chaos, which will play out in Obama's fame in his own way.
They've been talking about, you know, this is only the beginning of the healthcare incremental style.
We've got a long way to go.
Let's go to the audio soundbites.
Here is Joe Biden.
This is Yahoo's tech ticker website.
Said this about healthcare reform on Monday.
Everyone's entitled to adequate medical health care.
If you call that a redistribution of income, I call it being fair.
Howard Dean, March 25th, CNBC squawk box talking about healthcare reform and wealth redistribution.
The question is, in a democracy, where does the right balance between those at the top, 20% of the people do most of the consumer spending and so forth, and those at the bottom?
When it gets out of whack, as it did in the 20s and it has now, you need to do some redistribution.
This is a form of redistribution.
Ah, the truth is now coming out.
They've got the bill passed and there's nothing they think anybody can do about it.
It is redistribution of wealth.
Max Baucus, last Thursday night in Washington on Capitol Hill, after passage of the final health care reform reconciliation bill, the Democrats held a big press conference.
When it was his turn to speak, Baucus said this.
Too often, much of late, the last couple of three years, the maldistribution of income, America, has gone up way too much.
The wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy, and the middle-income class is left behind.
Wages have not kept up with the increased income of the highest-income Americans.
This legislation will have the effect of addressing that maldistribution of income in America.
I don't know if he's sober there.
He's talking about the health care bill will have the effect of addressing that maldistribution of income in America.
Folks, there's no such thing as a moderate Democrat anymore.
I don't, if it's got a D next to the name, they are the political enemy.
Claire McCaskill, last Friday morning on Mess NBC.
Do you think that Tone, though, is overconfident, considering, I mean, this is a country that still remains pretty divided over the health care bill?
When the American public understands that this is an incremental approach over years, it is going to rain in insurance companies.
It is going to help small businesses.
I think, frankly, this bill will get stronger and stronger as time goes on.
Yeah, it's going to rain in insurance companies.
It's going to destroy them.
Big insurance, the modern-day enemy and evil, helps small businesses?
It's not going to help anybody except Obama.
Bill will get stronger and stronger as time goes on.
Let's not forget the bill was endorsed heartily by El Presidente, Fidel Castro.
He loved it.
McCaskill was asked about that.
What do you think about Castro giving Obamacare his stamp of approval?
It would be better if he kept his mouth shut.
Why?
Why should Obama keep his mouth shut?
Why should Castro?
Sorry, why should I get confused?
Why should Castro keep his mouth shut?
What's the point of that?
I know that's the same thing.
Why should he keep his mouth shut?
Why is it embarrassing?
It's a great bill.
It's going to help small business.
It's going to rain in the insurance companies.
It's going to lower costs.
It's going to get everybody treated.
It's going to get everybody covered.
Why the hell not?
Democrats are lying low in their districts.
Why not celebrate this thing?
Why not?
When Castro says, at a boy, why not go, thank you?
Because he's a communist.
I know.
He's supposed to shut up, right?
Well, I don't know if it helps small businesses in Cuba.
There isn't any small business in Cuba.
Everything's been nationalized in Cuba.
You can't even get your 57 Chevy repaired.
You can't even get your Art Deco building painted.
They don't have Zilch.
Doctors are defecting from the greatest healthcare system in the world.
And now we have the endorsement of El Presidente.
And Claire McCaskill, speaking for the Democrat Party, I'd be better if he kept his mouth shut.
Back in a moment.
Having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have El Rushboe meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day.
Boeing will take a charge of $150 million due to the recent health care overhaul legislation.
They announced this yesterday.
The charge will hurt earnings by 20 cents per share in the first quarter of 2010.
Now, a lot of people are confused about this because this change, this tax deduction being taken away, doesn't go into effect till 2013, after the 2012 presidential election.
In 2013, Boeing and other companies will no longer be able to claim an income tax deduction related to certain prescription drug benefits for retirees.
Now, ATT has a bunch of retirees, which is why their charge is a billion dollars.
But accounting rules require that companies take the charge during the period the legislation is enacted, not when the actual element is implemented.
Several other companies have said they will take accounting charges due to all this.
And in fact, there's an Illinois company, Illinois Tool, to take a $22 million charge due to the new health care law.
And the accounting rules again require that the company take the charge during the period the legislation is enacted.
Now, what the White House is setting up here, this is all a Republican plot.
The White House political legislative operations were said to be livid with the announcement by several large companies that they were taking multi-million or as much as a billion-dollar charges because of the new health care law.
These are Republican CEOs trying to embarrass the president and the Democrats in general as a White House legislative affairs staffer.
Where do you hear about this stuff?
A Wall Street Journal editorial page, conservative websites.
Nobody else picked up on this but you guys.
It's BS.
No, the AP's picked up on it.
Everybody's picked up on it.
It's not BS.
On Friday, Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett were calling the CEOs and Washington office heads of these companies that took the financial hits and attacked them.
Attacked them for doing so.
One office head in Washington said the White House calls were accusatory and downright rude.
Most of the people in this administration have never had a real job in their lives.
They don't understand a thing about business, and that includes the president.
This is a quote from a senior lobbyist for one of the companies that announced the charge.
My CEO sat with the president over lunch with two other CEOs, and each of them tried to explain to the president what this bill would do to our companies and the economy in general.
At first, the president did not understand what they were talking about.
Then he basically told my boss that he was lying at lunch.
Frankly, my boss was embarrassed for him.
He clearly had not been briefed and did not know what was in the bill and doesn't understand it anyway.
Now, let's take this at face value and let's say that this is true.
It's almost believable to me that Obama would not know this is in there.
And it's almost believable to me that he would not understand when people who know something in the form of expertise would explain to him why X is going to happen because of Y or Y is going to happen because of X.
I think these people just assume the golden goose is always going to be there.
They must assume this with all the debt we're piling up, all the planned new taxes they have on people that we cannot afford, all this new spending.
But Obama is impervious to facts, impervious to the truth.
All he's concerned about is seeing to it that he can shrink the private sector as much and as quickly as possible with most of what is being shrunk taken over by government and the biggest expansion that we have ever seen.
All right, a brief timeout coming up.
Your phone calls are coming up as well.
Telephone number again, 800-282-2882.
And the email address, LRushbo at EIBNet.com.
Obama is lying, by the way, about the Heritage Foundation playing a role in this healthcare bill.
Details right around the corner.
You know what I would do?
I really mean this.
For some reason, my friends, I have no fear of these people.
And I perhaps should have based on their stated intentions for people like me.
But if I were one of these CEOs, I would parade up there and I'd take my financial data as required by Commissar Waxman.
And then after he goes through my financial data, I would say, by the way, Congressman, can we get a full accounting of how you arrived at your estimates for the cost of health care reform?
You say you've got these independent analysts.
Could we see what they came up with?
Because frankly, Congressman, we live in the real world and these analysts don't know what they're talking about.
It's very simple.
All of this is a result of Enron, all these new accounting rules.
It basically stems from this fact.
Companies used to be able to deduct part of their costs for providing drug benefits to their retirees.
Obamacare cancels the deduction.
Roland McDivitt, who is director of healthcare research at Towers Watson, told the Wall Street Journal they have a stream of tax benefits they're losing way out in the future, meaning these companies.
And since they had counted on these deductions for current and future retirees as an existing asset of the old law, accounting rules require them to take the full loss for the change in the same quarter in which the tax law is changed.
Thus, Friday's announcement to inform shareholders that ATT's bottom line was about to take a $1 billion hit.
Now, it has been estimated that this alone, when you add up all of the tax changes here that will affect all companies in the country, you're looking at a $14 billion hit.
Towers Watson estimates that just this one page of the 2,700 pages will eliminate $14 billion in U.S. corporate profits.
Now, the way to look at that is $14 billion less that American employers have to spend creating new jobs when the unemployment rate is still 9.7%.
And don't forget Kathleen Sebelius.
Yeah, well, our goal here is to really reduce the insurance company profits.
We really want to cut those down.
And remember, I think it was Hillary or Obama said during the campaign, the oil companies are not going to give up those profits easily.
So I think what they want is for companies to stay in business in a zero-sum game.
No profit, no loss, or maybe a loss, but still stay in the game.
Because the job is the thing.
Companies exist to provide health care and jobs, not to make profits.
Profits are evil.
FedEx has a target painted on itself now.
It announced a big profit.
This bunch simply doesn't like profits, even though it requires profits for them to get half of what they need to finance their big government.
So it's an all-out war on prosperity that's happening here, and it shows no signs of letting up.
Here's Obama last Tuesday on the Today Show.
Matt Wauer was doing the, I don't know what you call it, an interview.
Anyway, Matt Wauer said, healthcare reform, healthcare law now it's seen as a huge victory for you.
Your presidency for Democrats, tough pill to swallow for Republicans.
You notice there's no reaction here as far as the American people.
We're just looking at this.
Is it good for Obama?
Did Obama win?
Did the Democrats win?
Did the Republicans lose?
No concern for the actual impact of this on the American people.
So Matt Wauer says it's been described in a lot of ways.
Your vice president described it in colorful terms.
How do you describe it?
I think it is a critical first step in making a health care system that works for all Americans.
It's not going to be the only thing.
We're still going to have adjustments that have to be made to further reduce costs.
Further reduce.
There are no costs that have been reduced.
And it's just a critical first step.
Making a health care system that works for all Americans.
I thought this was going to insure all Americans.
Pelosi been out there talking about that.
So then Matt Wauer says, well, how are you possibly going to continue with any kind of legislative agenda when your opponents have said to you, I'm not going to cooperate with this president, with these Democrats, unless it's a matter of national security.
How do you move on?
First of all, I think that a lot of the rhetoric has been overheated and overblown.
And this is what happens in Washington when you have a big debate.
Suddenly, the passage of this bill is Armageddon.
And as I pointed out the next day, after I signed it, I looked around and no asteroids had hit the planet and no cracks had appeared in the earth.
This is a bill that is going to help a lot of people and help to lower costs of health care, but it's not a radical departure from what we've done in the past.
Okay, so he's repeating the theme that I predicted.
Hey, we signed it.
Nothing's bad happening out there.
Just a bunch of overheated rhetoric.
There aren't any costs that are going to come down.
Well, maybe for some people who even now aren't paying for much of what they spend, they're going to get it free as far as they are concerned.
But costs are going to go down.
Folks, I don't know how to say this.
Is the cost of any government program gone down?
Or have the costs wildly exceeded the original projections that the independent analysts came up with?
Social Security cheaper than what people thought it was going to be?
Is Medicare, Medicaid cheaper than what they were projected to be?
The war on poverty cheaper?
How can they say anything is going to be cheaper when we are in debt up to $14 trillion?
And I think we do have cracks in the earth, by the way, for people like AT ⁇ T who are going to lose a billion dollars out of their $3 billion profit.
That's a crack in the earth, Obama.
About to swallow up.
Now, here's a lie.
Of course, most of the previous soundbite was a lie.
Matt Wauer finally said a lot of people wonder how a bill could be good for the American public in general when it didn't receive one single Republican vote when a recent poll said 50% of people aren't in favor of it.
How do you respond to that?
When you actually look at the bill itself, it incorporates all sorts of Republican ideas.
I mean, a lot of commentators have said, you know, this is sort of similar to the bill that Mitt Romney, the Republican governor and now presidential candidate, passed in Massachusetts.
A lot of the ideas in terms of the exchange, just being able to pool and improve the purchasing power of individuals in the insurance market, that originated from the Heritage Foundation.
And they are fuminating at the Heritage Foundation because it's an out and out, total fabrication.
Obama claiming a central tenant came from them.
Actually, you just heard it, tried to explain that the insurance exchange he envisions being built by government is an idea that came from heritage in the first place, and nothing could be further from the truth.
Heritage approves of a market-driven approach that allows families to choose their own health insurance, not government bureaucrats.
But if Obama was a member of the Heritage Foundation, he would have known that all along.
I suspect he knows this is all BS, just like he knows that there's nothing in this that Republicans suggested.
Nothing at all.
The Heritage Foundation never once has proposed government-run exchanges.
The Heritage Foundation has proposed all of this kind of stuff occur in the private sector where individuals and families make their own choices.
They are a big believer in the health savings accounts, which Obama loaths.
Now, the word's getting out on this.
Some public traded companies starting to project all these losses, hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars.
Privately held companies saying they may want to make their employees independent contractors to avoid a future fine.
Do you know how that works?
The IRS will not let them do that.
You have to pass a test in order to become an independent contractor.
But here's another thing about becoming an independent contractor.
If you do this, or if your company tries to force you into an independent contractor status, you better than go out and incorporate yourself.
Otherwise, you're going to be paying the full Medicare tax on every dollar you earn.
Unlike the payroll tax, FICA, what's the ceiling on that now?
$102,000 once you earn more than that, $1,200,000, whatever it is.
There's a cutoff point.
Medicare, you pay the 2.9% on every dollar you earn.
So if you go sub-S, which is what John Edwards did, by the way, John Edwards did this to spare himself all of these Medicare taxes so that he could spend the money on the babe and the baby.
So what you do, you incorporate, this is a shell explanation.
I don't want to hear from accountants saying, I don't know what I'm talking about.
Just think of it's April Fools.
You set up yourself as a sub-S.
You pay yourself a salary, a portion of your total income, but you don't pay yourself all of what you earn as income.
You pay the rest of it as a bonus.
Deferred income or whatever.
That way you limit the amount of Medicare tax that you pay.
But if your company forces you to go independent contractor, then you pay your own taxes quarterly.
They escape the penalty for not having health insurance for you because it's up to you then when you're an independent contractor, like a doctor or a contractor or a lawyer.
You got to do everything yourself.
Pay your taxes, get your own health insurance.
Nobody provides it for you.
Or pay a fine, which you might opt to do because the fine is going to be much less than getting insurance.
That is also by design.
So that you can go out there and wait till you actually have the accident or get sick.
And the insurance company has to insure you at that very moment.
Well, now we're not talking about insurance.
We're talking about something totally different.
And there's no insurance company that can stay in business doing that by design.
Now, back to Heritage for just a second, because if they want to start talking about using Heritage ideas, starting with Obama, if they want to use Heritage's ideas and their name to rewrite history in a way that suggests conservatives support this kind of bill, it is going to be a tough ride.
Ed Fullner runs the place and is not going to put up with this.
It's an outright assault on the integrity of the Heritage Foundation.
Just trust me, there's no way that anything in this bill originated even a germ of an idea from the Heritage Foundation.
You can become a member too, like I am.
Sign up at askheritage.org.
And if you do sign up, you can see their reply to your president.
Not theirs.
That's askheritage.org.
Okay, a couple stories here.
I told the staff that we're going to get to the phones, but I've got to do two things here before we do.
This first story, now, keep in mind this is April 1st, but this is Canada Free Press.
Obama to crush economy with massive CO2 taxes as early as next week.
What do you shake your head?
Well, abandoning all loyalty to the democratic process this nation holds dear, President Obama has made the decision that getting energy tax legislation through Congress with the approval of the American people is just too much of a pain to bother with.
Instead, he'll have the EPA declare as early as next week that CO2 is a dangerous global warming gas and it'll start regulating its emissions immediately.
Now, the Supreme Court has given the EPA the legal right to do this.
Obama's promise to open up vast stretches of ocean on the east coast of Gulf of Mexico to energy exploration is simply a ruse to soften up the public for soon-to-be-announced draconian regulations.
Similar to how Obama used the $50 million study on healthcare companies competing across state lines to sell Obamacare as bipartisan, his recent decree allowing energy companies to explore that not drill, not really produce any energy from, just explore.
New stretches of ocean for oil is also meant to be a trivial yet impressive enough sounding carrot for conservatives right before he stuffs his Marxist trash down their throats.
Now, this obviously is an opinion piece.
If this were an American publication, of course, it'd be standard news.
Every American who doesn't live in a technology adverse commune in California will now pay even more of their hard-earned money to the federal government for absolutely no reason.
So that's one story that basically cap-and-tax is just going to be announced next week.
And we have heard that they were considering doing this because the votes are not there in Congress for it.
From Mark Hemingway, the Washington Examiner, anybody who thinks the multiple trillions of federal tax dollars spent by Obama and the Democrats on the TARP bailout for Wall Street and the auto industry, the economic stimulus bill, and Obamacare were excessive better get a good grip because the mother of all taxpayer bailouts is right around the corner.
Union bosses want taxpayers to foot the cost for bailing out labor organizations' many failing pension plans that millions of their members are counting on to be there when they retire.
Unfortunately, the average union pension plan has only enough money to cover 62% of its financial obligations.
Such a low level of funding puts those plans on the government's critical list.
Pension plans funded below 80% are considered endangered by the government.
Below 65% is crucial.
And we're talking about union plans that now only cover 62%.
With union membership declining in the private sector, this puts these funds into a tailspin from which they'll likely never pull out.
The government's Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation only guarantees pensions up to $12,000 a year.
Concern over these underfunded pensions is the real reason behind nearly every legislative item for which unions are currently agitating.
One of the top priorities, everybody knows, is card check that would eliminate secret ballots in the workplace.
The unionized UPS recently shelled out a whopping $6.1 billion to get out of the multi-employer pension plan in which it was formally enrolled.
Prior to UPS shelling out the money, the company's pension liabilities were estimated to be in the neighborhood of $4 billion.
Turned out to be much higher than that.
That's because unions are trying to hide the severity of the problem from their own workers.
But the union officers know this.
And after $400 million in campaign donations in 2008, if a union wants a bailout, it's going to be hard for the Democrats to say no.
And particularly hard for Obama to say no.
And if you are willing to throw away a trillion dollars and lie about its purpose, if you're willing to make up a bunch of horrific reasons, most of which were not true to justify TARP, and then change the rules and the purpose after the money's been allocated.
If you are willing to bail out General Motors and Chrysler and then take ownership of them and transfer majority ownership in one case to the unions, is it really hard to believe that Obama, who cares nothing about spending money or printing it or taxing it, is it hard to believe that he would bail out these underfunded union pensions?
It's not hard to believe it at all.
So there's just two stories, cap and tax by executive order next week and sweeping bailout for union pensions, essentially right around the corner.
Quick timeout, back after this.
You still don't believe me about this bailing out of the union pension plans.
What do you think the bailout of General Motors and Chrysler were all about from TARP money?
It was about bailing out the unions.
It was about saving union jobs in case those countries' companies rather had to declare bankruptcy.
Here's a story.
Details coming up, but it's about being targeted by this administration.
It's the L.A. Times.
Business titans awash in cash, and they are not happy about it.
Businesses are hoarding their profits, those that are making any.
And sports viewers, according to a survey, are largely Republican, proving that liberals are a bunch of girly men after all.
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