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May 26, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:30
May 26, 2011, Thursday, Hour #2
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Greetings and welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, the cutting edge of societal evolution.
Happy to have you along, my friends, 800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program, email address, lrushbow at EIBnet.com.
Our last caller from Joplin Kirsty, she was the communications director, is the communications director for the Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce.
And there's an organization she talked about.
And she gave a couple of websites, and they're all busy and they're all down.
We're trying to get them back on the phone here to get more information from them about what people can do.
Because one of the things that's happening in Joplin, people see the pictures, and there is all across the country, people are asking, what in the world could I do besides send money?
What is there that can be done?
And we're going to try to get her back or somebody from the Joplari Chamber of Commerce to explain this.
At least develop it further, what they were saying.
We're working on that even as we speak.
Are we not?
We are.
Now, I want to also go back to the first caller we had today on Medicare.
And he was calling about New York 26, the New York 26 election.
He was telling me I was wrong, that the election was totally about Medicare.
And the people of New York 26, they don't wear, they're tired of $100 million a year CEOs flying around their jets having health care and blah, blah, blah.
It just, the disconnect here is amazing.
And it's worth, I think, trying to persuade people, even who are in lockstep misinformation about this.
We've even got Republicans saying, it was the wrong time to tackle this.
Everybody's running for the tallgrass on this at the first sign of trouble.
And excuse me.
And for example, like the guy calls it, nobody's happy with Medicare.
That's not true.
Everybody is not unhappy with Medicare.
Let's go sympathetic.
Medicare is not the answer, folks.
Medicare is not, I don't care what it is, it's not the answer to our healthcare problems.
And more Medicare is a recipe for disaster.
We've told you countless times in this program that Medicare rejects more procedures than private insurance companies.
Remember that?
We've went through the numbers.
It's striking.
The number of procedures Medicare, the government rejects dwarfs the number of procedures that private insurance companies say no to.
If something isn't done about Medicare, all future generations won't exist.
The Medicare chief actuary, the government bureaucrat in charge of it, says it's doomed.
So what are you liberals supporting when you support Medicare?
What are you supporting here?
You're supporting something your own people say are doomed.
You're supporting something that is far more punitive than private insurance is.
You have this love affair with it because it comes from government, but it is bloated.
It's ineffective.
It's inefficient, and it doesn't work.
And you ought to be thankful that there are responsible people trying to fix it.
They're trying to fix it for the people.
They're trying to fix it for the country.
Now, who is it that robbed half a trillion dollars from Medicare?
Who is it that in his own health care bill took $500 billion out of Medicare in order to get his total price tag in under a trillion dollars?
It was your guy.
It was Barack Obama.
It's there.
$500 billion gone.
Ryan didn't do that.
Paul Ryan doesn't rape Medicare to the tune of $500 billion.
Your guy did.
Senior citizens, current senior citizens enrolled in Medicare are unaffected by the Ryan plan.
Not one person 55 years of age or older currently enrolled in any kind of a Medicare plan is affected by it.
Ryan's voucher program, the blood grant to the states, that is for the next generation of recipients.
This voucher, we call that a huge federal subsidy that helps individuals buy their health coverage, much like Congress.
This system that we're talking about is basically what Congress has and federal bureaucrats have.
Now, the liberals used to call these Cadillac plans.
Now they say these are horrible plans simply because they're politicizing everything.
Now, Paul Ryan hasn't done one thing to take Medicare away from anybody.
Barack Obama has.
The Democrats have.
The Democrat Party is in the process of destroying Medicare.
Paul Ryan is coming along trying to save it.
Restructure it so it's worth something.
Now, if we abandon Medicare, Medicare reform, if we abandon it, then what?
We leave it as it is, falling apart, denying more procedures than private sector insurance companies deny.
If we abandon Medicare reform, if we abandon the Ryan Plan, there won't be anybody to protect seniors from Obamacare.
There won't be anybody to protect seniors from the death panels.
There'll be nobody to protect future generations.
The program is going bust.
If we abandon reform, the Democrats, by their desire to do nothing, are destroying Medicare with Obamacare rather than reforming it.
Obamacare is not fixing anything.
It doesn't reform anything.
It simply destroys it by design so that nobody has a choice going anywhere but a federal exchange for health insurance and coverage.
And if we abandon Medicare reform, we're stuck with what's doomed.
And I, by the way, say this non-ideologically, I say this in a total nonpartisan sense.
I'm looking at a program going bust that can't be sustainable.
It can't be sustained as is.
Here's somebody, obviously very courageous, who wants to fix it.
There could be a political benefit if you fix sure.
But what's wrong with that?
Nobody else is trying to do anything except make hay out of false predictions about it.
I don't know what CEOs that make $100 million have to do with it.
I don't know what CEOs flying around in corporate jets have to do with it.
It has nothing to do with it.
These are just closed-minded people who cannot be dependent on in any way for anything other than the plundering of the program.
If nothing changes, nothing changes.
And if nothing changes, we're up the creek without a paddle.
Pure and simple.
Current Medicare enrollees.
Current Medicare enrollees are not affected by the Paul Ryan plan.
Current Medicare enrollees are affected by Obama's $500 billion takeaway from Medicare.
Current Medicare recipients are negatively impacted by Obama.
They are not affected at all by the Paul Ryan plan.
Now, I understand everybody loves to ride the sled down the hill, but nobody wants to walk the sled up to the top of the hill.
Everybody can't wait to get on that flexible flyer and speed down the hill, but nobody wants to pull that sled up there.
Ryan is trying to pull the sled up there so everybody gets on the sled smooth sailing down the hill.
Pure and simple.
That's why I said, yes, this is not hard.
This is so easy.
I just did it.
Where is Republican leadership?
Get on this.
If somebody's going to tell me, well, there's a little jealousy rush, a lot of Republican presidential candidates.
They don't want to credit anybody else for the plan.
They want credit for it.
Are they going to have their own plan?
It's a variation on Ryan's, and they want their name attached to it.
Yeah, I understand all that.
Fine.
Then let's see the plan.
Pure and simple.
Back to Joplin.
This is Sherry.
We got you, Sherry.
Sherry Cloyd, who's the executive assistant, Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce.
How are you?
I'm good, Rush.
How are you?
Good.
Now, we had Kirsty on, and we had a hard break format constraint that we had to go.
I didn't get enough information out of her.
People really do want to know what they can do to help you all in Joplin.
Absolutely.
Absolutely, Rush.
I know that Kirsty was going to mention that we do have a foundation set up through the Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce that is a business recovery fund.
You can go either call us at 417-624-4150 to get information on how to donate, or you can go to our website, joplincc.com.
That's CC for Chamber Commerce.
Joplincc.com.
Yes.
So you're taking steps now for businesses.
Yes, we are.
We are.
We want to help our businesses recover from this disaster, and we are here to help.
Well, now, Sherry, let me play devil's advocate with you here for a moment.
Sure.
Why do you want to focus on businesses recovering and rich CEOs and their corporate jets?
Why do you only want to focus on that?
Well, we are the Chamber of Commerce, and so we do serve businesses within our community.
I know.
I'm playing Joplin facetiously.
So we are focused on our businesses.
We are also focused on the individuals in town as well, because individuals are part of those businesses.
And so we are definitely concerned about them as well.
But we do want to help our businesses get back up and running to where the economy can be boosted again.
Well, you also want to keep them there.
Yes, we do.
We do.
And we have heard from several of our businesses, our member businesses, who have said, yes, we will be rebuilding.
So, you know, they are planning on being here and staying here.
Well, that's good.
I can't imagine.
I've seen the pictures.
I've seen the satellite pictures today of the six-block devastation.
And everybody, a lot of people in their individual lives get up one morning and say, okay, I've got to make some major changes.
I've got to start rebuilding my life today.
And that's, you know, any kind of change is daunting for people.
Absolutely.
This, with the pictures that we see, you live it.
Gosh, it's got to be what do you do first?
Where do you start?
It's overwhelming, but we have had so many people come into our community, and our community is banded together, and we are all helping each other.
And we are so grateful to everyone who has come in to help and clean up and help people and just be here with us as we go through this.
So we are so thankful.
And, you know, we're helping at this point, you know, just to be a support to the people who have been affected by this in our community.
And we just want to help them pick up the pieces.
Well, we've had reports that between 50 and 75 percent of the population displaced and affected by this.
Is that true?
Well, it's probably close, Rush.
Probably close to that.
This is amazing.
Joplin topped 49, 50,000 people, right?
Yes, we do.
Yes, we do.
Right at 47,000.
Well, God bless you.
And we wish you all the best.
I'm sure you'll be hearing from people.
Well, we hope so.
We hope so because we need people to be supportive of this community at this time.
And, you know, not only to our businesses, but also to our individuals.
And we are here to support as well.
And, you know, we just wanted to get this word out on your program just to make sure that people knew what they could do to help.
I appreciate it.
And we'll have these numbers on that website at our website as well.
Rush, thank you so very much, and God bless you.
Jerry Cloyd, who is the executive assistant, the Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce, and we will be back.
Talent on loan from God.
It's the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
There's more economic news out there today from the AP.
Sales of homes in some stage of foreclosure declined in the first three months of the year, but dot, dot, dot, they still accounted for 28% of all home sales.
So here's AP doing their damnedest to help Obama.
Foreclosure sales slow, but remain astronomically very high.
Again, there's no evidence.
There's any economic recovery, and there hasn't been any evidence of an economic recovery because there isn't an economic recovery.
Before we go next, Venice, Florida.
Hey, Ron, I'm glad you called, sir.
You're next on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Well, how are you doing, Rush?
I tell you, I've been listening to you for 20 years.
Thank you, sir.
And I've been, I'm pretty much in agreement with you all the time, about 99.9% of the time.
But this time I find a little difference.
I got a little bit of a political background, and I think that it was the wrong time for Paul Ryan to come out with his budget and his proposal.
What are your political background?
Well, I've been involved in the Republican Party for about 20 years.
I was a campaign manager for a candidate running for Congress in the evil Alan Grayson's district up in Orlando and everything.
But Daniel Webster won the primary and went on to get the seat and everything.
Okay.
All right.
So Ryan came out with his budget proposal at the wrong time.
Yeah, well, what has happened here is that people are confused.
They're being lied to.
They're talking more about what's wrong with Ryan's proposal compared to what we've already got that's in law that needs to be repealed like Obamacare.
The focus has been taken away from what they are doing, the bad side is doing, compared to what we can do on the right side.
It's like playing football.
You're a football fan.
We've been given...
Uh...
Are we losing?
Oh, we lost the connection.
Okay, I guess the thrust of what he's saying is here, we should have stayed focused on repealing Obamacare rather than drop that ball and come up with a Medicare reform plan that just confuses people.
It puts us on the defensive and so forth.
Well, okay, I can understand the thinking.
I understand, stick with repealing Obamacare.
But there's no need to go on defense.
By the way, if not now, when?
And if not who, us, or if not us, who?
You can.
Well, I refuse to go on defense because I don't think I have anything to be defensive about.
I don't think there's anything.
I think the recipe for going on defense, the left, the left knows or suspects that they can somehow make us accept their premise.
I don't accept their premise on anything.
I don't accept the premise that starts off the discussion about Ryan and his Medicare plan that's going to destroy people.
I already got my premise.
My premise is liberalism is destructive to this country.
Liberalism is destroying the private sector.
That's my premise.
And I go from that.
And I look for evidence of it every time a liberal opens his mouth.
And whether he's attacking me or Paul Ryan or anybody else, I just refuse to go on defense.
Now, again, you've got to be fair, being on the radio and acquiring and holding an audience is not the same thing as being a politician and getting votes.
So I can survive here.
I can even thrive being hated.
A politician can't.
And there's just no other way around that.
But doesn't say that you have to be hated in order to be right or be controversial at the same time.
Now, I think you can do both.
I think you can reform Medicare and still stay dedicated to repealing Obamacare, but you've got to do it.
If you're going to start walking down the path, you have to stay down the path.
One thing a lot of people feared was that all the repeal talk from the Republicans was just that, that they'd go through the motions for a few months and try to make it appear to us that they were serious about it, score some points for doing it, and then drop it.
Now, the Medicare reform, remember, there isn't a budget.
The Democrats haven't proposed a budget.
The program is doomed.
Something has to happen to fix it.
Now, that's a reality.
Hi, and welcome back.
Great to have you, Rush Lindbaugh and the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
I'm going to Ryan Medicare proposal.
The budget in general.
Medicare is the budget deficit.
If you're going to talk about a budget, and if you're going to talk about reducing the deficit, then you cannot not talk about Medicare.
Medicare is the budget deficit.
Some other things thrown in there, but largely Medicare, Medicaid, they are the budget deficit.
Now, how can you talk about the budget deficit, try to do anything about it, and not talk about Medicare?
And what was the message of the 2010 election?
We have to do something about spending.
We have to do something about the deficit.
Medicare is the deficit.
The 2010 election was about that.
Now, way back in February, Obama said that the rising cost of Medicare and Medicaid is creating huge problems for the nation's finances must be dealt with in a serious way.
That's what Obama said.
It's not a matter of you go first or I go first.
That's what Obama said yesterday.
Not a matter of you go first or I go first.
It's about getting in that boat at the same time so it doesn't tip over.
Well, Ryan took him at his word.
And now we see what happens when you take Obama at his word.
Ryan would have done it on his own.
He was a responsible guy.
So that's eat.
Look at it.
I want to go back, audio soundbite number 12.
Even Clinton knows.
And we've got this story here from Jonathan Carl from ABC.
Clinton worries Democrats won't fix Medicare.
Clinton is worried.
Somebody is going to fix it.
He knows that.
And whoever fixes it is going to be sitting pretty politically for a long time.
Clinton wants that to be the Democrats.
He wants the Democrats to have a role in it.
This is yesterday at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation fiscal summit.
I'm afraid that the Democrats will draw the conclusion that because Congressman Ryan's proposal, I think, is not the best one, that we shouldn't do anything.
And I completely disagree with that.
Deer Schlieckmeister worried that the Democrats are just going to sit it out.
And he's right.
They have been sitting it out.
They've set out everything to do with the budget.
They are not involved in it at all.
Totally on the sidelines.
So what do you what do you do to fix Medicare if you don't do what Ryan's doing?
Oh, well, now that, geez, I know what I would do, but I, well, what I would do is not practical.
I'd make Medicare free to everybody earning $100 million and has a jet.
And then I'd cut those people's tax rate to 10%.
It's clear what we have to do.
When you see that 12 cents of every dollar spent on health care is spent by the patient or consumer, there's your problem.
Before any of this is going to get substantively fixed, there has to be a responsible relationship between the cost and the ability to pay it by the patient, by the consumer.
And until that happens, and by the way, that's what Ryan wants to do.
That's where Ryan is headed with all this.
John in Rockford, Illinois.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Come on.
Hey, Rush.
Hey.
Hey, when we talk about Ryan's proposal, are we talking about is Social Security and Medicare two and the same in this discussion?
No, he's talking Medicare exclusively.
Has it ever come across anyone to make that clear?
Because I think I was kind of confused when I tried to explain that to my daughter this morning as to what everybody was talking about politically.
So Social Security will not be touched.
And then a person such as myself that's in his early 50s will basically have to take out some sort of kind of like a 401k if I had to simplify the process.
As I understand it, the Ryan plan is set up this way.
For people 55 and older who are getting Medicare benefits, nothing happens.
Nothing changes.
Right.
I'm 51, so I'm not selfishly concerned about you are going to face a different phase-in rate than somebody 25 or 30.
There are different phase-in rates, but ultimately, what happens is that Medicare payments, Medicare revenues, will be block-granted to the states.
The states will be in charge of administering them.
The federal government will subsidize the purchase of premiums.
It's going to end up costing patients a little more than it does now, but in plenty of time for people to adjust to it and get used to it.
This is not a change that's going to happen overnight.
It will involve the whole principle of vouchers.
The block grant back to the states is essentially a voucher system.
It's rather, let's just take a number.
I'm going to pick a number out of the blue that may have no relation to fact.
Let's say that the amount of Medicare spent on you every year is $10,000.
They're going to give you a portion of that $10,000 via block grant.
You're going to have access to it and you're going to go shop and you're going to get health care as you need it, as you want it, for whatever price you can pay.
You're going to shop.
And whatever is left over after a certain period of time is yours.
It's kind of an expansion on the health savings accounts concept.
But there's got to be some relationship to what services cost and the patient's ability to pay.
If that doesn't happen, then it's never going to become, or it's never going to get really fixed or totally reformed.
But it's a slow phase-in.
One of the arguments, even among people who are for the Ryan Plan, is that it takes 10 to 15 years to fully implement.
And he does that on purpose precisely to prevent a panic, which the Democrats are trying to make happen anyway.
But the bottom line is, if we don't do anything, then it's broken forever.
If we don't do anything, it's finished.
I'll run through it again.
If we abandon Medicare reform, then what?
There will be no one to protect seniors from Obamacare.
They are going to be subject to death panels.
There will be nobody to protect future generations.
There will be no effort here to get costs under control in any way, shape, matter, or form.
It's an utter disaster.
It's a sound proposal.
It makes a lot of sense, and it's very patient the way it's implemented.
And we've got time.
In point of fact, reality, some people grow impatient at the lack of speed it takes to implement a positive change on anything.
But as long as we're moving in the direction, the attitudinal effect that that will have on people, investors as well, will be profoundly positive.
As long as we're moving in the right direction, right now, we're just floundering.
We're rolling the dice.
The Medicare actuary says the program's doomed.
It cannot continue.
Whether you're 51 or 41 or 31, it can't continue as is.
It won't be there at all for you in any way, shape, manner, or form.
But here again, we find ourselves asking the question here at the EIB network, why are we panicked over Ryan's plan to reform it?
It's just the same plan that Congress already has.
All it is is the Congressional Health Plan with a smorgasbord of options and services that you will end up paying a little bit more for than you're paying today.
Really, but you're paying for it in ways that you don't know with taxes and other things.
But what we ought to be panicked over is Obamacare.
That is the far more radical change to everybody's healthcare system than Ryan's.
So everybody's got their focus in the wrong area here.
It is Obamacare where everybody ought to be panicked.
Not Ryan's plan to reform Medicare.
Ryan's plan is to save it.
Obama's plan destroys it.
Obama's plan destroys practically everything.
Collapse the system.
Everything falls apart.
Obama, the Democrats are there to put it back together in charge of everything.
That's their long-term objective.
So if you want to get panicked over something, if you don't worry about it, okay, you're 51, you got Medicare coming up, and here comes a guy talking about changing it.
Fine.
Put your trust in it.
Put your faith in it.
Do not trust a guy who wants to totally reorient and change all of health care.
He's going to destroy it.
If you feel like being panicked, if you're happily panicked, if you're comfortable being in a panic mode, be panicked over Obamacare, not Ryan.
We'll be back.
Dick Cheney says, I walk the ground Paul Ryan walks on.
Cheney doesn't want Ryan to run for president.
He likes the House Budget Committee too much.
I worship the ground Paul Ryan walks on.
Cheney said Wednesday during a rare public appearance.
This is according to the Houston Chronicle.
I hope he doesn't run for president because that would ruin a good man who has a lot of work to do.
I worship the ground Paul Ryan walks on.
No, I mean it.
The Democrats don't want to fix Medicare.
They don't want to reform it.
They don't want to fix Medicaid.
Very simple reason.
They want single payer.
Obama has said it.
We aired the Obama soundbites throughout the 2008 campaign.
All the things he had said talking to his union friends at SEIU on public radio in Chicago throughout 2002, 2004, 2007.
He'd made them plain.
I think in a soundbite we had of him speaking to the service employees in the National Union.
He said, look, we all know we want to get, and by the way, this is when he's honest.
These are his buds.
These are the guys that spend all the money electing him.
He goes in there.
He does not BS them.
He said, yeah, we all want single payer.
We want that to happen.
We can't.
We're not going to be able to do it overnight.
It's going to take five to ten years to get this done.
It's going to maybe 15.
Because you know, the American people don't want single payer.
They're going to have to force it as ultimately the only option.
And part of making Medicare and healthcare a single payer program, government-run, is that's got to be the only place people can go.
Private insurance has to fail.
Private coverage has to fail.
Previous other reforms have to not work to the point that people throw their hands up.
Gosh, I guess the government has to run it because it's the last option.
That's the plan.
That's the game plan.
So don't look for the Republicans or the Democrats to offer a competing reform proposal.
They don't want it to be fixed.
In fact, as far as most Democrats are concerned, the sooner it goes bust, the better.
Because they know people are going to demand treatment.
They know people are going to demand being able to go to the doctor.
They know it, and they can't wait to be the ones in people's minds who make it possible as agents of your friendly government.
Yeah, boy, those people of insurance company X, they really mistreated you, didn't they?
Yeah, remember that Republican guy that tried to fix the plan?
Yeah, that really worked out, didn't you?
But we're here for you.
That's what they want after everything's collapsed.
They want to break the healthcare system.
That's what Obamacare is all about.
Break our health care system so badly that only they can fix it in their own way.
And by the way, it won't be a fix.
It's just only they can administer it.
It'll end up being as bad as it's ever been as a single-payer government-run program.
But that's what they want.
Ed, you're next in Omaha.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Ed.
Hello.
I'd like to say hello to my mother, Kelly.
Second, I cannot believe how selfish older Americans are being at this point in time.
They want what they want and have absolutely no concern whatsoever for the future generations that are.
Why do you say that?
Well, all I hear from these older voters is don't take my Medicare away.
And first of all, they don't get it.
It's not being taken away, but they don't care if it goes bankrupt.
What about me, who's a 42-year-old male?
I have a two-year-old daughter.
You know, what kind of health care is going to be available for my family in the future if you're not willing to sacrifice a little bit right now?
Okay, let's step up a little bit.
Let me ask you a question then.
Yes, sir.
Do you believe the majority of stories we get about the elderly in this country, that they are, for the most part, just a couple steps away from poverty?
You know what?
No, I don't believe that.
And I hate to say this, but if they are a step away from poverty, that is their responsibility because they did not save for their future.
It is not my responsibility that you spent all of your money and did not save for your future.
You know, the reason I ask is because, and I can't find it.
I left it on the desk.
It was from an earlier program.
I didn't get to it.
I left it here in the stack.
But we had a temporary engineer here who went on a Betty Crocker kick and threw everything in here in a trash.
It was a story.
He's a nice guy.
He's not a Dale.
He was just trying to do the right thing.
But it was a story that took aim at this myth that the elderly are all a bunch of poverty-stricken people.
Now, don't look at me.
I'm just teasing in there.
Dale's a great guy, but he did throw away my show prep.
What am I supposed to do?
What do you mean you didn't know it?
You're the one that told him the procedure's here.
Anyway, I don't need the story.
I can recount it from my men.
The story was about, by the way, where is it written that every old person is on the brink of destruction economically?
And I thought it's a fascinating story.
Everybody does think, or a lot of people think that the elderly, they're all in poverty or just a step or two away from it.
But who is it that young people are moving back in with?
They're moms and dads.
And some of these people moving back in are 35 and 40.
How old are their moms and dads?
60 and 70 try.
So they're 60 and 70.
And if they can afford their worthless offspring moving back in with them, just how poverty-stricken are they?
So this story tried to blow that myth up that every elderly person in this country is bankrupt or soon to be, and it's not the case, and that is a good point.
It actually is.
I gotta go though, be back after this and continue.
Sit tight.
Very interesting.
I am holding here in my formerly nicotine stained fingers a short little institute that tells me that New Jersey governor Chris Christie is changing his mind about running for president.
Yes, and it's true.
And I, uh, making me think he's changing his mind.
And another story that makes me think Sarah Palin is going to make it official.
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