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June 28, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:42
June 28, 2012, Thursday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Hey, folks, have you seen the economic news today?
Have you heard about the unemployment numbers today?
Gross domestic product, have you heard about any of that?
Because I have it here.
And it sucks.
It's a disaster.
The economy of this country remains a disaster.
And we, the American people have just been deceived in ways that nobody contemplated.
And what we now have, what we now have is the biggest tax increase in the history of the world.
What we have been told by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and four liberals on the court.
Obama cares just a massive tax increase.
That's all it is.
Obama lied to us about that.
He lied.
The Democrats lied.
It wasn't a tax.
There was no way it was a tax.
The chief justice was hellbound, hell bent to find a way to make this law applicable, so we just decide, you know what?
As a tax increase, it works because there's no limit on the federal government's ability to tax.
And it's right there in the preamble of Constitution, right there, Article 1, Section 8, the General Welfare Clause, it's been established.
Congress can tax whatever, whoever, whenever, how much they want.
And this just goes to sh even when they don't ask for it, the Supreme Court is going to find a way to make what they want to do legal.
Because John Roberts said it's not, it's not our job here to forbid this.
It's not our job to protect people from outcomes.
It's not our job to determine whether this is right or wrong or any of that.
We just got to look at it and we can't forbid this.
This is what the elected representatives of the people want.
Now the elected representatives of the people were deceived.
Remember, yes, I ask you, if this decision went this way, what was your initial reaction going to be?
And how many of you were deflated as you can be?
Because the way this reported, the first thing that came down the mandate unconstitutional.
That was the first thing everybody reported.
Mandate unconstitutional.
Big sigh of relief.
And then within moments, wait a minute, wait a minute, we're reading further.
Hold it just a second.
The mandate's unconstitutional, but the court has decided it's a tax.
And therefore, it's okay.
So Obamacare is nothing more than the largest tax increase in the history of the world.
And the people who were characterizing it as such were right and were telling the truth.
We have the biggest tax increase in the history of the world, right in the middle of one of this country's worst recessions.
In fact, as the vice president said yesterday, a depression for millions of Americans.
The chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, John Roberts, said it's not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.
Not our job.
Well, what about when we are deceived?
The court upheld a law that was not what we were told it would be.
What has been upheld here is fraud.
And the Internal Revenue Service has just become Barack Obama's domestic army.
That is what we face now.
We were deceived.
Obamacare was a lie.
It was a stealth tax on all Americans, and nobody knew it until today.
Not officially.
Obama told George Stephanopoulos it wasn't a tax.
And Stephanopoulos was troublemaking for trying to suggest otherwise.
Let's go to the audio soundbite.
September 20, 2009 on This Week in the House.
George Stephanopoulos interviewing President Obama discussion about the health care reform bill, Stephanopoulos said, under this mandate, the government's forcing people to spend money, fining you if you don't.
How is that not a tax increase?
No, that's not true, George.
The For us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase.
What it's saying is that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you.
Any more than the fact that right now everybody in America just about has to get auto insurance.
Nobody considers that a tax increase.
People say to themselves, that is a fair way to make sure that if you hit my car, that I'm not covering all the costs.
Stephanopoulos then said, well, it may be fair.
It may be a good public policy.
No, but George, you can't just make up that language and decide that that's called a tax increase.
I don't think I'm making it up.
Maryam Webster's dictionary.
Tax.
The charge usually of money imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes.
George, the fact that you looked up Miriam's dictionary, the definition of tax increase indicates to me that you're stretching a little bit right now.
Otherwise, you wouldn't have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition.
Well, no, no.
I mean, what if what you're saying is I wanted to check for myself, but your critics say it is a tax increase.
My critics say everything's a tax increase.
My critics say that I'm taking over uh every sector of the economy.
You know that.
Uh look, we can have a legitimate debate about whether or not we're gonna have an individual mandate or not.
But you rejected it's a tax.
Absolutely reject that notion.
Well, it didn't matter, did it.
He lies to the American people every day.
What does it matter?
It's not a tax increase.
We all knew what was coming down the pike if this thing were upheld, whatever it's called.
We are being forced to purchase something.
Whether they want to twist this as coming under the commerce clause, or uh the whole thing being a tax.
But you just heard Obama told us it wasn't a tax.
Congress told us it wasn't a tax.
Pelosi told us, and we have to pass Obamacare to find out what was in it.
The Supreme Court just told us what's in it.
It's a massive regressive tax on all Americans.
I remember Obama saying that couples making less than 250,000 a year would never see a tax increase if he was elected while he served.
Out the window was a lie.
We were all deceived.
You call it a tax, you can call it a fine, no matter.
You can say it's a power of the commerce clause or not, no matter.
What happened today is all that matters.
And what happened today is that we were bludgeoned with a tax that requires us to do as the government mandates.
We must do what they say.
But guess who collects the tax?
Not the government.
The insurance companies, the health insurance, for as long as they last, the health insurance companies are the ones that collect the tax.
The IRS is going to enforce it.
We have to buy health insurance.
This is essentially being forced to pay a tax.
It's just been called a tax.
Insurance premiums have just been called a tax, folks.
Premiums to buy health.
We must buy it.
The government has the ability to levy that tax.
We are going to buy health insurance from insurance companies mandated by their government.
The Supreme Court told us today that this is a tax.
So our health insurance premiums essentially are a tax.
There's no limit here.
What if insurance companies want to tax us for not buying a new car?
Okay.
It is a stealth tax, and that's what it was all along.
It's a massive behavior modification program.
Either behave as directed or suffer the loss of private property.
If you don't buy what the government tells you to buy, you're going to be taxed.
You're going to be fined.
So even without the Commerce Clause, the federal government can virtually dictate what we do with our so-called private property.
The administration, Congress, no, it's not a tax.
Arguing before the court, no, it's not a tax.
Then a couple of whispers yes, it is a tax.
Chief Justice says, I can't forbid this.
Not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.
I got to find a way.
Congress wants this.
I got to find a way to make it happen.
Oh, okay.
We'll call it a tax.
And that makes it perfectly legal.
So today the sovereign nature of the state, the individual wasn't just weakened, it was eviscerated.
Between the Arizona and Obamacare decisions, America's a very different concept than it was just a week ago.
In the United States of America, you either purchase what central authorities tell you to purchase, or they will punish you with taxes.
In America, states are not allowed to fully protect their citizens from the slow motion invasion across their borders.
The feds opted out of the program in Arizona.
States are powerless.
And don't forget Obama just granted de facto amnesty to over one million illegal aliens.
So now we look forward to November.
November is the chance to get rid of the people who did this and then put in place people we hope mean it when they say they're going to repeal it.
That's it, folks.
That is all that remains, because as of today, the American government can and will seize your private property if you don't purchase andor sell what's been ordered.
It's really breathtaking what happened today.
And it is breathtaking to watch ignoramuses who don't really understand what happened, celebrate it.
We have been betrayed and deceived by Congress.
We have been betrayed and deceived by the Supreme Court.
It was never contemplated that Obamacare was a massive tax.
And you imagine them selling it on the basis of it being a massive tax increase.
You heard Obama, he went out of his way to tell everybody it wasn't a tax increase.
That was the death knell for the bill to call it a massive tax increase.
He's running around telling everybody that there nobody is going to pay increased taxes.
So we've been spent into deficit hell.
We're now being taxed into disposable income hell.
The Constitution's under assault.
And so is every individual living here under assaults.
Do as you're told, shut up, sit down, or pay a tax.
Brief timeout.
Take it, come back and continue after this.
Don't go away.
President Kardashian is on television as we speak.
I decided not to jip President Kardashian.
I figure you're angry and depressed enough as it is.
But he basically rehashing all of the lies he told about what health care is.
It's not going to cost you any more, how you get to keep your doctor, how all these people are going to end up being insured that weren't insured.
About that, you know, people still digging through this thing.
The ruling is uh close to 200 pages.
The law itself is 2700 pages.
Yes, he's spiking the football.
Of course he was gonna spike the football.
We're the only ones who weren't gonna spike the football.
Of course he's spiking the football.
I I really concerned here, the amount of power this guy is now going to think that he's got.
And it's payback time now, by the way.
Ask Arizona about that.
This is payback time.
But they're gonna have to readjust their campaign strategy because I know Obama was gonna run against uh, you know, five or four white guys and Uncle Tom.
He can't run against Supreme Court now.
He's he's really had a big campaign issue taken away from him in one sense, and we've had one handed to us.
And this whole thing has now become purely political with the court ruling that this is a tax, and it turns out to be the largest tax increase in world history and a tax that we were deceived about.
It becomes a purely political issue.
It's made to order for the campaign, made to order.
Obama's got nothing to defend.
He can go out there and defend this bill all day long, but the number of people who don't want any part of it just multiplied.
He's got to go out and defend and brag about a law that nobody wants, or a vast majority of the American people don't want.
He has to go out and try to defend an economic plan that's resulted in destruction of the American private sector.
So if you try to look for positives wherever you can, folks, and along those lines, there is a to me still somewhat confusing aspect of a ruling here on Medicaid and the states.
Nothing in our opinion precludes Congress from offering money under the Affordable Care Act to expand the availability of health care and requiring that states accept such funds, comply with the conditions on their use.
But what Congress is not free to do is penalize states that choose not to participate in that new program by taking away existing Medicaid funding.
So the Supreme Court apparently has decided that the government, in this case, the Department of Health and Human Services cannot penalize states who choose not to participate in the new Medicaid expansion.
Again, nothing in our opinion precludes Congress from offering funds under the Affordable Care Act to expand the availability of health care and requiring that states accept such funds comply with the conditions of the use of the money.
But what Congress is not free to do is to penalize states that choose not to participate in that new program by taking away their existing Medicaid funding.
So they can't do a uh a health care version on Arizona.
Uh that well, like they did on immigration in Arizona to the rest of the states.
But remember who we're talking about here.
We're talking about the Democrat Party and President Obama, who picks and chooses which parts of the law that he seeks to ignore and accept.
Mitt Romney spoke just before noon about this.
We have three sound bites.
Here is the first of the three.
What the court did not do on its last day in session, I will do on my first day if elected president of the United States.
And that is I will act to repeal Obamacare.
Let's make clear that we understand what the court did and did not do.
What the court did today was say that Obamacare does not violate the Constitution.
What they did not do was say that Obamacare is good law or that it's good policy.
And he continued.
You can choose whether you want to have a larger and larger government, more and more intrusive in your life, separating you and your doctor, whether you're comfortable with more deficits, higher debt that we pass on to the coming generations, whether you're willing to have the government put in place a plan that potentially causes you to lose the insurance that you like.
Or whether instead you want to return to a time when the American people will have their own choice in health care, where consumers will be able to make their choices as to what kind of health insurance they want.
And he wasn't finished.
One more bite we have for you.
If we want to get rid of Obamacare, we're going to have to replace President Obama.
If we want good jobs and a bright economic future for ourselves and for our kids, we must replace Obamacare.
That is my mission.
That is our work, and I'm asking the people of America to join me.
If you don't want the course that President Obama has put us on, if you want instead a course that the founders envisioned, then join me in this effort.
Help us.
Help us defeat Obamacare, help us defeat the liberal agenda that makes government too big, too intrusive, and that's killing jobs across this great country.
So that's the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, just before noon today, reacting to Obamacare.
The Washington Examiner has a story here that Republican governors are planning to ignore the Supreme Court decision today to uphold Obamacare, hoping the issue will drive voters to dump Obama in favor of Romney, who has vowed to kill Obamacare after the decision,
the Republican Governors Association said that nothing should be done by the states until after the election a clear signal that they believe a Republican president, Republican House, Republican Senate will kill Obamacare.
The governor's association chairman Bob McDonald said today's ruling crystallizes all that's at stake in November.
The only way to stop Barack Obama's budget busting health care takeover is by electing a new president.
Obama's health care takeover encapsulates his presidency.
Obamacare increases taxes, it grows the size of government, puts bureaucrats over patients while doing nothing to improve the economy.
And that's exactly right.
And does so as a result of a massive tax increase that the regime, the president, and the Congress all denied this bill was.
Our freedom of choice just met its death panel.
The Supreme Court.
Greetings, welcome back, Rush Limboy here, the cutting edge of societal evolution.
Our freedom of choice just met its death panel.
The Supreme Court of the United States.
Again, there may be an outcome to this that the regime did not anticipate.
And it's this.
The Supreme Court has ruled, and I just want to repeat this again, that states cannot be stripped of federal money for not expanding their Medicaid roles.
They can opt out of the Medicaid expansion.
And the reason they will is this health care bill puts all the financial requirement on the states.
It mandates massive expenditure increases in Medicaid and tells the states they have to spend the money.
They have to come up with they can't print money.
The states cannot print money.
They don't have it.
The states are in terrible shape, those where there aren't any oil booms going on.
Pensions, health care obligations, unfunded liabilities, states don't have the money for this.
What this means is that there likely will end up being more uninsured people than there were under previous projections.
And guess who these people are?
The poor.
The people who in this country really, if you want to talk about people who don't have health insurance, you're talking 10 to 16 million people who want it but don't have it.
That's what all this was about.
10 to 16 million people.
Those people are the ones who may be aced out here.
Because if the states do not have to participate in the Medicaid expansion, and they they cannot be penalized.
The court says right here, what Congress is not free to do is to penalize the states that choose not to participate in that new program by taking away their existing Medicaid funding.
So the states can say, uh, we have the money, uh, we're not participating in this expansion, and you can't take away what we've got.
If it happens like that, the people that end up being harmed are the very people running around today thinking that the result here is they've got free health care.
How many of you people in your office today, or wherever you happen to be when the ruling came down?
How many people, and I don't know, it could be zero.
How many of you had somebody come up to you and say, does that mean health care is now free?
I guarantee you there's some who think that.
But that's what this means.
That's what they thought when it passed.
We have the sound bites now.
The Supreme Court's affirmed it.
Wow, so now my health care is really free.
I tell you what, not only is it not free, you may not get any health insurance whatsoever.
Now, the federal government has recourse if states do this.
I call your attention to Colorado, which is burning alive, and one of the reasons why is that Obama has cut the budget necessary for a number of these uh uh tanker airplanes that drop chemicals on fires.
Because the environmentalist wackos convinced Obama it was a waste of money.
Once there's a fire, let it burn.
So people being forced out of their houses.
So if Obama, let's just say you use a real world example here.
Say Colorado is a state that decides it's not going to participate in the Medicaid expansion.
And the court says they can't be penalized for not doing so.
The government cannot take their existing Medicaid money away.
Well, situation like this, Obama could say, oh, your state's on fire.
Okay, well, um, I'll I'll take a look as I fly over on my way to California fundraiser.
Uh, in the case of, let's say, Louisiana.
Let's say there's another hurricane that goes through there.
Devastates part of the state.
Let's say Louisiana has not participated in the Medicaid expansion.
Obama gets said, well, you know what?
Um, we don't have anything for you.
FEMA's too tied up.
So there are ways that with political payback, a guy like Obama can punish a state for not playing ball his way.
And he's shown that he will do so.
Arizona is looking like a prime example of this right now.
Arizona dared to stand up to the one.
And now Arizona essentially has no border.
Arizona has no way to stop.
And all this being done under the rubric of social justice.
So what we get today with the Obamacare ruling is the largest tax in the history of the world.
It's going to be paid by the uninsured, very people Obama is supposed to help.
If you don't go by insurance for whatever reason, you pay a tax, pay a fine, what have you.
It's just been upheld.
Largest tax in the history of the world is going to be paid by the uninsured.
Very people Obama's supposed to and claiming to be helping.
Arizona, Obama's personal pinata, and other states waiting in line if they don't participate in the Medicaid expansion.
Now the politics of this.
I was thinking today, folks, right before the show began, how many days have there been my 23-year career like this?
And, of course, the first big one was Clinton winning in 1992, the day after that election.
I remember how depressed everybody who did not want Clinton to be elected was.
I remember how depressed the audience was.
And I remember my task that day and how I chose to go about it, which was to be as honest as I could, as positive as I could without abandoning reality, and to keep people engaged and in the game.
And there have been I forgot how many, I couldn't think of them all, but there have been many days like this throughout the course of this program, where a decision or an election has had a devastating impact on the attitudes of people.
And of course, there are obvious ways to do it from my standpoint in this circumstance.
You talk about the campaign, for example.
And I touched on it briefly mere moments ago.
We know that had this decision gone the other way, as it should have, that Obama was salivating to run against the court.
A court that was arrogant and out of touch and disrespectful and had no concern for the plight of the average downtrodden America.
Four white guys and an Uncle Tom, four rich Republican white guys and an Uncle Tom just took your health care away from you, but they kept theirs.
Well, that's gone now.
Obama doesn't have, he can't run against the court.
As a side note on this, how many embarrassed journalists are there?
All these stories, this week in the last, which trashed the court as being out of touch, arrogant.
I mean, really guy, Roger Simon in political wrote a piece as though the court had already cited, and against Obama, and many others had written pieces about how worthless and out of touch and damaging the court was.
And there were people that we need ten more justices.
This court's been overtaken by a bunch of rabid right wingers.
Now they've got to do their retractions.
They don't have the court to run against.
They don't have this as an issue to run against.
We have a great issue thrown right in the middle of our laps, and that is fraud, deceit.
What do you mean a tax makes it okay?
Is there anything the government can't tax?
Is there is there no universe alive that the government can't get itself involved in?
So we've got a rotten economy Obama can't defend.
We have a Supreme Court he cannot attack.
So from the standpoint of the campaign going into the summer, the fall, and so forth, you can look at it as a positive.
You can say accurately, too, that the anti-Obama vote will be loaded for bear.
Thank you.
It will be large, and it will be animated, and it will be energetic.
And what's Obama got to run on?
He can't run on his record.
It's a disaster.
He can't promise to do four more years of what he's going to do unless he wants to run on the great things represented by Obamacare, and that's just a touch of what's happened.
Just a little sample of what more we can do working together and so forth.
This will all work itself out, shake itself out as the uh months and days unfold before our very eyes and ears.
But I have to tell you something.
Yeah, I'm going to look at this, and I have, and I can find plenty of positives in it in terms of a campaign and the advantages it gives us and the ways in which to attack the incumbents that we have.
But I wish it weren't the case.
I wish we didn't have to do that.
This is very, very troubling what happened today.
The way in which this disaster of a law was determined to be constitutional is Indicates the country is in a place, you all know it, know it together.
The country is in a very dangerous and precarious place.
And it really is hanging by a thread, and that thread is either going to unravel in November, or it's going to get stronger.
We start sewing things back together.
But it really does boil down to November.
I think it's just unfortunate that we've gotten here.
We've gotten to this point where the Constitution.
I said it yesterday and the day before.
We wouldn't even be here if everybody involved simply had respect for an understanding of the Constitution.
We wouldn't even be here.
And that's what really is frightening about this.
It's the Constitution that's hanging by a thread, and all the rest of us with it.
But what's abundantly clear is we can't count on anyone except ourselves.
We the people.
It's up to us.
We can't count on anyone.
I tried to share with you the disquietedness I felt this week, the anticipation built with the health care ruling come Monday.
No, it's going to be Thursday.
And all the citizens and all the media...
gathered outside the court, tongues hanging, heavy breathing, waiting for the decision of what it turns out to be five people.
In a country of over 300 million.
Now I understand that it's a great opportunity we had to go to the court because the Congress, the shenanigans or did pass this thing in a totally convoluted way.
But just the idea here that in the old Roman days and the Gladiator, the Emperor is up there, thumbs up or thumbs down.
It's where we are.
November really does matter, and we can't count on anyone except us.
So now we have to sit here and hope that all of us are up to the challenge.
Because it's a big one.
you And back we are Rush Libba, the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
Telephone numbers 800 282-2882, and I know you want to weigh in on this, so we're going to start now with Bob in Oxford, Pennsylvania.
Hello, sir.
Welcome to the program.
Thank you, Ross.
It's a privilege and an honor.
Thank you very much, sir.
Long time listener.
Um.
You made a statement early in your monologue that the uh constitution's under assault.
Well, I really don't think it's under assault anymore.
Uh the Supreme Court just lit the last match to burn it up completely.
Uh our founding fathers uh put forth our constitution to protect individuals and the state from an all-powerful federal government.
And now we're no longer protected.
This federal government can now do whatever it wants to limit whatever it wants it to limit us to do and impose a tax on it and say, hey, we're allowed to do it.
For now that's true, folks.
For now, that's true.
And it's it's all right there.
It's it's in the preamble.
Article 1, Section 8, General Welfare Clause.
I I remember talking to people, general welfare, um, uh arguing with people when I was much, much younger, telling them no, general welfare is not welfare programs.
General welfare is not government taken care of it.
It's become that.
It's exactly what it's become.
That's right.
That the federal government has the power to tax us to spend the money for any reason when there are no limits whatsoever.
Right, and that the last limit has just been removed.
Now, even when they don't ask for it as such, in order to save themselves from themselves, the Supreme Court calls it a tax.
Yeah, I mean, it's amazing.
I mean, it's in the last three and a half years, I feel like I've been living in an alternative universe, and it's turning out to be a Looney Tunes cartoon.
We got Looney Tunes economics, and now everything's Lunary Tunes.
I don't know which uh cartoon character we're dealing with anymore.
Um I'd rather have Daffy Duck in the White House than the guy we have right now and probably do a better job.
Um, the problem is it's not a it's not a cartoon.
Leslie in Parker, Colorado.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Hello.
Hi, Russ.
How's it going today?
Good.
Thank you very much.
Um there's something that has not been mentioned in any of the um pre-decision analyses that I've been reading and hearing uh you talk about it, and that is what kind of legal precedent does this set?
And where goes our first amendment right to um petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Like, what do you mean?
Well, there's nowhere to go past the Supreme Court.
And what kind of legal precedent does this set?
You know, there the nobody's talked about whether Romney repeals it on day one or anybody else repeals it, the precedent set.
Precedent.
Not if it's repealed.
It can still be repealed.
Well, it can be repealed, but what kind of precedent does it set when the Supreme Court says that the government can tax us all they want and and that's it.
And they can call anything a tax, whether and and lie to us and get away with it, and that's constitutional.
Well, once if if you want to call that a precedent, then the solution to that is never electing Democrats.
Well, and by the way, some Republicans.
If the precedent's been set that the government can tax us for anything.
We have to elect people who don't want to do that.
Gotta take a break.
Back.
I'm not yelling at her.
No, no, no, no.
I'm being emphatic simply for the sake of the answer to the question.
By the way, what I said top of the hour was true.
The unemployment news is bad, and the number last week was revised upward.
And it continues to worsen.
Gross domestic product, jobless claims, they fell a little bit, but they'll be revised upward again next week.
Literally no improvement whatsoever anywhere on the economic front.
In fact, just more deterioration.
Probably will intensify.
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