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June 29, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:41
June 29, 2012, Friday, Hour #2
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By the way, I have a quick question.
If you got to go into all kinds of contortions, if you got to go outside the bounds of the law to save the act.
And that's what the New York Times quotes Justice Roberts saying.
Justice Roberts suggested that even he didn't find the tax argument especially plausible, but he quoted Justice Holmes to explain why it was good enough.
As between two possible interpretations of a statute, by one of which it would be unconstitutional and by the other valid, Justice Holmes wrote, it would be Oliver Wendell.
Our plain duty is to adopt that which will save the act.
This is the New York Times reporting that Roberts, gosh, I got to save the act.
Don, I got to save the act.
So he went back and he found Oliver Wendell Holmes, slow down mouth.
As between two possible interpretations of a statute, by one of which it would be unconstitutional, by the other valid, our plain duty is to adopt that which will save the act.
Well, excuse me, Mr. Justice Roberts, but how did that work in your Arizona finding?
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's open line Friday.
It's almost as if the Chief Justice thinks if you can imagine that the law is constitutional, then you have to rule that it is.
So now we're told that the guiding principle of the Supreme Court is we got to move heaven and earth to make sure the act is constitutional.
We have to save the act.
If it's the worst piece of crap ever to come out of Congress, we have to save this piece of garbage.
So if you can imagine that a law could somehow be constitutional if you do this or you do that, then that's what you do.
This is insane.
I do.
Folks, I feel like the police chief in my town just had a press conference and said, we have changed our mission.
We are now going to be facilitating people who wish to break in to your property because it's not right that you've made it so hard for them.
There's nowhere to go here.
There's nowhere to turn.
I have people saying, hey, Rush, tax bills have to originate in the House.
This thing originated in the Senate.
It really didn't.
Harry Reid took a House bill and gutted it and put Obamacare in it.
But the point still is, okay, let's say that that hadn't happened.
Let's say that the bill was unconstitutional because it originated in the Senate.
I hate to tell you, where do we have to go to get that determined?
We've got to go right back to the SCOTUS.
What are they going to do?
Rule it unconstitutional because that happened?
No.
You really bring this case to us simply because the thing originated in the Senate and not the House.
That's a minor point.
Everybody knew that they wanted to spend the money anyway, so who cares?
Well, we do.
The Constitution says that stuff has to originate in the House.
Well, it's not our job to find the stuff unconstitutional.
So we'll look the other way.
We got nowhere to go is my point.
Now, it doesn't appear to me, I know the two cases are different, but it doesn't appear to me that the Chief Justice went out of his way to find Arizona's immigration law constitutional.
Now, I know that the Arizona law, that case, was a case.
It was Arizona versus the regime, and there was no congressional legislation per se that was being argued, but at the end of the day, it was.
We've got federal limitation law was not being enforced.
Arizona's falling apart because of it.
They passed their own laws, which mirrored the federal government's laws so they could enforce them.
And the court said, you can't.
So it's not consistent.
We're going to do everything we can to make sure the act is upheld.
No, only certain acts.
But in both cases, they're legislation from the people.
Obamacare was legislation that came from the elected representatives of the people.
And the Arizona case came from the people and their elected representatives in the state.
State legislation didn't count.
Federal legislation.
Anyway, I've about said all there is to say on this.
I just wanted to get it off my chest.
Great to have you back here, folks.
Open Line Friday, Rush Limbaugh at 800-282-2882.
Let's see, it's not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.
Yeah, see, in Arizona, in Arizona, you know what?
Political choices, I don't agree with your political choices.
We're going to reject your choices in Arizona.
Let's go to the phones.
I want to just start out here.
I know that's the what?
Well, I'm just.
Snirdly is asking me if there is any glimmer of hope.
Well, of course, I'm just confining myself to the ruling.
You know, there's hope.
I mean, what we've got to do, it's game on.
It's like I said yesterday.
It is time to wrap this around Obama's head as tightly as we can.
We've got to tell everybody all over here what this is because the AP is out there.
Let me find it.
Yeah.
Associated Press.
They have an article, 10 things to know for Friday today.
What the healthcare law means for you.
You ready for this?
Free vaccines for kids, cheaper drugs for the elderly, and many other benefits of Obama's upheld law are already out there.
And there are more coming, like a guaranteed right to buy health insurance, even for patients with serious medical troubles.
So the media is spinning this today: everything's free now.
Obamacare, it's all free.
The dastardly Republicans have been stopped.
The court found for you, it's free health care.
Michelle Obama has got a story out there.
Yes, Muchel My Bell.
Contraception is now free.
It's one of the first things she talks about.
Contraception's now free.
I had people telling me in emails last night that people in their office were asking after the court rulings.
That means, okay, is healthcare free now just like when it was passed?
Okay, it doesn't mean it's free.
So what do we have to do?
We've got to start all over.
And we have got to wrap this bill and what it really is around Obama's head.
It's death panels.
It is massive tax increases, but those aren't going to happen until 2014 by design.
The tax increases that the Supreme Court just said are the reason the bill is constitutional, they don't hit till 2014.
Long after Obama has gone through his reelection process, tax increases are not going to happen between now and the election.
So there isn't going to be any evidence.
In fact, the way the thing's built, as we told you, the benefits kick in.
The mechanism to pay for it doesn't kick in until later.
But there are going to be endless regulations.
The insurance companies are out there talking about, okay, our fees are going to go up, our rates, our premiums are going to go up.
That will happen.
There's going to be denial of care, rationing price controls.
There are going to be deficits.
But yeah, it just, the glimmer of hope is the November election and the Republicans winning the Senate, winning the White House, and holding the House.
And then after that, hoping that everybody telling us now that they're going to repeal it will do so.
What glimmer of hope do you see, Sturdley?
You're looking for a glimmer of hope from me.
What glimmer of hope do you see?
It's worse than become a socialist country.
It's a banana republic.
This is worse than a socialist country.
We all thought that we had a backstop here.
The backstop doesn't exist.
Now, I suppose that Romney could just ignore Obamacare.
If he wins the elect, just ignore it.
Don't implement it.
Mr. Limbaugh, what are you talking about?
How in the world do you think?
Well, that's what Obama does.
He's ignoring whatever laws he knows.
He just granted amnesty for a million people.
The elected representatives of the people did not do it.
The elected representatives of the people defeated the DREAM Act.
President Obama just said to that and granted them amnesty.
So I guess taking a page out of the Obama playbook, Romney could just say, you know what, I'm not going to implement health care.
I'm just canceling it.
I'm not even going to go through the process of repealing it.
We're just not going to do it.
Well, Obama's getting away with it.
I'm being facetious to illustrate a point.
We thought we had a backstop with McKay and Feingold.
Nobody wanted to stick their neck out on that.
Bush said, no, no, no, no, I'll let the court decide it.
Well, guess what?
I found it's perfectly fine.
Don't forget the Stolen Valor Act yesterday.
You're now free to lie about winning medals and awards in the military when you're not even a member.
You can tell an IRS agent that you won an award.
You can tell him you're a Purple Heart winner.
As long as you're not trying to profit from it, you can tell anybody anything.
Court said that yesterday.
You can tell anybody that you won four Purple Hearts.
If you sell a book based on your faulty premise, they can go after you then.
But if you just run around bragging about it, and if you go to some store and have them make you some fake Purple Hearts, you run around wearing them, nobody can stop you.
You're perfectly fine.
Well, can you lie about having sex with interns to grand juries?
As long as there's a tax increase with it, I assume so.
I assume that if there's a tax increase associated with it.
Yeah, you can't argue before the Supreme Court.
got to tell the truth there well no no you really don't you can say one thing one day and another thing the next day and be perfectly cool that's what happened when they were discussing the tax anyway i'm gonna take a break and we'll get to your phone calls when we come back telephone number again 800-282-2882 and the email address lrushbo at eibnet.com
Before we go to the phones, one more little bit of news here.
This is from the Washington Free Beacon.
The headline of the story is, Obama and Soldiers Pay Up.
The Obama administration just today threatened to veto the Defense Appropriations Bill in part because it does not include higher health care fees for members of the military.
Now, you heard that right.
The regime threatened to veto the Defense Appropriations Bill in part because it does not include higher health care fees for members of the military.
The White House wrote in an official policy statement, quote, the administration is disappointed that the Congress did not incorporate the requested fee initiatives into either the appropriation or authorization legislation.
Obama's most recent budget proposal includes billions of dollars in higher fees for members of TRICARE, which is the military healthcare system, and is part of the administration's plan to cut nearly $500 billion of the Pentagon's budget.
So to cut money, they want health care expenses paid for by members of the military increased.
Want the military to have to pay more.
Now, why would that be?
There's only one reason, folks.
The regime's proposal is an effort to force people over to the state-run insurance exchanges.
It's a disguised mechanism to get military members to sign up for Obamacare.
He mandates, mandates in the Defense Appropriations Bill increased health care fees for members of the military.
But there's an alternative.
Leave the TRICARE system.
Go to a state-run exchange.
Join Obamacare, where it's going to be cheaper for now.
This is all about this administration trying to eliminate all of the choices that we all have for health insurance now, be it employer-based, be it self-purchase, be it wherever we find it.
They want those choices limited.
They want us all in these state exchanges, eventually melding us all into a single single-payer system.
And they figure mandating higher costs will force you to go where it's cheaper.
And the government, of course, isn't a competitor.
The government doesn't have to make profit.
So the government can undersell everybody, which is what they do for the first two to three years.
And their fines, if you don't buy insurance, are also much less than the cost of the policy for the first two or three years.
It's all a scheme.
It's all part of a grand plan to get everybody into government-run health care.
And all this while, Obama's going to be running around from now to November saying, you like your doctor, you keep him.
You like your current plan, you keep it.
No, you won't.
And don't doubt me.
I have no reason to Supreme Court you.
I have no reason to lie to you.
I have no reason to mislead you.
I have no reason to want to destroy your faith in me.
Quite the contrary.
Just the opposite.
Okay, Pat, Madison, New Jersey.
Glad you waited.
Your first today on Open Line Friday.
Hello.
Hey, Rush.
Second greatest honor I've had in my life, sir.
How are you today?
Rush, I think that this president just continues to get the hand at the gifts of all gifts, and he's going to make the Chief Justice look like a fool and feel like a fool because now he can take this and make it a campaign issue by saying, look, while I agree with the Supreme Court's ultimate finding, and I think that they did the right thing, I never said it was a tax.
The fact that the Chief Justice says it's a tax doesn't make it so.
It just, you know, that's just his decision, but we never thought it was a tax, and so therefore, I stand by my pledge that we didn't raise a tax on the American people and that we were well within our rights under the Commerce Clause.
Well, if Dunn, he will have a campaign problem if it's done right by the Republicans on the other side.
He could be maneuvered into having to defend this thing as a tax increase.
It's got to be pointed out.
It has to be shouted.
The only way this thing lives is because the Supreme Court said it's a tax increase.
The government has the ability to tax you.
Obama has unlimited tax increase powers.
That has to be how the Republicans position this.
And Obama then has to be forced to go and, no, no, no.
Look, I love what you said.
I love what the court did, but they got it wrong.
This really isn't a tax.
I'd love for him.
He's not going to say that, by the way.
You'll get close.
I don't know.
If it were me, it's a great way to duck the issue and say, you know.
He's not going to say.
He's going to talk about how everything's free.
He's going to talk about how costs are going down because of the rule.
He's not going to even address it.
Don't you think he's going to have to address it when he's attacked?
Who's going to make him address it?
Romney still.
Let's say Romney accuses him of being the author of the greatest tax increase in history and the media says, are you an idiot, Romney?
What do you mean?
Greatest.
The media make Romney look like an idiot for leveling the charge.
He's got to do something.
He can't stand by.
He's got to stand up and be heard, sir.
Who?
Romney?
Yes.
Oh, yeah, of course.
Absolutely.
And that's why I think it's a gift that he can just point right back to the Chief Justice.
And, you know, he doesn't care if he makes the Chief Justice looks bad because he doesn't care whenever he makes anybody look bad.
Well, I know what you mean when you say he doesn't care if the Chief Justice looks bad or if anybody else looks bad because he's a narcissist and, of course, all he cares about is himself.
I understand exactly what, but he's not worried about offending them.
He already did that, and they came around.
That's true.
That's true.
Intimidating a Chief Justice.
If you're Obama, you've got to say that intimidating these guys works.
Yeah.
And he can just put it right back on them.
I'm telling you.
Well, look, I understand.
Everybody wants to find the gift in this thing.
And I understand that.
I'm looking at it really, folks, just this self-contained legal matter.
That's how I'm looking at it.
The political consequences of this will happen on their own.
Look at, if the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is going to say that it's his job to find every way possible to make sure the act remains constitutional, as opposed to throwing it out, then you got to do that.
You got to find the act.
You've got to do whatever you can to make sure the act is sustained or survives.
Well, let me translate that for you.
What that means is it is now the self-appointed role of the Supreme Court to find ways to uphold unconstitutional laws and regulations.
In which case, we don't need a Supreme Court.
The Congress can now just pass anything.
If this is going to be consistent from the court, if whatever they pass, the court's going to bend every which way possible to find it constitutional, including rewriting it, which is what happened.
You talk about activism?
Justice Roberts stretching as far as he can to make sure he's not called an activist.
He ends up being the most activist judge on the Supreme Court I can recall since William Brennan or Douglas crying out loud.
He has rewrote it in order to save the act.
It's their job to uphold unconstitutional laws and regulations.
That's a new one on me.
I thought in Marbury versus Madison, the court assigned to itself the role of determining whether laws were constitutional or not.
Apparently now Marbury versus Madison is out and Roberts versus America is in.
In which case the court's role is to find any way possible without limits to uphold unconstitutional law.
That's why I'm sick because that's what has happened.
This is the mother of all judicial activism.
As Saddam Hussein would say.
Here's Ty in Indianapolis.
We continue on the phones on Open Line Friday.
Hello, sir.
Hello, Mega Ditto's Rush.
Thank you very much.
Well, I agree with you.
There's not much of a silver lining.
This isn't the worst law ever passed, though.
Shortly after the country was even founded, there was a law called the Alien and Sedition Act.
I think we all learned about it in social studies.
Right.
Now, that was before Marbury versus Madison that you just cited, so there was no judicial review, but the Supreme Court justices actually prosecuted people under this law.
So they clearly didn't have any objections.
People like me were prosecuted under that.
Exactly right, yeah.
So in their day jobs, I guess they used to have to work for a living.
They were prosecuting people under it, had no problems with it.
But in the very next election, the American people turned out that administration, they turned out that Congress, and they completely changed everything.
And then in 1960, I'm forgetting the name of the justice, but he said that that was a much truer sense of what was constitutional, the will of the American people, than anything any Supreme Court justice had ever done.
Well, but if you were talking to Roberts instead of me, what he would tell you is exactly right.
And I just upheld the will of the people because the will of the people was expressed in Obamacare.
The elected representatives of the people passed the law, so therefore it's my job to make sure it stays constitutional because this is what the people wanted.
Well, you and I know that it wasn't the will of the people, but that's not my point.
My point is that if we act now, if we, as you said today, game on, if we elect a new administration, elect a new Congress, if we make our meaning, you know, no, Andrew, that's exactly what we have to do.
That's exactly where we are.
I agree with you 100%.
I'm just trying to be a little ray of sunshine and say, hey, these nine people aren't the end-all-beal of what the Constitution are.
We are.
And someday, maybe some justice will say, hey, clearly the American people did not support this interpretation.
Clearly, the American people don't want to be taxed simply because they exist.
We have the right to life.
We don't have the responsibility necessarily to ensure that everyone else gets insurance.
All of that's exactly right.
The question is: how many people between now and November will come to accept this as you have just described it versus how many people will be told that, hey, your health care is free now and rich are paying for it and everything's back on track now.
You don't have to do anything.
Everything's cool.
Well, it's not going to be easy, I guess.
No.
No, it's closely.
Look, I've got a little bit too much idealism in me today.
I'm ticked off that we are here.
I'm not in denial.
I know we're here.
I know what we got to do.
I know what has to happen.
November, all caps, italicized and in bold, November.
I know exactly what has to happen.
I am just sick that it's gotten to this point.
That I am not paralyzed with my sickness.
I'm not defeated here.
I'm just, I am, I'm boiling mad and sick at the same time, and it's gotten here.
No, I didn't see the story that I was right about.
Well, Snerdley is asking me if I all saw the stories that said I was.
There weren't any stories that I was right.
There were just stories about the speculation that he changed his mind at the last minute and people are trying to figure out why.
Well, that was some of the gossip that was going around in the blogs yesterday.
But it was so inexplicable.
People trying to make up, or not make up, come up with answers that they can understand because the result, as I said, I hate to be redundant here, but sometimes it's necessary.
All these pundits.
I'm really down on a lot of things today.
All these pundits, boy, what a smart guy.
Wow, nobody predicted this.
This guy's, well, why didn't we predict it?
It's because we're constrained by the law.
We weren't thinking outside the law.
If somebody told us, hey, make a prediction based on the law not mattering, maybe somebody would have come up with this.
Okay, so nobody came up with this.
Nobody made this prediction.
And the pundits marveling at the brilliance and the sharp mind of, well, sorry, but save me.
I don't believe there's any brilliance here.
And I'm getting sick and tired of people marveling at each other for their so-called intelligence when there isn't any.
Wow, we didn't predict that.
This guy's smarter than we are.
Wow, this is really cool.
We've got to find a way to acknowledge that.
Nobody ever tried a stunt like this 223 years of the Supreme Court.
That's why nobody predicted it.
How many of you, when you considered every possibility here, you know what?
I think the court's going to actually end up calling this a tax increase.
Who in their right mind would think that?
Who in their right mind would predict that as the ultimate way in which the case would be decided?
Nobody.
Now, as to what happened to cause Justice Roberts change his mind if he did, I don't think we'll ever know.
I don't think the other justices will ever talk about it.
I don't think they'll write about it if something did go on.
They're pretty closed-minded about this.
Here's Chris Pleasant in California.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
Pleasure to talk to you.
Thank you very much.
It's a day where it's very depressing and disturbing at a level that's beyond some of the other things that have gone on the last three or four years to me.
And I was hoping maybe you could make some sense of a question I have.
If you step back and look at it, it seems to me like if they had a vote on the question of going forward as a tax on the Supreme Court itself, the only justice that was in favor of that was Robert.
It would be an eight-to-one disagreement that it is a tax, correct?
No.
I know where you're going with this.
You're asking me, did one of the nine determine this?
Yes.
You had the four libs who voted for the bill no matter what.
The four libs, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Breyer, they were going to vote for this.
It didn't matter what.
Then they were going to vote for the Hoped Commerce Clause.
So you got four votes for it there.
Then you got the other four, as it turns out that we're dead set against it from top to bottom, front to back, side to side.
Kennedy, Scalia, Roberts, Alito.
Thomas Alito.
Now you got Roberts.
So you've got four to four right now.
So whatever Roberts does, it's going to end up being 5-4.
It's not.
So Roberts decides that he wants this thing found constitutional.
For whatever reason, we don't know what happened.
But he knows the Commerce Clause angle isn't.
So he makes up this tax business.
And then he joins the four liberals, and it makes it five to four.
Then he writes the majority.
He assigns it to himself.
He writes the majority.
And he alone cites as the reason the tax business.
That causes Ginsburg and the liberals to dissent from his majority opinion because they don't like the fact that he ignored commerce.
They wanted it decided on the basis of the commerce clause.
Roberts didn't do that.
So Ginsburg writes that this is what everybody's confused.
Why is Ginsburg writing a dissent and she's on the winning side?
Nobody going to figure this out.
What she was dissenting against was that she didn't want, if Roberts is going to cite this on a tax basis, then don't even mention commerce.
She was upset that Roberts, in his ruling, decided that the Commerce Clause technique was unconstitutional.
It was the first thing that was reported.
The first thing reported.
And by the way, the news media is spanking itself for not waiting, for being too eager.
They all wrote, well, they had no choice.
That's how the court announced it.
We were defrauded, and I can't tell you a number of ways.
We were defrauded, we were defrocked, and then we were teased and mocked because the first thing the court released was commerce clause mandate unconstitutional.
Yay!
Right on.
Sigh of relief.
Wait just a minute.
The act is upheld.
It is just a tax.
And the government can do that.
That's what Ginsburg was ticked about.
She was saying in her dissent in the majority, if you're going to find this thing constitutional as a tax increase, don't even mention the commerce clause.
Leave it alone so we can use it later.
And then that led to everybody, okay, what just happened here?
Trying to figure out if Roberts admits that the Commerce Clause aspect of this, the mandate is unconstitutional, that's 5-4, bye-bye Obamacare.
But wait, no, I'm going to call it a tax.
That makes it, so you're right.
One guy found the mechanism for it to be constitutional, but he had four people voting with him on it.
So I know what you're getting at.
You got nine people here, and one of them found the mechanism, but he found four to agree with him.
But they still dissented on how he did it.
Hope that helps.
Not that it matters, but I hope that helps.
I have here an excerpt of a brief submitted to the court by the Landmark Legal Foundation, which filed a brief, many people did, opposed to Obamacare.
And this is on page 18.
This is section 2.
I sort of read briefly from the brief that Landmark submitted, which was ignored.
It did not have to be, the court is not even required to read it.
Don't misunderstand me.
I'm not.
I'm just telling you some smart people here who did anticipate where this might go.
The Landmark Legal Foundation brief, the individual mandates penalty provision in 26 United States Code, United States Code, Section 5000A, 2011.
The individual mandate penalty provision cannot be justified as a permissible tax under any constitutional test.
Arguments proffered by the federal government that this provision constitutes a permissible exercise of Congress's taxation authority fail under all established precedents and should be rejected by the court.
Okay, so here is a brief filed.
Andy Obamacare says you can't call the mandate a tax.
Now, what was the basis for which Landmark made that legal claim?
Well, it's important.
The Constitution allows for certain types of taxes and only certain types of taxes.
There are excise taxes.
Remember, I asked Snerdley yesterday.
I want all of you.
Think of all the federal taxes you can think of.
You've got excise taxes, direct taxes, which must be apportioned among the states.
And nobody knows what that means.
That's never been done before, by the way.
Direct tax, apportioned among the states.
It's never been done before.
And of course, the income tax under 16th Amendment, that's it.
Fees at Jellystone Park, for example, to ride the sleigh or whatever.
And income tax, which required a constitutional amendment.
Number 16, that's it.
Now, what the Chief Justice said is that, eh, that's just labels.
Meaning, the Chief Justice could not explain what kind of tax this penalty that he has found is.
This tax is not permitted under the Constitution.
It's not a fee.
It's not an excise tax.
And it's not an income tax.
This tax is going to be collected by private sector insurance firms.
You have to buy health insurance, right?
That's the tax.
That's what Roberts said.
Well, where are you paying the tax?
Insurance companies.
There's nothing in the Constitution about that.
That's why this is so unsettling here.
Is under these three kinds of taxes that the Constitution allows for, excise, direct, and income, this is neither.
Yeah, it didn't matter.
Had to save the act.
And Congress has the taxing authority.
What the Constitution, remember, required an amendment for there to be an income tax wasn't in there.
And there's no constitutional precedent for this kind of tax.
So that's why people who are really upset here are really genuinely upset.
Like, I don't know.
I'm going to think of an analogy.
I got to take a break.
Don't go away.
It's the fastest three hours in media.
Two of them are already gone, my friends.
But since I were smacked ab in the middle of Open Line Friday, one of the greatest career risks ever taken by modern, major American media figure.
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