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June 29, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:32
June 29, 2012, Friday, Hour #2
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By the way, I have a quick question.
If you gotta go into all kinds of contortions, if you gotta 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'd 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 gotta save the act, I gotta save the act.
So he went back and he found Jos Oliver Wenderville, 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, uh, excuse me, Mr. Justice Roberts, but uh, 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 gotta 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 uh 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'm I I feel like the police chief in my town just had a press conference that 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.
I I I there's nowhere to go here.
There's nowhere to turn.
I have people saying, hey, rush, tax bills have to read 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 gotta go right back to the SCOTUS.
What are they gonna 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 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 immigration law was not being enforced.
Arizona's falling apart because of it.
They passed their own laws which mirrored the federal government's laws they can enforce them.
And the court said you you you can't.
So it's it's not consistent.
We're gonna do everything we can to make sure the act is upheld.
No, only certain acts.
But in both cases, 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 um I've about said all there is to say on this.
I just 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.
Um see, it's not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.
Yeah, see, in Arizona, in Arizona, uh you know what?
Political choices um we don't agree with your political choices.
We're gonna we're gonna 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 Snurdley is asking me if there is any glimmer of hope in it.
Well, of course.
I'm just I'm confining myself to the ruling.
Um, there's hope.
I mean, if what we've got to do, it's game on.
It's like 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 again 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 health care law means for 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 as 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, Moochell 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 uh in emails last night, people in their office were asking after the court rules.
That means okay, is health care free now?
Just like when it was passed.
Okay, it says mean it's free.
So what do we have to do?
We've 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 gonna happen until 2014 by design.
The tax increases that the Supreme Court just said are the reason the bill's 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 things built, as we told you, the benefits kick in.
The mechanism to pay for it doesn't kick in till 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 that that'll 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, we'll do so.
What glimmer of hope do you see, Snerdley?
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 election, just ignore it.
Don't implement it.
Mr. Limbaugh, what are you talking about?
How in the world are you thinking?
Well, that's what Obama does.
He's ignoring whatever laws you know.
Let me just grant an 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 McCain Feingold.
Nobody wanted to stick their neck out on that.
Bush said, 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 not free to lie about winning medals and awards in the military when you're not even a member.
You can you can tell an IRS agent that you won an award.
You can tell him you're Purple Heart winner.
As long as you're not trying to profit from it, you can tell anybody anything.
Court said that yesterday.
If you sell a book based on your faulty premise, uh 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, it can you lie about having sex with interns to grand juries.
Um as long as there's a tax increase with it, I assume so.
If there's a tax increase associated with it.
Yeah.
Yeah, you can't argue before the Supreme Court.
You've 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 uh email address L Rushbow at EIB net.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's 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 health care system, and is part of the administration's plan to cut nearly $500 billion in 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 an in it's it's a 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 a profit.
So the government can undersell everybody, which is what they do for the first two to three years.
And their their 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 gonna be running around from now to November and 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.
Uh second greatest honor I've had in my life, sir.
How are you today?
Uh Rush, I um think that this president just continues to get the hand at the gifts of all guests, and he's gonna 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 you know they did the right thing.
I never said it was a tax.
The fact that the Chief Justice says it's the 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 the tax on the American people, and that we were well within our rights under the commerce clause.
Well, if done he will have a campaign problem if it's done right uh by the Republicans on the other side.
Uh he he could be maneuvered into having defend this thing as a tax increase.
It's gotta 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 again.
No, no, no.
Look, I love like what you said.
I love what the court did, but they got it wrong.
This really isn't a tax.
I'd love for he's not gonna say that, by the way.
He'll get close.
I don't know.
I I if it if it were me, it's a great way to duck the issue and say, you know.
He's not gonna say he's gonna talk about how everything's free.
He's gonna talk about how costs are going down because of the rule.
He's not gonna even address it.
Well, don't you think he's gonna have to address it when he's attacked, you know.
Who's gonna make him address it?
Romney still.
Let's say Romney accuses him of uh 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.
I I he's gotta do so he can't stand by.
He's gotta stand up and be heard, sir.
Who?
Romney?
Yes.
Well, yeah, of course.
Absolutely.
And that's why I think it's a guess that he can just point right back to the Chief Justice, and you know, he doesn't care if he makes a chief justice looks bad because he doesn't care whenever he makes anybody look bad.
Well, look, 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 uh but uh and I I mean he's not worried about offending them.
He already did that and they came around.
That's true.
That's true.
Intimidating intimidating a chief justice as far as if you're Obama, you gotta say that intimidating these guys works.
Yeah.
Well, look, I understand everybody wants to find the gift in this thing.
And they're I I under I understand that.
I'm looking at it really, folks, just this self-contained legal matter.
That's how I'm looking at the political consequences of this will happen on their own, and look at if if the chief justice of the Supreme Court is gonna 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 gotta do that.
You gotta find the act.
You gotta 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 gonna 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 is 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.
Thank you.
Thank you for very much.
Well, uh, I agree with you.
There's not much of a silver lining.
Um this isn't the worst law ever passed, though.
Um shortly after the uh 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 um actually prosecuted people under this law.
So they clearly didn't have any objections for the bigger.
People like me would were in the old were prosecuted under that.
Exactly right, yeah.
Um, 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 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.
So if 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 you and I know that it wasn't the uh will of the people, but that's that's not my point.
My point is that um 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, um that that's exactly what we have to do.
That's exactly where we are.
I agree with you a hundred percent.
I I'm just trying to be a little ray of sunshine and say, hey, these nine people aren't the end all deal 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.
Uh 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's free now, and uh richer paying for it, and uh everything's back on track now.
You don't have to do anything.
Everything everything is cool.
Well, uh It's not gonna be easy, I guess.
No.
No, it's not uh 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 gotta 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 uh uh what's what's defeated here.
I'm just, I am, I'm boiling mad and sick at the same time that it's gotten here.
Uh no, I didn't see the story that I was right about smoking Snerdly's asking me if I all saw the stories that said I was there weren't any stories that I was right.
You there there was a stories about the speculation they changed his mind at the last minute and people trying to figure out why.
Um, that there that that was some of the the gossip that was going around in the blogs yesterday, but it it was so inexplicable people trying to make up uh or not make up, people try to come up with with uh 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 I'm really uh 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 uh and the 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.
Well, we didn't predict.
Yeah, this guy's smarter than we are.
Wow, this is really cool.
We gotta 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 gonna 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 them if something did go on.
They're uh pretty closed-minded about this.
Here's Chris Pleasanton, California.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
Pleasure to talk to you.
Thank you very much.
It's a day where uh it's very depressing and disturbing at a level that's uh 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.
Um 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, Sothomaior, Kagan, and Breyer, they were gonna vote for this.
It didn't matter what, then they were gonna vote for the hoped commerce clause.
So you got four votes for it there.
Then you got the other four, as it turns out they were dead set against it from top to bottom, front to back, side to side, Kennedy, Scalia, Roberts Alito.
Uh uh Thomas.
Now you got Roberts.
So you've got four to four right now.
So whatever Roberts does, it's gonna end up being five-four.
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 that 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 it, it's what everybody's confused.
Why is Ginsburg writing a dissent and she's on the winning side?
Nobody could have figured this out.
What's she dissenting against?
What she was dissenting against was that she didn't want if Roberts is gonna side 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 report, and by the way, the news media spanking itself for not waiting, for being too eager.
They all wrote, and because well, they had no choice, that's how the court announced it.
We were 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 min, 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, well, 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 five four bye by Obamacare.
But wait.
No, I'm gonna 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 get I know what you're getting at.
You got nine people here, and one of them one 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 uh section two.
They sort of read briefly from the brief that landmark submitted, which was ignored.
Not and it did not have to be the court, not even required to read it.
Don't misunderstand me.
I'm not I just tell 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 State 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 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.
Think of all the federal taxes you can think of.
You got excise taxes.
Direct taxes, which must be a portion among the states.
Nobody knows what that means.
That's never been done before, by the way.
Direct tax a portion among the states, it's never been done before.
And of course the income tax under 16th Amendment.
That's it.
Fees at Jelly Stone 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 there'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 Robert said.
Well, where are you paying the tax?
Insurance companies.
There's nothing in the Constitution about that.
That's that's 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.
But The Constitution, remember, required an amendment for there to be an income tax.
It wasn't in there.
And there's no constitutional precedent for this kind of tax.
So that that's that's why people who are really upset here are really genuinely upset.
Like, I don't know.
I'm gonna think of an analogy.
I gotta take a break.
Don't go away.
It's the fastest three hours in media.
Two of them are already gone, my friends.
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