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July 3, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:52
July 3, 2012, Tuesday, Hour #2
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One great line of attack in beating back Obamacare is to tell people the economic reality of the implementation of this bill because it's the economy that people care about right now.
And there is a brand new wave of bad economic news out there.
We had it yesterday.
The manufacturing levels of this country are at a three-year low.
And we got Henry Nostrilitis Waxman out saying on C-SPAN, it's a depression.
It's not a recession.
Unemployment continuing to flatline.
There's nothing.
There's nothing decent happening in this country right now economically.
And Obamacare is going to make it even worse.
So if people don't, if our guys don't want to talk about the intimate details of Obamacare, which I think is a mistake, because it's made to order, anybody who cherishes liberty or freedom, and especially people that take it for granted, need to know how days are numbered if this thing is fully implemented.
Hi, folks.
Welcome back.
Rush Limbaugh here, 800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program, Rasmussen has a new poll out that's highlighted at Newsmax.
And basically, Scott Rasmussen says conservative anger against Obamacare is hitting stratospheric levels.
The anger is at an all-time high among Republican voters, among Tea Party people, among conservatives.
The people who make this country work have never been angrier.
And the people in Washington had better listen.
And I'll tell you something with this economic news, the manufacturing continuing to plummet.
Every economic indicator is anemic.
And there's something, and I don't mean this as an insult.
I'm speaking in a purely political frame here.
The Romney camp has got to realize that this election is not about him.
It's about Barack Obama.
This is a referendum on Barack Obama.
This election is made to order to make Barack Obama the focal point of every aspect of the campaign because it is Barack Obama who has led us to this precarious position that we are now all in, and it's only going to get worse with more of Obama.
Now, don't misunderstand.
Romney can't go out and say silly things about what he's going to do.
We don't assume he's going to do that.
But I'm talking about if I were a consultant, if I were advising anybody how to win an election, it's about Obama.
You don't have to sell yourself.
All you've got to do is avoid saying and doing stupid things because there is a power attached to incumbency.
Conservative interest in the presidential election hit stratospheric levels following last week's court ruling, according to Scott Resmussen.
All that did was energize conservatives.
The conservative interest in the election was already much higher than that of moderates and liberals, and it went up to really stratospheric levels right after the ruling.
We don't know if that'll continue or if it's just a temporary response to the news cycle.
Well, that's hard to say.
If Republican leadership casts doubt on their ability to do anything about this, mistake.
A horrible mistake to do that.
Hard to say what voter reaction to it would be.
But I think people have maintained, you have maintained, an emotional fever pitch over this for two years.
I don't see your emotion dwindling.
I don't see your emotion subsiding.
I don't see these stratospheric levels descending.
I see it only increasing.
People do not want this by a vast percentage.
If you take the public at large, the polling on it has really not changed since from the get-go.
Majority oppose this, and more and more people will oppose it the more they are told what's in it.
Now, I mentioned that Michael Tannert at the Cato Institute has a piece, and he says that Obamacare is now a bigger mess.
He focuses on the Medicaid expansion.
Now, let me summarize this, because it gets a little, or it can get a little complicated when it needn't be, because it uses terms that are a little nebulous, but I'll try my best.
What we do here is make the complex understandable.
The healthcare law, in order for Obama to get a score on the total cost from the CBO of under a trillion dollars, shifted much of the new expense to the states.
The healthcare law requires the states to bear the brunt of most of the costs of insuring all the 30 to 40, whatever million numbers of people that don't have insurance.
And largely, this occurs through the Medicaid program.
Well, the states don't have a lot of money.
The states can't print their own money.
And the one thing in this ruling that might be seen as helpful is the court said that the states cannot be punished if they refuse to accept these new expenses.
And what that meant was that the federal government, Obama, cannot take away their existing Medicare funds if they refuse to accept the demand of spending new amounts.
So they can't be blackmailed.
They can't be penalized.
They can say, we're not going to accept this responsibility.
You want to spend the money, you spend it.
We don't have it, we're not.
Now, having explained that, let me pick up with Tanner's piece halfway through.
Here is another complicating factor.
Most states have not yet set up an exchange.
Let me go one paragraph earlier.
Remember now, this is a law that already will cost as much as $2.7 trillion from 2014 to 2024.
It'll add more than $823 billion to the federal deficit.
And these are estimates that assume state taxpayers will be picking up some Medicaid costs.
How will Congress react if billions or perhaps trillions of dollars in new costs are added to the federal budget because the states refuse to pick up the cost?
There's another complicating factor.
Most states have not yet set up an exchange.
Many, especially those with Republican governors or legislatures, may refuse altogether to set up exchanges.
By most estimates, as few as 15 states are likely to have exchanges in operation by the 2014 deadline.
Now, the exchange is where you're going to go to get insurance.
And we touched on this yesterday.
If the states don't set up these exchanges, then where are you going to go?
Well, by 2014, 2015, enough damage has been done to the private sector insurance industry that you won't have any options.
You'll be forced to go to the feds.
It gets a little complicated there.
Obamacare gives the federal government the authority to step in if the states do not set up exchanges.
Obamacare gives the federal government the authority to step in and set up and operate an exchange in any state that doesn't set up its own.
But there's reason to doubt that they have resources to do so in 35 to 40 states.
Anyway, federal subsidies.
This is the states subsidizing the cost of an insurance policy.
Federal subsidies are available only through the exchanges that the states set up.
The federal government cannot offer the subsidies through a federally run exchange.
Thus, if states neither expanded Medicaid and if they don't set up exchanges, that could effectively block most of Obamacare's new entitlement spending.
Now, this is theoretical because Obama wouldn't let that happen.
He's not shown any concern about spending restraints anywhere.
Well, under the law, there's only a certain amount of money budgeted for the law.
Under the law, they may not have the money to set up the exchanges in as many states that will not set them up.
If the states do not follow and set up the exchange, that's what these guys are, these governors are all saying we're not going to play.
We are not going to implement Obamacare.
What they're telling you is they're not going to establish any of these exchanges that the law requires because they don't have the money to pay for them.
And under the terms of the bill, under the terms of Obamacare, the costs that are in there, the states do not have the money.
The feds don't have the money.
They've offloaded it to the states for that very reason.
If the states don't spend the money, the feds don't have it under terms of the law.
Now, again, we're dealing with Obama, who doesn't care about law.
I mean, this was a lawless decision.
His amnesty for the Hispanics last, that was lawless.
So I'm just giving you, if everything happened according to the law, we would have a very interesting situation.
But the law doesn't matter to the people who are running the show right now.
And I don't know how to say it other than that.
I've got no interest in lying to you about this.
Bottom line is that if the states neither expand Medicaid or set up these exchanges, that could effectively block most of Obamacare's new entitlement spending.
Because according to the law, and don't ask me why, I don't know, according to the law, the federal government can only offer subsidies in state-run exchanges.
They can't offer subsidies in an exchange that they set up and run themselves.
I don't know why.
All I know is it's what the law says.
I don't know what the thinking is behind it.
The obvious question is, why would the federal government penalize itself and allow itself to be put in this position?
I can't answer that right now.
I don't know.
Just telling you what's in the law.
And there's one last wrinkle.
If it is the subsidies, it's the subsidies that trigger the penalty or the tax, whatever you want to call it, under Obamacare for employers who fail to provide workers with insurance.
So states which do not set up exchanges could also escape the employer mandate.
That is, Obamacare requires employers with 50 or more workers to provide health insurance or pay a fine, a tax, whatever you want to call it.
But the tax only kicks in if at least one employee of the 50 qualifies for subsidies under the exchange.
And I don't know what you have to do to qualify for a subsidy, but it ain't much because they want everybody to think the government's giving them health care.
So it isn't much.
And all it takes is only one employee out of the 50 qualifying for subsidies to have the tax kick in.
Now, since the subsidies can only be provided via a state-authorized exchange, a state that refuses to set one up could end up blocking the employer mandate altogether.
And this is what the governors are trying to say without saying it.
At the very least, expect some employers to sue on this point, leading to yet another Supreme Court challenge.
This is nowhere near over.
But I want to make one more observation.
Look at what I just said.
Everything I just told you is in this stupid bill.
How many of you know what the heck an exchange is?
Okay, tell me, what is it?
It's the DMV.
You are going to go to the healthcare DMV to get your insurance.
What in the world are we talking about here?
A state-run exchange, 50 employees, but if one qualifies for subsidies, then a tax and there are 2,700 pages of this gobbledygooky gook.
State-run exchanges.
I'll tell you who's doing hoops in the grave is Karl Marx.
So think of this.
Well, and I know some people are going to get insurance and some won't, of course.
And the reasons that some get insurance while others don't will become known as well.
And those who don't get insurance, well, don't worry, pre-existing condition.
If you get sick, then they show up then.
How many people with a pre-existing condition are going to show up thinking that for the first time they're going to get insurance?
The law says they get it.
But who are we dealing with here?
We're dealing with a bureaucracy.
You get diagnosed with a very serious disease.
I don't even want to think about this.
This is an absolute disaster.
It is an unmitigated disaster that is so un-American in the sense of tradition, the way things happen in this country.
A state-run exchange, and then whether or not there are subsidies.
And if the state set up the exchange, then the feds can subsidize.
But if the feds set up the exchange, there can't be a subsidy.
And if there isn't a subsidy, then somebody isn't getting it for free.
And you, the American people, aren't going to be able to keep up with this.
So whatever you're told at this freaking exchange is going to be your life.
All you want is an aspirin.
All you want is a doctor to examine you, find out what the heck's wrong.
Why are you sick?
In the meantime, you're in a government office going through hoops, trying to figure out if you qualify to even be at the exchange.
Not even fully understanding what one of those is.
And at the end of the day, it all doesn't matter because the whole point of this is to have this control over you, is to have this authority over you.
It's break time, and we'll come back.
We'll get to your phone calls.
I'm going to reward people who've been patiently waiting since the program began.
Even before that, they've been lined up.
So that's coming up next, right after this, folks.
Sit tight, the EIB network.
Open Line Friday on Tuesday.
Rolls on.
Now, back to Michael Tanner's piece, he of the Cato Institute.
As I said, Obamacare gives the feds the authority to step in setting up and operating an exchange in any state that doesn't set up its own, but there's reason to doubt they have the resources to do so.
Why?
They failed to appropriate the money when they wrote the bill.
They screwed up.
The bill is so complicated that the advocates, the people who wrote it, forgot this.
Federal subsidies are available only through exchanges that states set up because the law says the feds cannot offer subsidies through a federally run exchange.
And there's a left-wing blog out there, Talking Points Memo, that's very upset about this because as the result of a drafting oversight, Congress neglected to include automatic appropriations for federally facilitated exchanges.
That means there's money on hand to help states that want to set up exchanges themselves, but the government's options vis-a-vis states that can't or won't are more limited.
They just the bill was so complicated, the authors left out important parts like this.
It's 2,700 pages and they forgot this.
So according to the leftists, a Talking Points memo, who are connected, I mean, they're wired into the regime.
The authors of the bill screwed up and accidentally left out the appropriations for federal exchanges.
That's why Tanner says they don't have the resources.
Now, another, the states have until November 16th this year to set up their exchanges.
I think that's right.
I think the states have, yeah, they only have until November 16th to submit their exchange development plans to Health and Human Service.
They've got to November 16th to tell Kathleen Sebelius what they're going to do.
I don't believe any of this.
Just the fact, folks, that we are talking about health care this way ought to be enough to tell all of you that you don't want any part of it.
All you want to do is go to the doctor when you need to.
All you want to do, if you need the ER, you go.
All you want is a diagnosis.
Somebody in your family is sick.
What is exchange crap subsidies and all that?
What do we and this is the easy stuff to understand?
Okay, just excuse me here, but just one more thing.
You have to hear this, and then we'll go to the phones.
How do you qualify for an exchange?
Are you ready?
An individual can qualify for subsidies in a state-run exchange if an individual can qualify for a state-run exchange if they earn less than 400% of the poverty level.
Do you remember us telling you this when we first reported this?
Well, this is practically everybody qualifies.
Way we hear this: An individual can qualify for a state-run exchange if they earn less than 400% of the poverty level, which is $44,000 individually or $88,000 for a family of four.
If you earn, if you qualify under those thresholds, then you get 80% of your insurance and health care free.
If you make a dime over those thresholds, you will pay full retail price for the health care provided under an exchange managed by an insurance company, and it won't be cheap because you're not going to have anywhere else to go.
You're going to have to buy it at your state exchange with participating insurance companies, which will be regulated to the point they won't exist for very many years.
So an individual, $44,000 or less, qualifies for subsidy, 80% covered.
If a state does not, see, they want.
What are you laughing at, Snerdly?
It's, hey, this is seductive.
That's why so many people are running around here.
Is my health care free?
If a state does not establish, does not establish an exchange, then the person or family who nonetheless qualifies is lumped into a federal exchange, but there are no subsidies there, remember, because they forgot to appropriate the money for it.
Look, the bottom line here is this is healthcare in America.
This is what it's going to be?
This is all to get your insurance.
And if you don't have insurance, you don't get covered.
You don't get treated.
And if you don't have insurance, you pay a fine.
And you don't get treated.
Okay.
Robert, New Orleans, I'm glad you waited.
I really appreciate your patience.
Welcome to the program.
Great to have you with us.
Multi-megaton dittos, Maharush.
Thank you, sir, very much.
You are lighting the way for all Americans every day, and we thank you for that, sir.
Well, I appreciate it, sir.
You know, this argument about whether it's a penalty or a tax is nothing, nothing but a diversion.
Obama and the Democrats and the media are talking about if it's this or if it's that.
It's not.
It's both.
I have read some of the bill.
I haven't read it all, but I've read some of it.
And so far, I have counted almost 20 new taxes.
Not even considering that.
Congress has already taken away half of the Medicare taxes that we pay in from on our payroll taxes every payday, have taken half of that, $500 million worth of tax money to implement this monstrosity.
So there is no argument whether it's a penalty or whether it's a tax.
It's both.
And then the penalty kicks in later.
And beyond that, there's another thing that people are assuming, and I'm hearing it creep in to the media's commentary on this, and it's not true.
They are saying that the Supreme Court ratified a tax.
They didn't.
The question of whether the tax itself was constitutional has never been raised before the Supreme Court because it can't.
Because of the May Injunction Act, no court has jurisdiction over it until the tax or the penalty or whatever Obama is calling it this week, they're not going to be able to discuss that issue before a court.
That's true.
When he's talking about the Anti-Injunction Act, which is the first thing they talked about in oral arguments in this case, the Anti-Injunction Act states that a court can't rule on a tax until it's been levied, until it's been collected and paid.
And these taxes that we're talking about here don't implement until 2014.
But it is a tax in the sense that the Chief Justice called what the government can do to penalize you a tax in order for it to be constitutional.
But it isn't constitutional.
That's what's so abhorrent about all this.
It's an abject disaster.
And you're right.
I'm glad you agree with me.
It's a sideshow to talk about whether this is a penalty or a tax.
It's a diversion, and it's a technique for people to avoid dealing with the substance of this, which is an out-of-control court, an out-of-control Congress, and a federal government that is operating outside the bounds of the Constitution.
That's what's going on here.
And I just think the fastest way to clue people in and get them refocused is to tell them what the details of their health care are going to be as according to this law.
Tell them exactly what's in store for them in terms of liberty and freedom down the road, and of course, their back pocket.
And there's another way to attach to this, too, and that is the economic impact of it.
Everything Barack Obama has done has done great damage to our economy.
Every single policy from the stimulus on, everything Obama has done has resulted in a slowdown and then a further slowdown, then another slowdown of the United States economy and a shrinkage of the private sector.
And this, we ain't seen nothing yet until this thing gets implemented.
The economic impact of this, the impact on the private sector economy of Obamacare, will dwarf the impact of the stimulus and all of the other Obama programs combined.
I say that.
It's hard for people to understand.
It's because people don't want to believe that elected officials would have this kind of design on their own country.
People don't want to believe that we have people here that want to rule, not govern, that want to succumb to their authoritarian instincts and their dictatorial instincts.
It's exactly what we have.
It's been staring us in the face for years.
That's what liberalism is.
Liberalism believes that no one's competent.
No one's capable of making their own choices.
You know, liberals, it's not enough.
If a liberal wants to be a vegetarian, not enough.
You have to be one too.
Otherwise, you're a threat.
If a liberal believes that oil is causing global warming, we have to get rid of it.
And you have to agree too.
And if you don't, then you have to be somehow punished, penalized, or done away with.
It's not enough for them to think what they think.
They demand compliance with it all.
Who's next?
Laura in Chicago.
I'm glad you waited.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Hello.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
I'm sorry.
I'm really nervous.
I'm trying to get my thoughts on you.
I've been where you are.
I understand being nervous, but you're going to want to repeat this experience again and again and again.
Don't be nervous.
Okay.
I feel, you know what?
I'm a Tea Party member and I'm, you know, I'm like Yosemite Sam.
I'm stomping mad right now.
I feel like, you know, Judge, you know, John Roberts sold us out and that makes me mad.
But I'm watching the TV and there's two people that are really, really irritating me right now.
The first one is Mitch McConnell.
I saw him in an interview yesterday about repealing this and trying to fight back.
And he was like, I don't know if somebody just woke him or what.
He looked like he was half asleep and he was like, yeah, well, we're not going to win this wand.
And I'm thinking, are you kidding me?
I almost jumped to the TV and grabbed him.
And now, he didn't say that, but it's interesting that's your reaction.
Yeah, I know he wants to fight, but he doesn't sound like a person who's willing to get in there and do it for us.
He seemed tired and old.
And you know what?
You know, we need somebody that's got some, I don't know, a different, I don't know.
Well, here's the active train of thought on this.
It goes something like this.
Rush, this thing so damn complicated to implement that, getting rid of it so damn much more complicated that I don't think that we can really expect to get rid of all of it is so and that is so much BS.
Well but Rush, some of this stuff's already been implemented, you know, and some people, some people like it, and yeah, but here, what are we talking about?
We're talking about defending protecting, saving the Constitution, The Republic, individual liberty and freedom, repealing this thing.
They want you to believe how hard it would be.
Oh, a monumental task.
It's got so many tentacles that are already out there worming their way through the culture in ways that we haven't even seen yet.
But if we take them away, people will will realize it and they won't want it to be harmful, and so forth.
The vast majority of this has not implemented.
There have been waivers galore and, by definition, the benefits the quote-unquote benefits don't kick in until 2014 and 2015 anyway, and you know why?
So they could keep the 10-year cost under this mythical trillion dollars.
The tax increases are what have implemented.
The tax increases are the beginning.
They happen for two years before any of the so-called benefits kick in, so there isn't really a whole lot of benefit to take away.
And this uh, what is it?
It's either the uh I, I think it is the uh pre-existing condition.
I'm gonna get the terminology wrong here, but there is a mechanism whereby people can register or enroll for it, and the number of people who have is minuscule.
This was six months ago, maybe less than that, maybe three months ago, but it was recent past and everybody was shocked at how few people had availed themselves of the opportunity to enroll in this pre-existing condition pool.
See, it's not a whole lot of people yet.
It wouldn't be that difficult to repeal this.
Basically, a piece of paper says Obamacare is now repealed.
These things are not nearly as complicated as people want you to believe, telling you you don't understand that it's very complicated and much more involved here.
Yeah, the high-risk pools, the high-risk, there was a pool that was set up for people who are very, very high-risk that they could immediately sign up for and enroll in.
And it was shocking to people how few people had taken advantage of it.
It's not that many people here who have become ensnared by the tentacles of the bill.
Now, the McConnell quote, he says, it's a lot harder to undo something than it is to stop it in the first place.
I'm confident they're going to give us the votes to repeal it.
He'll do whatever he can to repeal the law.
But he told a Rotary Club type group, 50 people back in, I think it was back in Kentucky, might have been in Washington or somewhere, a small group of people.
He made it known how difficult it's going to be to repeal this.
And he told them he's not sure it can be.
And people have heard that, and they have assumed that his heart's not in it, which I don't think is the case.
But I have to take another break here because time is zipping by back right after this.
I don't mean to pile on here, folks.
Cybercast News Service is reporting that a record 8,733,461 people took federal disability insurance payments in June.
That is according to the Social Security Administration, and that number exceeds the population of New York City.
So basically, 8.7 million people took out federal disability insurance under SSI, Social Security.
Now, you want to know the trick about this?
You know why this has happened?
Some people are going to say, well, it's because we've got a bunch of takers out there and a bunch of freeloaders, a bunch of lazy creeps that's trying to live off everybody else.
Partly true.
But people need to eat.
Barack Obama is policies have so destroyed the employment picture in this country.
People have burned through their 99 weeks of unemployment.
There are no job prospects.
Nobody's hiring full-time, to speak of.
And so this program exists.
And people are signing up.
And I'm sure there's some people that aren't disabled, but it doesn't take much to qualify for a disability under the Americans with Disability Act.
It's not that hard to qualify.
A lot of people genuinely are disabled, and they're properly on the program, but there are probably a lot who aren't.
But you know the difference here?
You might be surprised to learn that you are never kicked off once you are enrolled.
You are on it for life.
So we now have 8.7 million workers, as the story says, 8.7 million Americans who are living off of federal disability insurance payments and can for the rest of their lives.
Don't know how much money it is.
I don't know what an average monthly benefit is.
But all it takes to qualify for a disability now is a half-decent lawyer to make the case for you.
Because this government advertises, they are out throwing food stamp parties.
You've seen that story.
They're advertising for more people to sign up for the food stamp program.
This regime wants as many people eating, drinking, and living because of it and its so-called benevolence than they would prefer people working.
So you destroy the economy, you destroy the job picture, you burn through your 99 weeks, and where do you go?
Somebody says, Hey, sign up for disability.
Oh, okay.
8.7 million more people than live in New York City.
And it's for life.
You have a disability.
I mean, you check keeps pouring in every month.
Disability payments now average $1,100 a month.
And there are more statistics associated with it.
I'll give them to you.
We get back.
We got a brief time out here at the top of the hour.
Open line Friday on Tuesday.
Rolls on.
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