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Aug. 8, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:52
August 8, 2013, Thursday, Hour #3
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Talent on loan from God.
Much, much more than I will ever need, and if I could share some of it, I certainly happily would.
But I am endowed with that which I am endowed.
Great to have you here, folks.
Another big exciting, busy broadcast hour brought to you by me, the Excellence and Broadcasting Network and the Rush Limbaugh program at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program 800-282-2882, the email address L Rushbow at EIBNet.com.
All right, let me get to the let me get to the health care stack.
Maybe a couple of things before we get to the health care stack.
You know, this may be, this is not a health care story, I must be honest.
This may be, and this is tough to say, the best example of the Limbaugh theorem yet.
And that's hard to say, because there are examples of the Limbaugh theorem every day.
The Limbaugh theorem, by the way, you know what, it's almost like gravity.
When Sir Isaac Newton finally explained gravity to people, that was it.
Everybody understood me.
The Limbaugh theorem is the explanation of how the Obama administration works.
And there are examples of it constantly, because it's how they work, this.
Some days the examples are better than others.
Now today's example comes from the New York Times headline.
Obama before a military audience vows to end across the board cuts.
President Obama stood at this desert base, Camp Pendleton, California on Wednesday before nearly 3,000 Marines sailors and their families, and a captive audience of two Republican adversaries in Congress.
And he vowed that he would fight to end across the board budget cuts that have shaken the military for crying out loud.
I don't, I really don't know of a of a of a greater example of the limbaugh theorem, and there it is in the first paragraph.
Here we have the architect of military cuts.
Here we have the man who has been responsible for them.
Going to an audience of Marines and others at Camp Pendletman at Pendleton and promising that he would fight to end them.
Not only was the sequester Obama's ideas, he insisted on it.
You know why he insisted on the sequester?
Because it had automatic military spending cuts.
Obama knew that the sequester would cut military spending the most, and it did.
On top of that, in 2008, Obama ran on the promise of cutting the Pentagon's budget by at least a trillion dollars, since we wouldn't be fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan anymore.
And that one trillion dollar savings was going to pay for Obamacare.
Remember?
Obamacare magically came in at less than a trillion dollars.
And that it was not going to bust the budget.
It was going to save money.
Because we were going to cut the military budget by a trillion dollars.
And so we were going to take that money we were spending on Iraq in Afghanistan.
And we're going to transfer it to health care to be a wash.
That was why it was so important to claim, if you remember that Obamacare was going to only cost $900 billion.
That's why all of the moving and shaking and maneuvering and massaging with a congregational bud a congressional budget office to make sure that Obamacare was scored at under a trillion dollars.
And true to his promise, Obama probably has cut the Defense Department's budget by that much or more, since he's been quietly slashing the Pentagon budget since he came into office.
he was cutting defense spending long before there was a sequester even, but the sequester took the budget acts to it.
You remember the the sequester, the best way to explain this.
They're trying to come to an agreement on extending the debt limit.
And one of the terms of the agreement was okay, we'll do it this time.
But then out in the future, we are going to, if we don't come to an agreement, there's going to be massive cuts in Medicare and massive cuts in military.
And the reason that was happened, that happened, the theory behind it, at least as we were told, the Democrats would never allow Medicare to be cut.
And those evil, rotten Republicans, they'd never allow the defense to budget department to be cut.
And so the sequester, mandatory spending cuts, if we couldn't come to an agreement on the debt limit or extending the budget a new continuing resolution.
Those two cuts were supposed to be so onerous and so painful that neither party would go along with it.
But the sequester happened, and we are living under it now, because neither side blinked.
Now, one of the reasons the Democrats didn't blink, Obama had already cut Medicare in order to take it out of the calculations of cost for Obamacare, if you remember.
That was, I mean, getting rid of 500 billion dollars of Medicare by cutting it and not counting it, was a crucial element in the whole equation of getting Obamacare magically to cost less than that one trillion dollar figure.
So there have already been the Medicare cuts, Obama said we've lived with that, but he was salivating over the automatic massive cuts to the Department of Defense that the sequester would bring.
And it was his idea.
Don't forget, he tried to pass the sequester off as a Republican ID.
It was his.
And there have been Defense Department cuts prior to the sequester.
So, this is, it's like Colonel Sanders going to a chicken farm where the chickens can understand English and saying he's tired of chickens being killed.
And he's going to finally do something about it.
It's no different.
This guy goes out to Camp Pendleton vowing to fight the across-the-board budget cuts that have shaken the military.
This is just hubris or chutzpah.
I don't know what it is.
But it is the Limbaugh theorem.
Maybe the best example.
I mean, how many of you really think the Republicans are cutting the defense budget?
It's just laughable.
And, of course, it's the military.
They have to stand there with full respect.
They can't hoop and holler and shout back, What in the hell are you talking about?
Because this is the guy that's done the cutting.
Here's still more Limbaugh theorem from an unfazed Reuters headline, Obama's Economic Speeches Pound Republicans.
The economic policy speeches President Obama has been delivering in recent weeks are turning out to be blunt attacks on Republicans with an eye toward coming fiscal battles in the 2014 congressional elections.
Really?
So why did the taxpayers have to pay for these campaign swings?
He's simply running a full bore campaign against House Republicans.
He is blaming the economy on House Republicans.
See, he can't be in charge of it.
He's out campaigning.
He is doing everything he can to create jobs.
He's doing everything he can to grow this economy.
And damn Republicans!
He's the president.
He's been president for four and a half years.
It is his policies that guide and shape the American economy today.
The Republicans don't have any policies.
The Republicans don't have any power.
They haven't had any power.
The Republicans cannot implement one idea that they've got.
Not one!
There is no...
Republican economic policy taking place here.
Every bit of it Obama owns.
There he is on the campaign trail, routinely bashing Republicans for the state of the economy.
I'm telling you, it looks like the drive-by's here at Reuters and the New York Times are hellbent on proving how prescient and how right I was with the limbaugh theorem.
I mean, this is exactly what we predicted would happen.
He'd go on the campaign trail.
Remember, it's all about 2014.
It's all about blaming Republicans for everything that's happening.
It's about distancing himself from any of it.
He's not governing.
He's not the president.
He has nothing to do with any of this.
The Department of Defense, massive budget cuts.
The guy that's been president four and a half years is out telling the military, I'm gonna stop it.
I'm gonna make sure these people doing this get cut off at the knees.
And he goes out and tells a bunch of low information people in the crowd, I'm sick and tired of what Republicans have done to this economy.
And I'm not gonna put up with it anymore.
And I'm gonna stop it.
And I need you to elect Democrats in 2014 to help me stop what they're doing.
Meanwhile, every policy is his.
Every defense budget cut is his.
This is simply amazing, folks.
And he gets away with it.
Once again, we have Reuters totally unfazed reporting this.
The New York Times totally in lockstep reporting this.
And the Times reporters, Jackie Kalmas at Reuters, it's Steve Holland, and believe me, they know.
They know precisely what they're doing.
They know how they are enabling a bond.
They're sitting out there and they're reporting what they know to be bogus.
I gotta take a break.
I promise the health care stack, it is coming.
I it's right here, right at the top now.
Ladies and gentlemen, it looks like the drive-by media has finally gotten around to reporting the outrageous carve out that the Congress has been granted on subsidies for Obamacare.
If you'll recall, last week, members of Congress and primarily their staffs, again, who make anywhere from 70 to 174,000 a year, complained that they couldn't afford insurance under the law of Obamacare.
And they were demanding subsidies.
They didn't qualify for subsidies.
But they said they couldn't afford it.
And so Obama personally negotiated 75% of the cost subsidies for members of congressional staff.
They will be subsidized to the tune of 75% by the Office of Personnel Management.
They are not going to have to qualify for subsidies the way everybody else is at a state exchange.
They are not going to have to go to an exchange.
Essentially, the Obama, the federal government, has agreed that members of Congress and their staff will have 75% of their health insurance costs paid for by the Office of Personnel Management.
Now the big news hit on Thursday and Friday.
I remember predicting on Friday.
Snerdley was sitting here thinking, boy, wait till this blows up.
This is going to cause a title wave.
And I said, Snerdly, it isn't going to get reported, and nobody is going to hear about it.
And it didn't.
It was a whole hummer over the weekend, and only yesterday started to be reported in places outside the alternative media.
And now Reuters has a story.
Congress wins relief on Obamacare Health Plan subsidies.
Congress has won some partial relief for lawmakers and their staffs from the Obamacare health reforms that it passed and subjected itself to three years ago.
That's a point I should make again.
The members of Congress, as as you know, one of these falling on the swords kind of things that they did to tell us, the serfs, well, hey, we're going to be using the same system you do.
Well, they found out they couldn't afford it.
And so they started belly aching and whining, moaning and crying, and they got relief.
Obama personally made sure that the government's gonna subsidize him.
Congress has won partial relief for lawmakers and their staffs from the Obamacare health reforms that it passed and subjected itself to three years ago.
In a ruling issued yesterday, U.S. lawmakers and their staffs will continue to receive a federal contribution toward the health insurance that they must buy through soon-to-open exchanges created by Obama's Obamacare law, the decision by the Office of Personnel Management with Obama's blessing.
It wasn't a blessing.
He came over there and demanded them.
He told them they were going to do it.
The decision will prevent the largely unintended loss of health care benefits for 535 members of the Senate and House and thousands of staff.
Oh, let's all start crying.
Did you hear that sentence?
Yeah, there was an unintended consequence.
You know what?
Members of Congress and their staff, they were going to lose their health care.
No, they weren't.
They were going to have to get it the same way everybody else did.
And that wasn't good enough.
They weren't going to lose it unless they didn't buy it.
They just decided they didn't want to spend the money that it's going to cost.
Folks, this is it's no more complicated than that.
Members of Congress and their staff just decided they didn't want to spend that much money on health care.
So they started saying, we get afforded.
Well, why did you voice it on everybody else then?
Well, they're going to get subsidies until not everybody's going to get subsidies.
Anyway, they do know from the Office of Personnel Managements.
The mainstream media finally got around to reporting this outrageous carve out today.
Actually, it happened late yesterday afternoon.
So we'll see if it's uh this is a Reuters story.
We'll see if it begins to reach further if the tentacles of this story find their way deeper into the fabric of the new as society.
But I doubt it.
This is this is I remember back 1988 and 89 when the House bank scandal hit.
And I remember they asked me to go on the news hour with Jim Lara.
Back then it was the McNeil Lara News Hour.
And I was interviewed by uh Judy Woodruff.
And I said, Judy, she asked me, what's the big deal?
I said, Judy, this is simple.
This is easy.
These guys can go write checks for money they don't they don't have.
I said, Judy, it doesn't matter what they're paid.
Their salaries are irrelevant.
They can write bad check after bad check after bad check, and their bank covers it.
And there were countless examples of members of Congress that were 400,000, 500,000 in arrears that the House bank had just covered, and it was no big deal.
And we turned out it had been going on a long time.
Well, somehow that Democrats ran the House back then.
I think that was Jim Wright was the Speaker of the House.
The Republicans were in the midst of 40 years in the wilderness of not having control the House of Representatives.
It was shortly after the presidential campaign of 1988.
As somehow, see, there wasn't any alternative media.
The only media that that story had any chance of appearing in was the mainstream media.
Because outside of me, there wasn't any alternative media.
It was just CNN and the networks and the newspapers, and that was it.
And back then, you know, you had a Republican president-elect, George W. Bush, so they were not interested in excusing or accommodating or ignoring people in power.
And they were still in their in their mode back in 1988 of being suspicious of people in power, which they're no longer practicing, particularly if it's Democrats.
They are if it's Republicans.
And back then the only media this story could have appeared in was the mainstream media, and it did.
And it got big precisely because it was easy.
I remember Guy Vanderjack was a member of Congress in Michigan, and he appeared after I did on that episode of the McNeil Lara News Hour.
And I remember him sitting there pointing his finger at the camera.
He had no idea who I was.
I mean, I'd basically been doing this show six months, and he was wagging his finger, and he said, I don't know who that was, but whatever he said is exactly right.
This is just too easy to understand.
You've got members of the House who can write themselves checks for any amount they want.
Anytime.
You know what else is happening?
At the House Post Office, a member of Congress could take a check, say for five grand, a campaign donor check, five grand over to his account, and buy a dollar's worth of stamps and take the change in cash.
So all when this stuff broke, I mean, it was easily understood, and there was an outrage.
This was the first step.
This was the first this scandal was the first thing that happened, the progression of events that resulted in the Republicans winning the House in the 1994 elections.
And this is the same thing.
Now my point is that the House bank scandal was as widespread as this carve-out is.
And by the way, uh this is huge.
Obamacare is wildly unpopular.
People do not want it.
The people that wrote it have just been granted a total exemption from it on the basis they can't afford it.
We don't have that option.
Now, the Reuters story said that it's unfortunate.
It was unintended that uh that members of Congress uh would not be uh covered.
It was totally intended.
It was intended by virtue of an amendment put in there by Chuck Grassley, the senator from Iowa.
Chuck Grassley attached an amendment to this mandating that members of Congress and their staff would be subject to Obamacare like everybody else.
It was totally intended.
So that they would have to suffer like everybody else is gonna have to suffer in this.
And they they said we can't afford it, and Obama fixed it.
Obama went over and told the office personally, Obama personally told Office of Personal Management, look, uh, you're gonna subsidize them.
And their subsidy is going to be anywhere from uh $5,000 to $11,000, depending on their income.
That's how much they're going to be helped, up to a maximum of uh of 75%.
Now, here's the latest on this.
This 75% subsidy, and just because it comes from personnel management doesn't mean it doesn't come from us because everything in government comes from taxpayers.
It's just that they're not going to have to go through the exchanges to get this done like you and I are, and they're not going to have to go through exchanges for their subsidies.
They're just going to be granted by essentially the department that they work for, personnel management.
So on top of everything else now, the 75% subsidy isn't enough.
Congress has now asked to be spared the penalties for being old or smoking.
I am not kidding you.
Under their old federal health insurance program, Congress all paid the same premiums, but thanks to Obamacare, the premiums are going to vary based on age, smoking, and place of residence.
Older Congressmen who smoke and live in a red state will have to pay much higher premiums than others.
They're trying to get that changed too.
So that they don't pay the insurance premium of smoking or being old.
Not kidding.
That's the latest thing they're asking for.
And there's even more.
Even though Congressmen get to keep their 75% taxpayer subsidy for the rest of their lives.
It's not a one-time thing.
Every renewal on their insurance will be subsidized.
75%, that's still not good enough.
Because of the differences in the premiums due to age and smoking, they want to change the rules so that they can go back to their old federal insurance once they retire.
Once they retired, they want to be exempted from all of this, and they want to go back to what they had before Obamacare.
They want to be able to get their old insurance back when they leave Congress so that they're not stuck with Obamacare for the rest of their lives like we all are.
Now I know this because it is being reported in little pockets, but this it's not.
Even when Reuters reports it, it's not a big deal.
It's a yawner, it's a ho humor.
Here's another one from the Hill.com.
Obamacare death panel faces growing opposition from Democrats.
Most of the health care stack that I have today, if I had to summarize what every story in it's about, it can't work.
Obamacare physically, financially, practically cannot work.
It's too big.
It's it it's it's a leviathan that simply cannot be tamed.
It cannot, it just can't work.
Every story would fall under that umbrella.
Hill.com.
Obama's cost cutting board, memorably called a death panel by Sarah Palin, is facing growing opposition from Democrats who say it'll harm people on Medicare.
Former Democrat National Committee Chairman Howard Dean drew attention to the death panel designed to limit Medicare cost growth when he called for its repeal in an op-ed last month.
But Howard Dean's not the only Democrat looking to kill it.
A wave of vulnerable Democrats over the past three months has signed on to bills repealing the powers of the death panel.
They include Senator Mark Pryor, Arkansas, Representatives Ron Barber, Arizona, and Kirkpatrick, Arizona, Kirsten Sinema of Arizona, and Elizabeth Estee of Connecticut, all five, are considered vulnerable in next year's elections, highlighting the stakes and the political angst surrounding the health care measure.
And so now you've got a bunch of Democrats say, wait a minute.
This is going to hurt Medicare.
Why would it hurt Medicare?
Because the death panel has the ultimate power to determine who gets treated and who doesn't.
Not covered, treated.
The death panel determines who is going to get treated.
Medicare pays for the elderly to be treated.
The death panel trumps Medicare.
And Obamacare.
Medicare's been gutted to boot.
So the next story is from CNN Money.com, where Obamacare premiums will soar.
Get ready to shell out more money for individual health insurance under Obamacare in some states, that is.
While many residents in New York and California may see sizable decreases in their premiums, Americans in many places could face significant increases if they buy insurance through state-based exchanges next year.
Now, by the way, this claim here that residents in New York and California are going to have lowering insurance or lower insurance rates under Obama.
That that is folks, that's an abject lie.
And the news of the day is the evidence.
The news of the day for the past month or longer has been all about rising premiums in California and New York and insurance companies pulling out of there by design, by the way.
Now you would almost think with this story that CNN was going to commit a random act of journalism, but they don't.
Instead, they push a bunch of myths.
First, they claim that rates are going to go down in New York and California under Obamacare, which has been debunked, they won't.
And then they claim that those states that have bare bones plans when in fact states have high rates because they already require insurance companies to cover a lot of the nonsense mandated under Obamacare, pre-existing condition stuff.
Which isn't insurance, that's welfare.
That's another story.
From Cybercast News Service.com, Blue Cross, Aetna, United, Humana, one, two, three, four insurance companies have pulled out of the Obamacare exchanges.
All part of the plan, private insurers are being forced out of the market.
This is part of the Obamacare long-term plan to make it so that only government has insurance to sell.
Major health insurance companies, Blue Cross, Aetna, United Humana have decided not to participate in various states in the Obamacare health insurance exchanges.
That'll be the only place Americans will be able to buy a health insurance plan using the federal subsidies authorized under Obamacare.
Under Obamacare, every American must buy a health insurance plan that meets minimum government specs.
If a person does not get health insurance through their employer, and it's not on Medicaid, they can buy insurance through their home state's insurance exchange, which, depending on the state's going to be run either by the state or the federal government, because not all states have signed up to open an exchange.
The states will operate exchanges where small businesses can buy health insurance plans.
And when you go to the exchange, if you go to a website, there are going to be a number of insurance companies there offering plans, and theoretically you're going to have freedom of choice.
You're mandated to go there.
You're mandated to buy a policy, and while you're there, you can choose.
Well, what happens when Blue Cross and Aetna and United and UMana pull out.
Right there are four insurance companies taking their business out of there.
That's going to result in less competition.
And it's all by design, folks.
This is this is all part of the plan.
The long-term Obama plan is to eliminate private sector insurance as a business.
Because the long-term objective is single payer, government-run health care.
And they know that they just can't weigh the magic wand and say starting next year, all private sector insurance is dead, and you have to go to the government to get your insurance.
Nobody would put up with that.
So the way Obamacare is designed is to make it impossible for people like Blue Cross or Aetna or United or Humana to make a profit.
Therefore, make it impossible for them to stay in business.
So what'll happen is these evil greedy private sector insurance companies will pull out.
And Obama and the Democrats are running around saying, see, you just can't trust the private sector.
See, these people only care about profit.
See, they don't care about you.
They don't care that you're sick.
They don't care that your grandmother's sick.
All they care about is their profit.
Well, good riddance, when the truth will have been.
The characteristics of Obamacare Have made it impossible for them to stay in business.
So it's actually quite brilliant.
Obama and the Democrats want the government to be the sole place any of us can go for insurance, but they can't mandate that in the law.
Nobody would support it.
So they structure it so that happens anyway.
And it appears to happen because private sector insurance companies are a bunch of rotten SOBs who would rather pull out than provide you with insurance for health coverage.
And so the government will be there as a savior.
The government will be there as a stopgap to save you from the evil clutches of these private sector rich guys who probably vote Republican who don't care about you.
That's how it works.
And it's working.
When Blue Cross and Aetna and United and Humana pull out, that's all part of the plan.
Two more stories.
Washington Examiner, most of the 24 health care co-ops, the exchanges created under Obamacare are in danger of running out of money before they even open.
Running out of money before they even begin offering health insurance to consumers.
This according to the Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services.
Now California got 900, I think, million dollars.
They've blown through it almost, almost out of money.
Finally, Obamacare months behind in testing its IT data security.
Meaning, well I'll have to say this for tomorrow.
It's kind of complicated.
But when you go in to an exchange and sign up, that data's not secure.
They haven't got any security on the IT set when you go sign up.
It's not encrypted, nothing.
I'm telling it's a debacle.
So let's review.
You have to buy insurance.
Rates are skyrocketing, but you can get a subsidy.
But you can only get a subsidy through the exchanges.
But the companies aren't offering individual plans via the exchanges because they're pulling out, which means individuals aren't going to get a subsidy.
And they're going to have to pay through the nose or pay the Obamacare penalty or tax or fine for not having insurance.
That's where we're headed.
The subsidies come from the private sector guys.
And they're pulling out.
I mean, in one sense they do.
I don't know.
This can't work, folks.
It just cannot.
HR, I want you to save.
Uh you got to get these people's numbers on hold.
Because they don't have to do with health care.
They have to do with something very important.
Get the numbers, ask them if we can call them tomorrow.
Because it's open open line Friday.
Please let them.
If you're on hold in HR Pickett, please grant him permission to us call you tomorrow, because those of you on hold in Pittsburgh, Hightown, New Mexico, and Raleigh, I do want to talk to you.
I really do.
Well, we're almost finished with another busy broadcast week.
Open line Friday.
Did you get those uh callers' numbers, HR?
Excellent.
Excellent.
Because there's some really important things they wanted to discuss, and I'm really glad that they're going to join us tomorrow.
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