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Oct. 25, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:39
October 25, 2013, Friday, Hour #2
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Time Text
My God, folks, you want a CNN is so excited and reporters can barely keep their clothes on.
It's been ever since the previous hour ended.
They've been doing breaking news at CNN, and the reporters can barely contain themselves.
They're so excited they cannot see straight over there.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's Open Line Friday!
That's right, folks.
Great to have you Open Line Friday, where you get to determine what we talk about.
And I look forward to talking to you.
The numbers 800-282-2882, the email address, Elrushbo at EIBNet.com.
What is the big CNN breaking news?
The Obamacare high-tech czar, some guy named Zeintz, Z-E-I-N-T-Z, Zinz, Zeintz, Zeintz, Zitz, whatever his name is.
And he's a former employee of Bain Capital.
Kid you not, snirdly.
He said, this is the breaking news.
He said that the healthcare.gov website will be fixed by the end of November.
And CNN can barely contain themselves.
They are so happy.
All right.
It's going to be up and running and it's going to be fixed by the end of November.
They didn't say which year, so I'm assuming they mean this year.
But notice, remember, folks, that Obama arbitrarily added a six-week delay to the mandatory time you have to sign up at healthcare.gov.
And that was yesterday or the day before.
And so today, the regime's high-tech guy comes out and says, guess what?
Healthcare.gov, our tech surge, is going to be complete by the end of November.
And what that means is you better get ready because by the end of November, they're going to declare it fixed, whether it is or not.
That's what that means.
So that's the news from CNN that they can barely keep their clothes on over.
I knew it they could do it.
I knew they could do it.
They're going to fix it.
They're going to fix it.
Yeah, they knew they could fix it.
The end of November.
Or we're just in time for the holidays.
It's even better.
So the end of November, folks, it's fixed.
Whether it is or not, at that point, every problem is yours.
Everything that goes wrong will be your mistake.
By the end of November, it will be user error.
It will be user incompetence because they just announced that by the end of November, the whole thing is going to be fixed.
And I don't think it's coincidental that this week Obama gave him another six-week grace period.
This is all arbitrary.
High-tech people that I have talked to who know about this stuff say that there's no way this website in its current state can be quote unquote fixed, period.
It just can't.
We're talking about 5 million lines of code.
And don't forget, Byron York has this story today about, and it's a fascinating piece as it relates to Obamacare because the IRS is going to be administering everything here.
And the Byron York story is about the earned income tax credit and how there is a 30% level of fraudulent claims every year in it.
Earned income tax credit is basically tax refunds for the poor.
The earned income tax credit gives tax refunds to people that don't pay any taxes, is essentially what it is.
And it's like every other federal program.
It's gone way beyond its original intention.
It's now gotten bigger and is giving more money away than it ever intended to people who were never supposed to be qualified to get it.
It's just it's out of control.
And there's the level of fraud is 30% of the claims, 30% of the income tax returns claiming EITC are fraudulent.
And the IRS says they can't do anything about it because the program is too big and too complicated to fix.
Now, the point is, these are the people who are going to be administering a nationwide program of all kinds of subsidies and paybacks and compensation payments.
And if they can't handle and keep the fraud out of the EITC, and we're going to give them, even with 16,000 new agents, Obamacare, the point is, it isn't going to work.
But that'll not stop Obama.
Remember, he doesn't care, folks, about all of this, this minutiae right now.
It doesn't matter.
And I'll tell you something else.
Our last caller was a guy named Ron, and he thinks, he said he thinks that this is different because the true believer liberals are going to run into this one headfirst as individuals.
Like everybody, they are going to get their cancellation letters from insurance companies.
Remember, there is no longer any employer mandate.
An employer does not have to provide health insurance anymore.
They got a waiver of one year for that.
So people are on their own while the individual mandate survives.
The law is you have to have health insurance.
So people are being canceled in the hundreds of thousands.
And the cancellation letters are basically telling them that you can't keep your current plan, but Obama said they could.
Ron thinks that this is going to wake liberals up and they're going to see this and they're going to be fit to be tied.
Now there is, and I poo-pooed the full extent to which he believes this might happen.
However, there is one thing about this that differs from other liberal programs.
Let's compare this to, let's say, a tax increase.
A tax increase, or taxes in general, the vast majority of people do not ever write a check for it.
Taxes are withheld and they really never have the money that they're paying.
And that is a fundamentally important key thing to understand about why people don't go nuts about tax increases.
It's because it really does not take money out of their pocket.
It prevents money from getting into their pocket, but people are not actually seeing, they never take possession of the money that is being taxed because of withholding.
I've always said, if you want to change tax policy, get rid of withholding, require everybody to pay the check, and you'll have reform real fast.
Well, that's what's happening here.
In a sense, people are having to pay for their health insurance.
Now that the employer mandate's gone, they're having to go through the rigmarole of trying to qualify for a subsidy.
They're having to go to the exchange, the website, whatever.
It's a mess.
They're getting these letters.
Their current plans don't survive.
Their premiums are doubling in many cases.
The deductibles are quadrupling in some cases.
People are getting notices of deductibles of $6,500 to $8,000, in some cases, $12,000.
And they look at that and they can't believe that.
They're not going to use that much in a year.
It's boggling their minds.
Plus, now they're going to have to buy a new policy, and it's money out of their pocket.
And that is something that is going to make a lot of people mad.
It's going to have a personal impact on them.
Whereas a tax increase doesn't because they never have the money they're paying in taxes.
Net withholding.
That was such a brilliant scheme.
Such a brilliant scheme because it really does mean that the money people are paying in taxes, they never get it.
So in a true definition of the word, they're not, there is no transaction when they pay their taxes.
They just, they don't get it in the first place.
It's taken from them before they ever see it.
Not true here.
So this, I think there are a lot of people getting these notes and they're seething.
And they're scared.
You know how important health care is to everybody.
They're scared.
They believe this business that one illness and they're bankrupt.
One illness and they're busted for life.
One illness and they're broke for the rest of their life and they can never get another flat screen, might not be able to get another car.
I mean, people are, they believe all these horror stories.
And it's become healthcare insurance treatment coverage, what has become one of the most important things to people.
They're willing to give up salary for it.
They're willing to give up lifestyle for it.
It's an amazing thing the Democrats have perpetuated here and done with the scare tactics related to it.
But in this instance with Obamacare, these people being canceled are having to find what it is going to cost them.
It's money that they do have that they're going to have to pay.
And that's not the case with taxes.
Their taxes are deducted.
They never see that money.
So there's no concept of really paying it.
But this, they have whatever money they've got, and now they find out what they're going to have to pay.
They're going to have to write that premium check.
That's why they're busting tail to get this website claiming to have it fixed.
In the meantime, from the daily caller, health insurance cancellation notices are soaring even higher than the Obamacare enrollment rates.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans who purchase their own health insurance have received cancellation notices since August because the plans don't meet Obamacare requirements.
And the number of cancellation notices greatly exceed the number of Obamacare enrollees.
Now, I mentioned some of the stats, some of the statistics in this article yesterday, but they really, they can't be repeated enough.
Insurance carrier Florida Blue, 300,000 cancellation notices, 80% Of the entire state's individual policies.
30 or 300,000 cancellation notices in one week.
Kaiser Health News, Kaiser Permanente, 160,000 plans, half of its insurance plans in the state.
Blue Shield of California sent 119,000 notices in mid-September.
Two major insurance carriers in Pennsylvania, Insurance Highmark in Pittsburgh, Independence Blue Cross in Philadelphia, plan to cancel 20 to 45 percent of their total plans, respectively.
Nearly 800,000 New Jersey residents' health care plans will not exist in 2014.
800,000 cancellation notices in New Jersey.
This is forcing insurers to create new ones, new policies for individuals and small business owners that now have to fall in line with Obamacare regulations.
More Americans have lost their individual health coverage in Florida and California than have gotten past the login screen on healthcare.gov.
And that is according to the Washington Post.
The Washington Post says that 476,000 applications have been started but not completed.
Now, folks, there's something wrong with that number, though.
Don't believe that 476,000 number because a lot of that, what I mentioned last hour, is Medicaid enrollment.
The regime is combining Medicaid enrollment and healthcare.gov enrollment to get a fraudulent, phony Obamacare number.
It isn't for, the number more accurately is in the 1750 to 195,000 range.
And the cancellation notices dwarf that.
Average premiums for young women to increase 193%.
So the regime's relentless war on women continues.
From the article, overall, states averaged a 193% increase in premiums for 30-year-old women nonsmokers.
But on the bright side, women now get free birth control pills, which, what, might cost $12 a month?
Average premiums for young women age 30 to increase 193%.
Again, from the article.
For our hypothetical female subject, any salary above $36,000 or about 314% of the federal poverty line would preclude her from receiving premium subsidies.
Now, I will guarantee you that any person, male or female, earning 36 grand probably thought they were going to get a subsidy.
This story says that women earning any salary above 36 will not receive subsidies for their premiums.
It's at this level that the subject, the woman example in the story, must pay the full amount for a bronze level insurance plan.
And without any premium subsidies, she's expected to pay $236 a month for her coverage.
So nobody, folks, nobody, male or female, making over $36,000 will not be eligible for any subsidies.
Unless you're a congressman or a staffer and they get theirs, they still get their subsidies.
In fact, grab soundbite number five, Charlie Wrangell.
This is Wednesday in Washington on Capitol Hill.
He was interviewed by the Cybercast News Service.
And the question earlier today, Congressman Barton on C-SPAN, who like most members of Congress makes $174,000, said that he gets a $10,800 taxpayer subsidy for his insurance, which most people who make his money would not ordinarily get in the private sector.
Do you think, Congressman Wrangell, that members of Congress should be able to get that subsidy?
We should not be able to get any subsidy that anybody with a like profession would be getting from any other employer.
And it's my understanding that the government's contribution is unsquare with the type of job we have in the private sector.
So no taxpayer money for health insurance to go in the exchanges at all.
I didn't say that.
So do you think the government is our employer?
But do you think you should get that money to go to the exchanges?
No question about it.
All right.
We should not lose a part of our overall compensation.
Of course not.
Of course not.
There's no question we should get our subsidy.
That's part of our compensation.
Of course we should get it.
So from this story, it's in the Washington Free Beacon.
Women making over $36,000 a year do not qualify for a subsidy.
Charlie Wrangell at $174,000 a year does.
It's Open Line Friday back to the phones.
Toby, Idaho Falls.
Great to have you, sir.
Hello.
How's it going, Rush?
Good, good, good.
Great to have you here.
The reason for my call was back in 1990 when I started listening, and this might help out some of the younger and newer listeners.
I was trying to figure out whether I was liberal or conservative, and I had it all lumped into one thing.
Once I figured out that on your show, you're talking about government when you're talking about liberal versus conservative.
That's when I figured out that I was conservative.
And I was wondering if you could give an example, like a few things that I think you might be liberal on would be like cigars and the truth.
Well, now this is an interesting question, but we're going to have to define liberal first.
Why do you think meaning that you think it's good?
Wait, the definition of liberal is whether it's good or bad?
To you.
Give me an example.
I'm not sure I know exactly what you mean yet.
Well, like the example that I gave Snerdley was, I'm liberal on maple syrup.
Definitely.
You give me a stack of pancakes, and we'll see all the maple syrup.
I can pull it up.
I mean, you want it with no limits.
You love it.
No matter how dangerous people say it is or how bad it is for you, you still want it.
Yeah.
And so you how is how is that how is that a liberal characteristic of yours?
Well, it just seems like that that's what we're talking about when we're talking about government is if you're liberal on it, you want more of it.
If you're conservative, you want less.
Yeah, but in your case, are you buying the maple syrup?
When I use it, yeah.
Well, then there's no liberalism there.
There's utter self-reliance and self-responsibility.
You're buying it.
You're using it as you wish.
Well, I'm just trying to differentiate.
It seems like the newer listeners think that you have to be either liberal on everything or conservative on everything.
But it's, you know, it depends on what you're talking about.
So now, okay, so you actually, what you're trying to get at is, are there things that I, El Rushbo, and you, El Tobo, while we are conservatives, are there things that we do that people might say, hey, you know, you have a little liberal in you.
Is that what you mean?
Well, not if you're talking in the government sense.
I don't want to be labeled liberal that way.
I don't think there's much the government does, right?
But like, I'm liberal on cigars myself.
I love cigars, and whenever I want one, I have one.
I don't care.
I don't think that's liberal, though.
Hang on, Toby.
Don't go away.
And we're back, and I want to go back to Toby in Idaho Falls.
Toby, are you still with us?
I'm with you.
Okay.
Now, folks, I look at everything as a teachable moment, and I may be totally misunderstanding this, but I want to spend some time here.
Because right now, Toby, I'm still very confused as to your meaning and your point.
And I want to understand it so that I can intelligently reply to you.
You are equating, I need to ask you: are you defining the word liberal as more of and in excess and a lot?
Because you've used this example of maple syrup on your pancakes.
You want a lot of it, and that is a liberal use of maple syrup.
Is that what you mean?
Yeah, and to somehow, because see, it took me a while when I first started listening in 1990 to catch up on politics because I was young and new to it.
Right.
So whether I was liberal or conservative.
And it's a different thing whether you're talking about government or something else.
So, how do you equate the, because I guess you think your love of and use of maple syrup, even though you're conservative, is something that is liberal about you, right?
Oh, well, see, even though I'm liberal on it, I have zero use of it because I'm diabetic, pretty much.
Well, that's a new wrinkle.
So let's stick with the hypothetical.
You like it.
Let's pretend you're not diabetic and you can eat as much of it as you want.
I'm still trying to understand the terms here so that I can answer this.
Are you defining liberal as more of it, whether it be government or maple syrup?
Yeah, well, that's the thing that you'd probably be better at than me is defining.
And I'm just trying to find some way to help the newer listeners and the low-information voters.
You know, it seems like they're all scared of being labeled conservative because of the media.
Okay, another new wrinkle here.
You now think that you have a way of helping low-information voters understand what conservatism is.
And your example of using a lot of maple syrup is an example of how we all have a little liberalism, but when there's too much government, that's bad.
That's not good.
Yeah, like truth.
I mean, who wouldn't be liberal on truth unless, you know, like you're a convict or somebody that needs to lie.
Well, okay, here's, you are confusing, maybe conflating a better word, the word liberal.
It has an entirely different definition in politics than it does outside of.
Like the liberal use of maple syrup, in your example, has no relationship to what a political liberal is.
Yeah, and then to convolute it even more, I hear, you know, understand that it used to be different back in the Europe government.
They had the liberals.
Yeah, I know.
You still have, even today, of people who think that conservatives are actually classic liberals.
That's the intellectual class that says that.
And in a Berkeyan sense, they're right, but that's going to muddy these waters even further.
We don't want to go there.
That's why I'm trying to convey the idea to you, and you can ponder on it and try to, because it is, you know, decide if you're conservative or conservative or liberal nowadays.
I could see where it could be tough for some people, you know, because if you think you're a conservative, then you can't go out partying, you know, and be all Hollywood.
Why can't a conservative go to a party and be all Hollywood?
Well, just because of the media and the cliques, basically.
Well, what will the media say if a conservative goes to a party?
Well, if they're a popular one, they might blacklist them, huh?
Okay.
All right.
We're digging a deeper hole here.
And I think now where we have arrived, if I understand this, we're really talking about branding.
We're talking about branding and no longer, folks, forget maple syrup and cigars because we're not talking about that.
We're talking branding.
And he's convinced that the low-information voters are no way ever going to want to be conservatives because they never party.
They never go Hollywood.
They never have fun.
There are sticks in the mud.
They tell you, don't have too much maple syrup.
Don't do this.
Don't do that.
Don't do that.
Don't have sex.
Don't have fun.
Don't make out.
Don't do it in the back of the car.
And he says he does all that stuff and he's still a conservative.
Am I right, Toby?
I'm right.
So we got to get young people by saying you can be fun.
You can have fun.
You go Hollywood.
You can love Miley Cyrus and still be a conservative in your politics.
So it's a branding problem.
And look, Toby, you've identified a problem that is a real one, and a solution to it has to be found.
And that is the fact that the left owns the pop culture.
They literally own it.
They own movies.
They own television shows.
They define it.
And in the process, they are the ones who are responsible for the opinion of Republicans and conservatives being basically uncool, unhip squares or nerds or what have you.
And what young people, what young person wants to be any of that?
They all want to be hip and conservative isn't.
So your solution, pour on the maple syrup.
And people will see that you can be a little liberal as a conservative, but not be for big government and that kind of thing.
Now it makes total sense.
Well, Snardley, I'm not a good...
No, you're wrong about that.
Snerdley's, he just said to me, see, they're not right, Rush, because when you go to Hollywood, look, TMZ covers you.
TMZ was trying to make me look bad.
TMZ was not covering me the way they cover everybody else they cover.
Yeah, that's true, but that was just, geez.
When we were taxiing out, one of the local TV stations, news choppers, was following us.
Yes, this is true.
They were hovering.
I'm sure they were shooting video.
But when TMZ, Snerdley, when TMZ covers me coming out that restaurant, they're asking me questions they hope I trip up on.
They're not fawning over me like they do the left.
That's this guy's point.
Conservative Hollywood type, they don't get fawned over.
They're not portrayed as cool.
They try to trip them up.
They try to melt Gibson them.
They try to do anything they can.
And that's his point when you get right down to it.
And he says, how are young people ever going to come to our side if they're never going to be cool in the places they want to be seen?
And it's actually a good question.
This is why I stuck with this, folks, because if you dig deep, you eventually get to what people are really talking about, thinking, or feeling.
And he's a young guy, and he wants people to understand that he's cool and he's hip, and he's not what people portray conservatives to be.
And he thinks that that's going to have to happen all over the place for the Republicans to triumph.
I understand that to a point.
I think it'd be a mistake to think that we've got to go all in and make sure we appeal to the pop culture low information crowd in order to succeed.
I totally reject that.
That is popularity.
That's not success.
And you don't – ideally, you would want to exist in such a way as to inspire the low information to become high information.
We don't want to become them.
We want them to become us.
The challenge is they don't think we're cool and it isn't going to be any fun to be us.
But becoming them is not the solution.
And trying to make them think that we are them, like the Democrats, that's not the solution.
It's just like trying to get the Hispanic vote by agreeing to amnesty.
It's not the solution.
It's not the way you get the Hispanic vote, but the Republican Party doesn't get that.
The Republican Party is actually trying to do what this guy wants in their own, perhaps well-intentioned, but convoluted way.
Anyway, Toby, I appreciate the call.
And I got to take a quick break.
We'll be back and continue after this.
Don't go.
One of the biggest challenges we have, folks, is making liberty and freedom cool.
Ron Paul, in his so-called farewell address to Congress when he retired, said he never, ever would have believed what a tough sell freedom is.
But it is because it requires self-responsibility.
It requires making your own way.
And liberty and freedom right now with the low information crowd, they laugh at it because they don't think it's a problem.
They don't think it's under pressure.
I'm convinced low information voters, by virtue of being low information, haven't the slightest idea how their freedoms are being eroded.
So when they hear that we are concerned about that, they think we're just old fuddy duddies worried about stuff and all we want to do is control them.
And of course, they couldn't be more wrong.
We want them to be independent.
We want them to be critical, independent thinkers, not mind-numbed robots.
We want them to expand their universe and get beyond whatever Kim Kardashian and Kanye West are doing today and whatever's on TMZ and all of that stuff.
It's just a question of certain things right now are not viewed as cool and hip.
Brevard County, Florida, Jonathan, you're next on Open Line Friday.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
How are you doing?
I'm fine, sir.
Thank you much.
I wanted to ask you a question about the immigration reform that's going to be coming up in the House and the Senate.
And I wanted to ask your opinion on whether or not you thought that the IRS's history of targeting Tea Party and conservatives is going to have the same kind of chilling effect on conservative groups getting through their congressmen and their senators the way they did the last election when we lost five to seven million votes because they were targeting these groups and intimidating them into silence.
Well, two things here.
In the 2012 election, I need to ask you a question.
In a 2012 election, according to the best data anybody has, 4 million Republicans did not vote, who did vote in 2008.
Do you think that was because of what the IRS did in harassing the Tea Party and preventing them getting tax-free operations up and running?
I think that had a lot to do with it because these larger organizations have an easier time of doing public outreach and informing people of what's going on in government and helping them to really get involved in the issues.
And when you take away the ability, it makes it harder for voters to become more informed and to get active in politics.
Well, I don't deny that, but I'm wondering how many of those 4 million were unhappy with the nominee.
How many of 4 million were already died in the wall conservatives, and they just fed up with the Republican Party nominating another Northeastern moderate.
And they just said, you know, hell with it.
I think the IRS impact on the Tea Party had more impact on undecided voters and on Democrats dissatisfied with Obama.
Now, when it comes to immigration, I think the thing that everybody should know is that as we sit here today, the House of Representatives is hell-bent on passing an immigration bill by the end of the year, and that Congressman Ryan is leading the movement here.
Senator Jeff Sessions from Alabama is really worried about what the House is doing, and he's responded to it extremely forcefully and eloquently.
But the House is prepared to move on this because the Chamber of Commerce wants it, their business donors are demanding it, and there's palpable fear when the donors threaten to take a hike.
So I don't know that the IRS scandal is going to have any impact on that.
That all the IRS scandal is just against law.
In the simplest sense, it's a violation of law, and it ought to be held.
Obama all the way to the top should be held accountable for this by everybody.
It's unacceptable.
We have reached the screeching halt.
Time of yet another busy broadcast hour, ladies and gentlemen.
But there's much more straight ahead, as always.
So we'll take a brief time out here at the top.
Get a little rejuvenated and come back ready to go in a mere moment or two.
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