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Nov. 15, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:34
November 15, 2013, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Greetings, my friends.
Great to have you here.
Rush Limbo, the EIB Network, and another epic week of big-time broadcasting about to finish.
It's Friday, so let's go.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
Okay, great to have you.
The telephone number, if you want to be on the program, is 800-282-2882 and the email address, illrushbo at EIBNet.com.
Remember now, Open Line Friday is pretty much whatever you want to talk about.
There aren't nearly as many restrictions on Friday as there are Monday through Thursday.
Monday through Thursday, you have to talk about things that I care a little bit about, at least.
But we throw that out on Friday.
And that is what makes this the greatest career risk taken by a major media figure.
Turning over the content portion of program to rank amateurs.
Lovable, nevertheless, just fabulous rank amateurs, but amateurs nevertheless.
I am a highly trained broadcast specialist and benevolent dictator throwing away some of that power on Friday.
Again, 800-282-2882.
All right, let me cut to the chase on something here regarding Obama yesterday and reinstating your cancel plan.
Because I'll tell you, you can find whatever you want to find about it.
You can find the insurance companies saying they can't do it.
State insurance examiners say we can't do it.
You'll find media people arguing amongst themselves about whether or not Obama's got the legal authority to do this.
And that's really what I want to focus on here.
Because people have been confused.
I've been getting email all day.
Rush, why would Obama veto the Upton bill if it basically says exactly what he said yesterday?
What did Obama say yesterday?
And, by the way, I don't believe for a moment that the bumbling, incoherent, gee, I don't know what's going on around here president we got yesterday was anything but an act.
That was a total act yesterday.
This guy is not disengaged.
He's you know, you know, I uh, I didn't know website.
One week into it he said he still didn't know how bad it was that nobody had told him.
Yet he's the smartest guy in the room and he tried.
He tried to turn his ignorance into a sign of his brilliance when he said, I think i'm pretty smart.
I'm smart enough no, not to go out there and tell you this thing's working.
If it didn't, I didn't know.
So we're supposed to believe that he didn't know.
This guy knows everything.
This is the Messiah, yet he doesn't know anything.
And I think it's just more limbo theorem stuff.
I think it's more of his effort to distance himself from the day-to-day and then allow himself to just, you know, what the guy does is make a pronouncement here, make a pronouncement there, and then move on.
And when he makes a pronouncement, he expects things to happen.
And he thinks everybody thinks it's going to happen when he makes the pronouncement.
And then this didn't work.
So he goes out and acts like he didn't know anything about it.
He is told about it later on, and now he's working real hard to get it fixed.
He's sorry this happened to you, but he's not sorry it happened to you.
He's sorry for the way you feel about it, but he's really not sorry it happened.
And he's going to make sure that whatever happens happens next.
And I think I got soundbites here that drive-by is all worried.
He seemed incoherent and rambling and his regime falling apart.
Folks, make no mistake.
They haven't changed at the regime what their objective here is.
And that's to, in fact, I saw a piece.
I don't want to mention the guy's name because it's not about that.
It really isn't.
But I guess I share a little frustration.
For how many years have I been telling you, and you, and you know it because you've heard it, you're smart enough to figure it out yourself.
Ever since even before this thing was officially proposed and then passed in Congress and signed into law, one of the fundamental parts of Obamacare, one of the things that had to happen for Obamacare to happen, is the private in sector, the private sector insurance market to be wiped out.
This has been, for me, a fundamental point understood from the get-go, understood by virtue of who's proposing the law.
Obama.
Liberal, socialist, communist, collectivist, redistributionist, whatever.
He wants the government to run health care.
That means there can't be any private sector alternatives.
Because when it gets down to the end of the day, the government's going to have sole control.
That's what he wants.
And for that to happen, there can't be an existing insurance market.
So there's a bunch of places today celebrating renowned think tank scholars for just figuring this out.
And I just, I said, I marvel at what need not have happened here if otherwise smart people would have just spoken up three years ago instead of waiting until now.
You know, all of us that have been trying to warn everybody, I mean, even McCain is still, even after yesterday coming out suggesting this thing needs to be repealed, he's still going after Ted Cruz.
And Ted Cruz is the guy that was right in this.
Ted Cruz is saying, you know, you guys, everybody's missing the point if you still get focused on the insurance company because the next thing you're going to lose is your doctor.
Because A, your doctor's going to quit, or B, your doctor's going to be reassigned, or C, there aren't going to be very many doctors left.
Well, that's the next thing to happen here.
But it's just sad to me that we're here, that none of this need happen.
None of it needs to have happened.
And there are smart people on our side of the aisle who have known as early as I did who this guy was and who should have been saying, I hope this guy fails right along with me.
There should have been opposition to this guy all along.
Know I'm crying over spilt milk and it doesn't accomplish, but it is frustrating.
All of the Johnny come lately's here.
Now, now there's the argument is raging over whether Obama can legally do what he did.
Well, now they were as smart, and they might not have had the compunction or the guts to say it early on because there was, you know, you got to look like we all want the president to succeed, and particularly the first black president.
We all have to.
Black was irrelevant to me.
President of the United States, pretty important position, and it's the ideas and policies that matter to me, not the color skin.
Anyway, we've been there, said that, done that.
I just, I marvel, everybody's getting caught up now in the horse race, the political back and forth of this.
Did Obama have the power to do what he did?
F Chuck Todd at NBC.
Come on, everybody, pipe down.
Obama doesn't have the power to do what he did.
Well, what did he do?
You know what the regime is saying?
Let me go back to Upton for a moment.
This is the Republican bill being voted on today, and I guess it's going to pass.
Oh, maybe not now?
Really?
He's going to have some Democrats.
So are the Democrats pulling out of this thing?
Aha.
Well, now that is fascinating because the Democrats, there were earlier in the week, there were reportedly plenty of Democrats willing to sign on to the Upton bill, which basically just says what Obama said yesterday, but it doesn't.
See, that's the thing.
The regime was asked yesterday in the press conference.
I didn't learn any of this until I got home last night.
I wasn't able to actually look at and read what happened.
That press was so loaded yesterday.
It's a shame.
I wish I would have been able to figure it out during the program because it was loaded with stuff yesterday.
It was absolutely loaded.
And one of the things, Obama was asked, well, what legal authority do you have to change the law?
And they cited some obscure court case from the mid-80s and the FDA, which said that the courts have held, paraphrasing here, the courts have held that federal agencies can arbitrarily choose to enforce or not enforce certain things whenever they want to, all the way back to the 80s, and they simply cited that.
Now, that's really a brief, brief overview.
So what the regime is saying, we didn't change the law.
We didn't change anything.
We're just not going to enforce one aspect of it for a year.
So they said, don't start talking to me about throwing away the Constitution or anything.
We're not changing any law.
We're just not going to enforce for one more year the fact that you've got to get rid of your plan.
Now, if we want, we can go back and recover, talk about again the idea you were never going to be able to keep your plan.
I mean, the scope of that lie remains huge, fraudulent.
If the political winds were different, it would be impeachable.
I mean, it's huge, that lie, the scope of that lie, the depth and extent of that fraud, because everybody knew you weren't going to be able to keep your plan.
You couldn't.
I mean, it didn't.
Existing plans had to go if Obamacare exists.
Obama cares its own law.
Plan that you had that you liked legally, well, it was illegal.
Your plan was illegal.
Everybody knew this.
Obama knew it.
It's in the Federal Register.
They knew that 93 million Americans are going to lose their plans.
So now where we are is the regime is essentially saying we didn't change anything.
We're just like we stood down on the Defense of Marriage Act.
We decided we're not going to defend that anymore.
And we're not going to defend aspects of the DREAM Act.
So we're just not going to enforce this for a year.
And there's nothing you're going to do about it.
And that's why Obama's threatening to veto Upton, because Upton would actually change the law.
And Obama didn't.
By his own answer to his question yesterday, by virtue of what I have since deduced, they didn't change any law here.
This is Obama not playing dictator.
We just, you know, we're not going to enforce the fact that you got to get rid of your plan for one more year.
We're just going to stand down.
And they cite, again, a court case from the 80s involving the FDA.
Now, the FDA case involved, it was a much, much smaller scope than this.
And it's not certain that that precedent would hold in this case.
But again, all of that is irrelevant if nobody's going to take action against this.
And Obama can do whatever he's going to do if nobody's going to stop him.
Any president can.
Any president can do whatever they want to do if nobody's going to stand up and try to stop him, including the media or the opposition party or public protests by the citizenry or what have you.
So Obama trying to head people off at the pass is saying I'm not going to enforce it.
Now, Jonathan Adler writes at the Volokh conspiracy blog, and he says this.
In other words, the regime is not changing the law.
It's just announcing it's not going to enforce federal law while simultaneously threatening to veto legislation that would authorize the step the president's decided to take.
That's the Upton bill.
Now, does this make the renewal of non-compliant policies legal?
No.
The legal requirement remains on the books.
So the relevant health insurance plans remain illegal under federal law.
The president's decision does not change relevant state laws either.
So insurers will still need to obtain approval from state insurance commissioners.
This typically requires submitting rates and a plan specification for approval.
It can take a lot of time.
It's disruptive because most insurance companies have already set their offerings for the next year.
It's no wonder that some insurance commissioners have already indicated they have no plans to approve non-compliant plans, meaning your plan that you like, they're not going to bring it back.
A lot of insurance companies are not going to bring it back, which is fine with Obama.
Obama doesn't care.
All Obama cares about is that you heard him say, you get to keep your plan if you want it.
It's now up to you to go through the hoops.
It's up to you to convince your insurance company.
And as far as Obama is concerned, you're going to hate your insurance company when this is all over because they're going to be the ones that don't let you have your plan back.
And they heard Obama say that they can keep their plan for a year.
So now the insurance companies are the bad boys.
And if the Republicans sign on to this, they can, well, I don't know, it's unwittingly or who knows, take some of the blame, depending on how they deal with this.
Now, and then Adler at the Volokh Conspiracy does other things besides right there.
And I've asked other sources about this.
I'm waiting on replies from other legal eagles.
Yet even if state commissioners approve the plans, they will still be illegal under federal law.
And that's the point the regime is.
They didn't change the law.
They're just not enforcing this aspect of Obamacare that requires you to say bye-bye to your plan.
Given this fact, given that your plan will still be illegal, but with no jackbooted thug tracking you down to enforce it, why would any insurance company agree to renew such a plan if it remains illegal?
It's nice that regulators may forbear enforcing the relevant regulatory requirements, but this is not the only source of potential legal jeopardy.
So, for instance, what happens when there's a legal dispute under one of these policies?
Say, for instance, an insurance company denies payment for something not covered under the policy, but that would have been covered under the Affordable Care Act.
Would an insurance company really want to have to defend this decision in court?
After all, this would place the insurance company in a position of seeking judicial enforcement of an illegal insurance policy.
Let me take a break here because the time constraints of the programming format dictate it.
Back after this.
Wait a minute.
Folks, don't misunderstand me.
I'm not saying that Obama's free and clear here.
Make no mistake about something.
There is no legal authority in the Constitution or in any other statute.
There is no legal authority for a president to repeatedly, even routinely rewrite federal statutes, which he is guilty of times 10 in Obamacare with all of his waivers, all of the delays, all the selective application of the law to certain people moving in and saying to members of Congress and their staff, guess what?
I'll make sure the taxpayers subsidize you through the Office of Personnel Management.
None of that's in the law.
He can't do that, but he can if nobody's going to try to stop him.
And by the same token, he cannot just willy-nilly refuse to enforce a law.
That's no different than writing a new one.
People, oh, well, he's not changing a law.
Oh, okay.
Nobody's just not going to enforce it.
Oh, okay.
It's the same thing as changing.
He does not have the power to wave his dictator's magic wand and say he doesn't have the constitutional authority, no legal authority to say, you know, I'm not going to enforce that for a year.
I'm just not going to let you.
I'm not going to enforce it.
No penalty.
It's going to be illegal.
You're still going to be breaking law, but I'm not going to try to catch you.
You can't do that.
Not in our system.
But everybody seems willing to accept that since it isn't changing the law.
But it is.
Presidents, nobody has this kind of authority to pick and choose what parts of a law they're going to enforce or not, or rewrite.
Well, I just got another legal opinion, which tells me that I was incorrect moments ago when I said to you that a president cannot willy-nilly choose to enforce or not enforce aspects of a law.
I'm told by a legal person I respect that for better or worse, the executive branch does have enforcement discretion and can refuse to enforce laws, even though enforcement discretion is supposed to be about allocation of resources, not rewriting statutes.
Now, clearly what Obama's doing is there's nothing about resources in what he's doing.
He's not choosing to enforce the law saying you've got to get rid of your plan because they need to do that in order to save money or anything like that.
He is doing it to rewrite the statute.
And that is in the spirit of the law kind of violation.
But he can still do it, according to the legal opinion I'm holding here, my formerly nicotine-stained fingers.
But then, you know, I remember back during the government shutdown, the Republicans wanted to pass legislation to open the Grand Canyon, for example, or they wanted to pass legislation to approve funding for the cancer hospital for sick kids.
And the Democrats said, no, we're not going to cherry-pick.
You can't cherry-pick what parts of government you're going to fund and what parts you're not.
It's got to be all or nothing.
But for themselves, they reserve the right to enforce or not enforce parts of the law that they don't like.
And they did, the regime did announce, if you remember, that they were just going to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act.
So, according to his legal beagle, Obama can do this.
He can choose, the federal government does have the discretion to enforce or not enforce a law.
However, again, it is supposed to be based on whether or not they've got the means to enforce it.
Adequate personnel, resources.
This is not that.
He's choosing not to enforce this for purely political reasons.
Doesn't change one thing, though.
And this goes back to the real crux of this.
Shifting the blame for all this to the insurance agencies and overall industry.
Because Obama has said that for the next year, your old plan, if you can get it, even though it's substandard, if you can get it, you can have it.
And we're not going to prosecute you for having it.
It's still going to be illegal because I'm not changing the law, but you can have it if you want.
But he cannot make the insurance company give you that policy back unless he does change the law because the policy remains illegal.
So now the real focus of this becomes the relationship between you, the individual, and the insurance company.
Because the insurance company has no legal authority to issue policies that violate federal law.
And Obama cares the law of the land.
And since it hasn't been changed, your old policy is illegal.
They're just not going to try to find you and prosecute you.
They're not going to punish you.
They're not going to enforce, but it's still illegal.
So Obama can choose to refuse to enforce the law, but he cannot Protect the insurance company from any civil lawsuits filed by people like you based on the illegality of the policy.
So even though, and this is where it gets interesting, even though there is the provision or the legal ability for the regime to choose not to enforce something, that doesn't give others the permission to break the law.
In other words, the insurance company cannot willfully do something in violation of the law and then say, Obama said it was okay when somebody comes after him in a civil lawsuit.
That defense was, it doesn't fly.
So Obama is not granting anybody immunity here, particularly the insurance companies.
What he's doing is shifting the blame to the insurance company because with the low information, this is the roll of the dice.
Now, I don't know that it's going to fly anymore.
I really don't.
Two years ago, this would have been a slam dunk in the insurance companies.
May as well close up shop and go away.
I don't know that he's going to get away with it as easily anymore.
But what he's trying to do here is go on television, tell everybody, you know what?
I didn't know it was this bad.
But I know how you love your plan, even though it's not very good.
If you like it, you're going to be able to keep it for a year.
Okay, so now you're all excited.
You get to keep your plan.
You're so happy.
Now you go out and you try to get it reinstated and you run up against these evil insurance companies who are going to tell you, we can't.
The plan's gone.
The law says that plan was illegal.
We're not going to give you something.
It was illegal.
You say to the insurance, but Obama said you could.
That's not going to help us in court.
Something goes wrong.
The Obama said we could do it.
Defense isn't going to fly.
And so you end up mad at your insurance company, not at Obama.
This whole thing yesterday was purely political to help the Democrats in 2014.
Look at the media last night and today wringing their hands, so worried about how Obama's goofing up and how Obama seems incoherent and rambling.
It was a bumbling, fumbling, just as it was embarrassing press conference.
It was painful to watch.
It was the limbo theorem on display.
I really, you know, folks, when I got home yesterday afternoon, last night and I had a chance, that press conference was on the same time.
I now know why he started a thing at noon.
He started a thing at noon so that I wouldn't know anything about it till the program was over.
That thing was loaded.
If I would have had known what he had said, I could have spent at least an hour and a half yesterday properly positioning this and properly analyzing it, but I didn't because I was doing the program at the same time.
It's just, it's one of those frustrating things and nothing that, you know, no way I can listen to his press conference or even read the transcript while I'm doing the program.
But why is that these rumbling, bumbling, painful to watch?
Gee, Obama.
They've all got this idea.
He's the smartest guy in the room, and he came off as an ignoramus.
You've got to remember who his audience was yesterday for this, the low-information voter.
As far as they're concerned, all Obama cares about is they continue to think he's fighting for him.
He didn't know that website was bad.
He didn't know it wasn't working.
In fact, this is classic.
He said he used his ignorance as an illustration of his brilliance.
If I have this right, he said, nobody told me that the website wasn't ready, even a week into it.
Do you think I'm that stupid?
You think I'm so stupid?
I'm not stupid enough to go out and start touting this thing as the greatest thing since sliced bread if I had known it was a mess and wasn't working.
It's not the guy uses his ignorance as a sign of his brilliance.
Or not a sign, but a way to explain, or to actually cement the idea that he's brilliant.
Hey, I'm so smart.
You know, I'm not that dumb.
I'm smart enough to know not to go out and sell this thing.
It'd been working.
Nobody told me.
And yet, over here, everybody thinks this guy is the smartest, the most connected, the most in-touch, the most engaged president we've ever had.
And yet, every day, he doesn't know anything about what's going on and gets away with that.
And now he's turned not knowing anything into a sign of how smart he is.
Okay, I'm going to take another brief time out.
We got other things out there today besides this, but I wanted to touch on this because everybody's been asking me why would he say he's going to veto?
In fact, Eric Cantor of the Republican House leadership sent a tweet out yesterday saying, you know, the president just said that he's going to do what our bill is going to do, but yet he said he's going to veto our bill.
Like his feelings were hurt.
I don't know if, you know, you can't read hurt feelings of the tweets.
I don't know.
That's just the way I interpreted it.
And a lot of people, why would he veto something that, and precisely because an act of Congress, that's legislation that wouldn't, if he signs that bill, then he can't say he's not changing the law, which is what he's hanging his hat on.
I'm not changing anything.
I'm just not going to enforce something.
By the way, speaking of tweets, Dingy Harry said on a tweet yesterday.
And here's what Dingy Harry, Harry Reid, Senate leader, Democrat leader, said: Rush Limbaugh says Republicans should do nothing that helps fix the health care law.
I hope Republicans don't follow his advice.
That reminds me of Obama.
First two weeks in office, gathering all these conservative columnists, congressional leadership, saying, you know, you got to stop listening to Rush Limbaugh.
That's just not how things get done here.
That's not how things get done in Washington.
You've got to stop listening to Limbaugh.
He says, Dingy Harry, Rush Limbaugh says Republicans should do nothing that helps fix the health care law.
I hope Republicans don't follow his advice.
Of course not.
Dingy Harry would love to have Republican fingerprints on this.
They didn't put their fingerprints on it.
There's not one Republican vote for this monstrosity, this obscenity.
All right, another obscene profit timeout on the schedule.
We'll take it and be right back.
Don't go away.
Okay, folks, there's other aspects of this that I want to get to that have nothing to do with what Obama did yesterday.
Jonathan Gruber, M-I-T, who was an architect of Obamacare, was on NBC with F. Chuck Todd.
I'm just teasing this.
And he, do you remember Dick Gephardt talking about the winners of life's lottery?
In Gephardt's world, the winners of life's lottery were the rich.
If you win a lottery, you're what?
You're lucky and nothing more.
You're just plain lucky.
And that's not fair.
And Gephardt portrayed the wealthy as the winners of life's lottery, basically saying that is the essence of unfairness, just getting rich by luck as his primary justification for confiscating income from them via ever-increasing taxes.
Well, Mr. Gruber, the architect, it is said, of Obamacare, the professor at MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has now introduced eugenics into this entire healthcare debate by suggesting that there is a lucky gene pool.
The how did he phrase it?
The winner of life's gene pool lottery or some such thing.
So what he's getting at is that the healthy are lucky.
The healthy who don't have to spend as much on health care.
The lucky who are only lucky because of their genetics.
We have to tax them more.
We have to get more from them.
The healthy have to pay the freight for everybody who is unlucky, who has bad genes, and because of that, they get sick more often.
This is Margaret Sanger territory we're getting back to here.
This guy is introducing eugenics.
And of course, he is special.
He himself is an elitist genetically and therefore will be exempt from whatever plans he has for the winners of life's genetic lottery.
I mean, wait till you hear this.
But I want to get started with phones since it's Open Line Friday.
I'll get into that shortly into the next hour.
We're going to start in Panama City, Florida, right up the road here.
Patrick, great to have you on the program, sir, and hello.
Thank you, sir.
How are you?
I'm okay.
Doing pretty good.
Great.
You know, when this story broke of 106,000 people being enrolled, that's bogus, Rush.
The story broke on Fox News, and it was on my phone app, and the word they used was not enrolled.
It was picked a plan.
106,000 picked a plan.
And it went on to say that the reason they used the word picked is because they had not, many had not paid for it yet.
That's right.
So technically, they're not enrolled.
That's true.
So everyone's saying, oh, it's 106,000 people.
It's not.
No, it's not.
We don't even, we don't know the numbers.
No, we don't know the numbers.
It's not even half that, though.
We're pretty safe in assuming it's not even probably half of that.
I'm with you on that.
Absolutely.
Well, what is your point about it?
Well, it's a disgrace, Rush.
And we let this man get the president get away with it.
It seems everything that he does and using his magic wand is against the Constitution and legislation and everything.
And we just, we give him a pass, it seems.
I know.
I'm really, In a way, I'm conflicted because you say, and I know what you mean, that he's getting away with it.
And, yeah, where we are certainly means he's gotten away with it.
I just have to catch myself sometimes and grab myself before I get too far gone.
The magic is gone from Obama.
Now, he does not have the ability any longer. to get away with things that he did, certainly in his first term.
Now, he's not changing the way he's going about anything.
And Obama doesn't think he's in any trouble.
But there aren't nearly the people being bamboozled, fooled, madly in love with Obama.
I mean, folks, you know, I read the tech blogs, and there has been a massive falling out with Obama and the high-tech community in Silicon Valley.
It's not about any of this.
It's not about health care.
It's not about taxes.
It's not about – they're ticked off that their privacy has been corrupted by the NSA.
They think Snowden is a hero.
They're just livid at Obama.
They're writing about—they can't believe that Obama would do this.
They can believe Bush would do it.
They can believe Nixon would.
They cannot believe that Obama's collecting their private data and bragging about it.
Just little things like that.
It's if you're healthy, if you don't get sick much, if you don't go to the doctor much, use your health insurance much, you are a genetic lottery winner.
It has nothing to do with the way you live, nothing to do with doing the right things.
It's just sheer luck.
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