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April 2, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:24
April 2, 2014, Wednesday, Hour #2
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Hi, how are you?
And greetings once again.
Music lovers, thrill seekers, conversationalists all across the fruited plan.
Rush Limbaugh and back at it here at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
The telephone number, if you want to be on the program, is 800-282-2882.
And the email address, LRushbo at EIBNet.com.
I have the audio soundbites of Obama's Victory Lap press conference.
Well, it wasn't a press conference.
He didn't take any questions.
Stop and think of that.
You got a Victory Lap and you don't take any questions, even from your sycophant press corps.
But they already have the answers, and they didn't care.
They don't care.
Everybody's partying there just to get to the parties.
Shut up, Mr. President's party.
So I want you to hear the soundbites anyway.
We'll get to them in just a second.
But amidst all of this delusional, self-delusional happiness that the left is immersed in today, because it is delusion, they really, they've got themselves convinced now because of the ABC Washington Post poll and the 7.1 million sign-ups that you just now love Obamacare.
And they've turned the corner and my goal, guys, this is wonderful.
And they're deluding themselves just like they did in 2010.
But there's something else that's happened today that's going to bring them down to earth.
And it won't be long before they're all on TV having conniption fits.
The Supreme Court strikes down limits on the law or in the law on overall campaign contributions.
This is just unacceptable.
The Supreme Court has struck down the limits in federal law on the overall campaign contributions the biggest individual donors may make to candidates, political parties, and PACs.
The justices said in a 5-4 vote today that Americans have a right to give the legal maximum to candidates for Congress and president as well as to parties and PACs without worrying that they will violate the law when they bump up against a limit on all contributions, which is now set at $123,200 for 2013 to 2014.
That includes a separate cap of $48,000 on contributions to candidates.
The case was McCutcheon versus Federal Election Commission.
Now, it didn't call into question the maximum amount an individual can donate to a single candidate or political party in a two-year cycle.
Those limits are $2,600 to a candidate and $32,400 to a party or $5,000 to a PAC.
Those are unchanged.
Case did not call those maximum amounts into question.
It's the overall limit that all of your donations add up to that the justices struck down.
Chief Justice John Roberts announced a decision which split the court's liberal and conservative justices.
Roberts said the aggregate limits do not act to prevent corruption, a rationale the court has upheld as justifying limits.
The thinking always has been that the more money you have, the more corruption.
And of course, the correct view is that money is speech.
It takes money to buy ads, takes money to express your opinion.
No matter who's spending it, it takes money for that to happen.
And money equals speech is the enlightened view, but the left hates that.
It's just like if you say corporations are people, oh no, they're not.
It's like showing Dracula the cross to say corporations are people.
Well, the court in Citizens United said corporations are people, and the liberals got ticked.
And now the court has further underlined and exclamation-pointed the notion that speech equals money.
And when they figure this out today, when they come off their high from celebrating Obama's phony victory lap, they're going to be fit to be tied.
Now, Justice Thomas agreed with the outcome, but he wrote separately to say that he would have gone further and wiped away all contribution.
He would have got rid of this $2,600 limit to candidates, for example.
He just blow it all up.
He said, this case represents yet another missed opportunity to right the course of our campaign finance jurisprudence by restoring a standard that is faithful to the First Amendment.
Until we undertake that reexamination, we remain in a halfway house of our own design.
He's right.
He's right on the money.
Justice Breyer, writing for the minority for the dissenters, took the unusual step of actually reading a summary of his opinion from the bench.
That lets you know how ticked off the four lib justices are over this.
You know as well as I do, Citizens United just sent them over the edge because that meant the Koch brothers could give as much as they want or any other corporation.
Yeah, and the corporations are not people.
They just can't stand it when you tell them that.
They just, it's amazing.
It's fun to watch a liberal when you say, next time you're with a liberal, anywhere, just out of the blue, blurt, corporation, people.
See what happens.
Just say it.
Don't lead up to it.
Don't lead into it.
Just blurt it out.
Hey, Fred, corporations are people.
Watch what happens.
Cover your face or other body parts you fear being damaged and hang around and watch.
Now, we do have one little leading soundbite to give an indication the way this is going to go.
Carol Costello on CNN today spoke with the senior legal analyst at CNN, Jeffrey Toobin.
Was he speaking from the cockpit simulator of the Malaysian airline?
He wasn't.
Well, I put everybody else in there.
So he spoke to Jeffrey Toobin about this, and this is a brief summary of what they said.
These rulings continue to surprise me only because so many Americans are concerned about the money factor, who gets elected to public office.
They think it's a real problem, and these kinds of rulings seem to only exacerbate those problems.
The four descending justices, led by Justice Stephen Breyer, said, in effect, that's all a bunch of nonsense, that speech is not money, that money is not speech, that this should be regulated.
But they only had four votes, not five.
So now we know corporations are people, and money is people, too.
Oh, no.
See, they just can't stand it.
So now we know corporations are people and money is people, too.
I don't know, folks.
It's a contradiction every day.
I'm entertained by these people, but at the same time, they're actually doing destructive things.
They're not into freedom of speech is why it's so hard for me.
What do you mean, snared?
What is so hard for them to understand?
Freedom of speech.
They're not into freedom of speech.
These are the people who created political correctness, which is censorship.
They're not into freedom of speech.
Not for you.
The only freedom of speech that exists is if you say something or anything they want to hear or agree with.
If you don't, you don't have freedom of speech.
They're not interested in a level playing field.
They want to rig every game.
They can't win on a level playing field.
This is what they all know.
And so let's go to the Obama sound bites.
This is, I think this kind of behavior, I really do, folks, should be beneath the dignity of the office of the president.
But that just doesn't apply to this president or to this regime.
Here in this bite from the Rose Garden yesterday is President Obama essentially, well, in the next bite, it pretty much agrees with Harry Reid.
Everybody that's criticizing is lying about it.
But here's the first bite.
It's number three.
And this is the pep rally and the way it began.
Despite several lost weeks out of the gate because of problems with the website, 7.1 million Americans have now signed up for private insurance plans through these marketplaces.
7.1.
No, the Affordable Care Act hasn't completely fixed our long-broken health care system, but this law has made our health care system a lot better.
A lot better.
See, they had to say it twice to cue these dunderheads, because even they know that's not true.
Nothing's better about this.
So he had to say it twice to get them to applaud at the right time or the right space.
But I think this whole thing is a disgrace because celebrating something, it's mandatory.
This is the law.
This is like, like I said last hour, are we going to do this on April 15th?
Have a big pep rally and talk about how many people love the changes we've made in the income tax system.
Look at how many people are paying their taxes today.
All because of me.
All right, let's have a big party.
It's bogus.
It's mandatory.
7.1, they can't even document the number.
And even if it is true, 7.1 is nothing when the law requires everybody.
But I think, as I said earlier, I think this is beneath the dignity of the office.
This is Obama joining Dingy Harry in essentially calling all the people with these Obamacare horror stories a liar.
I got to admit, I don't get it.
Why are folks working so hard for people not to have health insurance?
Why are they so mad about the idea of folks having health insurance?
Many of the tall tales that have been told about this law have been debunked.
There are still no death panels.
Armageddon has not arrived.
But there are death panels.
There already are decisions being made who gets treated and who doesn't.
But I got to admit, I don't get it.
Why are folks working so hard for people not to have health insurance?
Mr. President, you're the only guy that's canceling people's health insurance.
You're the only guy making that happen.
Not me.
There's not one Republican who's taken anybody's health insurance away from them.
There's not one Republican nor one conservative who wants to take anybody's health insurance away from them.
There's not one conservative or Republican who wants this health care system to worsen.
You're the only guy making all that happen, Mr. President.
You, you alone, with your party, you are the one seeing to it that people are losing their health insurance.
You are the one that lied to them 23, 24 times over three years.
If they like their plan, they could keep it.
If they like their doctor, they could keep it.
Millions of Americans have lost their health insurance, finding out they couldn't keep their plan or their doctor as you promised them they could.
Nobody is taking anybody's health insurance away from anybody except you, sir.
There is nobody in the opposition to Barack Obama who is mad about people getting health insurance or treatment.
There is nobody upset about anybody getting insurance or getting treatment.
What people are upset about is you are breaking a system under the guise of reforming it.
You are putting it under your control and you don't know what you're doing.
You're not qualified to run this system.
You're not qualified to run health care.
You're not qualified to run health insurance.
You're not qualified to run a hospital or a whole series of them or anything of the sort.
You're not qualified to run an HMO.
You've never done anything like it.
You've not even paid for your own health care ever before.
You don't know anything about this.
People don't like being lied to for three straight years.
People don't like seeing their policies canceled.
They don't like seeing their premiums doubled and their deductibles tripled.
They don't like seeing their prescription costs skyrocket when they're told the opposite.
It was you, Mr. President, who promised everybody that the average health care premium is going to come down $2,500 a year.
Nobody's seeing that.
Nobody is working hard for people not to have health insurance.
What people are trying to accomplish, what we seek to achieve, is the preservation of the greatest health care system the world has ever devised.
You, Mr. President, have it in your crosshairs and you are trying to destroy it under the guise you know better how to fix it.
We're not trying to work hard for people not to have health insurance.
Not mad about people having health insurance.
Maybe some of us get mad at having to pay for other people's health insurance involuntarily.
Maybe a lot of people are kind of fed up, Mr. President, with your hand being in their back pockets all day every day.
Maybe people a little upset who are providing for themselves, being told they're the problems, that they're not paying their fair share, and here comes your big hand in their back pocket and taking money out and giving it to somebody else or forcing them to do that.
Many of the tall tales that have been told about this law have been debunked.
No, no, they have not.
Just the other day, a couple covered California received in their packet a pre-marked voter registration card for the Democrat Party.
Exactly what we predicted would happen in this program.
And that couple is afraid to change that registration, Mr. President, because they're afraid of you.
They're afraid of their own government.
They're afraid of retribution if they cancel the fact that you pre-registered with the Democratic Party or that California covered California did.
There aren't any tall tales being told.
So now you're calling all these people have been denied cancer treatment liars, joining with Dingy Harry on this?
That's why this is beneath the dignity of the office, I think.
I got to take a break.
We'll be back.
Don't go away.
Meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day.
El Rushball behind the Golden EIB microphone.
And another sound might from the Rose Garden Victory Lap yesterday afternoon.
And this one, if you don't like Obamacare, if you dare to oppose Obamacare, you are on the wrong side of history.
Here is the president in a Rose Garden in a victory lap continued.
The debate over repealing this law is over.
The Affordable Care Act is here to stay.
Man, history is not kind to those who would deny Americans their basic economic security.
Nobody remembers well those who stand in the way of America's progress or our people.
And that's what the Affordable Care Act represents.
As messy as it's been sometimes, as contentious as it's been sometimes, it is progress.
It is making sure that we are not the only advanced country on earth that doesn't make sure everybody has basic health care.
Well, except that we do make sure that everybody has basic health care.
There's not a person in this country who doesn't get treated if they don't need it.
All they got to do is go to the emergency room.
It's the law of the land.
The only civilized country doesn't have forced health care.
Well, only civilized country in the world, Western industrialized, don't have socialized medicine.
You know, well, maybe there was a reason why we're the only one that didn't have socialized medicine.
It is not progress.
That's the problem.
It's destruction.
It is not, but it's an absolute mess is what this program is.
All right, we'll get to your phone calls when we return.
Sit tight, folks.
A couple of health care news items here before we head back to the phones.
First up, the RAND Corporation did a survey on this whole healthcare business.
And the upshot of it is, only one-third of Obamacare exchange sign-ups were from the previously uninsured.
Only one-third of exchange signups were previously uninsured.
Now, the RAND study hadn't been published yet.
Its contents were made available to the Los Angeles Times.
The RAND survey estimates that 9 million people have purchased health plans directly from insurers outside the exchanges, but the vast majority of these people were already insured.
So, you know, Obama's sitting there says, oh, yeah, we're the only country that did it.
We're not doing anything that this law set out.
It's just to mishmash.
And from the National Center for Public Policy Research, 3.1 million young adults have not received coverage via their parents' insurance.
Now, this is one of those big deals even the Republicans say they can't oppose.
I had two things the Republicans say about Obamacare.
There are at least two that we can't repeal.
No matter what, we can't do away with them and we're not going to do away with them.
One of them is coverage for pre-existing conditions.
We're just, we're not going to touch that.
Everybody wants that.
Everybody wants everybody, no matter what their problem, to be covered, to be able to have insurance.
Well, yeah, everybody wants a lot of stuff.
I don't know.
I guess I'm too big a stickler, but pre-existing condition insurance is not possible.
It's not insurance.
It's something else.
And if you call it something else, you might change the percentages of people that support it.
And that's why they call it insurance.
Well, I think everybody ought to have insurance.
I don't think insurance ought to be denied anybody when it comes to health care.
Of course, everybody thinks that.
But then what if you're talking about offering people something that isn't insurance, but is in strict definitional terms welfare?
Well, then what kind of support does it get?
See, that's the kind of stuff that matters to me.
It makes me, you know, a stick in the mud.
Let's say you decide for some reason you have enough money, you don't have to get a mortgage.
So you don't have to have homeowners insurance.
So you don't.
You plop down whatever your house costs.
And then one day you drive home and you see smoke coming from your neighborhood.
And you get closer and closer and you see it's your house on fire.
Oh my God.
Oh no.
Then you realize, you know what, I don't have any insurance.
So you call the insurance company and say, hey, my house is on fire, about 20% is destroyed.
I want homeowners insurance.
And they would tell you to go pound sand.
You got to buy the insurance before the fire.
Now, if you want the insurance company to pay you or to pay for the repairs, the fire caused, you're not buying insurance at that point.
You're buying repairs.
Now, the equivalent, you decide because you're young and healthy, or take the risk, whatever, that you're just not going to get catastrophic health insurance.
You've got enough money to pay as you go.
When you go to the doctor, this or that.
And then you do go to the doctor and they come out and say, you know what?
You've got X terminal disease or X catastrophic disease.
You call health insurance.
I just was diagnosed with, I want insurance.
Sorry, you can't get insurance for something that you should have bought insurance for this before this happened.
Well, I want it now.
Well, no, we don't sell that.
That's not insurance.
But we are a compassionate country, so we're calling that pre-existing condition insurance.
But there really is no such thing.
It isn't insurance.
It's something else.
And if you termed it something else, would it have the universal support that it's got?
Side point.
Second thing that the Republicans said that it would never tamper with.
The American people want it is your children being covered by your policy until they are 26.
That's not going to change.
No matter if we got our arms around Obamacare, we're able to get rid of the whole thing.
We're not getting rid of that.
Well, the National Center for Public Policy Research has done some research.
I mean, that's what they do.
And they have found that the number of young people who can now stay on their parents' insurance plan until 26, the slacker mandate, we call this spoiled kids who don't want to pay their own way until they're 27, stay on their parents' insurance.
But only 3.
Well, 3.1 million young adults have not received this coverage via their parents' insurance.
Well, here's the pull quote.
And look, this gets into the weeds here.
It's a little deep of analyzing the whole story does.
But here's the upshot of this story.
What HHS did, Health and Human Services, what they did amounts to little more than a back-of-the-envelope calculation.
To really get at how many young adults are newly covered under their parents' policies would require surveys asking very detailed questions about the source of insurance.
It would also probably require more sophisticated statistical analysis that could estimate the impact of the slacker mandate while controlling for other factors such as the economy and Medicaid enrollment.
As it stands, all we have is an estimate of the number of young people who got coverage via their parents.
It's an unreliable number.
It's far too unreliable.
This story says for major newspapers to be reporting it.
And the Health and Human Services has not updated their figures in nearly two years.
And the reason is the program is losing its effectiveness and the numbers are declining.
There aren't that many kids staying on their parents' policies.
There aren't that many kids up to age 20.
It's something that's not being utilized.
There's no way of determining it.
There just isn't enough statistical analysis and data for people to figure out how widespread the benefit is.
And the best that they've been able to come up with here is despite what Obama and the LA Times and the media is saying, there are 3.1 million young adults who have not received coverage via their parents' insurance.
David Hookberg is the story.
He's a PhD.
And it's another lie about Obamacare.
The point of this little research project is to say that this magic of all these kids being covered, they're not is the bottom line.
It's just a feel-good talking point.
And your parents, your kids, are going to be able to stay covered on your policy later 20, but it's not happening, as best anybody can tell.
Here is Tasha from Central Illinois.
It's great to have you.
I'm glad you waited.
The Rush Limbaugh Program.
Hi.
Hello.
How are you?
I'm good.
Thank you.
Hey, I just wanted to call because something interesting happened yesterday here in Illinois on the state level.
And I'm a 39-year-old single mother of two boys who listen to you regularly when they're in the car with me.
And I am putting myself back through school to become a registered nurse because I want to better myself and to provide for my kids.
And we had a political action day yesterday at the Capitol, and I'm sitting here listening to groups that they're trying to get us to join professional groups, which I do support.
We need to be involved in a political action at the state level for the care of our patients.
But one girl got up there and literally had her own victory dance almost.
And she was sitting there talking about how the state has almost reached their, and I'm quoting, goal of X amount of people that through Obamacare are now on Medicaid.
And she's like, we're almost there.
And I just, I know my mouth actually fell open because my friend next to me was like, what's wrong?
And I was so offended by that because I am on paper that targeted demographic.
Like, I do not have a job outside the thing.
I'm well below poverty level, but I'm not taking any state aid because that's what I'm working to stay off of.
I'm putting myself through school and putting myself.
You are a throwback.
You are a throwback.
You are actually working to get yourself off of welfare and other kinds of aid.
Yes.
Do you know how rare that is?
It's frustrating.
It's very frustrating because I do believe in those programs.
I know they're there to help people.
My sons, they're on the lunch program at school, and I'm not ashamed to say it because I do need that help in some areas.
But I am choosing to put myself through school.
And actually last year, I was sick.
I got breast cancer.
And I am blessed enough in my life where I made choices early on.
Like I said, I'm 39.
I joined the military at 18, and I am still in, you know, on a part-time status here in my state.
And I get my private insurance through them.
So I do pay a premium, even though I did not have a job.
I paid my premium.
And the state of Illinois and the U.S. government did not pay for my cancer treatment.
So kudos to you.
And here you are.
You're trying to gain control of your life.
You want self-reliance.
You want to be responsible for yourself.
And you're sitting there and you're listening to somebody tout and celebrate the number of people we're getting to sign up for aid.
And you don't understand it because you're trying to rid yourself of that encumberment, correct?
Yes.
And she was smiling.
And I was just like, you've got to be kidding me.
She's like, you know, and just the timing of the event and the closing, of course, because they kept moving the deadline.
It just happened to be the next morning.
And she's like, and I'm sure we still have people that are in the system.
And I just, she kept going on like it was the best thing ever.
How many people in this crowd were women?
Would you say?
Well, it was 1,200 students, and it were nursing students.
So majority of them were women.
And there were, like I said, I'm an older student.
There were a mix, but most of them were younger students.
And I'm thinking, if I would have heard this, I mean, I've been to college before, and I actually heard the Reverend Jesse Jackson talk whenever I was younger.
And he is a smooth-talking guy, and he just swooped in those poor college kids like you wouldn't believe.
And I'm sitting here thinking, how many people...
Look at what you have run up against, and you've run flat up against the modern reality, which is that if you're an American, the government owes you.
And the objective is to get your benefits.
Get your benefits.
Sign up, get your aid, have the government pay for it.
It doesn't matter whether what you're signing up for is bankrupt, such as Medicaid.
It doesn't matter.
You are owed benefits because you are an American or because you've had a tough life or because you've had some guy was mean and did you dirty and you're a single woman now and you've been the lot, the odds are against you and somebody's got to give you benefit.
Here you are trying to establish independence.
You do not want to be emboldened or owing to this to anybody.
You want to be self-reliant.
And I'm sure it's eye-opening.
You thought you were like most people, but most people were like you.
And you found out that's not the case, at least in that universe of people where you're hanging around.
No.
And the thing is, we, you know, now I'm thinking a year from now when I graduate, I have a bachelor's degree in nursing.
What is my income going to be if I have to, what's health care cost going to be?
You know, how much am I improving myself to where now I go and half my income is going to go to- Well, here's what you need to do.
You need to walk through that crowd the next time it assembles and ask them how much from you they want.
And they'll say, what are you talking about?
Well, you're out there, you're demanding aid.
Who needs to pay for it?
So how much do I owe you?
Yeah.
And see what happens.
Because they don't personalize it.
They don't think the money is coming from other people like them.
They think it's coming from Obama's stash or this bottomless pit of money they think the government has.
How old are your boys?
My oldest is 14 and my youngest is 8.
Eight.
Well, by you any chance have, you probably don't, copies of my books.
I don't, but I listen to all the people call in and talk about how wonderful they are.
I'm going to send you both books.
I'm going to send you both books and the audio for both books, especially for your eight-year-old.
The age group is 10, 13, but your 14-year-old will benefit from this too.
But given that you're doing what you're doing for yourself, the reason I wrote these books for children, for young people, is to counter the exact kind of thinking you saw there that's being inculcated and taught during their formative years in school that they're owed something.
I just want them to understand where this all began, the country began.
So if you'll hang on, Tasha, we'll get your address and get that stuff out to you.
I'm happy to do it.
Do not go away.
It's Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims, Rush Revere and the First Patriots, the new one, both available, both out now.
We'll be back after this.
Don't go away.
The event that Tasha, Tasha attended, it was the American Nurses Association of Illinois.
It was the 16th annual Student Nurse Political Action Day.
And she was all excited to go.
I mean, she's going to be a nurse.
Political action.
Hey, we just need to be what she didn't realize was that the organization's definition of political action day is, how do we get ourselves in the government gravy train?
And how do we grow the size of government and become part of the government?
And the whole idea, what she ran up against was the idea of the fact that these nurses or whoever's leading this organization, whoever's running it, they want to make sure that people get enough benefits that they never try to get off of it.
You know, it used to be, it used to be that welfare was not enough.
It was enough for basics, but it was not enough to coast on.
Now it is.
The whole idea, the left's whole idea of welfare is as a replacement for work, based on the premise that work is job lock.
Work is punishment.
Work ties you to mean people like the Koch brothers, and you can't discover the inner poet or photographer that's in you.
But now they're going to come along and they're going to pay you plenty on welfare, so much that you don't need or don't want to get off of it.
What may sound controversial to say is it was the truth.
Welfare used to be a bare subsistence.
It was not intended for you to be able to live on.
And the left realized that wouldn't work.
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