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Nov. 14, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:37
November 14, 2014, Friday, Hour #2
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Okay, folks, great to have you back, Rush Limbo doing Exactly what I was born to do.
I wish everybody could find out what that is and experience it.
Because if you do that, you will never work a day in your life.
Live from the Southern Command in Sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
Telephone numbers 800-282-2882.
And I'll get to the phone call sooner in this hour than I intended to.
Sooner than usual.
To make up for the fact that I didn't get to the phones in the last hour.
And again, the thing about Open Line Friday is you can bring up anything you want.
Monday through Thursday, it has to be something that I either understand or care about.
I don't even have to understand what you're talking about on Friday.
That opens the universe up to a whole lot more people.
And it just does.
You didn't know that because I'm so good at adapting.
But there were a couple that I had no clue.
And you would never know had I not told you.
One more thing here on this Cadillac tax business.
It's June 13th, it's 2012.
Gruber interviewed by Frontline on PBS, and he told them that the Cadillac tax issue was addressed in 2009.
And we played the audio soundbite of Gruber mentioning that he had been in the Oval Office and talked to Obama about this.
And how brilliant Obama was, and how he they needed something here that would get them a really good score from the Congressional Budget Office.
They needed a mechanism to cat to have the total cost for Obamacare come in at under a trillion dollars.
And the reason for that was that's what the Iraq war cost.
theoretically.
And one of the sales pitches on Obamacare was, well, it's not going to cost us any more money because we're going to get out of Iraq.
And no, we're just going to take that money, which is already allocated and everybody's used to being spent.
We're just going to do health care for everybody.
It's a beautiful thing.
They needed that number to come in under a trillion dollars for a whole host of reasons.
That was the big one.
But it was gonna cost much more than a trillion dollars, as everybody now knows, and we knew then.
But they had to come up with a trick.
They had to come up with a bunch of tricks.
They had to trick you, they had to trick the insurance companies and to trick the CBO.
They did it with the Cadillac tax.
The economists that were in the room with Obama and Gruber said the number one thing that had to be done was to take on the tax subsidy to employer sponsored insurance.
Now that tax subsidy to employers, what the hell is that?
Well, note here that like all good leftists, Gruber is calling the lack of a tax on expensive health care plans, a tax sub a tax subsidy, is when the government thinks that a business or an industry or an individual is getting away without paying taxes.
Remember, all money is Washington.
In their view, all money is Washington's, and what anybody ends up with is the result of policy and their good intentions.
You don't earn what you make.
You get to keep what they let you keep.
That is their attitude.
They use the tax code for this.
And the fact that these expensive health insurance plans did not have an appropriate tax on them offends them.
They called this the the absence of a tax a federal subsidy.
For example, make this very simple.
You earn 100,000 a year and you have a tax rate of pick numbers here to make it easy.
You earn 100,000 a year and you have a tax rate of 40%.
You pay $40,000 a year in taxes.
The government looks at what you keep, the $60,000 as a tax subsidy.
They are not taxing that.
And if they said it's unfair you should be paying $50,000 a year in taxes, then they would conclude you had a $10,000 tax subsidy that they needed to fix.
It was unfair that you should only be paying 40,000 out of the $100,000 you earn.
So what you're not paying in taxes in their world, that's because of their good graces, and you are being subsidized by the government.
Anyone who has any money left over after paying their taxes is essentially being subsidized by government.
This is how they look.
And I know you're saying, come on, Rush, you can't expect us to believe you.
Yes, I do.
I'm begging you to understand it.
If I could wave a magic wand and have all of you understand how liberals think, what they do, how they take their beliefs and implement them as policy.
How in the world can you look at the Constitution as a charter of negative liberties?
But they do.
They look at money that you are not paying Washington as a tax subsidy.
They look at a number of other things they call imputed income.
For example, if if you uh say you don't pay tax on some of your employment benefits, that also is a tax subsidy.
You are getting an unfair deal.
You should be that's income.
It may not be cash, it may not be salary, but it's income, and you should be paying tax on it.
And if you're not, they look at it as them being nice to you and subsidizing you.
So they're sitting here in the room and they're and they're trying to come up with a mechanism to get this number under a trillion dollars, and they can't do it no matter how they do it, because it's going to cost much more.
And Gruber and the guys come up with a Cadillac tax idea because it fits perfectly with class energy class warfare meme.
And they're going to announce they're going to levy this massive tax on insurance companies because they're being subsidized already.
They're not paying enough taxes on these plans as it is.
And we're talking about the rich and they're getting away scot-free.
We got to end that tax subsidy.
Meaning we've got to levy a tax on this money.
It's not fair the insurance companies are keeping that.
That money's ours.
That money is governments, because all money is governments.
So, like all good leftists, Gruber is calling the absence of a tax, the fact that there is no tax on an expensive health care plan, a tax subsidy.
In other words, the government is paying for it, but not getting any money back for it.
So the tax subsidy economists have been wailing and moaning for decades about all the money they're losing on all the activity in health care that isn't being taxed, and they wanted to get some of it back.
And that's also part and parcel of Gruber applauding Ted Kennedy's scam to have Romney care actually paid for by $400 million in federal taxes.
And for that, Ted Kennedy was a great guy.
You have heard of him.
We got a very powerful guy here in our state, Ted Kennedy.
You may have heard the name, and I'm telling you, the guy is brilliant.
He found a way to scam the feds out of $400 million.
In other words, Ted Kennedy found a way to scam the scammers who come up with their tax subsidies.
And Ted Kennedy found a double scam whammy on them.
And Gruber's out there applauding all this.
Because you see, at the end of the day, what enabled them to sell this is you can't let the rich have better health insurance than the poor, even if they're paying for it.
And the fact that they were paying it makes it even worse because they can afford to pay for it.
And that's not fair.
So there's two things that are not fair here.
The rich had better health insurance than the poor, and the rich were able to pay for it themselves, and both of those are unacceptable.
And so they devised a scheme to make everybody think that they were really socking it to the insurance companies with this Cadillac tax, class and to class warfare, get the little guys celebrating the big bad insurance companies going to get theirs.
And they were counting on the fact that a tax increase on business, as far as the public is concerned, they will not know that that money is going to be passed on to everybody else in higher premium costs so that the company, the industry, is not actually paying it when all is said and done.
And they were out applauding the stupidity of the American public not understanding economics.
And that's what all this is really basically about.
And so today, Obama has arrived on the scene, expressing outrage and anger that he didn't know about any of this.
He's embarrassed, and they're gonna they're gonna take care of this guy.
This is not this is this is unacceptable.
Just like Obama's been outraged at everything else he did when he found out of what he did.
And he always finds out about it in the media.
Take a quick timeout.
We come back, and it's time for your phone calls, folks.
I've set you up, so it's your turn next.
Meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day.
And we now hit the phones.
We're gonna start in Chicago.
This is Dan.
Great to have you, sir.
Welcome.
Hi, Rush.
It's a pleasure to speak to you finally.
And um forgive me if I sound a little nervous, but uh my question is on immigration.
And I I grew up in Chicago, union contractor, union household Democrat, not converted to Republican, but I just wanted to know, I'm really confused.
When did it flip that the Democrats were so concerned about illegal aliens, illegal immigration, and everything?
Because we were always taught that it was the evil Republicans that wanted the illegal immigrants and illegal aliens here, and they were going to take our jobs and all this other stuff, and it's like flip-flopped.
And I'm just really confused.
Yeah, you want to know if you want to comment on that.
You want to know when this happened.
Yeah.
So, how many years ago was it, if you don't mind my asking, that you were young and living in your union household and hearing that it was the Republicans that wanted all of these illegals in the country because of cheaper.
But once I started getting out working, and actually, when I started asking questions about certain things that didn't make sense, I either got what, are you Republican now or something?
and I wouldn't get an answer, so I guess I am.
So it's 30 or 35 years ago when you were aware of it one thing.
Pretty much in from the eighties, you know, and then the nineties, and it kind of maybe, I don't know, when the answer, the answer, quite the short version answer to your question, uh, is the shift began when the Democrat Party actually uh changed its full-time ideological alliance.
Uh and you be because you're right, it wasn't that long ago that organized labor steadfastly opposed uh any kind, unless they can organize it themselves, unless they could turn these workers into union and does paying union workers themselves.
The the the I tell you what happened when when the unions realized that these kinds of workers could facilitate an increase in the minimum wage, they began to soften on them.
Because as far as union contract negotiators were concerned, any time the minimum wage goes up, they think automatically the base union wage should go up.
Oh, you're gonna raise the wage of an incompetent idiot.
Well, we are experts, experienced, we're the experts of what we do, bricklayers or whatever it is.
We want a commensurate raise.
If you're gonna raise these people that can't do diddly squat, and you're gonna say they're worth eight bucks an hour instead of six, just to pick a couple numbers, then the union negotiators would use that as a mechanism for renegotiating their deals and and getting higher wages.
But what's happened, the basic short answer to your question is the Democrat Party Has become whatever the ideology demands first, and all of the various groups that make up the Democrat Party constituencies have to fall in line.
So in this case, the Democratic Party wants voters.
And the way to get voters, especially as the poor enter the middle class, become a little bit more self-reliant.
This is pre-Obama economics days.
People would graduate from the Democrat Party dependents and end up voting Republican.
You had to replace those people.
The Democrat Party needs a permanent underclass that's uneducated and unskilled and low paid.
And they have to import them now.
That's what amnesty is about, or blanket pardons, if you prefer the term.
And so the unions have just had to get in line with this because it has become the overall objective of the party.
And it has been kind of interesting to watch because I think you're right.
This does not help union people.
It does not help the union way.
It doesn't help any American worker.
But but union labor included.
Yeah, everyone thinks it does, but you know.
How does it how does it help the average American worker to flood the market with low-skilled, uneducated people who have nothing and therefore will work for pennies compared to you, a lifelong union member who have demands and requirements based on your expertise, your length of service, your qualifications, uh experience, and all of that.
And what's what's happening is that your expertise and experience is being judged as replaceable by low-wage, unskilled people who can be taught whatever it is needs to be done, and the cheapness of it, how little it costs is worth it for a while.
Democrat Party benefits because here comes a new wave of dependent people who are going to totally depend on the Democrat Party and the government for food and water and shelter and whatever else.
And the Democrats will pay the unions off in a bunch of various ways, winning elections and giving the leaders various appointments, positions of power within the party.
It's the whole thing is a rigged game.
The uh Republicans, on the other hand, don't leave them out of this.
The Chamber of Commerce wants the same thing.
They want the cheap labor, too.
But I uh, you know, you you you talk about it used to be when you were growing up that the Republicans, I would caution you to always remember that there were a bunch of lies about Republicans told in Democrat households, and there still are.
war on women, racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, you name it.
Thank you.
And there were a bunch of lies being told when you were growing up, too.
The Republicans want this.
Uh that there was the last immigration bill was uh the big one, Simpson Mazzoli in 1986, and it was under three million.
And we were told, if we just do it this time, we'll never have to do it again.
Ted Kennedy and boys promised, yep, we'll secure the border, we'll shut it down, and it's never we got to take care of these three million that are here.
We've got to do something about it.
It's it's it's it's inhumane what we're doing.
They're living in the shadows, what are the arguments were?
We've we've got we've got so Reagan went along with it, got snookered because they didn't do anything to secure the border after Reagan left off, it's two years later.
Nothing was done to secure the border, and the flood continued, and we're back at it.
Only this time we're talking 20 million now, 12 to 20 million.
The first wave that Obama's talking about is four and a half to five million, they say.
But if they're in the shadows, and we don't know who they are or where they are, then how do we know how many are actually going to be pardoned?
I got I got a note from a guy who says, you know what, amnesty's good, Rush.
I mean, amnesty carries a lot of weight, but you still have a lot of low information people may not be totally up to speed.
What about characterizing what Obama's gonna do as a blanket pardon rather than amnesty?
I mean, there's gun amnesty, amnesty can be a good thing.
Turn in your gun, no penalty attached to whatever you've done with it or possessed it illegally, ball temporary amnesty plans here if they want to affect some kind of change, but Blanket pardon.
Only criminals get pardons.
But sometimes even good people get amnesty.
So I don't know, it's interesting.
The uh the the power of words and various terminologies in order to convey.
But on this one, I don't I don't think there's really a problem.
The vast majority of the people do not want any of that.
They don't want amnesty or blanket pardon, and they don't want Obamacare.
They don't they don't there have never has been majority support for it.
All of this is happening against the will of the American people.
That's why the election happened.
The election, people were sent to Washington to stop this.
Don't get me started on this again.
I'm gonna say something I regret about the Republicans and what do they not see?
It's a good thing that your splitting tone just went off here.
Back to the phone single open line Friday, and we have a young reader of the Rush Revere, Time Travel Adventures with Exceptional Americans series.
This is uh Elena from Warrington, Virginia, and uh ten years old.
Great to have you here on the program today, Elena.
Hi.
Thank you.
Hello, Mr. Limbaugh.
I just wanted to thank you so much for writing those books.
I love them.
Absolutely love them.
Um You are you are you're more than welcome.
And uh you you sound so cute.
You you sound so well spoken.
It's it's it's great to have you on the program.
Thank you.
Um I've got the first book by my grandmother, and I kind of read it, but then I broke my left femur in January, and so I couldn't go outside and play, so I would sit down on the couch and read the first book.
And then I finished that and I really loved it.
And so my grandmother got the second book, and so I read that one, and I loved that one too.
And then she just recently got me the third book, and I'm almost done with that one, and I love that one too.
So you've read Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims, Rush Revere and the First Patriots and Rush Revere and The American Revolution.
You've you've read all three.
Yep.
I have.
And all because of a broken femur.
How did you break your how did you how did you break your femur?
Uh I was sledding down a hill, and then my sled crossed in front of someone else's, and he ran into my leg.
Oh my god, that had a hurt.
Yeah, kind of.
Yeah.
Was it so it was a boy that did it?
A boy broke your femur.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Figures.
Mm-hmm.
Well, uh you know, I w you you you are so kind.
You're so nice.
Um what I I want to send you uh an autographed set of these books that you can keep.
So you don't have to open them just to look at the autograph signature page, but that way you keep them fresh.
And I'm gonna say I want to send you the audio versions too, it lina, because I I read those, I record those.
And if you want to relive them without having to read them, you know they're just six CDs for each book.
Just pop them in and listen to them whenever you want.
In fact, we'll put together a whole rush revere package for you and send it off to you because you've made my I've the third book, it's this is this is hard to say.
But the third book, we've been so excited for it to come out.
The the first two are excellent and in our minds.
But this one, the the third one is just really, really good.
We were so excited for people to read this one.
And the fact that you like them all is just is just great because that means mission accomplished for me.
Uh and and I never knew that anything I would write would be interesting to somebody your age, and the fact that it is and that you like it, that's just that's just perfect.
Yes.
So And I have I've been listening to your show since I was little, because my mom would listen to them.
And so when I was eating when I would be eating lunch, she would turn it on and I would listen to it too.
So I really like it.
Well, this is a grand slam home Run for me today.
So that you listen to the program to boot.
Okay, well, this is great.
Looking, Lena, thank you very much.
You are where is Warranton, Virginia?
What's it close to?
Um it's like an hour away from D.C. and that's close enough, yeah.
Okay, so uh FedEx can get to you on Saturday.
We'll we'll I don't know if we'll get it to you tomorrow, but certainly by next week we'll have a a whole bunch of stuff from uh from Rush Revere and Liberty too.
But you need to hang on so Mr. Snerdley can get your FedEx address, okay?
Okay.
Thanks, Elena, very much.
Thank you so much.
Yo, it's it's my pleasure.
I you believe how well spoken she was at ten years old.
Now, many of you who are around ten-year-olds, it it may not be that uncommon, but I'm not around that many.
And I don't know.
That's just to me it's just cute.
It's it's so cool.
And uh we'll get the stuff out to her.
And just great.
Thank you again, Elena.
Appreciate it.
Here's John in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
I'm glad that you called, sir.
You're next on Open Line Friday.
Hi.
Hi, Ross.
Um it's an honor to talk to you.
Um we were we uh I just went through voting and for all this to stop.
And I thought it was just incredible that you know the people rose up and said, Hey, you know what, this has got to stop, and all we're doing is finding out that it's gonna be circumvented, and our voice doesn't really mean anything.
And now that I hear that the Republicans are scared, and it just kinda really hurts me because there is so many guys in Landingcraft in Tarawa at uh Omaha at um uh at uh Normandy beaches and things that were going in scared.
And uh the only thing reason why they did it was for a piece of paper and for the guy on the left and the guy on the right of them, and they knew they had a job to do, and that goes from Fredericksburg and the Civil War going up Maurice Heights or holding on to um some seminary ridge at Gettysburg and uh Wake Island holding out and yes,
even for two guys to go try and help an ambassador at Benghazi, and now we're asking them to stop this, and they s and they don't have the guts to do it.
Maybe they should go out on the mall and take a look at those Marines holding that flag up on Sarabacchi and think about how many didn't make it to raise that flag and what it meant to all the rest of them to see that flag raised on Sarabacchi.
We want this stopped uh because sooner or later somebody's gonna come up with the idea to cross the Rubicon and go to the rally point to stop it with other brave men.
I look, I I hear your uh your frustration.
Let me let me jump in and explain uh to those of you who just might be tuning in.
My guess is that that John here is a little ticked off because there's a story in the Washington Times today.
House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday Republicans could use a spending bill to block Obama's planned executive action to grant work permits to illegal immigrants or amnesty or uh blanket pardons.
But his Senate counterpart ruled out a government shutdown over it, canceling the one major piece of leverage the GOP has in the fight.
Mitch McConnell, the incoming majority leader said we'll not be shutting the government down or threatening to default on the national debt, flatly ruling out an all-or-nothing showdown over Obama's plans.
Now, look, if you strip everything away, what that means is that all Obama has to do, or all the media even has to do, is threaten a government shutdown, and it looks like the Senate will not go any further.
And I I uh I must remind you again that the Republicans, according to the media, shut down the government last December.
And Ted Cruz Got raked over the calls for it by Republicans.
Ted Cruz evil here, Ted Cruz doing this, Ted Cruz's embarrassment, Ted Cruz is killing us.
And the last thing I saw was the Republicans won a landslide election.
Even after so-called shutting down the government.
What I don't understand, and I understand the Republicans all too well.
I understand that they are total prisoners to what they think or fear the media might say about them.
And they are they they some Republicans really believe that the meaning of this election was they were sent to compromise and get government working again.
They don't buy that they were sent there to stop Obama.
That's what they say.
Some of them don't think the country's in crisis, John, like you do, and like most of us do.
They just think politics as usual is going on here.
And they're governed by the old rules and rules of procedure, and they just they don't they don't see what's going on.
And the third thing that is really they think shutting down the government, they're going to get raked over the calls, they're going to ruin their presidential chances in 2016, and it's going to destroy everything they might try to do because the people of this country don't want their precious government shutdown.
What I don't understand is how is it shutting down the government when you defund a little piece of Obamacare?
How is it shutting down the government to not give Obama whatever money he needs to implement his amnesty?
Obama will play hardball with them how?
Oh, they're going to shut down the government.
If this is the first stage, I know they want to be shutting down the government.
But it's not a government shutdown.
Well, Obama wouldn't say that, but the media would say, oh, by the way, the president's black and the Republicans are racists.
And uh so the political calculation is that they can't win doing any of this.
And no, I don't recall the Democrats ever publicly removing weapons from their arsenal.
I don't recall it ever happening.
I don't I but this I think just illustrates maybe it's not fear.
I mean, I use the word fear, and I assume that these Republicans are afraid of what the media is going to say about them, or their consultants are afraid, and they tell the candidates and the senators that they ought to be afraid.
I uh but but it's clear clear that they they don't want that said about them.
They don't want it said that they're shut down the government, even though it was last December, and they won anyway.
So I remain perplexed about it.
Now, Boehner is out saying we've got it on audio tapes coming up here.
Vahner is out saying that they are going to do whatever it takes to stop Obama's amnesty or uh Obamacare, maybe both, or what have you.
But the Senate, Senate leaders are not talking that way.
And in fact, many of them are out saying publicly that they think the election results are a signal from the American people that they want Washington to work again.
And that means compromising with Obama.
I don't know.
Getting blue in the face.
Explaining all this.
And I you you call here and you express your anger, and I feel it and understand it, but I I beyond that, I don't know what to do.
Uh yeah, I don't know what to tell you to make you feel any better about it because your anger's justified.
But the thing that we can always hold back or hold in reserve here is that so far all this is just words.
Nothing's really happened yet.
Now, it may not be a great indication of what is going to happen, but still it hasn't happened yet.
And then that always means there's hope.
Gotta take a break.
We'll be back.
Don't go away.
We have been chronicling the tortured existence of the former AP, Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier, in uh in recent days.
The entire Jonathan Gruber story, the discovery that Gruber has been running around bragging about how they lied to the American people get Obamacare passed and how they had to rely on the stupidity of the American voter and the economic ignorance of the American voter in order to laughingly braggadociously get Obamacare passed.
Ron Fournier has been tortured over this.
And he might pronounce his name Fournier.
I'm not I haven't heard it pronounced, so I cover myself with both pronunciations.
But it is clear that Ron Fournier is a long time AP journalist, which means he's a liberal Democrat, whether he knows it or not.
And it's also clear that he has put blind faith in the decency and goodness and honesty of liberal Democrats, that they're kind and compassionate and so forth.
And he's really having a tough time coming to grips with all of this.
This is from the way he's writing and speaking, it's making it sound like he's really tortured over this all of a sudden realization that the people he respects and loves in politics are a bunch of lying skunks.
So he was on a special report with Brett Baer on Fox last night.
And Brett Bear said, Ron, does this change of the dynamic as we now head to a Republican-held Congress, this Gruber thing?
Does it change the dynamic?
Does it change the dynamic about the perception of the law?
Yeah, and it undermines the president's credibility even further.
It undermines the central element of the Democratic Party that a government is honest and transparent and can get things done well.
It undermines their faith, frankly, in the media, which to a large degree has been giving this whole issue a pass.
I've been really struck by the fact that, okay, this is a democratic lie, so we'll pass on it.
It's like we have blue lies and red lies in this country, and of course, white lies, honey, that dress doesn't make you look too fat.
You know, lie is a lie is a lie is a lie.
This is not only a lie, but it's insulting to the American people to say that we're stupid, and yes, it's going to affect the president's ability to be able to have any credibility with the public and uh defend this law.
The thing about it doesn't matter.
He doesn't care whether he has credibility with the American people, who wouldn't have done 90% of what he's done.
He doesn't care if he has credibility with the public.
He doesn't care what the public wants.
But notice, notice, if you will, the premises which underlie this whole thing.
Yes, it undermines the central element of the Democrat Party that a government is honest and transparent and can get things done well.
So he's admitting that's what the Democrat Party is to him.
The Democrat Party is honest.
The Democrat Party is transparent.
The Democrat Party can get things done well.
Well, conversely, what must the Republican Party be if that's what he thinks about the Democrat Party?
And that has shaped the way he's written his stories and articles over the years.
This blind faith belief that all goodness and all decency and all honesty is in the Democrat Party, and that they're the only ones who make government work.
And making government work is number one.
That's what making government work is what all of this is all about.
And now all of these earth-shattering stories are shocking the very foundation in which he's placed this blind faith.
I've really been struck by the fact it's a Democrat lie.
And you know what?
I've finally figured out that Democrat lie, like my friends in the media don't care.
If a Republican lie, why that's all they talk about.
But Democrat lie, they don't care.
So the red lies and blue lies.
Bureau chief.
AP bureau chief.
Thank you.
What m I'm trying to be nice here, but what?
I mean, I'm kind of like when McConnell said he's surprised that Obama's not tacking to the center.
I don't understand how intelligent, informed, engaged everyday people.
But we have to understand it because they are.
Talent on loan from God.
Rush Limboy, your guiding light with us.
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