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March 25, 2015 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:46
March 25, 2015, Wednesday, Hour #2
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There continues to be some uh well not just curiosity, some confusion as well about Ted Cruz and his decision to sign up for Obamacare.
There's another there are some options that he has here, and I want to run through these.
By the way, greetings and welcome back.
Great to have you as always.
Uh Rush Limbaugh, the most listened-to radio talk show in America, telephone numbers 800-282-2882, and the email address L Rushbo at EIB nut.com.
Now, all of this would have been academic had his wife not quit.
Well, she didn't quit.
She took an unpaid leave of absence at Goldman Sachs.
But if she had stayed there while he ran the campaign, this would not even be an issue.
They made a determination that a campaign is a family endeavor, obviously, and she wants to be there to support him, and she is quite accomplished in her own right as well.
So she just taking an unpaid leave.
She's going to go back there.
Well, depending on what happens with his electoral chances here, but she will go back there.
But her her temporary leave without pay cancels the family health care package, which at Goldman Sachs has uh a value of about $20,000.
That's that's a pretty good benefit.
And it's gone.
So what are the options Ted Cruz has?
Because I tell you the reactions that I'm seeing are running the gamut.
Some say that he's been brilliant here in illustrating to people how punitive this law is and how big and deep the long arm of the federal government is.
Others say he looks like a hypocrite because he's well known to hate Obamacare.
He has made one of his central campaign promises, a total repeal of Obamacare, and yet here he is signing up for it.
Not only signing up for it, but he doesn't appear to be doing so begrudgingly.
He doesn't appear to be angry about having to do it.
He just matter-of fact signed up for Obamacare.
But he had no choice in this regard.
There are three things he could do: sign up for insurance, not get insurance, and pay the fine, in which case, if the family encountered any health care expenses, the family would have to have enough money to pay for those out of pocket and make the choice to do so.
So it's uh that's two-prong.
Don't know how much money Cruz has.
But let's say he's got enough to handle whatever day-to-day normal health care might come up, maybe even an emergency or two, but may decide I don't want to spend my money for that.
So I'm gonna go get insurance, like everybody else does.
Because if I get the if I don't get insurance, if I protest kind of thing here and just pay the fine, it'll be cheaper than insurance.
But what if somebody in the family gets sick?
I don't live alone here.
I have family responsibilities.
And of course, the third thing he could do is nothing.
It's really not an option.
He's a member of the United States Senate.
Not doing an option.
Doing nothing would not be cool.
That would mean that uh uh it would be publicly stating he's doing nothing, and the IRS would not have to find him in an audit.
The IRS is the collection agency.
If you don't have insurance, they're gonna get you uh for your fine, and the IRS is how they're gonna collect it, and they're gonna collect it from your refund if you have one.
And if you don't get a refund, they're gonna they're at some point they're gonna figure you will get a refund.
They're gonna take that whenever you get it.
If you never qualify for a refund, they're gonna send you a bill.
One way or the other, the IRS is gonna get your fine money if you decide not to get insurance.
But when you get right down to brass tax, Obama has given all of us no choice here.
Ted Cruz has no choice but to use Obamacare because Congressmen are forced into Obamacare.
They cannot use a non-Obamacare insurance policy and still get it through their employer, their employers of federal government.
They and they can't get insurance outside their the government and get the employer Discount or the or the premium subsidy.
So there really are no other choices.
There are no individual insurance plans thanks to Obama.
Well, that's not true.
There are still a few companies selling individual insurance plans, not nearly as many as used to before there was Obamacare.
The private sector, individual health insurance market is rapidly evaporating thanks to Obamacare.
So there really are no other choices.
There are no individual insurance plans anymore thanks to Obamacare.
It's not totally, but there's so few, they're prohibitively expensive because there's so few of them.
There's no competition for them.
If you go in, if you find a company still selling individual just to you, health insurance plans, you're going to pay through the nose for it.
And that's why seven million or more people lost their health insurance.
Because the private sector provider is drying up.
The private individual insurance market is drying up.
That is why 7 million and probably more people lost their health insurance.
So just to review this, Cruz had two choices.
If he intended to follow the law, try to find a private plan, and most of them have been done away with, or become incredibly expensive because of Obamacare, which makes them out of reach.
And if he went that route, he would lose whatever his employer pays toward his premiums.
Second thing he could do, get insurance through his employer, which by law has to be Obamacare because he's a member of the U.S. government.
So where's the hypocrisy?
I mean, the drive by us are trying to say he's a hypocrite here, but he's got no choice if he's if he is a member of the Senate, federal governments, the employees got to follow the law.
He has to be insured through Obamacare.
What did all these Democrats who fought the Bush tax cuts, did they refuse to pay less on their income taxes or did he take the cuts?
It's six of one half dozen or another.
Democrats hated Bush's tax cuts, but I'll bet that every one of them took them.
How many Democrats do you think they're out there when Bush announces his two or three series of tax cuts back in 2000 and 2001, 2001, 2002?
And all these Democrats are disagreeing with it.
But how many of them do you think said, you know what?
I'm in protest and I'm going to pay more taxes than I should.
I'm going to violate the law and I'm going to get a greater contribution to the government.
I'm not going to take my tax cut.
How many of you think did that?
I give you the answer, zero.
They all followed the law.
And nobody called them hypocrites.
They're out there opposed to tax cuts, but every damn one of them took the tax cut.
Well, here's Obama, I'm sorry, crew is opposing Obamacare and promising to repeal it if he ever has the chance.
But the law is the law, and they're calling him a hypocrite.
What do they want him to do?
Break the law.
I'm talking about the media and whoever else there is critics.
What do they want him to do?
Make a stand here on this?
Is that what some people want him to do?
He hates Obamacare.
He's supposed to make a stand.
He's supposed to show leadership.
If Obamacare is bad, he should not sign up for it.
Is that what some people think he should have done?
The Cobra option, his wife could go to Cobra.
Cobra is 18 months max.
I don't think 18 months would even get him through the uh through the elections, be tight.
Might be right up to the election in 2016.
But Cobra is not inexpensive.
Cobra is not cheaper.
All Cobra is a mechanism whereby if you get canned, if your company goes out of business or for whatever reason you lose your insurance, Cobra is the mechanism that's been set up for you to go and keep it.
But there are no cost reductions in it.
Now, if Cruz had opted for the fine instead of the insurance, that would have been cheaper, But he would not have had insurance.
So now we're back to okay, if the family needs health care, actually needs some treatment.
Does he have the money to spend it out of pocket?
If all he does is pay the fine and does have any insurance.
And then if he does have the money, and I don't know, if he does have the money, is that how he wants to spend it?
Or would he rather save it, keep it in a 401k, whatever he does with his money, I have no idea.
His wife probably handles that.
She's a Goldman Sachs.
I'm sure they've got the money to pay the fine.
But if he went out and paid the fine, if he opted not to insure his family, can you imagine what the drive buys would do with that?
They would call him a dangerous lunatic.
They would call him a monster.
He can't win on this.
He can't win.
And he's not, I have not heard him say, now, Snerdley, correct me.
I have not heard Cruz say that he's doing this under protest.
I've not heard him say he'd rather not have to do it.
I've not heard him complain about it.
I've heard him say, I've got to follow the law.
We read the law and we follow it.
We follow the text of the law.
But I've not heard him express regrets that he has to do this.
Have you?
Well, he may have.
I just haven't heard it.
I think some of his supporters want to see some uh synchronization here, if you will.
On because on the one hand, Ted Cruz is identified as somebody who despises it and has vowed to repeal it.
And then out of the blue, the next thing people know he's signing up for it and doesn't appear to be upset about it.
And so some people say, wait a minute, this is not in sync.
He ought to be mad that he has to sign up for it.
And when he signs up for it, he ought to turn this into a big issue to his advantage.
He ought to make a teachable moment out of this.
That's what I hear some people saying.
And some people think he is doing that, but they are inferring it because I don't hear him saying it.
Time will tell.
Take a brief time out.
More people weigh in on this when we get back.
Do not go away, folks.
Somebody says I missed the point.
I did miss the point.
I never missed the point.
Other people missed the point.
I pointed out what what the point that I missed.
I should have said that Ted Cruz offered and claimed he wasn't going to take any subsidies so that he does not appear to be an elitist.
I pointed that out in the previous hour.
He's not going to take any subsidy, even one that he qualifies for.
And the reason he's not going to do that is because he doesn't want to be on the dole.
He doesn't want to take any more of taxpayer money than he already is by signing up for Obamacare.
I made that uh clear in the in the first part of the first hour of the program.
And in that sense, uh, you know, he's he's avoiding uh the trap of appearing to be identical to the elites on this, who don't have a problem.
Now they're all happy about this at the White House.
They're very happy they had an official welcoming ceremony.
And Ted Cruz is in Obamacare at the White House.
Here's the press secretary Josh Ernest this afternoon at the press briefing.
A reporter said, could you comment on the news that Senator Cruz is looking at obtaining health care insurance through a health care exchange under Obamacare?
What he will find is the same thing that millions of Americans across the country have found, which is that there are good quality, affordable health care plans that are available because of the Affordable Care Act.
And these are plans that will ensure that people are no longer discriminated against because they have a pre existing condition.
These are plans that will ensure that uh individuals are not discriminated against just because they're women.
What are plans that will ensure that the recipients have access to free preventative services like free mammograms and free birth control?
Oh, yes, Ted Cruz's wife is gonna need what?
Birth control pills?
Three thousand dollars a month, birth control pills, condoms.
This is something he's gonna find out, just gonna, oh, this is such a great thing.
His wife is gonna discover all of these preventative services.
This this, by the way, this pre existing kit condition, people have forgotten the pool that they created for people didn't sign up for that.
That kind of withered on the vine, this whole this whole pre existing condition thing.
This is nothing more than an agenda cheat sheet here.
Plans will ensure people no longer discriminated against because they have a preexisting condition.
That's not discrimination.
I know it's become discrimination in our culture, but it isn't.
That's what Ted Cruz is going to find.
Anyway, this is they're happy about it.
They're welcoming to it.
And the uh exchange continued with this question from the unnamed reporter.
You don't seem to be taking the bait for the ironic moment as this representative.
I have noticed that a number of other people have pointed out the irony.
I'm seeking to merely point out the common experience that it seems that uh the Cruz family may be sharing in.
Yeah, so I I'll leave the irony to you guys, my buddies and my associates.
I don't need to point out the irony because I've got you schlubs in the media doing it for us.
So all I'm gonna do is point out how happy and satisfied Senator Cruz is going to be once he learns the truth of Obamacare.
He will never want to be without it.
And that's what we're so happy that he's going to learn.
Now, if you want to point out the irony, you go right ahead.
I've noticed a lot of people already doing that, but I'm not going to go there.
Unstated, because I don't have to.
You guys are taking care of that for us.
And we appreciate it here at the regime.
And here's Dave in Bedford, Ohio.
As we head back to the phones.
Great to have you, Dave.
Thank you for waiting and welcome to the program.
Hey, Russ.
I just uh first I just want to take one quick second for you have really changed the way I think about a lot of different things.
Conservatism and the way you explain it and the way you explained it, the way I hit my ears.
I just wanted to thank you for changing the way I look at not just politics, but this is my life as a whole.
And I just wanted to thank you sincerely for changing the way I look at things, not just through heart, but the real reason and understanding and on basis of facts and not just opinions and half-hearted nonsense like you hear out in the uh real media out there.
I just want to thank you for that real quick.
I appreciate that very much, sir.
Thank you very much.
Um but as far as Ted Cruz goes, um, I I think um I think uh he's playing it this way.
I don't obviously know for a fact, but me personally, my premiums went up when uh uh when Obamacare took effect the last two years.
I had two raises at my job the last two years, and basically they won for paying my uh my higher premiums for my family health care coverage.
And Ted Cruz has been a constant, constant proponent of it, obviously, or I should say opponent uh of Obamacare, and I think he's signing up for it.
Hey, I I I get it.
He can he he uh me and everybody else knows he can afford whatever he wants.
He can go outside.
But the point is to make the point, and this is that I think that his premiums uh may not go up, but his coverage may go down, or his premiums may go up, or he can maybe contrast his wife's policy with Obamacare's policy, and well, hey, my wife had to take you know leave of absence from my job.
I have to point something out here.
I know that that's what you want him to do, but he hasn't done that.
You we gotta be very careful here that we don't project our own desires on Cruz's actions.
You may want him to say those things, and you may want what you've described his attitude to be to be his attitude.
So far, I could I may have missed it, but I haven't seen him say any of that.
I haven't seen him express any regret.
I haven't seen him react to any of the so-called irony.
I I don't I don't know what the irony is of Ted Cruz being forced into Obamacare.
It's the law.
I don't know what the irony, what do they expect him to do?
Break the law?
Make a stand for it?
I don't understand.
Not wrong button, Robert.
Go ahead.
Oh, as far as that goes, hey, when he said yesterday, I'm just following the the letter of the laws, even if I disagree with it.
Just a uh presidential candidate saying that is music to my ears.
Hey, maybe you disagree with it, but hey, I'm going along with it.
Hey, it's more than the president's doing right now, number one.
Right.
And number two, I think he's a very smart man.
I think he knows what he was getting himself into.
And I think he may have already done a little bit of research on this and maybe knows that he's going to lose his maybe his family doctor or uh premium ship one way or another, or something's gonna happen where he can say, hey, you know, I'm one with you guys.
You know what?
I my previous I'm being affected by Obamacare, too.
I'm with you on that.
All right.
You know what I mean?
All right.
I'll tell you what we'll have to do here.
We're gonna have to wait for a while to see if your theory is true.
Because basically what you're saying is that Cruz has thought about this in advance.
This was not just a random decision, and that at some point he's going to take the occasion of his having to sign up and turn it into a political advantage or weapon.
And you think that he's going to describe how he's maybe not able to keep the doctor he liked, or he has getting less coverage than he had, or whatever.
You think that is what is coming next.
Absolutely.
I mean, this is what we've been waiting for.
He didn't do, he didn't go through the government shutdown and do what he's been doing for nada.
I think we need to have somebody that's man enough to fight the good fight and point.
Well, yeah, he could go other places, but I need to stand here with these people and make this point.
Well, I agree with that.
Look, I agree with the guys, it's it's it's it's music to our ears to hear a presidential candidate express reverence for the law.
But remember, he'd better point that out.
You can't rely on the low information crowd to pick up on the subtlety of that.
The low information crowd is not saying, wow, man, I love Cruz.
He's actually obeying the law, as opposed to Obama who's breaking, because they don't think Obama's breaking the law.
By definition, they're low info.
Look, folks, I I I I I don't want to I don't want to overdo this.
I I don't want to be so redundant on this that that you get uh to the point that come on, Rush, I've heard it, but I I I want to say this enough so that you understand it.
Ted Cruz had the choice of going Cobra, which would have cost him $20,000 a year.
Probably more, because that's the value that his wife's policy or benefit at Goldman Sachs uh contained and when she left, took her unpaid leave, they lose that.
So they were used to a $20,000 health care benefit.
If they go Cobra and avoid Obamacare, which is what some people wanted him to do, then he's looking at that uh expense.
So he could do that, or he could get insurance through his employer, and have the employer subsidize his premiums by up to 75%.
Now, the s that that is that is not the that's the law.
I I don't know to what extent that he is.
He's he said he's not taking any subsidies, and he's subsidies he's not going to take.
What Cruz is doing here is being fiscally responsible for his family first.
Something the left doesn't understand.
He isn't taking any subsidy.
He's getting insurance through his employer.
That is not a subsidy.
And he's required to do that by law.
He has to do what he did.
Or he can go the fine route again, as we've explained.
It is not his fault that his employer is mandating that he use Obamacare.
Just like it's not your fault that you are mandated to use Obamacare.
It's not his fault.
It's not your fault.
Some people want him to take a stand because they think that would be consistent with hating Obamacare.
So he ought to not do it.
But he's got a family, and he's got family responsibilities there.
Now, let's keep in mind also, Democrat Congressman and their staffers.
Do you remember this?
They screamed bloody murder about having to go under Obamacare when they found out how much it was going to cost.
I will never forget this.
Harry Reid and a bunch of Democrat leaders just yelped and want when they found out their staffers do not make enough money to afford Obamacare.
So the staffers who were not going to qualify for subsidies were all of Obama just waved a magic wand and granted congressional staffers subsidies, up to 75% of the cost is being subsidized.
But not through the exchanges.
Obama set up a subsidy program for congressional staffers that runs through a different federal bureaucracy.
I can't think of it off the top of my head.
But it's a common one.
It's not something deeply hidden.
Do you remember this?
I will never forget it.
So many surprises erupted when Obamacare began its implementation process.
And Senate staffers, the people that wrote the damn thing in many cases, were just outraged.
Some of these people making 110, 120,000 a year could not afford it.
And they whined and they moaned, and Harry Reed went out and whined and they moaned.
And they were given subsidies that were of a 75% value.
75% of the total cost is being paid by taxpayers through a different federal bureaucracy.
People like Harry Reid went out of their way to try to exempt their staff from Obamacare.
And many of the staff, as I just explained, have been exempted.
So what exactly is the irony of Ted Cruz being forced into Obamacare?
Now there's a there's a story here in the stack.
I should have put this near the top, but I wasn't thinking properly.
I didn't think it was going to hit with the cruise story.
so Let me take another call and I'll look for it while um I'm talking to the to the next caller.
This is uh Larry in Nashville.
Larry, great that you called.
I appreciate you uh waiting, and welcome to the program.
Hello.
Oh, same here, Rush.
Uh, it's great to talk to you.
I've been a fan of you ever since I was 14.
Uh that was back when I was a liberal.
Uh that was back in 2008, and I supported uh McCain after starting to hear in your uh radio show, and now I'm 21.
And uh I'm also Hispanic, so you know it's it's crazy.
Um, I'm calling because of Ted Cruz uh signing up for this uh Obamacare.
Um I don't necessarily see it, I I do see it as him by law going and signing up for this Obamacare.
Uh but he's also I see it as him setting a president for American responsibility.
Uh we have to go get Obamacare.
We have to go pay taxes to the IRS.
Some of us may agree that the IRS is unconstitutional, but uh it's our responsibility to pay our police officers and pave our roads.
Um I see it as a responsibility, not so much as him being dragged out to the Obama exchange uh to be forced to buy this.
I see it as a responsibility uh for Americans to start being responsible with their stuff.
Uh we used to support civil defense, we used to support the war effort, we used to vote.
Now there's such an apathy across the the country, no one really cares anymore.
Well, again, what you have you you are uh constructing your own explanationslash justification to make yourself feel comfortable with what Cruz is doing.
And I understand that.
And you you to him to you he's he's he's engaging here in a uh a civic and responsible way.
There is the law, and then there's also the right thing to do.
Because signing up for Obamacare supposedly theoretically helps defray costs for others, which is one of the so-called intended uh objectives here.
But I I need to caution all of you here.
Remember, I am the mayor of Realville for a reason.
I live there, and the population is very, very small.
All of the things that I have heard today from people who've called explaining to themselves why Cruz is doing this.
He hasn't said.
He has not said, okay, I have to do this, just wait a couple weeks and I'm gonna find out why I did this in a couple weeks.
I'm gonna be able to blow this to smithereens by pointing out how I lost my doctor or how I premiums have gone up or what.
He hasn't said any of that.
So there's a lot of projection going on.
The point is, I have looked and I have had some people look for me as the program has been on the air here.
We can't find one news story, one example of Ted Cruz doing this under protest.
Not one.
So if you are thinking that he's doing this with some form of protest or some political angle that we don't yet know, that's fine.
But but please understand he has not said anything like that yet.
Now the fact that people are constructing these scenarios tells me they're uncomfortable with what he's done here.
I'm just being honest.
For everybody that's called here today, no, no, no, Rush, you just wait, you just wait.
What Cruz is doing is, and then they tell me what is what his strategy is.
Tells me you're not really kosher with this.
There's something about this that you not feeling comfortable about.
Which I understand, by the way.
I totally here's here's this guy who has huffed and puffed and sworn off Obamacare and has promised to repeal it and hadn't had a good thing to say about it in day one.
And the all wake up one day and there's Cruz smilingly signing up for it.
And if your reaction is, whoa, whoa, this is a compute, then I can I can understand that.
So you would construct for your own comfort in this scenarios you think might explain why he's doing this, and then you've called here to share them with all of us.
That's fine and dandy.
But I'm just cautioning you, he hasn't said anything yet that gives life to any of the theories that we've heard here.
He may down the road, don't know.
All he said is he's gonna follow the law.
And his wife left her employment, leaving the family uninsured.
So now he has to insure the family, and the law says he has to do it with Obamacare.
His employers, the federal government, it's mandated that he has this Obamacare coverage, and that's it.
He did not say when he signed up, I regret having to do this.
He did not act unhappy.
He did not act like he felt embarrassed over having to do this.
He did not act in any way negative about this at all.
So we'll just have to wait.
See that the story I was looking for is a story in the Daily Caller, and it's actually a couple of days old.
I've had it, I think, in the stacks here since Monday.
A group of Democrat senators is urging the Obama regime to delay a key portion of Obamacare because the results could be harmful and disruptive.
In a letter, exclusively obtained by the Daily Caller website, Senate Democrats pleaded with the Health and Human Services Secretary, Sylvia Matthews Burwell, to delay an Obamacare rule change that puts companies with 51 to 100 employees in the costlier small group market instead of the larger group market.
The rule change, which will result in higher premiums for many companies, goes into effect in 2016.
The Democrats that signed the letter, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Heidi Heitkamp, Chris Koons, Joe Manchin, Joe Donnelly, and John Tester, and then the independent Senator Angus King, but he caucuses with the Democrats.
So even as all of this is happening, Democrats have yet asked for another delay in implementation because it's going to hurt their re-election chances.
By the way, the uh the bureaucracy that that offered subsidies that was demanded, required to offer subsidies To congressional staffers was the Office of Personnel Management.
Now I want to go through this one more time too because so much happens on this program every day.
The content of one EIB network program could fill the Encyclopedia Britannica.
So it's tough to remember this stuff.
But I will never forget this.
The Senate and House staffers on the Democrat side, many of whom participated in writing a portion of Obamacare, 2200 pages.
When they finally found out what it was going to cost them, because they're mandated, their employer mandates that they have Obamacare.
They work for the federal government.
Their premiums, they were not going to be able to keep their doctors, they were not going to be able to keep their plans, their premiums didn't go down $2,500.
Their health care costs were said to go up so much they couldn't afford it.
They didn't qualify for subsidies because they were not going to be going through any exchange.
The federal government at the point in time did not have an exchange because they were still obeying the law at this point in time.
There was no federal exchange.
Only the states that had signed up had exchanges.
And so there was no subsidy for these people.
And they just they screamed bloody murder.
And Harry Reed went out and screamed bloody murder.
And Obama came along and essentially waved his magic wand and granted them subsidies up to 75% of their total health insurance costs.
Congressional staffers, House and Senate, via through the Office of Personnel Management, because there was no federal exchange.
Even if there had been, these people would not have qualified for it.
So Obama just in a sort of like another executive action, just mandated that the Office of Personnel Management underwrite 75% of the health care costs of congressional staffers.
Because Harry Reid and the rest of them were just screaming like stuck pigs over this.
Ted Cruz hasn't done anything.
He hasn't complained about the cost.
He hasn't done any of that, at least as it affects him personally.
He's not asked for subsidies.
He's not demanded anything of the sort.
All he's doing is complying with the law, and that's what he said he's doing.
But this latest thing from these Democrat senators, they want another delay through the 2016 election, because this is going to affect donors.
I'll explain in greater detail when we get back.
Don't go away.
Now, folks, it wasn't just congressional staffers that were belliaching about this.
I want to review this whole thing.
I've given you the highlights, and I want to review the whole thing.
Senator Charles Grassley put into Obamacare that Congress and staff would have to use it.
The original bill did not mandate that Congress would have to use it.
That's the way it always is.
The left designs a bill.
Washington designs a bill.
They exempt themselves from it.
And they did this.
They exempted themselves from all of this Obamacare crap.
Chuck Grassley put in there that Congress and staff would also have to use it.
There was nothing in the bill that said Congress and their staffers would be able to keep their employer contribution under Obamacare.
But Obama, this is when he got into action.
The executive action declared that the Office of Personnel Management would continue to contribute to Congress and staffers' premiums at the same rate they had been doing so before Obamacare.
They were never going to have to fall prey or succumb to the rigors and requirements of Obama.
They had been exempted, and Grassley said, nope, nope, if we're going to do this, we're going to do this.
It wasn't just staffers who were screaming bloody murder when they found out what all this cost.
Congressmen were also saying that they were going to have to retire or not seek re-election.
If they had to pay the full premium under Obamacare because they didn't have the money.
A lot of members of the House earn no more than what they make in Congress.
It's a lot of money.
me.
But everybody spends what they make for the most part.
They didn't have it.
They had a previous plan that a lot of the stuff was subsidized.
And they were going to be exempted from Obamacare, and Grassley stuck it in there that they were going to be, and they started screaming, and that's when Obama moved in to subsidize everybody through the Office of Personnel Management.
Now the drive-bys emphasized the staffers when they reported the story.
Because they make a little less money than the Congressman.
But the Congressmen were part of the thing as well.
They were also hypocrites.
They wrote the bill.
They voted on it without reading it.
And then when it comes into implementation phase, they started bellyaching, a bunch of them on the Democrat side especially, about how much it was going to cost when they thought they were going to be exempt.
But the media didn't focus on the members of Congress so much bitching.
They focused on the staffers because they have more sympathy for the staffers and they don't make as much money.
So Obama moved in via the Office of Personal Management, and everybody on Capitol Hill ended up having their insurance premiums and their costs, all of it subsidized, not everybody, but up to 75%.
And that's the true story of that.
Now, when we get back for the break here at the top of the hour, I need to give you a further explanation, a little bit more detail on these Democrat senators, every damn one of them up for reelection in 2016.
Ask, begging for another Obamacare delay, what that's about and why, what it means.
And we're going to get back to your phone calls because so many people still want to weigh in on Senator Cruz here, so hang in there.
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