Posted on 03/02/2010 3:56:42 PM PST by GOP_Lady
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On Today's Show... |
March 2, 2010 |
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"I want to know where all the Republicans are backing up and defending Jim Bunning.
He is articulating the number one, or at least it's in the top five, Republican campaign issues this November.
Where are they?"
"Look at this program as a classroom, ladies and gentlemen.
Look at me as not a professor, but as a teacher, and ask yourself how much does it cost you to come here and learn every day?
How much do you have to pay for the textbook? How much lunch money does it require for you to come here and learn?"
"There seems to be, with certain people in certain professions that have certain worldviews,
a genuine lack of knowledge about basic economics 101."
"If you have -- and most Americans fit this category -- a benefit at work that pays for a portion or all of your health care,
you are not technically insured. Your company is insuring you. You have coverage. Somebody other than you is paying for it."
"The ability to pay the bill has absolutely no relationship to the cost of the service in this country,
and that's because there are too many people in the middle who are benefiting financially and politically by being there."
"It was President Obama who lauded the whole concept of paygo, and Harry Reid has lauded the whole concept of paygo.
I mean every bit of ammo for Bunning to have some defense in there from his colleagues is just waiting to be used."
"If you have access to a service that you don't think you're paying for, then you're not going to care what it costs,
and if you have a bunch of politicians pounding into your head every day that you are entitled to that, then by
God you're going to expect it."
"If you tax more of something, you're going to get less of it.
If you tax something less, you're going to get more of it.
Economics 101. Free market 101."
"The things that are wrong with the US health care system have nothing to do with our health care.
They have nothing to do with the actual care. They have to do with who's running it."
"This is a government problem just as every other screwed-up program in this country servicing the entitled is a disaster.
The people who bring us these programs now want to control two-and-a-half trillion dollars of our economy.
There's not one of them, other than the doctors that are elected to office that has the slightest competence, qualification.
Just because they care doesn't mean they're qualified."
"We need to ask ourselves why a guy whose only experience with medicine is as a
patient is qualified to design the entire nation's health care system."
"When Howard Fineman told us that he 'listens every day,' I found it hard to believe, because none of it's sinking in."
"If you are a black centrist in a couple of key areas, the Democrat Party wants nothing to do with you --
and if you are black and you want to be governor of New York, you haven't a prayer."
"Have you seen, by the way, the NAGs are now going after New York Governor David Paterson?
What if his last name was 'Clinton,' and what if he were white? Would you gals leave him alone?"
"Politico says that rather than change things up a bit and address Senator Bunning's issue about paying for an unemployment benefits extension, Harry Reid let the fund stall because he's got a tourism bill he needed to work on to save his butt back in Nevada."
"How does the United States come to be the best in health care?
It's not because of our government. It's because of freedom --
and Obamacare is all about restricting freedom, pure and simple."
"Somebody explain to me when it happened that politicians became the experts on high-tech,
health care, energy, automobiles and the like. We are lost in this country because we have made government figures godlike."
"Eliot Spitzer's madam has announced her gubernatorial run.
There used to be a day when if you had a mistress, she kept her mouth shut.
Now, they run for office."
"The dirty little secret is, the Republicans are not the ones who've stopped this Obamacare bill.
The people who've stopped this are all of us, the citizens of this country who have let everybody know --
in no uncertain terms, in so many different ways -- we don't want it."
"A bunch of little General Motors cars have been recalled, and I'm just waiting for Obama to be called up
by a House committee and be grilled, 'cause it's power steering motors that are failing on these things."
"Bunning is retiring. He's not running for reelection. That frees one up quite a bit."
Continually repeat ...
It's not about me.
I'm the President.
Past editions of "Rush In a Hurry"
To be added or removed from the "Rush In A Hurry" Ping List, FReepmail GOP_Lady.
"A polar bear cub is comforted by its mother as they drift TWELVE MILES out from shore on a rapidly shrinking iceberg after hopping on board to take a rest from hunting seals. The future looks bleak for the bears as they balance perilously on the ice that was bobbing around under their weight -- but amazingly experts said the pair probably made it safely back to shore." I'm sure they did. They can swim 60 miles. They're polar bears. This is designed to make us think that global warming is melting the icebergs, and these poor bears are going to die out there. Polar bears do this and even if they did, no great loss. There's a polar bear explosion in terms of population out there.
END TRANSCRIPT
| Read the Background Material... |
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| • UK Sun: No Ice-Cape For Polar Bears • Climate Depot: Continuously Updated 'ClimateGate' News Round Up |
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Have you seen, by the way, the NAGs are now going after New York Governor David Paterson? What if his last name were "Clinton," and what if he were white? Would you leave him alone? If David Paterson's last name were "Clinton" and if he were white would you NAGs leave him alone? They're trying to get him to resign now. And, of course, Harold Ford, the party bosses got to him. Harold Ford said, "Okay, okay, okay! I won't run, I won't run! It would be horrible. It would be a devastating primary. It would help the Republicans. Okay, I won't run." Now, folks, which party is it that has the big tent? And which party is it that throws its moderates out? It seems to me that if you are a black centrist in a couple of key areas, the Democrat Party wants none of you -- and if you are black and you want to be governor of New York you haven't a prayer.
Now, you might be saying, "Why do they care about Gillibrand?" Because she's a rubberstamp for Chuck-U Schumer! Very simple. She rubberstamps what Chuck-U does. She's not, by the way, safe. But anyway, poor Harold Ford. He's gone. He wanted to run. Party bosses, I don't know if it was Clinton or Cuomo that called him. Maybe it was Torricelli. I don't know how they're using him these days, but I can imagine the phone call. (interruption) Well, I know Schumer bullied him, but somebody having a phone call. (Clinton impression) "Hey, hey, hey, Harold. How you doing, buddy. Heh-heh-heh-heh. You think you actually think, Harold, we're going to let you run? You couldn't even hold a cheap little seat in Tennessee. You had Chris Matthews on, you said people were running dastardly ads against you down there and you couldn't beat Corker, and you think we're going to let you run for a seat in New York?
"Harold? Stay at Wall Street, earn your millions. Go back to be pro-life and all that stuff that you are. We're not going to let you pollute our party anymore. We love you -- and, Harold, I heard Rush Limbaugh singing your praises. Ha-ha-ha! You don't have a prayer, Harold, in our party. I don't know what you were thinking. Have you heard of Bob Torricelli? Do you know him? I know you know Andrew Cuomo. Ask them. Ask them about me. Don't think my heart's slowing me down, Harold. Dooooon't you think that." So after, I'm sure, a phone call somewhat like that, Harold Ford writes a piece. "Okay, okay, I'm not going to run because it would help the Republicans." In the meanwhile, Republican Party said to have this no "big tent" and no room for its "moderates," and yet which party is it that throws its moderates overboard and apparently doesn't have a big tent?
END TRANSCRIPT
| Read the Background Material... |
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| • New York Times: NOW Calls for Paterson to Resign • New York Times: Why I'm Not Running for the Senate - Harold Ford |
Well, uh, they won’t.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, here's Larry Summers. This is on CNBC's Fast Money yesterday, and just imagine... (laughing) Just imagine Bush going out and saying this.
SUMMERS: Who knows what the next number is going to be. The blizzards that affected much of the country during the last month are likely to distort the statistics. And in past blizzards, those statistics have been distorted by a hundred to 200,000 jobs. It's very important to know, very important to look past whatever the next figures are.
RUSH: Well, where does this stop? "Well, ignore the March numbers. There was a lot of wind. There was a lot of wind in March and there were a lot of cloudy days, and, you know, cloudy days depress people and they don't go look for work as much. And April? You gotta ignore the April numbers, tornado season really gets going there, and when you get to the summer, it's so hot, people can't afford to go outside and sweat while finding a job. Nobody can hire somebody smells like a pig." So where does this kind of rationale stop? "You gotta look past February numbers, blizzards." It sounds to me like they're expecting a disastrous number.
END TRANSCRIPT
| Read the Background Material... |
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| • Reuters: Winter Storms to Distort US Jobless Figures-Summers |
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Brian in upstate New York, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Rush, good afternoon. How are you?
RUSH: Fine, sir. Thanks very much.
CALLER: Good. I was just actually calling... I work in a wing of the automobile industry and was wondering if you or anybody else there had heard of the unpublicized tax subsidy that General Motors gave to General Motors credit card holders about a month ago.
RUSH: Unpublicized tax subsidy that --
CALLER: Well, that's the way I saw it.
RUSH: -- Obama gave to Obama credit card holders about a month ago. No, I hadn't.
CALLER: I earn enough credit on a General Motors credit card you can use that money toward the purchase a new one, a new vehicle. Essentially --
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, wait. Whoa, whoa, whoa. How do you earn enough credit on an Obama credit card?
CALLER: It works like a Discover card. For every dollar you spend you get a percentage back, and then that you can apply towards the purchase of a new vehicle.
RUSH: But only a new vehicle?
CALLER: Correct.
RUSH: Oh. I had not heard that. All I'd heard today was that the CEO of GMAC is being paid the same rate that the CEO at Goldman Sachs is being paid.
CALLER: During the month of January, people were able to go into General Motors stores -- and I know that some people had only $300 worth of purchase credit on the card and General Motors was bumping that up to two and sometimes $3,000 towards the purchase of a new vehicle.
RUSH: Wait a minute. You mean if I had an Obama card and I had built up 300 bucks in credit and then went into an Obama dealership, that they would add two or three thousand dollars to it?
CALLER: Up to $3,000 total. Yes.
RUSH: Toward the purchase of a car?
CALLER: Correct.
RUSH: Where is that money coming from?
CALLER: It's you and me.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Something that's not making money. It's being subsidized by the taxpayers.
RUSH: Yeah, since it's Obama.
CALLER: And the only people eligible for that were people that held the General Motors credit cards.
RUSH: Shazam!
CALLER: So...
RUSH: Let me ask: Are we going to get that money back when Obama Motors pays back its loans to Obama?
CALLER: I'm not sure. But some people had, for example, $1500 on the card and they got it bumped up to 2,000, but I know people that work at these stores, and they said, "We saw people coming in that only had two or three hundred dollars worth of credit towards the purchase of their next vehicle, and General Motors was bumping that up to two and sometimes $3,000."
RUSH: (laughing)Meanwhile, they're grilling these Toyota guys into committing hari-kari.
CALLER: And the other sad thing is you didn't have a General Motors credit card you weren't eligible for these incentives.
RUSH: Yeah. Well, I don't have an Obama credit card. I don't have a Discover card so I didn't know that's how it worked.
CALLER: Well, it's just like any other reward, the airlines have them, hotel chains have them. For every dollar you spend you get a dollar back.
RUSH: I never use 'em. I don't want to keep track of it. I never use those things.
CALLER: (chuckles) But just thought you know that, that's a little known taxpayer subsidy that General Motors also during the month of January.
RUSH: Well, I did hear about the General Motors recall today. A bunch of little General Motors cars have been recalled, and I'm just waiting for Obama to be called up by a House committee and be grilled, 'cause it's power steering motors that are failing on these things. You can't find this on the news. The degree of coverage about this is zilch, zero, nada compared to the treatment these Toyota guys got. (interruption) I did... (sigh) I don't even know what. (interruption) Yes, there are. He's asking me about the rewards on the credit cards. I have one credit card. I don't know that there are... Yes, there are rewards. I don't keep track of it. If I have to call somebody to use my credit card before I get to where I'm actually going to use it, I don't go to the trouble.
(interruption) No, I never return tapes to Blockbuster because I never rented them. I bought 'em. I don't know. To me, it's a bunch of busywork. So I've never used those things. That's why I didn't understand what the Discover card was. (interruption) What's so hard to believe about it? What in the world...? Do you clip coupons out of the newspaper? (interruption) Well, it's the same thing! It's the same thing. You still gotta sit... (interruption) I don't do anything online when it comes to the credit card. I have... (interruption) Look, all I know is I've got something like four million points on my credit card, but I have no clue how to redeem them or what I can redeem 'em for. Not the slightest clue, because to me it's no different than clipping coupons. I just don't have the time. I'm not interested in it. Have I stepped in it here or something?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: The credit card company doesn't even want me to know I've got these points. They put it in fine print on page 20 of the bill. I happened to see it once when I went through there. I have... (interruption) Uhhh, that's right. I have one credit card. (interruption) I don't have a backup in case... (interruption) It's never declined. I do not have a backup credit card. Actually, that's not true. I do have a backup credit card but they haven't sent me the new one for the last two years and I have not called them to get it reissued 'cause I never use it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: To Liz in Tampa Bay, Florida. Great to have you on the program.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. My family adores you, and my husband is a huge fan. Initially I wasn't but you've heard of being radicalized? Well, I was Limbaughized, and now I see the way.
RUSH: Well, thank you. Thank you very much.
CALLER: Anyway, I did want to comment or take issue with what you said earlier about coupon clipping being a waste of time.
RUSH: For me. I was just speaking for me.
CALLER: Okay. Well, I have a family of four with two teenage boys, and I can tell you, I would not be able to feed them well in today's economy without coupons.
RUSH: I will send you my newspapers.
CALLER: All right, great.
RUSH: I don't even read newspapers anymore. I have 'em delivered to the house for guests but I don't even read 'em. I do all this on the Internet and I don't know how to clip a coupon from my computer screen.
CALLER: Well, last night I saved $64 at the Publix on, oh, I guess about $110 worth of groceries. So you can really save money.
RUSH: That's fine, and I know that they're not losing money on the coupons, either. I was just saying for me, it's a personal waste of time.
CALLER: Well, let's put it this way. You're not in a position where you really need to have the extra income that coupon clippings provide.
RUSH: Ah, ah, ah, ah.
CALLER: And your time is better spent doing other things.
RUSH: Well, true, but on the latter part of what you said here. But I am not commenting on the expense of things or any of that. I have never clipped coupons in my entire life. When I was outta work I never clipped coupons. I am not going to sit down with a pair of scissors and a newspaper. If you do it, more power to you, God love you, God bless you. I'm not a coupon guy.
CALLER: Well, not everybody can be and probably it's a good thing because then they'd probably do away with it.
RUSH: No, they're not going to do away with it because it generates traffic. You use the coupons, gonna buy other stuff in the store, it's a cooperative effort between the companies that issue them and the grocery stores.
CALLER: Well, the sad thing is, from what I understand there are an enormous amount of coupons that aren't utilized.
RUSH: Yeah?
CALLER: And they do save a lot of people money, and more people really need to give some thought to it.
RUSH: You know, since I have stepped in it in so many ways today, why not put the second foot in here. I don't do mail-in rebates, but that's not what I was going to say. What I was going to say is it is people like me who don't use the coupons who make them continue to be used by others who do use them. If everybody redeemed every coupon out there they would do something about the program. There would be fewer coupons or they would be worth less. So I'm actually owed some thanks here, but I know this is not how people will look at it. See Snerdley's -- (laughing) -- no, I want to play an audio sound bite that proves something else I'm right about. Rather than arguing about credit card points and coupons, because I'm not judging whether anybody else does it is right or wrong. You know me. I'm a total freedom guy. If you want to use your coupons, go right ahead. I'll send you mine. I've just never in my life done it.
END TRANSCRIPT
| Read the Background Material... |
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| • TIME: Strapped Consumers Paying Credit Card Bills Before Mortgages |
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This morning on MSNBC, the guest is the chair of the board of directors of the NAALCP, Roslyn Brock, and the cohost F. Chuck Todd: "Is your group just a civil rights organization for African-Americans, or do you believe that Hispanics and other immigrants are part of the umbrella, the NAACP?"
BROCK: The NAACP is not just a civil rights organization.
RUSH: Bingo.
BROCK: It is the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization in this nation charged with the responsibility to ensure equal opportunity and access for all Americans.
RUSH: Hmm.
BROCK: And when we speak about people of color, we'll really speaking to the issues of Americans who feel that they've been locked out of a prosperous society.
RUSH: Bingo!
BROCK: We are a multicultural, multiracial organization, and we are intending, or want to as we enter the first year of our second centennial to cast a broader net to welcome all Americans who are interested in fairness and dignity and equal opportunity for all to come and join us.
RUSH: I wonder if they would accept my membership if I wanted to join? This, ladies and gentlemen, is just another faction of liberalism. That's why I put the L in there, the National Association for the Advancement of Liberal Colored People, because just like the NAGs, it's not really about feminism, it's about liberalism. This babe finally let the cat out of the bag, and in so doing confirmed that I've been right all these years, which is a perfect way to end this segment.
END TRANSCRIPT
| Read the Background Material... |
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| • Baltimore Sun: Incoming NAACP Chairwoman Found Her Voice Early |
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Anybody out there who knows Howard Fineman of Newsweek. Howard wrote a column today about how he was in the hospital down in Argentina and he's now learned what's wrong with American health care. He knows how to fix it. Somebody call Howard Fineman and have him tune in here at 12:33, a little bit less than a half hour from now and I'm going to explain it to him.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Well, Howard Fineman just called said he can't listen at 12:33, he's headed up to Capitol Hill, but he'll catch the show later. We asked him, "Well, you want us to delay for when you have some free time?" He said, "No, no, no, no, you go ahead and do it at 12:33 and I'll catch it later." I don't miss your show at all." Which... That's stunning, busy as Howard Fineman is.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Howard Fineman. This is what I wanted to say, and I really didn't have the guts to say it. When he told Kit that he "listens every day" I found it hard to believe, because none of it's sinking in. None of it's sinking in. If he listens every day, he has got one of the biggest immune systems that I have ever seen. I'm surprised he got sick down in Argentina. He got food poisoning down there. This guy is so immune to the truth -- as espoused by me, your host -- that I'm surprised he got sick.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: All right, Howard Fineman writing on Newsweek's website: "What the Debate Should Be About -- I got sick in South America, and I realized what the health-care debate in this country should be about: costs. After covering the health-care debate for a year, I suppose I needed to clear my head and get some perspective on the medical world. But the way I accidentally did so was a little extreme, dramatic, and painful. On a trip to visit our daughter in Argentina, I got a severe case of food poisoning, and spent two nights and three days in a small, private hospital in the breathtakingly beautiful (not that I cared!) Andes resort town of Bariloche.
"Before I say more, here's the bottom line: I got great care at a tiny fraction of what the cost would have been in the U.S. -- even correcting for cost-of-living and currency values. My hospitalization included continuous intravenous fluids (to counter dehydration); IV antibiotics; an EKG, two blood tests and a chest X-ray; special meals; a private room; and even satellite-TV access to what seemed to be every obscure soccer match on the planet. The doctors, nurses, aides, and others were all uniformly excellent. Total cost: about $1,500. In the U.S., according to my survey of D.C. doctors (my own and others'), the equivalent care would have cost $10,000 to $15,000. That's probably not counting satellite TV. The stark arithmetic, in turn, reminds me of what the debate here should be about but often isn't: how to control our immense and metastasizing medical-industrial complex, which is waging the equivalent of a costly Cold War against an Evil Empire of bad food, bad habits, and greed. President Obama proclaims his plan (whatever it finally is) to be 'reform.'" By the way, he's going to include four Republican ideas in his plan tomorrow. I don't know what they are. I'll find out and tell you in a minute.
"But from what I can see," Mr. Fineman writes, "it would merely feed, at taxpayer expense, 30 million currently "uncovered" people into a wasteful system that doesn't have either the price-signaling power of a marketplace or the sweeping overview and control of a state-run bureacracy.[sic]" He's ripping Obama's plan there. "Either alternative might work; the latter surely does, at least in a highly centralized, communitarian country such as France. But what we have, and will have even if the president has his way, is a simmering mess of neither-here-nor-there. Most Americans have no idea how much their health care really costs, nor do they know how well it really works, compared with, say other places, practices or countries. And there is no truly national administration of a sector of the economy that accounts for about $2.5 trillion in annual economic activity -- an amount of cash roughly equivalent to the entire economies of the U.K. and Russia combined." That's what our health care spending is.
"Now, Argentina is no role model. Their system is as much of a mash-up as ours. They spent a lot of money, proportionally (about 11 percent of GDP compared with 17 percent for us). We're 34th in the world in life expectancy; they are 45th, according to the CIA World Fact Book. Most Argentines rely on a rickety public system; about a quarter get coverage through their place of work -- which, in the leftist Peronist tradition, means through their union. Others -- mostly the better off -- rely on private, for-profit hospitals of all sizes and shapes. I ended up in one of the latter," a small for-profit private hospital. "I had passed out from dehydration on the way to the airport, but when my wife and daughter took me to the hospital I was aware enough to be a little worried about the place I was now entrusting with my life. There was a gravel and dirt parking lot. The entrance to the emergency room looked like the side entrance to a warehouse. The waiting room had a few chairs in a tight row. I had no choice but to intimately examine the purple foot of an injured hiker sitting in the seat next to me.
"The equipment was not fancy and not state of the art. On the other hand, my illness was not fancy, and I am not state of the art. What they had was more than enough for me. The key is that the doctors were clearly well trained and knowledgeable, and inspired confidence with their touch of Argentine cockiness. American doctors have high regard for the education of most of their Argentine colleagues. (They only problem: they spoke almost no English. Luckily our daughter speaks like a native Argentine and she served as translator for my wife and me.) There was no waste in their rounds or in their supply rooms, it seemed to me. They treated me appropriately but not with flourish. An example. To take a shower, I needed to have my IV connection covered to protect it against water. The orderly improvised a solution. He took a clean rubber glove and cut it off at the fingers and palm to make a protective sleeve. That might not be a 'best practice' in the U.S., but it worked. In Argentina, perhaps they can't always afford the latest in technology, but they also strike me as doctors who don't dwell on technology for its own sake, or for the sake of impressing patients.
"So, I had a minor (though painful and scary) ailment; and they took pretty much the line of least resistance in treating it. I was out of the hospital as promptly as possible, and on my way back to Buenos Aires with my family. In figuring the bill, let's say that, since the Argentine peso is worth about one forth of a U.S. dollar, the 'real' cost of my care in Bariloche was $6,000. That is still about half of what I would have paid back the United States. Without getting into profound issues of lifestyle and culture (we are killing ourselves with fast food and lack of exercise) --" while our life expectancy goes up, Howard, "-- the main question we need to ask in the on-going health-care debate is this: where does all that extra money go? Now that is a seminar the president should convene -- before it's too late."
I read the whole piece, but basically what Mr. Fineman is asking, "How come it costs so damn much here? I got 1500 bucks down there for what would be ten to $15,000 here. Where does that extra money go?" I don't mean to be insulting, but Mr. Fineman is an educated man. He is as informed as anybody would know, it's been his life. But there seems to be, with certain people in certain professions that have certain worldviews, a genuine lack of knowledge about basic economics 101. Where does the money go? Howard, here's the first thing. Who paid down there for you? Did you pay for it or did the Argentine government pay for it? I'm asking, I don't know. He said it cost him $1,500. I'm assuming he paid for it, but I really don't like making that assumption. I'd venture to say that the absolute primary reason there is no relationship to cost and service in this country is because the people paying for the service aren't paying for it. If you have an insurance plan or if you are on Medicare or Medicaid, you don't care what it costs because as far as you're concerned somebody else is paying for it.
If you have -- and most Americans fit this category -- if you have a benefit at work that pays for a portion or all of your health care, you are not technically insured. Your company is insuring you. You have coverage. Somebody other than you is paying for it. In other words, the ability to pay the bill has absolutely no relationship to the cost of the service in this country, and that's because there are too many people in the middle who are benefiting financially and politically by being there. The government. And the government has forced the insurance business into all these different mandates in the states, lack of competition amongst insurance companies nationwide. We have 1300 health insurance companies and they can't compete with each other across state lines. But it's real simple. It is real simple. Imagine if we had hotel insurance. And imagine, Howard, if somebody said that staying in a five-star hotel is a right, just like they say the best health care in the world is a right. It's not possible, defining rights properly, it cannot possibly be a right. But suppose we had hotel insurance and everybody was able to stay in a five-star hotel but didn't have to pay for it as far as they were concerned, so they didn't care what it cost because they just thought they were entitled to it and a bunch of politicians, "You know, there's a lot of votes out there in this. Everybody ought to be staying in a five-star hotel."
So the real simple thing, until we get back to a direct participation by the patient customer in the cost of the service, we're never going to get costs down. Howard, I would suggest you go to the Wall Street Journal yesterday and read a piece written by the governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels, who reported declining health care costs in the state of Indiana precisely because the health service accounts, the HSAs, health savings accounts, are working brilliantly. They are putting people in charge of their own health care, and they are shopping for it just as they shop for a car, just as they shop for a hotel room. Some people want to stay in a Motel 6, others want to stay in a Comfort Inn, others want to stay in a bed and breakfast, but somehow in this country everybody thinks they have a right to stay at the Waldorf-Astoria on somebody else's dime. Now, if you have access to a service that you don't think you're paying for, then you're not going to care what it costs, and if you have a bunch of politicians pounding into your head every day that you are entitled to that, then by God you're going to expect it. And a politician is going to come along and say, "You want it? You got it, vote for me." It's really simple.
There's no relationship between the cost of this service and anybody's ability to pay for it. How do you think a Band-Aid ends up costing $50 in a hospital? There's no logical market explanation for that. It is forces that are altering the natural ebb and flow of the market that are causing this to happen. And, Howard, there's a second thing. I know you know this. I wish you woulda asked those doctors down in Argentina just what their malpractice insurance premiums are and how much they have to charge patients in order to stay in business just to pay their malpractice. Find out what the status of trial lawyers is in Argentina and ask if they're getting rich by trying to put doctors out of business, by ambulance chasing a bunch of clients who have no business suing anybody except for a big power grab for money. The things that are wrong with the US health care system have nothing to do with our health care. They have nothing to do with the actual care. They have to do with who's running it. The same people who blew up Social Security; the same people who failed at the war on poverty; the same people who failed creating the Great Society; the same people that have created this rampant entitlement mentality among way too many of our people now want to control all of health care.
I would simply ask anybody, go examine one massive federal program that costs less than what they thought it was going to cost, that is efficient, that has the people who interact with that program satisfied and happy with it, or are they always complaining about it? I don't care if it's Social Security, I don't care if it's the DMV, I don't care if it's Fish and Game or Fish and Wildlife, I don't care who it is, there's nobody that is happy interacting with a government bureaucracy. The next thing we need to do, Howard, ask ourselves why a guy whose only experience with medicine is as a patient is qualified to design the entire nation's health care system, a guy with basically no career in the private sector, a guy with basically no existence with having to make a payroll or understanding costs, a guy whose career is basically six to seven minutes old now from community organizing --well, I take that back. He did work somewhere in a law firm in the private sector where he said he felt like he was in enemy territory. And then he goes to community organizing and does his Saul Alinsky bit. Then he runs for the Illinois Senate, look at the state their budget's in. Then he comes to the US Senate. He voted for every spending bill that Bush proposed and he's blaming everything he inherited on Bush, when he voted for every dime of it and wanted even more.
But why is it, Howard, that we've got 530 Republicans and Democrats exempting the doctors who are out there in Congress? Where is it written that these clowns are in charge of putting together a health care system when they are the ones who broke it? Howard, I'll tell you, I had a little medical scare myself out in Hawaii in December. And not to belabor the point, but it involved an ambulance ride with EMS guys, getting EKGs all the way, it involved a chest x-ray, it involved two overnights, a bunch of testings, IVs, I got an angiogram. It cost 60% less than had I used my insurance, which I don't have, Howard. I self-insure because it's cheaper. I get grief when I tell people I pay for my own health care, somehow that makes me out of touch. "Well, easy for you to do. You're bragging, we all can't do that. Imagine making 50 grand." I understand. This is the vicious little cycle. You ought to be able to afford basic office checkups at 50 to $75,000 a year without having to use an insurance policy for it, and you could if Uncle Sam were not part of the mix and if the state governments were not part of the mix, all these stupid mandates on the insurance companies.
Howard, this is a government problem, pure and simple, just as every other screwed-up program in this country servicing the entitled is a disaster. And the people who bring us these programs now want to control what you properly pointed out was two and a half trillion dollars of our economy. And there's not one of them, other than the doctors that are elected to office that has the slightest competence, qualification. Just because they care doesn't mean they're qualified. Would you let Obama perform the medical procedures on you when you were in Argentina? Would you have Obama call those doctors, "Here's how you need to do this"? Would you? The last thing I thought about was calling anybody in government when I had to go to the hospital. All I wanted to do was have a relationship with the doctors and let them know they were going to get paid. And that wouldn't have even mattered, because I got emergency type treatment. But paying for it myself cost a whole lot less.
Now, where do these medicines and medical devices come from? How many patients and patents, I should say, has Argentina received? How much do they spend on research and development? You gotta understand how things end up being the best. You said Argentina is not the best, we're best. How did that happen? It's not because government mandated it or because somebody up there knows the best. The free market worked around these people and the obstacles that they represent to become the best.
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RUSH: There's so much that so many smart people just don't understand. It never occurs to them. Like, for example, how many big drug companies are there in Argentina that had to spend a whole lot of R&D and development costs and so forth for the drugs that Howard Fineman was given while he was there? How many patents do they have? I don't know but I'm just telling you what the best costs, if that's what you want. And when you think it doesn't cost you anything, that somebody else is going to pay for it and a politician agrees with you, we're sunk. People I think have to have a fundamental understanding of just how things come to be. How does the United States come to be the best in health care? It's not because of our government.
It's because of freedom -- and Obamacare is all about restricting freedom, pure and simple. Howard, by the time Obama finishes there's only going to be one option: Government insurance. That's it. There's not going to have any competition. That's his aim, that's his objective. Because, Howard, when these guys control health care, they control every aspect of our lives and can legislate based on costs to the government, decides who lives and dies who gets treatment who doesn't, what you eat what you don't eat. "You know, the life expectancy is going up, but you can't eat McDonald's anymore if you want government health care," and that's going to be the only health care there is, and we have guys like Obama in office who very much want to do that.
Now, we got $2.5 trillion dollars of our economy that is health care, as Mr. Fineman points out. And the guy who says he's got all the answers to fix the US health care system is spending $1.5 trillion a year in deficits, money we don't have! What are we getting for that? Somebody explain to me when it happened that politicians became the experts on high-tech, health care, energy, and the like. When did they become the experts on manufacturing automobiles? Who are they to bring people up and basically try to ruin their careers simply because they don't hire union workers to make their cars? We are lost in this country because we have made government figures godlike. We have assumed that they and only they have the answers, when they have zero qualifications to manage the outside-of-government things they want to manage. Zero qualifications. There's not one business who would hire Obama to do anything for them. Not one.
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RUSH: I mentioned, when answering Howard Fineman's Newsweek column on how do we lower costs of health care in this country, I mentioned Mitch Daniels and his HSA program in Indiana, health savings accounts that he wrote about in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. Let me give you some excerpts of this. "When I was elected governor of Indiana five years ago, I asked that a consumer-directed health insurance option, or Health Savings Account (HSA), be added to the conventional plans then available to state employees. I thought this additional choice might work well for at least a few of my co-workers, and in the first year some 4% of us signed up for it. In Indiana's HSA, the state deposits $2,750 per year into an account controlled by the employee, out of which he pays all his health bills. Indiana covers the premium for the plan. The intent is that participants will become more cost-conscious and careful about overpayment or overutilization. Unused funds in the account -- to date some $30 million or about $2,000 per employee and growing fast -- are the worker's permanent property."
Now, this is the same thing with public school vouchers. But in an HSA, they put the money in that they would otherwise be spending on your health care, and it's up to you. You go shop it, and whatever you don't spend at the end of every year is yours, your permanent property. "For the very small number of employees (about 6% last year) who use their entire account balance, the state shares further health costs up to an out-of-pocket maximum of $8,000, after which the employee is completely protected. The HSA option has proven highly popular. This year, over 70% of our 30,000 Indiana state workers chose it, by far the highest in public-sector America. Due to the rejection of these plans by government unions, the average use of HSAs in the public sector across the country is just 2%.
"HSA customers seem highly satisfied; only 3% have opted to switch back to the PPO. The state is saving, too. In a time of severe budgetary stress, Indiana will save at least $20 million in 2010 because of our high HSA enrollment. ... Most important, we are seeing significant changes in behavior, and consequently lower total costs. In 2009, for example, state workers with the HSA visited emergency rooms and physicians 67% less frequently than co-workers with traditional health care." Why? Well, because it's their own money and what they don't spend on health care they could buy a plasma or whatever the hell they need, a new Toyota muffler or whatever. "They were much more likely to use generic drugs than those enrolled in the conventional plan, resulting in an average lower cost per prescription of $18. They were admitted to hospitals less than half as frequently as their colleagues. Differences in health status between the groups account for part of this disparity, but consumer decision-making is, we've found, also a major factor.
"By contrast, the prevalent model of health plans in this country in effect signals individuals they can buy health care on someone else's credit card. Americans can make sound, thrifty decisions about their own health. If national policy trusted and encouraged them to do so, our skyrocketing health-care costs would decelerate." And this is common economic sense. This has come out of the Heritage Foundation, it's come out of any number of places, and it is routinely pooh-poohed by unions and government people who do not want costs to go down, who do not want you in control or in charge of your health care. More liberty for you equals less power for them. It's that simple.
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| Read the Background Material... |
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| • Newsweek: What the Debate Should Be About - Howard Fineman • Wall Street Journal: Hoosiers and Health Savings Accounts - Mitch Daniels |
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RUSH: The State-Controlled Media hates Jim Bunning. We have a montage.
ED SCHULTZ: (music) Jim Bunning has been acting like not a real good guy.
LARRY O'DONNELL: Bunning is regarded as a very, very strange man with a nasty temper.
CHRIS HAYES: A bizarre character.
DANA BASH: (background noise) Bunning does not have a good relationship with his Republican leadership.
BOB BECKEL: He slid into too many bases head first.
JONATHAN KARL: Known for throwing brush-back pitches (b-roll) and isn't afraid to ruffle feathers.
ANDREA MITCHELL: Jim Bunning... He has a track record of saying terrible, terrible things.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: He's been behaving in a way that's certainly outside the box.
JAY NEWTON-SMALL Look, he's 78 years old. He's really bitter.
DAVID CORN: He's been erratic for years.
BRIAN WILLIAMS: Angry words and an obscene gesture.
KELLY O'DONNELL: (background noise) A reputation for being prickly.
LARRY O'DONNELL: Bunning shot him the middle finger.
RUSH: Yeah. It was a Senators-only elevator. All the guy's doing is standing up for a Senate rule called paygo.
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RUSH: All this is about, unemployment compensation extension. He's all for that. Bunning says he's all for continuing benefits. He said, "We just got a new rule here that we gotta pay for it." Senator Bunning, the next time you take to the Senate floor, suggest to Dingy Harry: "Look at how much unspent money from the Porkulus bill is there and how much unspent TARP money. Why do we need to spend more than we don't have? Why don't you go get whatever this bill requires from what you've already allocated and be done with it?"
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RUSH: I want you to listen to this stuff again, all these media people talking about Bunning. It's more appropriate if they were talking about Harry Reid. These comments about Bunning apply much more to Harry Reid than they do to Jim Bunning, who is a great guy. You know, Harry Reid could have easily dealt with this today but he didn't. The Politico even says that rather than change things up a bit and address Bunning's issue Harry Reid let the unemployment fund stall because he's got a tourism bill he needed to work on to save his butt back in Nevada. But when you listen to this sound like they're saying the R-word without using the R-word when they describe Bunning? Listen to it again and keep in mind they are more apt descriptions of Harry Reid than they are Jim Bunning.
ED SCHULTZ: (music) Jim Bunning has been acting like not a real good guy.
LARRY O'DONNELL: Bunning is regarded as a very, very strange man with a nasty temper.
CHRIS HAYES: A bizarre character.
DANA BASH: (background noise) Bunning does not have a good relationship with his Republican leadership.
BOB BECKEL: He slid into too many bases head first.
JONATHAN KARL: Known for throwing brush-back pitches (b-roll) and isn't afraid to ruffle feathers.
ANDREA MITCHELL: Jim Bunning... He has a track record of saying terrible, terrible things.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: He's been behaving in a way that's certainly outside the box.
JAY NEWTON-SMALL Look, he's 78 years old. He's really bitter.
DAVID CORN: He's been erratic for years.
BRIAN WILLIAMS: Angry words and an obscene gesture.
KELLY O'DONNELL: (background noise) A reputation for being prickly.
LARRY O'DONNELL: Bunning shot him the middle finger.
RUSH: Sounds to me more like Harry Reid characterizations than it does Jim Bunning. Now, yesterday in Claremont, Florida, "Nobody Messes with Joe" held a press conference to talk about Recovery Act funding for highway projects, and here is a portion of his remarks.
BIDEN: One of Bill's colleagues is standing on the floor of the United States as we speak. He's standing there, and preventing the Senate from being able to move forward on doing the kind of thing we're doing here today. What's that mean? (angry) Four hundred thousand people will be kicked off the rolls this month if he has his way!
RUSH: Come on, everybody knows these unemployment benefits are going to be extended. It's gonna get done. This is how the Democrats play the game trying to make it look like Bunning doesn't care. What Bunning knows is that this country is fit to be tied over this out-of-control spending. Jim Bunning knows that there is more anger in this country over spending than there is over any other issue. There is more anger over spending and the economy and lack of jobs, and Jim Bunning is a hero to people here for trying to finally get the Senate to abide by its paygo rules. But again, folks, the smidgen amount of money in this bill that Bunning is holding up? The money has already been allocated and unspent in any number of other areas. The Porkulus bill, the TARP bill, we know that not all that money has been spent. So why add to it? Why add onto it? It's silly and it's destructive and it's purposeful. Now, here's Robert Gibbs yesterday at the daily press briefing. During the Q&A, a reporter says, "Does the White House see this episode with Senator Bunning as something isolated or is there something larger you're trying to draw attention to here?"
GIBBS: I think what we're trying to draw attention to is the fact that hundreds of thousands of people who've lost their job and lost their health care because of that and their unemployment benefits, all that is threatened because one person has decided to stop the entire process. It's hard to bargain with somebody when, if you say, "I won't do that because of this," and you say, "Well, how about we vote on that?" and you (sic) say, "I object?"
RUSH: As usual, the White House press secretary making absolutely zero sense, and I'm not going to waste your time or mine translating it. Let's go to the Senate floor late yesterday, Jim Bunning.
BUNNING: If we can't find $10 billion to pay for something that we all support, we will never pay for anything on the floor of this US Senate. I have offered several ways to do this, including trying to negotiate with the majority leader's staff. None have been successful. We cannot keep adding to the debt. It's over $14 trillion and going up fast. If the budget that is before us passes, it will add another $1.5 trillion to the debt.
RUSH: Dingy Harry is not interested in solving this. He likes the press helping his party portray Republicans as heartless, cold, mean-spirited, unfeeling extremists when in fact they're trying to enforce a little spending discipline on an out-of-control Congress. I guarantee you, the anger at all this spending is huge. People know they can't live their own lives like this, and they know the government can't, either. It's out of control, simply out of control. Dingy Harry doesn't want to negotiate. He wants the issue out there. Gibbs wants the issue out there. Obama wants it out there. All the press wants it out there. And this is how much, and to what a great degree, they're just out of touch with people in the country. Here's Dingy Harry playing the violin for these poor wretches standing in line for unemployment benefits that will not be available because of the evil troll, Jim Bunning.
HARRY REID: My friends on the other side of the aisle are opposing extending unemployment benefits for people who are out of work. Where was my friend from Kentucky when we had two wars that were unpaid for during the Bush administration; tax cuts that cost more than a trillion dollars, unpaid for? Where was my friend and the Republicans objecting to that? I hope Republicans will reconsider, think about their constituents standing in the unemployment line as we speak.
RUSH: They're not standing in the unemployment line. They're standing in the unemployment benefits line. I saw on CNBC today... I'm going to have to go back and see if I can source this. I think I was on CNBC where a guy, a recipient is getting 30 grand in unemployment compensation? What did I do with that? He's getting $30,000 of unemployment compensation. If he's got a wife and she's unemployed, that's 60 grand. Plus they've got food stamps. If that number is pretty representative, then we can't keep going. None of this can be sustained. Nobody is going to start looking for work. We're now extending unemployment benefits to 99 weeks. None of this, none of this is sustainable and there's one voice of some sort of sanity addressing this issue in the United States Senate. So Dick Durbin was next up. He had to whine about Jim Bunning yesterday afternoon on the Senate floor.
DURBIN: When the victims in the middle of the debate are unemployed people, I don't think that's fair. This one young man, David Señor, showed me a list of 300 applications that he had made to try to find a job during the last year. He said, "I go online every day," and this is a man who had worked for years, had a strong work record until he was laid off, and he said, "I just can't find anything. I'm desperate. I'm trying everything I can think of and now you're going to cut off my unemployment benefits."
RUSH: No your unemployment benefits are not going to be "cut off." All these federal workers being furloughed, you know they're going to get their back pay. Nobody is going to lose a dime here. Everybody knows this. This little episode here is a great illustration, a microcosm of the difference in the two parties and exactly who's out of touch and who's in touch and exactly how destructive to the country as we know it the Democrat Party has become. So it continued this morning. On the floor, Jim Bunning keeps stating his case.
BUNNING: It's really hypocritical of the Democratic side of this aisle passing a paygo bill -- what does paygo mean? It means you pay for the bills as they appear on the floor of the US Senate -- and then to present a bill that not only is not paid for but just paid for a little bit, paid for a third of. That was the Reid bill on the jobs bill that he presented to us: $5 billion was paid for, $10 billion was not.
RUSH: Harry Reid calls Bunning a hypocritical.
HARRY REID: My friend just is... He's throwing around words like "hypocrite." People can make their own decision as to who is a hypocrite.
RUSH: We have.
HARRY REID: I'm not calling anyone "hypocrite," although I'm just stating the facts. Someone boasts about the good offices of paygo but votes against it, talks about the doc fix but votes against it. So I would think that, uh, my friend from Kentucky should get a different historian to help him with his facts because they're simply wrong. So I object.
RUSH: Yeah, go ahead! This is the guy who said at the health summit lasting wee, "Reconciliation? You may be entitled to your own opinion, but you're not entitled to your own facts, Lamar. You can't sit there and say that! Nobody's talking about reconciliation." That's all anybody was talking about. That's all they're talking about now. So when Dingy Harry says somebody is not entitled to their own facts, the way I interpret it is, he doesn't have any to support his own argument.
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RUSH: Somewhere Virginia. This is Nancy. Great to have you on the program.
CALLER: Hello, Rush.
RUSH: Hi.
CALLER: I'm calling you after being floored yesterday. I'm one of the 2,000 employees in the Department of Transportation who was told to go home yesterday, and I just wanted to give you some thoughts, because I support Jim Bunning and I support everything he's saying because I care more about the future of the country and my children's future and my long-term financial viability than I do about this job. And I didn't just start working there yesterday. I have a long federal career, and the way that the leadership talked to us yesterday, they were very apologetic, it was such a surprise because we've had continuing resolutions so many times before.
RUSH: Hm-hm.
CALLER: It's always passed without a problem so they were really shocked that somebody actually stood up and voted against it this time. They were livid.
RUSH: I appreciate you calling here. Now I know why you identified your location as somewhere.
CALLER: Yes. Because I will tell you, I live a life of politically correct hell. I have to watch everything I say, I have to not disclose my true feelings about some of the things that we work on that is nothing but a boondoggle and squandering of the taxpayers' money. I have to watch things go on every day that I think most taxpayers would not be proud of. And I also work with a lot of dedicated, caring people who try to do a good job and we do a lot of good work in the Department of Transportation. Anybody that's driven on the roads and bridges lately knows we do a lot of good work. But mixed in with that --
RUSH: Well, except in Minneapolis.
CALLER: Mixed in with that is a lot of stuff honest hardworking people should not be having to deal with. And I have relatives all over the country, I sent them all e-mails this morning begging them to please -- I told them I have been furloughed and I said, "Please contact the Republican leadership and your representatives and urge them to support Jim Bunning," and don't leave him standing out there by himself.
RUSH: Well, he is for now.
CALLER: For now.
RUSH: Very gutsy on your part. I just want to correct one thing.
CALLER: If I'd really been gutsy, I would have given you my real name, Rush.
RUSH: I appreciate that. This is instructive in itself. This is a woman who works for federal government afraid for anybody to know who she is in the federal government. At any rate, Bunning is not -- this may sound like a technical point -- he's not voting to furlough you, he's not voting against unemployment benefits, he says --
CALLER: No.
RUSH: -- we got a $14 trillion -- we gotta start paying for some of this stuff somehow, we can't sustain it. And you're gonna get your back pay. It always happens.
CALLER: Oh, I know. We were assured of that yesterday.
RUSH: You're going to get your back pay --
CALLER: -- promise you --
RUSH: The only guy that hasn't been paid back in anything like this is the sleigh ride operator --
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: -- at Jellystone. Everybody got their Thanksgiving, Christmas turkeys during the government shutdown, and you're going to get your back pay and the unemployment benefits will eventually be funded and everybody knows this. Bunning is simply making a point. I'll tell you something else. He's retiring. He's not running for reelection. That frees one up quite a bit.
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RUSH: By the way, it was President Obama and his weekly radio, YouTube speech, whatever it was -- we're getting the audio even now -- who lauded the whole concept of paygo, just lauded it, and Harry Reid has lauded the whole concept of paygo. I mean every bit of ammo for Bunning to have some defense in there from his colleagues is just waiting to be used.
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RUSH: Kevin in Vienna, Virginia. Welcome to the program. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Thanks, Rush. I appreciate you putting me on --
RUSH: Thank you, sir. You bet.
CALLER: -- and dittos from a second-time caller. I just wanted to make an observation that I think the press is doing a disservice to the citizens because just look at the amount of energy that they're using going after Bunning and compared to the amount of energy going after Charlie Rangel.
RUSH: Well, come on now! Charlie Rangel, Pelosi said it herself, doesn't do anything to harm national security or any of that, big deal. Plus Dick Durbin threw down the race card, "Hey, he's black! He served in a segregated unit in Korea. Cut the guy some slack. He's entitled to go on junkets and have freebies for 500 grand because he comes from a slave heritage." You gotta understand the priorities here. Bunning is a white guy in the Hall of Fame. That's unfair as it is.
CALLER: I guess my priorities are all wrong.
RUSH: Ah, you're right.
CALLER: I spent 20 years in the Special Forces and I'm a taxpayer now and they still haven't cut me any slack.
RUSH: Well, I know. It's hypocrisy on parade. They're going to pay for all of this. They will pay for all this. There's a lot of people unemployed paying attention to what these people are doing because they think that these are the people that screwed it up and therefore they think these are the people that have to fix it because these are the people saying they're going to. Obama's been saying for over a year (impression), "I'm going to put you back to work, stimulus bill, maybe three." Meanwhile, unemployment numbers keep going up and the Council of Economic Advisors grand pooh-bah says, "Hey, it's going to be so bad Friday, ignore the number. It's because of the blizzards." Meanwhile, Charlie Rangel with a half million dollars here, tax evasion over there, bunch of junkets down the Caribbean, caught napping on a beach down there.
"Uhhh, look, he served in a segregated unit in Korea! He's a black guy, slave heritage. You gotta cut the guy some slack. Besides his wife did it once and his staff did it the other times." But Jim Bunning? "Ha-ha-ha-ha! Republican, Baseball Hall of Fame, probably pays for everything he buys himself? Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. And now wants people to starve?" as they say. This is what they're saying. I'm just telling you, people are noticing this stuff. They are noticing.
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RUSH: To Nashville, Tennessee, this is David. Great to have you on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Earlier when you said that you had an idea that maybe Jim Bunning could ask to, you know, divert some of the TARP funds or stimulus bill funds, you know, for something like this, I saw an article from AP, it was buried in the paper here last Thursday, and it says: "Future measures are going to be much more difficult to pass, especially since a top Senate Democrat --" unnamed, it just says top Senate Democrat, "-- has blocked unused authority from the Wall Street bailout program from being used in the future for jobs bills and other initiatives." And I thought, well, he's blocking things, too, you know, but we don't know who that was. And I heard this morning that Jim Bunning actually did ask someone for the authority to, you know, use those stimulus funds, and they turned him down.
RUSH: Really?
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Really? Okay, cool. So the Democrats are the ones objecting to using --
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: -- already allocated funds for this.
CALLER: And this says top Senate Democrat -- I assume they mean a Senator, I don't know, it says top Senate Democrat has blocked these funds from being used. Well, that's very similar to what they're accusing, you know, it struck me as --
RUSH: It's just a trick for more spending. That's all they want to do is spend, spend, spend, spend, pure and simple. Thanks for that update out there, David. I missed that buried AP story. How many writers did it have, 15? The last two AP stories I've seen had 15 writers, both on Obama's health care plan.
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RUSH: Now, Obama and paygo. Jim Bunning says, "Hey we got paygo, we got paygo, we can't pay for this and so we're not going to extend the benefits until we come up with a way to pay for it, we got paygo, we got a rule here." He's being creamed; he's getting bomb threats; he's being assaulted by the media. Everybody is mischaracterizing what's going on here. Let's go-go back to February 13th, 2010, Obama's weekly YouTube address.
OBAMA: What also has made these large deficits possible was the end of a common-sense rule called pay-as-you-go. It's pretty simple. It says to Congress, you have to pay as you go. You can't spend a dollar unless you cut a dollar elsewhere. This is how a responsible family or business manages a budget. This is how a responsible government manages a budget as well.
RUSH: February 13th. That's like 18, 19 days ago. Paygo. All for it. Now he's joining the cast and crew who are trying to destroy Jim Bunning for saying, "Hey, we got this paygo rule here." Here's more Obama from that same YouTube address on February 13th.
OBAMA: Now, in a perfect world Congress would not have needed a law to act responsibly to remember that every dollar spent would come from taxpayers today or our children tomorrow. But this isn't a perfect world. This is Washington. That's why this rule is necessary, and that's why I'm pleased that Congress fulfilled my request to restore it. Last night I signed the pay-as-you-go rule into law. Now Congress will have to pay for what it spends just like everybody else.
RUSH: Now, the real irony here is that he hasn't had to. This guy is the most reckless, out of control spender we've ever had, but beside that, here he is touting paygo February 13th, Congress can't spend the money they don't have. Not going to do it anymore. So is it any wonder Bunning is standing up? He's just said what the president said, and the president's own party and the president's own media is trying to destroy the guy.
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RUSH: We're at Radcliffe, Kentucky. Aaron, welcome to the EIB Network. Great to have you, sir.
CALLER: American Kentucky dittos, Rush, God bless you, sir.
RUSH: Thank you very much, sir.
CALLER: It seems to me yesterday when I was first hearing about this, that the Republicans may have staged this Bunning objection a little. My political instincts aren't as good as yours, but as soon as I heard about it, it just struck me that Senator Bunning was not running again and therefore he's the perfect candidate to be the lone objector to renewing the unemployment benefits. Since the Drive-Bys are going to tear up the Republicans anyway over this issue, it may as well be someone who's not running again.
RUSH: Well, I think that may be one of the reasons he's doing it, but I would find it hard to believe that there's some sort of behind-the-scenes conspiracy where they said, "Hey, Jim, you're not running. Go out and run interference for us." There's nothing to gain party-wide if they all don't get on board this.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: In fact, if they don't get on board this... I mean, they sent Susan Collins out there today on the Senate floor to trash Jim Bunning and she's a Republican.
CALLER: Right. I see your point on that. It just seemed funny to me also I heard this morning that he's talking about, you know, using the stimulus money -- and the first thing the Democrats did, especially Senator Reid, was turn around and start deflecting. Because seems to me they don't want anybody to know that there's like $800 billion or something like that sitting there.
RUSH: They know.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: They know.
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RUSH: Dennis in Phoenix, thank you for waiting, sir. You're next on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Mega dittos, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I love you. Hey, I had an example for you. You're talking about people that put all their faith in the government. Look at the Post Office. You know, they've been going downhill for years. They're losing volume. What do they do? Nothing. They're billions of debt. You know, people that want to trust the government, government doesn't have to operate like private business. A private business is not going to lose billions of dollars. They innovate. They change things. You know, the government will keep doing what it's doing until there's no more mail to be delivered.
RUSH: (laughing) I hope to hell that never... Actually that would be kind of nice. Nobody would get any more bills. Ah, they'd come on the Internet.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: That's what you mean. Well, look at Obama's plan to fix this. Look at Obama's plan to fix it. He's right. The Post Office is running huge deficits (What government bureaucracy isn't?) So Obama said, "Well, you know what? We're gonna suspend Saturday delivery, and we might go to the Postal Commission see if we can get an increase in stamps." That's not the Obama business model. Let's compare the Post Office to our health care circumstance. If Obama's business model were consistent, in the face of this massive budgetary shortfall at the Post Office what Obama would do would be to expand mail delivery to Sundays, close the Post Office boxes and make sure that everybody's mail is delivered to their homes from six a.m. to midnight and then he would find 30 million new people to deliver mail to. Well, that's his recipe for fixing what's wrong with health care, but for some reason wants to cut back on one-day delivery on Saturdays. Here is joke in Mobile, Alabama, you're up next on the Rush Limbaugh program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. Mega dittos from south Alabama, cold south Alabama.
RUSH: Thank you very much.
CALLER: I wanted to make an observation about why, in the face of all these turn-downs that Americans have given the president and the Democratic Party he keeps marching forward with the health care legislation.
RUSH: Yes?
CALLER: I believe that it's because of you, Rush Limbaugh. I believe that he does not want you to put a notch in your gun about your comment about his policies failing. I've analyzed it, I've looked at it, and I said, "Why does this man keep bringing this issue up when the American people have totally rejected it time and time again over the last eight to ten months," and yet here it is again in our face. I just believe that he does not want that thing to fail and you to be able to gloat.
RUSH: Well --
CALLER: I think we have you to blame. I think we have Rush Limbaugh to blame for this.
RUSH: Well, of course, and there's no logical way to dispute or even refute what you're saying because it's very clear. One of the things that motivates these people as much as the deal they're working on is making sure we don't win, making sure we don't win.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: No matter what the hell the alternative is, make sure we don't win.
CALLER: Yes. I agree. I agree.
RUSH: But he doesn't understand. See, my definition of Obama's success is failing at something like this. He doesn't look at it that way. He's looking at it differently, 'cause his motivation is multifaceted, by the way. It's not just beating us. Folks, as Mona Charen said it once in a column: "This is ballgame" if Obama gets this. I saw Tom Coburn on TV this morning, and he was asked by a reporter, "The polling data for the Democrats on this is so bad, why don't you let 'em pass it? Just let 'em pass it and they'll get creamed in November and you can start rolling it back." And Coburn said, "You got the wrong idea. It's not that easy to roll stuff like this back. This is an entitlement. You want to try to roll back Social Security? How did that work out?" So it's an interesting point. Now Obama is going to offer -- and it took 15 people to write this. We finally have the story.
It took fifteen people to write this AP story on Obama including some Republican ideas: Medical malpractice reform and trying to rid the health care system of waste and fraud. But, see, the dirty little secret is, the Republicans are not the ones who've stop this. The people who've stopped this are all of us, the citizens of this country who have let everybody know we don't want it, in no uncertain terms, in so many different ways. The Republicans don't have the votes to stop this and they never did. Well, they do in the Senate theoretically with Scott Brown now, but if they go reconciliation, we don't have the votes to stop 'em. We're back to that. In addition to that, it's the Democrats who cannot get unified on this. They've had supermajority in the Senate, a massive majority in the House and they still can't get unified on this. Republicans are still need to get nowhere near this.
This is nothing more than a little trick to get the Republicans on board with this, but the whole premise hasn't changed and that is the government running the show. Meaning Democrats running health care, $2.5 trillion dollars of the economy. There's not one example of them handling anything this big and doing it right and doing it well and having it work out as they said it would before they took over. The whole premise behind this needs to be blown up. The whole premise that government and a bunch of unqualified bureaucrats know best how to run a massive segment of our economy has just got to be obliterated. The premise of this is all wrong. I think the Republicans get that. At least Coburn does because I saw his answer on TV this morning this morning to these various questions about whether or not these ideas Obama's going to include are going to attract the Republicans. He said, "No, no, no, because he's not changing the basic premise of what he's doing." So we'll see. And the American people are going to speak up on this as often and as loudly as they have to, and just understand it's not going to stop Obama. He and the Democrats are totally willing to govern against the will of the people and even lose their majority to get this done.
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RUSH: Big Canoe, California, Gene, great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Mega dittos, Rush. Listener since '88.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Quick question for you. I'm trying to be as gentle as I can. Senator Frank Lautenberg has been diagnosed with stomach cancer. I'm just curious why he couldn't be a really good example for us and just be given painkillers.
RUSH: Oh.
CALLER: As Dr. Obama would prescribe for him, and some end-of-life counseling, maybe.
RUSH: Yeah, I remember that ABC health summit they had. A woman shows up and says, "My mother is a hundred years old and wants a pacemaker, would you account for her will to live?" "No, we can't take into account things like that. In some cases we just have to give 'em a pain kill." So you think Lautenberg would be a good test case on this to illustrate --
CALLER: Well, as I recall, Rush, President Obama said a grandmother, you know.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Eighty-four-year-old grandmother, Frank might even be a great-grandfather, who knows.
RUSH: Possibly true.
CALLER: Very, very good example for the Democrats to show us how the way should be in the future.
RUSH: I can't really object to your logical thinking on this 'cause I would then add, "Would some of you please consider a question? Of all the people in the United States of America to be asked a question, 'Can my grandmother live?' who the hell is Barack Obama to say give anybody a pain pill? Who is he to be the one to say that? Where's his medical degree?" This is unbelievable.
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RUSH: Last night on the Kudlow Report, CNBC, spoke to Alan Reynolds, Cato Institute senior fellow. Kudlow said, "You're saying that the stimulus is raising unemployment, and I think you're saying longer we have unemployment, the compensation benefits, the worse the unemployment rate gets. Is that right?"
REYNOLDS: Absolutely. I quote the Federal Reserve. The latest FOMC minutes say probably added at least a percentage point, the extension of unemployment benefits. Punched it up. Larry Summers himself said unemployment is about one and a half percentage points higher than we can explain by the usual GDP figures. Alan Krueger in the Treasury department has done research on this subject. The OECD says the evidence is totally clear. Look, if you subsidize something you get more of it. We are subsidizing very, very, long extended periods of unemployment. And we're getting what we paid for.
RUSH: Duh! Duh! You subsidize what you get you're going to get more of it. Same thing. If you tax more of something, you're going to get less of it. If you tax something less, you're going to get more of it. Economics 101. Free market 101. Kudlow says, "Well, we used to have unemployment benefits for six months. Now it's, what, 18 months?"
REYNOLDS: It was 18 months until November, and what we're dealing with here is an extra 13 weeks which takes it out to almost two years. So we would be rolling back, and only in a couple dozen states, because this only applies to states that have very high unemployment. In a couple dozen states you would have to go back to only 79 weeks of unemployment benefits. My data may be slightly out of date, but Canada had a maximum of nine months last time I looked in a 2007 OECD report, Sweden was 14 months, Britain was six, Japan was something like ten. I mean this is unusually long period, and it basically, it gets people to not leave Michigan, to not leave California and go to Utah. Utah only pays 46 weeks, they have an unemployment rate of 6.7.
RUSH: Well, I like hearing that, that backs up something else I've always said and that is most of the limitations that we have in life are self-imposed. For example -- I'll just use myself. There is no way that I would have realized my career dreams if I had decided to stay where I was born. Too small a town. It would not have happened. I had to leave, had to move. Now, some people don't want to, some people to want stay with their families and friends and so forth, that's totally fine. But it's a limitation if what you want to do is not there, if the opportunity to be the best at it is not there. This is a great example of a great education here today on this program, costing you zilch. Finally, Kudlow says, "You say the Fed has acknowledged all this in print. You say the organization for economic development has said the same thing. So why do Republicans and Democrats in Washington keep extending unemployment benefits except for Jim Bunning, why do they keep doing it?"
REYNOLDS: I think it has to do with natural sympathy. I mean you want to help people who are in trouble and one can make an argument that, well, if they have a little more time to look they might get a better job. We're talking two years, there's just an awful lot of research that says the intensity of job search really picks up in the last four weeks or so before the benefits run out. The benefits are in -- in California, it's $4.75 an hour, it's about $25,000 a year, that's my salary, that's serious money, and in New Jersey it's closer to $30,000 a year. If somebody else in the family is working you just are not in a real big hurry to get off of that gravy train. Plus you're likely to lose Medicaid, other benefits, some health benefits and some housing benefits, perhaps, food stamps.
RUSH: I knew I'd heard this somewhere. Alan Reynolds there has just said that in New Jersey it's $30,000 a year on unemployment benefits, and if you have two people in the house unemployed that's $60. You're not in a big hurry to get off the gravy train. If you do you lose Medicaid or other benefits, food stamps and so forth. All makes sense. So finally Kudlow says, "The 90% working are financing the 10% unemployed out to two years. Is that what's happening here?"
REYNOLDS: Yeah. And it's really getting to -- the balance is tilting pretty badly. The ratio of transfer payments including Social Security, Medicaid, is now 40% as large as all private wages and salaries combined.
KUDLOW: Wow.
REYNOLDS: The amount of individual income tax was barely even with the amount of transfer payments, federal and state, that were paid out last year, about $2.1 trillion. We're reaching a tripping point where those who are doing the paying in and those who are taking out, I mean it makes a lot of people want to step over the edge and join the other camp.
RUSH: And there's a story in the Washington Times today about how never before have as many Americans been dependent on the government for their daily existence as they are today. It's at an all-time high. And make no mistake, that's by design. We've been headed this way ever since FDR and the New Deal, and this has been the objective of it. The theory is that all these people are going to vote for whoever keeps the money flowing, and that's Democrats. That's been the theory.
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HOORAY Rush! HOORAY Jim Bunning! Which way will the RINOS/collectivists/statists/progressives “on our side”/sarcasm go?
Get with the program Rush, they're supporting the Democrats here...
Like anyone should be surprised.
Sometimes there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the Republicans and the Democrats, and sometimes there is...easy to figure out.
Thanks for the Ping!
Sometimes there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the Republicans and the Democrats, and sometimes there is...easy to figure out.Really?
AP - The Senate on Tuesday passed a $10 billion measure to maintain unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless and provide stopgap funding for highway programs after a holdout Republican dropped stalling tactics that had generated a Washington firestorm.
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