Also to Jim, I also had a coworker the other day say the same! It's odd to me how many people think this and yet he is leading in the polls for the GOP nomination. Did a bunch of Libs register as Republican or something?
Posted on 01/28/2012 3:18:49 PM PST by Jim Robinson
I have not been able to find the entire On The Record Bondi interview, either in video OR professional transcript, so I transcribed it myself. Hopefully the full segment video, with transcript, will become available, so any mistakes I may have made can be corrected.
Below is the transcription of Greta's Pam Bondi interview, transcribed directly from the TV segment [the later rebroadcast]. (Note: In the rebroadcast, there was a second or two in which there was a loss of audio and a black screen; I have noted it in the transcript]
Greta's 1-27-2012 interview On The Record with Pam Bondi
GRETA: And he is certainly taking a lot of flak for it, but Gov Romney insists his healthcare law he signed in MASS s different from Pres. Obama's healthcare law, but Rush Limbaugh says that's not true.
Greta starts interview with RUSH LIMBAUGH show video clip:
Romney says, "92% of the people in my state had insurance before the plan went in place, nothing changes for them." Obama: "If you like your plan, you get to keep your plan," except that you don't, but that's what Obama said. "If you like your plan, you get to keep it, we're not touching it. If you like your doctor, you get to keep it, we're not changing it." "For the 8% of the people who didn't have insurance we said to them if you can afford it, buy it, and if you don't want to buy insurance, then you gotta help pay for the cost."
Obama: "You gotta buy insurance or pay a fine."
[EDITED OUT OF THE RUSH VIDEO] This is Santorum's point, it's the same thing. Your option is to buy insurance required, or you pay a fine. Now, the way Obamacare is structured, the fine is much cheaper than the insurance, for a couple of years, by design. The idea is to get people paying the fine. They are the free riders. Romney is right, they pay the fine but if they show up at the emergency room, by law they have to be treated. They're the free riders. So Santorum is saying, "See, it's the same thing.
Obama's doing the same thing. Romney doesn't call his plan a fine. You don't buy insurance, then you have to help pay for the cost; it's the same thing. This is why people say there's not much difference between the two plans.
And then Romney says, "Under federal law if somebody doesn't have insurance then we have to care for them in the hospitals, give 'em free care. So we said no more free riders." So you're paying a fine or you're buying health insurance, which is what Obamacare is.
Source of video excerpt: Santorum Hammers Romney on Obamacare
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GRETA: FLA Attorney General Pam Bondi has spent the past year trying to get Pres Obama's healthcare law overturned, but she's also supporting Gov Mitt Romney for President. Is that a contradiction of not? Atty Gen Bondi joins us. Good evening Pam.
BONDI: Good evening Greta. Good to talk to you.
GRETA: Nice to talk to you. OK, How do you reconcile these two plans and your support for Gov Romney and the Mass Plan, and, of course, I assume you just heard what Rush Limbaugh just said.
BONDI: Oh, and I have so much respect for Rush Limbaugh, of course. But, oh, there is nothing to reconcile. These are two completely different plans. And I'm listening to Rush, taking notes. Let me tell you what I wrote:
ObamaCare raises taxes.
Mitt Romney's plan would not.
ObamaCare has Medicare diversions.
Romney's plan would not.
Pres Obama's federal healthcare plan creates new federal bureaucracy.
Romney's plan would not.
It [ObamaCare] reduces choice.
Mitt Romney's plan would not.
It raises costs.
Mitt Romney's Plan lowers costs.
I could keep going, but it's about States Rights. From day one, Mitt Romney, and I'll tell you along with Newt Gingrich, along with Rick Santorum, along with Ron Paul, all of our candidates have said, the first thing that they will try to do is get rid of the Federal government healthcare takeover. So all the candidates have said that.
And let me tell you, I have been asked to be on Gov Romney's task force. I am going to be part of his healthcare policy team, um, when he's president to undo this and to create good healthcare. So I wholeheartedly support him, and I don't think he contradicts it at all. In fact, he is doing everything that we agree with.
GRETA: Ok, Let me ask you this. It is enormously complex, all these healthcare questions. Just one of them recently said it reduces costs, and I'm only quoting from what Politico has on 10/26/11 in which it says that even Gov Romney admits it does not reduce costs in Mass. That the whole idea in Mass was to expand coverage so people could be covered, but an admission that it didn't reduce costs cause healthcare costs have been rising and, not in this article, doesn't the Mass[ Healthcare] Plan get some Federal subsidy, so in some way we all sort of pick up the tab?
BONDI: Well, that's in Mass, not in the entire country. He wants a plan where each state can decide what to do in their own state that wouldn't raise costs. And let me tell you Greta, Of the majority of states... [Greta interrupts]
GRETA: Let me ask you about the mandate there. Just so the viewers understand. The national plan has a mandate. The state plan has a mandate. You argue that the national plan mandate is unconstitutional, but there is a distinction with the state plan, is there not?
BONDI: Yes, yes. Federal healthcare plan mandates that every person in this country buy insurance, and if not, we will be penalized or taxed. What we want is for each state to have the ability to regulate and create their own healthcare plans that best fit each state. That's what we want. That's what we mean when we talk about the mandate.
And of the 26 states that are involved in the lawsuit that FLA is leading, the majority of the states---some are governors, some are Attys General---but the majority of the states involved in that healthcare lawsuit have endorsed Mitt Romney, and we stand behind Mitt Romney for Governor as well as my fellow cabinet members Adam Putnam, Jeff Atwater and [black screen /no audio for a second or two] completely remaining neutral. He's not helping anyone behind the scenes, as well as our Senate president and our speaker of the house.
GRETA: Alright. I'm going to take the last word. leaving this just so that I edit the other side ... Bill McCollum, who started the lawsuit, your predecessor in the state of FLA as the AG, he is one of the co-chair of Newt Gingrich's campaign. You, of course, are part of endorsing Gov Romney, just to put some perspective on it.
But anyway, it is enormously complicated, and we are going to see what happens at the end of June in your national lawsuit challenging the national healthcare. Thank-you Pam. Nice to see you.
Newt commits to firing every czar on day one. Romney is already lining up his army of czar’s.
In many ways, Romney is nothing more than a white Obama.
Well, I guess Obama faces East when he prays, while Romney dreams of being a god on his planet Kolob.
They’re both nuts.
*snip*
RomneyCare has metastasized into yet another big-government cancer. Barack Obama wasn’t being entirely disingenuous when he cited RomneyCare as his model for Washington-run health care.
Lately, some Romney apologists have suggested that RomneyCare, as first conceived by the former Massachusetts governor, had its virtues. Say the apologists, the trouble with RomneyCare came when now-Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and the big spenders and government-growers in the state legislature got their hooks into the program.
This only shows what any good conservative knows about an entitlement, no matter how limited in intention. Liberal politicians — and more than some establishment Republicans — will find ways to grow entitlements to their advantage. Does anyone really think Social Security, which is heading for crisis, would be a hot topic if it had stayed a meager pension supplement as started by FDR in the 1930s?
What businessman-turned-Governor Mitt Romney gave to Deval Patrick and Massachusetts’ liberal legislators with RomneyCare was an exploitable opportunity — an opportunity to take Romney’s supposed “conservative” health care program and blow a hole in it bigger than the hole that sank the Titanic. (RomneyCare was more ambitious to start with than apologists claim, anyway.)
The fact is that government entitlements, however modestly begun, are going to follow the iron law of politicians’ self-interest. Growing government, expanding and increasing bennies, and shoveling contracts to special interests are the tickets to politicians’ job security — or so has been the case in Washington and plenty of state capitals for too many decades.
*snip*
Not incidentally, for all Mitt Romney’s boasting about not raising taxes in Massachusetts, RomneyCare, in fact, has upped taxpayer bills in two important ways. As the Wall Street Journal reported last year:
While Massachusetts’ uninsured rate has dropped to around 3%, 68% of the newly insured since 2006 receive coverage that is heavily or completely subsidized by taxpayers. While Mr. Romney insisted that everyone should pay something for coverage, that is not the way his plan has turned out. More than half of the 408,000 newly insured residents pay nothing, according to a February 2010 report by the Massachusetts Health Connector, the state’s insurance exchange. [Italics added]
And this tidbit from the same Wall Street Journal article:
Mr. Romney’s promise that getting everyone covered would force costs down also is far from being realized. One third of state residents polled by Harvard researchers in a study published in “Health Affairs” in 2008 said that their health costs had gone up as a result of the 2006 reforms. A typical family of four today faces total annual health costs of nearly $13,788, the highest in the country. Per capita spending is 27% higher than the national average. [Italics added.]
Yet for all of RomneyCare’s evident failure, businessman Romney has stubbornly continued to defend the program. A smart businessman — and a smarter politician — would have acknowledged RomneyCare’s failure, claimed to have learned lessons, cut his losses, and moved on.
~~~~
What’s confounding is that, if as stated now that Gov. Deval Patrick, lib and BHO bud, took advantage of the opening Romneycare gave him as crook libs do, why isn’t Romney defending himself and saying that to describe the healthcare financial mess in MA now?
That’s totally vacant, misleading and disingenuous on the reality .. and purposeful.
He can honestly say he’s immediately gonna do an EO to
eliminate Obamacare, ‘cause he’ll just replace it with his
schemes. Transparent as a window ...
Gotta side with ya there HG...The mediots have totally taken off the table that it is IMPOSED on citizens.
The assholes foisting ***care (gov't, bambi, romney-style, state..etc..) are NOT going to be in the same system we will have to deal with. This is all pure socialism and will ignite real "class warfare".
Newt's my choice, but the reality is that we are likely stuck with Romney.
Meaning, we have the choice between Obama, or a paler version of Obama.
What happened to this country.
Guess Bondi’s going for a cabinet position. Or at least an ambassadorship. Very sad.
Buuuump!
How much money are these FL “conservative” politicos being paid, anyway??? Allen West must be feeling like the Lone Ranger right now.
Of COURSE Romney and his people don’t care about our country - if they did, they’d be conservative!
Newt needs to hit Romney harder on the issues and his record as it relates to them. I hope he has the resources because Romney and his powerful backers are really fighting dirty. If only Santorum didn’t needlessly continue to siphon off votes when he doesn’t have a chance. Rick Perry is a patriot; Rick Santorum is just selfish.
Just connecting the dots and keeping up with Bimbo Bondi. She did it again.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2839569/posts?page=96#96
One of my colleagues at work is a huge Obama supporter said he really wouldn’t have a problem if Mitt became president because Mitt is liberal and not much different from Obama.
Same way I feel about him. Just makes me wonder why the other GOP candidates don’t hit him with the figures.
BUMP
Romney does not deserve to recieve the vote of one single conservative American
More liberalism to come folks. More to come.
This is called Cleaning Off The Fan. The defense that Romney never intended for this plan to go national is not a strong one.
I will tell you what’s going on - the Republican Party is seeing an opportunity just like the Democratic Party exploited in 2008: they see a chance to grab control of Congress and the White House.
Exit polls in Ohio indicated that Romney is getting moderates and dissatisfied Democrats, liberals who will not vote for a do-over by BHO2.
I suspect that is why the GOPe have been promoting Romney. As he was a liberal governing Massachusetts, he can attract liberal leaning independents and liberal Democrats away from BHO2. They are dazzled by visions of a ‘slam dunk’ election.
Very wealthy people in this nation are massivley supporting Romney. They have fear, real and justified fear, that the Marxist BHO2 will seize all property and redistribute wealth in this country. That is why Romne’s war chest is flush with cash donations.
The GOPe despise Conservatives and the Tea Party. But we see what Romney really is - a self-professed progressive, a classic example of a fascist - and will not support him come November IF he is the nominee.
Choosing between a communist and fascist is not a choice, it is more like a death sentence.
Santorum hammered Romney AFTER the fact. He still endorsed him for president and was fully aware of Romneycare.
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