RUSH: Justice Scalia, during oral arguments today… I guess he said to the government lawyer, Mr. Verrilli… And the discussion today was the severability of the mandate from the rest of the health care law. And they’re discussing what aspects of it to keep. They’re all speaking hypothetically. If the mandate gets thrown out, does the whole thing go? Do we keep parts of it? Scalia, during oral arguments, said (chuckling), “You want us to go through 2,700 pages?” A justice of the US Supreme Court said to the government lawyer, “You want us to go through 2,700 pages?” Do you realize that?
What do you think the number is of members of the House of Representatives that have read that bill? How many of them do you think have read all 2,700 pages and know what’s in it? We know that it was rammed through so fast that nobody… Well, not nobody. Very few people who voted for that bill had seen it, had read it. It wasn’t around long enough. It wasn’t posted long enough. John Conyers said (paraphrased) “Hey, we can’t be expected to read this stuff. That’s why we got lawyers. Lawyers read it and they tell us what it says. It’s all legalese. We don’t understand this stuff.” And he said it with a completely straight face and he said it with utter sincerity.
He’s a member of Congress from Detroit, and he’s utterly serious. “Oh, yeah, well, well… You can’t expect us to read this. We wouldn’t understand it. We hire people to read it for us and tell us what’s in it.” It sounds like Scalia hasn’t read it, either. “You want us to read 2,700 pages?” That’s hilarious! What it really signals is they’re not gonna get into the minutia of this. Ask yourself: How are they gonna decide? If they throw the mandate out but then they decide to keep parts of the rest of it, how are they gonna do it? The court is gonna read the 2,700 pages, and then the court is gonna vote on it all? Come on. Give me a break. That isn’t going to happen.
And they would probably have to go hire a couple of additional clerks to read this stuff and tell ’em what the bill says. Anybody who thinks that we’re gonna get a defined, totally comprehensive result here about what’s gonna stay and what gets thrown out? They’re not gonna read 2700 pages. That’s what Scalia is just pointing out. And if they’re not gonna read all 2700 pages, how in the world are they gonna decide what stays in and what doesn’t? What an utter mess. This is an embarrassing mess. This whole thing is just a profound embarrassment. The premise behind this health care bill is an embarrassment, and it’s a threat.
The actual bill itself — the legislation, the language — it’s an embarrassment. Nobody knows fully what’s in it. And Pelosi, the Speaker of the House at the time, said, “We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it,” and she said that seriously. She wasn’t trying to be funny or clever. She was being dead serious. “We gotta pass it to find out what’s in it.” She almost was using that as, “Okay, you want to know what’s in it? Well, pass it! We’re not gonna tell you ’til you pass it.” This is how we’re going to administer health care for 300-plus million Americans? We have nine justices of the court read the 2,700 pages and then write opinions on what ought to stay, what ought to go? What a joke this has become.
Aside from the genuinely severe, tragic outcome of liberalism’s success, that’s what liberalism is: It’s a joke! It is a really damaging, harmful, painful joke, but it is an absolute joke. This is an embarrassment. It is folly. And that’s another reason why I am just beside myself when I listen to all these so-called high-IQ intellectuals debate this on the highest planes of erudition and sophistication. Nobody knows what’s in it! The more it unfolds here, the more obvious it becomes to me that this ought to be one of the biggest embarrassments in this nation’s history. This whole episode. This whole law. This whole piece of legislation. This whole effort to ram it through. Its premise, its objective. Plus it’s tragic. If it ever happens, if it ever is really is implemented it stops being a joke. It stops being an embarrassment and then it becomes shackles.
Scalia: Do you really expect the court to do that? Do you really expect us to read 2,700 pages? Do you really expect us to give this function to our law clerks? Is this not totally unrealistic, that we’re gonna go through this enormous bill item by item and decide each one? (That’s a justice of the Supreme Court putting, as plain as day, what’s before them.) You want us to go through 2,700 pages with our clerks, item-by-item, and decide each one? That’s what you’re asking us to do here?
And you know what?
That’s exactly what they’re asking ’em to do!
That’s the point. This is exactly what Obama’s asking them to do. They don’t see anything strange about that. “Eh, it’s 2,700 pages of fairness, social justice, equality. Damn right we expect you to go through this, see how wonderful it is and keep it.”
Who’s next? Raleigh, North Carolina. Hi, Josh. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Rush, thanks for having me on and making the complex understandable.
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.
CALLER: I wanted to get to… Let’s say, for example, that what Carville says is true, because I do know some people that agree with Obama a lot but not Obamacare. I want to take a look at the other side of that coin and can you imagine the uptick in voter enthusiasm? It would be 2010 all over again if Obamacare is declared constitutional. I mean, so many people would… It would be 2010 all over again and then more.
RUSH: I think you’re right. Health care is what gave birth to the Tea Party. Health care is what created that 2010 midterm election victory. I think you’re right. That would erase… (chuckling) Anybody that’s concerned over who the Republican nominee is? If this thing gets fully declared constitutional, then our side would know, “Okay, this is gonna have to be done in Congress and we gotta get rid of Democrats.” That’s what everybody would know. I think you’re right. A lot of people think the opposite, though, Josh. A lot of people think that having it declared constitutional would just dispirit our side and they would give up.
A lot of people think that would happen, too.
By the way, Scalia was not addressing Verrilli today. I need to correct that. He was speaking to Mr. Kneedler, K-n-e-e-d-l-e-r, who is deputy United States solicitor general. So he’s part of the team. Verrilli was the solicitor general. He led off yesterday and he was profoundly humiliated. So they sent Kneedler in there today to try to change it up, and apparently he was catching hell all day, too, from the justices. Even from Sotomayor. So it was apparently not much better for Kneedler than it was Verrilli. In fact, the Republicans put together an ad using Verrilli’s stuttering and pausing at the beginning of the oral arguments yesterday. Now, this is a TV commercial, and while the audio plays, if you could envision the Supreme Court building and the graphic that says, “Voice of Obama’s Lawyer.”
So it’s a picture of Supreme Court building and the Chyron graphic: “Voice of Obama’s Lawyer.”
CLERK: Case 11398, the Department of Health and Human Services vs. Florida.
VERRILLI: For more than 80% of Americans the, uh, insurance system does provide effective, uh, access. (pause) Uh… (pause) Excuse me. (drinks water) Uh… (coughs) It… be…because the… Uh… The, uh… The, uh… (drinks water) Excuse me. (long pause)
RUSH: Those pauses are all in the ad. He stops speaking. The clinking you heard was ice in a glass. He was drinking water. “Excuse me.” He was drinking water. He lost his place. He had no idea what to say. That was in his opening argument, and the graphic at the end of the ad is, “Obamacare: It’s a Tough Sell.” That was the government lawyer kicking things off yesterday.