RUSH: I just got this story off the TIME Magazine website. Headline: “Labor Leader Admits Obamacare Woes.” Awwww. Let’s all grab the violins. “The head of the nation’s largest federation of unions admitted ‘we made some mistakes’ in writing Obamacare Thursday at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast in downtown DC. The head of the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka, said he was surprised that employers have reduced workers’ hours below 30-a-week to avoid an employer penalty scheduled to go into effect in 2015.

“‘That is obviously something that no one intended.'” You know, when are you people gonna realize there are unintended disastrous consequences to everything practically that you do? “Oh, we had no idea!” Yeah, you had no idea either when you raised taxes on yachts. You had no idea that the people that built them would get fired, did you, because people would stop buying them. You just had no idea.

You had no idea when you raised taxes that you get bigger deficits, did you? Because you kill jobs. You had no idea any of this, do you. “We had no idea that employers would try to get below 30-hour work weeks to avoid the…” What, you think they’re just gonna sit there and bend over, grab the ankles, and take the hit? You think you people just diagnose and proscribe liberalism on everybody and we’re just gonna sit here and take it?

Many of us, Sir Richard, devote our entire lives to avoiding what you people do. Many Americans spend their entire waking day trying to figure out how to not be negatively impacted by the things that you people do, be it your regulations, your taxes, or your silly social changes that you make that cost everybody an arm and a leg. That’s why there’s no productivity in this country anymore, because everybody’s just trying to figure out how to not be damaged by you people.

There’s an entire industry of people in this country who are getting along by finding ways to not be damaged by Barack Obama and the Democrat Party and their policies. What did you think people were gonna do, Richard? Just sit there and pay these onerous penalties and fines and go out of business? You’re not foolish enough to really believe that every business has a pile of trillions of dollars that they’re just hoarding rather than giving you, that if you come up with the right law you can separate them from that money.

You don’t really believe that, do you?

Don’t you understand how most businesses are themselves one version of paycheck to paycheck? They’re just one Democrat regulation from going bankrupt. They’re just one Democrat tax increase from going out of business. Who do you think they are? “Oh, we had no idea! Sorry, we didn’t intend this. We didn’t anticipate this consequence.” Let me tell you something, Richard. You bought it, you broke it, you own it. I don’t have any sympathy here.

“Labor Leader Admits Obamacare Woes.” You’re not gonna get sympathy here, Mr. Trumka. You fought for it, you helped write it, you had your thugs help beat up people at Town Hall meetings who are opposed to it. You were perfectly fine using force on Tea Party people, one black guy in a wheelchair in order to make sure this thing signed into law. Now all of a sudden, when your workers are losing their jobs, “Oh, gosh, we didn’t intend this!”

This is what’s wrong with you people. If you really didn’t know — and I don’t believe this. You really don’t understand the consequences of what you do, and you think there’s just an endless pile of money out there somewhere, and no matter how many times you dig into it, it’s always gonna be there. Richard, we haven’t had any money in this country 20 years. The national debt is $17 trillion. This guy’s running around now complaining.

“Labor Leader Admits Obamacare Woes,” and he says, “That is obviously something that no one intended. No one intended the [health care] act to result in people working fewer hours just so they [employers] don’t have to pay for health care. So that’s something that needs to be addressed.” Not by you people! You have already messed this up. You have already taken the greatest health care system in this country and practically destroyed it.

The only hope now is to defund the thing and repeal it.

If you really want to do something, Richard, you’ll join that effort. If you really care about your rank-and-file, Mr. Trumka, you’ll join everybody in trying to stop this before it is unalterably implemented in this country. You didn’t know this was gonna happen? Do you not remember when you guys sat there and just celebrated massive tax increases on the sale of luxury goods, including yachts and high-priced cars and so forth?

Do you not remember what happened? The union members who make the yachts got laid off because people stopped buying the yachts in this country. They went elsewhere where they were cheaper. If I can remember that, surely you can. What do you mean, you don’t know what’s gonna happen when you impose massive penalties, massive financial penalties on businesses for doing nothing?

This is exactly what happens, Mr. Trumka, when you treat American businesses as criminals, when you look at ’em as suspects. When you treat them as criminals and come up with legislation that gets even with ’em, what do you think they’re gonna do? They’re gonna do whatever they have to do to stay in business — and that’s what this country has become: The United States versus the policies of Barack Obama and the Democrat Party.

We’re in the midst of an effort oriented toward the greatest survival since the Donner Party tried to get over the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Every day, rather than be productivity, people in this country are simply trying to find out ways to avoid the damage that you have inculcated everywhere in this country. People get up and productivity is figured out and based on, “What we can avoid?” not, “What we can do?”

And then you come along.

“Oops! You know, we didn’t expect this to happen. Well, we maybe made a mistake there.” Well, you can fix it, Mr. Trumka. You can join the effort to repeal it. I mean, it’s that bad? It can’t be fixed. “When asked if he would accept a change in ObamacareÂ’s definition of full-time work, as some legislators have suggested, Trumka responded, ‘Of course we would,’ but didnÂ’t elaborate on what the change would be.”

You really think changing the definition is the answer? This is the way they think. Okay, let’s take what happened. Obamacare says that you do not have to provide insurance or pay a penalty for anybody working fewer than 30 hours a week, so businesses have converted full-timers to part-timers working less than 30 hours. So what Trumka’s saying here is, “Well, let’s now just say 25 hours is full time, and let’s fix it that way!”

It’s not specifically what he’s saying, but when he’s “asked if he would accept a change in Obamacare’s definition of full time,” all that means is: Let’s change definition of full time so that under 30 hours means you have to pay the penalty or cover ’em. You fought for this, Mr. Trumka. You literally fought for this. You had people beat up for this at town hall meetings in St. Louis.

Maybe not you specifically, but the Widow Carnahan’s kid, at one of his town meetings, sent was union thugs. Maybe SEIU came in there and beat up some people. You fought for this. You wrote it. You helped write it. You did everything you could to help this law become the law of the land because you thought it was great socialism. It’s amazing how it never works, isn’t it?

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RUSH: I’m gonna tell you what Trumka is really after. Trumka wants the same thing Congress got. Trumka wants a waiver. That’s exactly it. What Trumka is trying to get is a waiver for his union buddies, and he wants the penalties to be delayed ’til he can get those waivers. Just like members of Congress said, “We can’t afford this! We can’t afford this!” So Obama came along and is gonna give them subsidies from the Office of Personnel Management.

So that’s what Trumka’s angling for. It’s why he is whining and moaning, “We can’t afford it. Oh, my God, we didn’t know! We need a waiver! We need a waiver!” Once he gets his waiver, then everything will be fine, and you will be stuck with this — and that’s what these leftists are all gonna do. They’re always gonna be trying to find ways to exempt themselves from this as they do.

They write laws for all of us and then they exempt themselves from it, and that’s why Trumka’s whining and moaning. He doesn’t want the thing repealed. He just doesn’t want to have to abide by it. What he’s really saying to Obama is, “Look, man, we’re responsible for you being elected. You give us a break. If you’re gonna give these members of Congress and their staffs a break, think about us.”

That’s what he’s doing.