RUSH: You know, I don’t care how Obama tries to spin this. He’s up there now with the French president, Hollande. I don’t know if they’re asking the French president about his wife and his mistress and his girlfriend. I don’t know if they’re asking him that. But somebody just asked Obama about the three-year delay of the employer mandate, and there’s no answer that can get him off the hook on this.
But this one, he said, “Well, we just learned that this will give the employers more time to be in compliance with the law.” I don’t care how he spins this. The fact of the matter is, this was sold to everybody as a panacea. I mean, it was sold to the true believers as the big fix, and it was so good and so wonderful and so helpful. It was gonna insure the uninsured! It was gonna keep the insured insured. It was gonna lower premiums.
It was going to widen the availability of health care itself!
Of course, none of that has happened; just the exact opposite. For political reasons only, in order to avoid being destroyed at every election since 2010, they have delayed or waived the implementation of the very punitive aspects of this law. And it’s purely political — and the entire Washington, DC, political spectrum understands now. They’re not delaying the implementation because it isn’t ready. They’re not delaying it to help anybody except themselves.
They’re not delaying the implementation because they’re having trouble getting it right because they’re never gonna get it right. It’s never going to do what it was advertised to do. It is a punitive piece of legislation. It puts people who have no idea what they’re doing in charge of health care. We’re seeing the result. It was sold as great. It was sold as helpful. It was sold as a solution.
Yet the only way to keep from doing even more damage to the country, to the health care system, to the small business sector? The only way to avoid damaging all that is to not implement this thing! In the process, Obama’s trying to insure himself and his party from being damaged politically. So yesterday, they announce another delay in the requirement on businesses to provide health coverage, giving some employers a reprieve next year while phasing in the mandate for others. The Regime… Get this, now.
This is not even constitutional what he’s doing. He does not have the constitutional authority, by virtue of the law itself. I’ll get to that in a minute. “The administration will let employers with 50 to 99 employees off the hook in 2015.” I mean, that right there: The Regime “will let”? In their magnificent munificence, they “will let employers … off the hook.” To be in compliance with this law is damaging and harmful, and so we’re going to let them off the hook?
“They’ll be required to report on how many workers are covered, but they will have until 2016 after the next two elections before they face a penalty for failing to cover employees. Employers with 100 or more workers will be required to provide health insurance to full-time staff, but the new rules will only require them to cover 70% of workers next year, and 95% the following year.” It’s an unmitigated disaster.
There’s no other way to describe it. It’s harmful, it’s punitive, it’s never going to work. If it were as Obama and the Regime and the Democrats advertised — if it were the panacea they promised, if it were the fix that they promised, if it was the solution they all promised — Obamacare would already have been fully implemented by now and the American people would demand access to it. The American people would be wanting it.
Instead, they’re running away from it.
They’re hiding from it.
They’re trying to avoid it.
They don’t want to be found by the health care system. The Regime knows full well that if they don’t delay the implementation to this thing, the Democrat Party is dead. Terry Jeffrey writing at Cybercast News. I think it’s Terry Jeffrey. If this piece isn’t by him, I know he wrote one. “Obama’s new delay of employer mandate violates the plain language of the law,” and this is being sort of just glanced over by people.
He doesn’t even have the power to do this. What he’s doing is not legal. He doesn’t have the authority — and while people gloss over that, they’re focusing on, “What does it mean for Obama?” Believe me, they’re all coming to the conclusion that this is purely political, and he’s losing support on this from his side of the aisle. Ron Fournier, National Journal. It’s fascinating. His first opinion of this was (paraphrased), “Hey, hey, stop complaining, you right-wingers!
“All he’s doing is manipulating taxes, and that’s perfectly legal. The president can delay or speed up the implementation of the tax aspect of this law any time he wants,” and then somebody said to him, “No, no, no, no. It has nothing to do with that, Ron. He is manipulating this law to avoid political pain,” and Fournier said, “Oh, is that what he’s doing? Well, then I totally agree. He can’t do that.”
Honest to God, that’s the way it came out.
The argument is, “Okay, if you’ve got an albatross piece of legislation…” This is conventional Washington thinking, by the way. This is inside-the-Beltway thinking, both parties, both sides. If your president has a piece of legislation that’s an albatross around your neck, and you got an election coming up, what you do is you change policies. You propose new laws or whatever to change people’s attitudes and opinions of you.
And that’s totally permissible. But you do not go in, violate the Constitution, and simply decide, “I’m not gonna implement that, not gonna implement that, not gonna implement that.” If you’re doing that to improve your political positions, then that is said to be unfair — and as sophomoric as that sounds, everybody in the Beltway agrees with that.
“President Barack Obama’s Treasury Department issued a new regulation today that for the second time directly violates the plain and unambiguous text of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act by allowing some businesses to avoid the law’s Dec. 31, 2013 deadline to provide health insurance coverage to their employees.”
That’s actually when the mandate was supposed to kick in. It was by the 31st last year. So we’re already way behind. Initially, on July 2, 2013, the [Regime] unilaterally delayed the deadline for the employer mandate until 2015. Now, the [Regime] is unilaterally delaying it for some businesses until 2016. … The text of the law itself describes an ‘applicable large employer’ as follows:
“‘The term “applicable large employer” means, with respect to a calendar year, an employer who employed an average of at least 50 full-time employees on business days during the preceding calendar year.’ … In its official summary of PPACA, the Congressional Research Service said: ‘(Sec. 1513, as modified by section 10106) Imposes fines on large employers (employers with more than 50 full-time employees) who fail to offer their full-time employees the opportunity to enroll in minimum essential coverage or who have a waiting period for enrollment of more than 60 days.'”
That’s the text of the law. It goes on, and it’s perfectly clear. He is violating the text of the law. The law says he cannot do what he’s doing, and he’s doing it anyway. Now, let’s go to the audio sound bites. Up first, Dr. Krauthammer on Fox Special Report with Bret Baier, the All-Star Panel, and they’re discussing Obama’s latest delay of the mandate.
KRAUTHAMMER: This is stuff that you do in a banana republic. It’s as if the law is simply a blackboard on which Obama writes any number he wants, any delay he wants, and any provision. It’s now reached a point where it is so endemic that nobody even notices or complains. I think if the complaints had started with the first arbitrary changes — and these are not adjustments or transitions. These are political decisions to minimize the impact leading up to an election, and it’s changing the law in a way that you are not allowed to do.
RUSH: Now, that is the conventional, inside-the-Beltway wisdom that, “Hey, you can’t change a law in a way you’re not allowed to if it’s going to minimize negative impact of you leading up to an election.” Somehow, everybody inside the Beltway says that. That sounds so sophomoric to me, but everybody agrees with that. But the part of this sound bite that’s interesting to me is, “It’s now reached a point where it is so endemic that nobody even notices or complains.
“I think if the complaints had started with the first arbitrary changes…” They did. There were all kinds of people who’ve been complaining about this since before there were arbitrary changes. There were people trying to call attention to the outrageousness and the impossibilities of this law while it was being debated. There were people trying to call people’s attention to what Obama’s true long-term intentions were with this law, before it was even voted on.
With the first series of waivers, there were all kinds of catcalls from people in the Tea Party, Tea Party Republicans in Congress, certain talk radio people. There was a bunch of people raising hell about what Obama was doing. There just didn’t seem to be any interest in that inside the Beltway. There was a guy named Ted Cruz who was trying to get everybody to listen to him about this, and you know what they did to Ted Cruz insides the Beltway and even within the Republican Party.
Ted Cruz and Mike Lee said, “Can we stop this? Can we bring this to a halt? Can we stop the implementation? Can we delay this? Can we defund this?” and you know what was said about them by people inside the Beltway. They were called extremists, and worse. They were portrayed as problems for the Republican Party. Kathleen Sebelius, back in November of 2012 said, “There will not be any delays, and to talk about delays is silly. It’s unnecessary. We’ll not do it.”
There have been people — and there have been a lot of them, and they have been loud — who have been dead right on from the get-go about this. To lament that nobody said anything? So now when Obama does it, it just seems like no big deal. There are a lot of us who are hoarse, a lot of you who are hoarse! I mean how does it get to the point that it is so endemic that nobody even notices or complains? It gets to that point because when the first people noticing and complaining about it speak up, they’re impugned!
They’re criticized, they’re marginalized, they’re told to shut up — and then it keeps on going and they keep speaking up, and they are continually told shut up. (interruption) We can’t do anything about it. That’s my whole point. There hasn’t been any push-back ever from the Republican Party on this, and there isn’t any now. It isn’t gonna happen. (interruption) They’re not even asked the question. It’s just a little thought process exercise. (interruption) What if somebody actually did begin impeachment proceedings?
Do you think that would slow Obama down in this extra-constitutional behavior, or not? Probably not. (interruption) Yeah. Maybe if the polls showed it. True. But it isn’t gonna happen anyway. But the idea that nobody’s spoken up and nobody said anything about this until now, and it’s too late once everybody finally starts noticing? Bob Beckel on Fox today was asked to comment on what Dr. Krauthammer said, and he was not happy.
BECKEL: I think Charles has stepped way over the line by calling this a banana republic. The fact is that this is an enormously complex law. It is requiring… You literally have to rewrite it as you move along because the situation has never been like this. Do I think this was moved because of political reasons? Yes, I do. And I’m glad it is.
RUSH: See? Everybody knows. He’s not moving this law to help anybody but him. He’s not doing any of this to provide anybody any assistance — patients, doctors, hospitals, or businesses. He’s only trying to help himself and his party. Beckel says that’s fine. “Charles stepped way over the line there calling this a banana republic.” Hey, Bob? Grab sound bite number three. I want to take you back to me on this program July 3rd, 2009.
RUSH ARCHIVE: We have 232 years of evidence — and as Lanny Davis would say, of “poof” — that independence works far better than dependence does. It’s better for the individual — and as our founders foresaw, better for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But now with the unemployment numbers at nine-and-a-half percent (and no end in sight) to the plunge in the number of people working and our economic growth in negative numbers, it is safe to say that the United States is or is on the verge of becoming a banana republic.
RUSH: There you have it, folks. We’re on the cutting edge of societal evolution yet again, characterizing the Regime as a banana republic barely six months into it.