RUSH: Politico has a story today that might as well be called “The Democrat National Committee PR Site.”

“Why Liberals Are Abandoning the Obamacare Employer Mandate.”

Now, folks, this is so obvious as to be risible. For those of you in Rio Linda, it means laughable. The Politico is now pretending that the Democrats have changed their minds about the employer mandate, yeah, because, you know, you got an election coming up and the employer mandate — providing health care — employer mandate, we can’t, oh, no, that’s not gonna look good for us going into the election.

So this is a story about how the Democrats and some of it brightest scholars at Democrat think tanks also agree we’ve gotta drop, we have to abandon the employer mandate. And this story is about pretending that the Democrats have actually changed their minds, ’cause they haven’t. This is just an election year maneuver. Because once the midterms are over they’re gonna get rid of it, which is a preposterous lie, the story says. They’re not gonna get rid of it, no way. The Democrats just know they have to say this to get campaign donations from businesses and try to fool the low-information voters. Once elections are over in November it’s gonna be back to the anti-business tick as usual and Obamacare will once again be impossible to change because it’s the law of the land.

Have you ever noticed that whenever anybody other than Democrats wants to change Obamacare, “No, no, no, no, you can’t. Settled law now. I mean, Obamacare is the law of the land. You can’t change it.” When Obama comes along or the Democrats come along and they want to issue a waiver or, say, abandon the employer mandate, “Oh, fine, absolutely. In fact, it’s a brilliant idea. Yep, let’s get right on that.”

Of course there is no law of the land when the Democrats want to change it. But if there’s any doubt about how the Democrats are running away from Obamacare, check out the headline from the AP today: “Senate Democrats: Obamacare? What’s That?” Senate Democrats are actually trying to pass off, Obamacare? That’s old. There’s nothing there. Obamacare, what’s that?

Now, The Politico story: “Robert GibbsÂ’ prediction that ObamacareÂ’s employer mandate would be jettisoned shocked Democrats back in April.” And I remember him saying it. “By July, the former aide and longtime confidant of President Barack Obama had a lot more company. More and more liberal activists and policy experts who help shape Democratic thinking on health care have concluded that penalizing businesses if they donÂ’t offer health insurance is an unnecessary element of the Affordable Care Act that may do more harm than good.”

They don’t believe this. This is simply something they think they’ve got to do now. The key element of the employer mandate — there are two parts of it. They must provide health insurance. If they don’t, there is a fine. Now, let’s be honest about something else. Let’s just remember, the fines, both on the employee, the individual mandate, the employer mandate, people who do not go out and get insurance or do not provide it have to pay a fine. Those fines — now for forgive me for speaking this way. I’m just speaking within the context of the law. Those fines are a primary funding mechanism. The one thing this story does not reference and does not talk about, getting rid of the employer mandate also gets rid of the fine for not providing health insurance. And that means they are getting rid of one of the primary funding sources.

Now, folks, at every turn, every one of these waivers or changes in Obamacare, a fundamental aspect is that they are eliminating a funding source. Now, I don’t want to be misunderstood. I’m not speaking in favor of Obamacare at all. I haven’t changed my mind on it. Do not misunderstood. But simply taking it as a piece of legislation and looking at it that way, there are many ways that they wrote in this thing being paid for.

Don’t forget, they promised that Obamacare was gonna lower the deficit. They promised that Obamacare was gonna lower premiums $2,500. They promised that the uninsured would be insured. They promised all kinds of great things with this, and many of the things they promised included vastly reduced costs for everybody.

Now, as they eliminate the funding mechanisms with all of these waivers and exemptions and changes, guess what? We have here the equivalent of Social Security with no payroll tax. How long would Social Security have lasted if there was no payment mechanism for it? FICA, on your paycheck, is how Social Security, theoretically, is paid for, and was at the outset. They’re taking away, they’re eliminating, not all by any means, but enough of the funding mechanisms. This legislation is just gonna end up with more chaos, and there’s gonna be more contempt. There’s gonna be more turmoil. There isn’t gonna be anywhere near the money to pay for this because they are not getting rid of Obamacare.

They are just, as they’ve always done, temporarily suspending the parts of Obamacare that make everybody hate it. The things they lied about when it was all getting going, they are eliminating so that people do not see the real punitive aspects of this law. And in this case, they’re trying to lighten, or lessen the blow on business by simply telling them, “You know what, it was unrealistic. We shouldn’t have put that in there at all.” They’re saying they’re gonna get rid of the employer mandate. So no longer are employers gonna have to provide health insurance.

Well, somebody’s gonna have to provide. The individual mandate’s still alive. They haven’t gotten rid of that. So you’re still gonna have to go get it or pay the fine, but businesses are let off the hook here for providing it and/or paying a fine. Now, remember, this is all just what they’re saying now in the run-up to the midterms when they need donations from businesses to fund their campaigns. They know that Obamacare is already hated by the voters.

But if there is any doubt about how hard the Democrats are running away from Obamacare, I just want to remind you again of that AP headline: “Senate Democrats: Obamacare? What’s That?” And the Politico story: “Leading Democrats in Congress arenÂ’t bolting from the employer mandate, at least not before the November election. But the White House has delayed it twice in the past year, dubbed it ‘not critical’ and said it will be phased in more slowly when its begins next year. … Democrats remain committed to the individual mandate — the core of the coverage expansion through the new Obamacare markets.”

Folks, they’re creating an absolute hodgepodge mess out of this, all for their own electoral benefit. Virtually I would say 75% of the real illustrative “here’s what this law’s really all about” punitive characteristics are being delayed or waived ’cause people already hate it. If people found out what was really in this, if this thing fully implements someday, it’s of course gonna be too late then, theoretically, if there hasn’t been a full move to repeal it. No. It’s not about making it work at all. It’s about making sure it doesn’t work. The Democrats and the White House, right now their full-fledged objective is to make sure this bill does not work as designed, particularly before the elections.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We’re gonna start in New Haven, Connecticut, with — well, I don’t understand the phonetic. Esmayhen, it looks like. Esmehan. Anyway —

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Yeah. Thank you for calling. Great to have you here. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Mr. Rush. How are you today?

RUSH: Very well. Thank you very much.

CALLER: I am a Turkish American, and I’ve been in America for 35 years. And I travel all over the world at just 16 and a half years old. I work all my life, and now I end up marrying wonderful man and everything, and I’m retired from Navy, and I will have $2,200 a month. And I still have insurance of $238, $5,000 deductible, and I have my doctor, and I’m very happy, pleased with my insurance. But now I have to change it because Obama — oh, I’m so angry. I hate him. Well, anyway, I have to pay $600 a month the same $5,000. That’s the cheapest insurance I can have is $600 a month. And I think that’s terrible, terrible to do to normal people. I’m not millionaire. I’m just normal person. And he supposed to help us. But he doesn’t. He’s hurting us. He’s terrible person. He’s helping the people who don’t want to work. They want to stay home. And I’ve been —

RUSH: No, no, no. You’re misunderstanding this, Esmehan. I’m glad you called so I can straighten you out here. You’ve had an unfair advantage ever since you arrived in America and it’s time the playing field was leveled. You may not be a millionaire, but you have a job. That’s not fair. If you can afford all this you’ve gotta have some kind of a job or you’re retired and have some sort of a pension that can pay for it. This is called leveling the playing field.

This is called making sure that you find out what it’s like to be somebody you’re not. ‘Cause it’s not fair, it’s not fair that you have been able to provide all this yourself. It’s not fair. So now you’re gonna find out what it’s like when you can’t, and you’re gonna be dropped into the same boat with the poor and unfortunate who are poor and unfortunate because America made them that way. And so what appears to you to be punitive — well, it is punitive, in fact. Let me ask you a quick question. When all this was getting started, were you in favor of it? Did you think it was gonna be a benefit for you, Obamacare, I mean?

CALLER: No, I never think of it, and I don’t like him. I never did like him because I know he’s going to lie, because only stupid people believe him. Me and my husband, we’re not. We know what he’s trying to do.

RUSH: If that’s true, then there are a lot of stupid people. By the way, I’ve got a story, it’s here, and it’s a Forbes story. It’s by Merrill Matthews. The headline says it all. “We’ve Crossed the Tipping Point; Most Americans Now Receive Government Benefits — Obamacare has pushed us over the entitlements tipping point. In 2011 some 49.2 percent of U.S. households received benefits from one or more government programs –about 151 million out of an estimated 306.8 million Americans.” This is according to the Census Bureau, so it’s Regime numbers.

“Currently, around 6 million to 7 million Americans who have signed up for Obamacare are receiving taxpayer-provided subsidies,” even though they may not be qualified for them and even though the Regime’s numbers cannot be trusted. We still have to deal with ’em ’cause they’re the only numbers we’ve got and they’re putting out six to seven million, and they’re getting subsidies. We know that many of them don’t qualify.

“There are another 3 million who have signed up for Medicaid. That means some 10 million Americans — or a total of about 161 million — are now getting government subsidies (though the final number might be somewhat lower since some may have been receiving benefits already).” So it’s close. I don’t want to nitpick here, but it actually might be worse than 51% because 87% of the eight million who’ve signed up for Obamacare do get a subsidy. That’s seven million people. Medicaid expansion has enrolled not three million new, but four million more people.

So Obama has increased government dependents by 11 million people, which just happens to be the number of illegal aliens that we are told are living in the country. The bottom line, we have crossed the tipping point, according to Forbes and any other person, agency that wants to investigate it. And it appears it’s really tight. Either we have crossed the tipping point or it’s just a matter of time.