RUSH: You want to hear the table of contents in the Max Baucus bill? This is the one everybody’s all excited about now, Gang of Six in there, three Republicans, three Democrats. Remember, now, 
Baucus announced yesterday part of his plan is a fine of up to 3,800 bucks on citizens via the IRS if you don’t have health insurance. It’s going to be mandatory just like automobile insurance is.
‘Section I: Health systems savings.’ There are four chapters. ‘Ensuring appropriate payment. Capturing productivity gains. Reducing geographic variation in spending, and modifying beneficiary contributions.’ ‘Section II: Options for Modifying the Exclusion for Employer-Provided Health Insurance.’ (Repeats for emphasis.) ‘Options for Modifying the Exclusion for Employer-Provided Health Insurance.’ ‘Section III: Other Health Care Relate Revenue Raisers, Modify Or Repeal The Itemized Deduction For Medical Expenses. Repeal Or Modify The Special Deduction And Special Unearned Premium Rule For Blue Cross And Blue Shield Or Other Quantifying Organizations. Modify Health Savings Accounts. Modify Or Repeal The Exclusion For Employer Provided Reimbursement Of Medical Expenses Under Flexible Spending Arrangements And Health Reimbursement Arrangements.’ Wow, they’re really simplifying this, aren’t they?
Now, every time you hear me say ‘modify or repeal,’ think ‘eliminate or cut.’ Or another word, yeah. (laughing) It begins with an F. Another word we can’t use. ‘Limit The Qualified Medical Expense Definition. Modify The FICA Tax Exemption.’ That’s Social Security. ‘Extend The Medicare Payroll Tax To All State And Local Government Employees. Modify The Requirements For Tax Exempt Hospitals.’ Now, whenever you hear ‘modify or limit,’ or ‘repeal,’ or ‘limit;’ think ‘cut,’ or ‘get rid of,’ or the F-bomb. ‘Section IV: Lifestyle Related Revenue Raisers. Impose A Uniform Alcohol Excise Tax. Enact A Sugar Sweetened Beverage Excise Tax. Section V: Administration’s Revenue Raising Proposals,’ and I have them all here. I printed it out. I’m sorry it’s very long. It’s five pages.
‘The President has outlined a number of possible revenue raising provisions as part of the Administration’s Fiscal Year 2010 budget proposals. In Committee discussions on health care reform, the focus has been on health care-related program savings and revenue raising proposals. However, the Chairman desires to provide, for the information of Members and potential discussion, a list of the President’s Budget proposals. Revenues Dedicated to the Health Reform Reserve Fund. 1. Limit the Tax Rate at which Itemized Deductions Reduce Tax Liability to 28 Percent. 2. Reduce the Tax Gap and Make Reforms. Expand Information Reporting. Require Information Reporting for Private Separate Accounts of Life Insurance Companies. Require Information Reporting on Payments to Corporations.
‘Require a Certified Taxpayer Identification Number from Contractors and Allow Certain Withholding. Require Increased Information Reporting for Certain Government Payments for Property and Services. Increase Information Return Penalties Improve Compliance by Business.’ Well, ‘Expand Information Reporting’ means all of us in the private sector have to tell the government more and more about what we’re doing. ‘Require E-Filing by Certain Large Organizations. Implement Standards Clarifying when Employee Leasing Companies Can Be Held Liable for Their Clients’ Federal Employment Taxes. Strengthen Tax Administration Allow Assessment of Criminal Restitution as Tax. Revise Offer-in-Compromise Application Rules. Expand IRS Access to Information in the National Directory of New Hires for Tax Administration Purposes. Make Repeated Willful Failure to File a Tax Return a Felony.’
This is in the Max Baucus health care bill. That’s just page one. There are four more of these things. Yeah. Only the rich are going to be paying for this. A couple millionaires going to be paying for all this. You’re going to get it free. ‘3. Make Reforms to Close Tax Loopholes.’ ‘Impose Penalty on Failure to Comply with Electronic Filing Requirements.’ ‘Clarify That the Bad Check Penalty Applies to Electronic Checks and Other Payment Forms.’ ‘Expand Required Electronic Filing by Tax Return Preparers Expand Penalties.’ This is ‘Section V: Administration’s Revenue Raising Proposals.’ ‘Improve Investigative Disclosure Statute.’ ‘Extension of Statute of Limitations where State Tax Adjustment Affects Federal Tax Liability,’ meaning (snorts), make it more difficult to deduct your state taxes on your federal return.
‘Deny Deduction for Punitive Damages. Repeal Lower-of-Cost-or-Market Inventory Accounting Method. Modify Estate and Gift Tax Valuation Discounts and Make Other Reforms.’ ‘4. Modify Alternative Fuel Mixture Credit.’ That’s ethanol. This is in the health care bill. ‘Other Revenue Raising Proposals: 1. Other Revenue Changes and Loophole Closers: Reinstate Superfund Excise Taxes. Reinstate Superfund Environmental Income Tax. Tax Carried (Profit) Interests as Ordinary Income. Codify ‘Economic Substance’ Doctrine Repeal the Last-In, First-Out (LIFO) Method of Accounting for Inventories. Reform US International Tax System. … Defer Deduction of Expenses, Except R&E Expenses, Related to Deferred Income. Reform Foreign Tax Credit: Determine the Foreign Tax Credit on a Pooling Basis.
‘Repeal 80/20 Company Rules. Prevent the Avoidance of Dividend Withholding Taxes. Modify Tax Rules for Dual Capacity Taxpayers … Require Withholding on Payments of FDAP Income Made Through Nonqualified Intermediaries. Require Withholding on Gross Proceeds Paid to Certain Nonqualified Intermediaries. Require Reporting of Certain Transfers of Money or Property to Foreign Financial Accounts. Require Disclosure of FBAR Accounts to be Filed with Tax Return. Require Third-Party Information Reporting Regarding the Transfer of Assets to Foreign Financial Accounts and the Establishment of Foreign Financial Accounts.’ It goes on. ‘Eliminate Oil and Gas Company Preferences. Levy Tax on Certain Offshore Oil and Gas Production. Repeal Credit for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) Projects. Repeal Credit for Production from Marginal Wells. Repeal Expensing of Intangible Drilling Costs. Repeal Deduction for Tertiary Injectants.
‘Repeal Passive Loss Exception for Working Interests in Oil and Gas Properties. Repeal Percentage Depletion. Repeal Domestic Manufacturing Deduction for Oil and Gas Production. Increase the Amortization Period for Geological and Geophysical Costs to Seven Years. Eliminate the Advanced Earned Income Tax Credit. … Reinstate the 39.6-Percent Rate Reinstate the 36-Percent Rate for Taxpayers with Income over $250,000 (Married Filing a Joint Return) and $200,000 (Single). Reinstate the Limitation on Itemized Deductions for Taxpayers with Income over $250,000…’ These are all ‘revenue raisers’ in the Max Baucus bill, ‘Section V: Administration’s Revenue Raising Proposals.’ Okay, we’ve got what Obama wants to do with all these taxes and eliminations of this and modifications and repeals. Let’s see if he talks about any of this tonight in his speech. Well, of course, he’ll do all this and we still won’t have enough money.
He’s going to break the bank. He’s gonna kill the private sector with this. He’s gonna kill competition. He’s gonna destroy incentive. He’s gonna raise the price of gasoline and oil-related products through the wazoo. Folks, this is the point. This is the Max Baucus bill but it’s the Obama bill and this is how this stuff is all going to happen. This is not about health care when you read through this. This is all about the elimination of as much private sector competition as there can be, punitive taxation, penalties galore. It has nothing to do with health care. And all this is supposed to save us money? No! It’s not even going to offset the deficit because it’s gonna limit tax revenues because it’s going to break people. And then we come to the accompanying story here from the Washington Post: ‘Recovery May Well Wait on the Wealthy to Step up Their Spending.’ There’s another story here from McClatchy: ‘A Year After the Financial Crisis, Consumer Economy is Dead.’
I better take a break here. I’ll do these two stories when we come back but theory fascinating. Because you people, you people, you’re saving too much. Just yesterday or over the weekend, Obama was saying, ‘You’re not saving enough. We need to expand savings options, and one of the things we’re going to do and we’re going to send your income tax refund to you in a savings bond,’ which allows them to keep your money! Forced savings. Even though you’re saving too much and not spending enough. Now we’re waiting for the rich to step up their spending. Because I guess the poor getting food stamps to buy food, toothpaste, and detergent simply isn’t reviving the economy. Tax cuts for the poor simply aren’t doing the trick.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I got a question in the e-mail during the break: ‘Why does this require a certain certified taxpayer ID number from contractors to allow certain withholding?’ Right now, independent contractors — and there’s a ten-point IRS definition that has to be met for you to be an independent contractor. For example, when you pay a lawyer you don’t withhold anything from your payment to the lawyer and report to the IRS. You just give the lawyer your payment and then the lawyer has to declare the income, files a quarterly estimate and so forth. There are certain independent contractors that you pay that you don’t withhold any taxes from. That’s going to change under this bill. Require a certified taxpayer ID number from contractors — that means independent contractors, that means 1099 contractors are going to have withholding taxes taken out.
Now, in the case of a doctor payment or a lawyer payment, are you going to have to do the withholding and report to the government, if you’re the client, you’re the customer? I don’t know. But somebody’s going to have to do the withholding. Are the lawyers going to have to do it themselves, the independent contractors, because right now what they do is they file quarterly and they file estimates based on sliding scale and so forth. It’s actually kind of nice ’cause you get to keep your money longer and use it longer rather than give it to the government and that’s what they want to change. They want the money now. They don’t want you to have it. They want as much withholding as they can get. This is all about the limitation of freedom. When you go through this list in the Baucus bill, administration revenue enhancers or revenue raisers, you find out that the health care bill is where all the tax changes are going to take place all under the guise of making health care cheaper and lowering the deficit and raising revenue to provide health care for the people that don’t have it.
The Washington Post State-Controlled Media did an analysis of the House bill. Even if it’s passed as is and signed into law, after ten years there are still something like 25 or 17 million uninsured in this country. The Senate bill is even worse. It’s not even doing what it seeks to accomplish because that’s not what it seeks to accomplish. It doesn’t seek to insure everybody. If this Baucus bill happens, what’s going to happen is more and more people are going to be uninsured, premiums are going to skyrocket, and the whole idea there is, ‘Oh, my gosh, look at all the people unemployed and uninsured, oh, my, we need the public option.’ They’re going to try, if it takes them two years to get this, they might pass a health care bill next week that says we’re going to study the issue further. They’re going to pass something that Obama can say, ‘Got my health care bill,’ and then they’re going to keep adding to it and adding to it til they finally get their public option. You’ve heard Barney Frank say it’s what they want. You’ve heard Maxine Waters say that’s what they want. You’ve heard Jan Schakowsky of Illinois say it. Even Obama has said it in speeches in 2003 and 2007. Will he tell us that tonight? Is that what he’s going to say? Of course not. Here, listen to Baucus. This is this afternoon on his plan. He’s talking to a couple of reporters.
BAUCUS: I very much hope and do expect Republicans to be on board. I don’t know how many, but if there are not any, I’m going to move forward in any event.
RUSH: Well, he’s going to move his bill with or without Republicans. All this talk of bipartisanship is BS. And Olympia Snowe is not on board. She’s not on board the public option despite the reporting to the contrary. So Baucus is pretty much admitting this Gang of Six thing is nothing but spin. Ah, if I can’t get Republicans I’m going to move it forward anyway. Stand by, folks. Get ready. They’re ratcheting it up, and the news tomorrow is going to be, ‘Wow, great comeback. Great, great comeback. Oh, Obama pulled a rabbit. The old Obama is back.’ I just know it. In fact, it will probably be the case tonight after the speech. Be prepared.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Barney Frank on Street Signs, CNBC this afternoon, Erin Burnett said, ‘Men’s Health magazine is going to run an article where they spoke to the president. He said our kids drink way too much soda. I think it’s an idea we should be exploring.’ Not his damn business what people’s kids drink, none of his damn business! She said to Barney Frank, ‘That’s specifically referring to a soda tax. Could a soda tax go in here? Is all of that still up for grabs?’
FRANK: Very unlikely. I guess the other question is will Men’s Health have a picture of the president with his shirt off given the nature of their coverage. No, I think it’s very unlikely that there will be a soda tax.
BURNETT: What about the tax on the top 5% of earners? Is that a done deal in this bill?
FRANK: I hope it is.
RUSH: Well, I just read to you here in the Baucus bill, and in the health care related revenue raisers, Section 4, lifestyle related revenue raisers. ‘Enact a sugar sweetened beverage excise tax.’ It’s in the table of contents of the Baucus bill. Every tax you can think of and then some is in this bill.