RUSH: The health care plan, people are erupting. We’ve got the audio of Kathleen Sebelius and Arlen Specter being told what-for. People in Los Angeles, you ought to go to the Drudge Report. There’s a poster in Los Angeles of Obama made up to look like Heath Ledger’s Joker character in the last Batman movie. And I’ve always said the downfall for Obama — when the tipping point’s reached — is going to be when it becomes cool to dislike the guy, when it becomes cool to make fun of the guy, and it’s starting to happen here.
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RUSH: Folks, I have learned what the government’s new insurance companies are going to be called. As you know, Nancy Pelosi has made it plain. It’s time this month, in August, to demonize the insurance companies. That’s how they’re going to try to get you to change your mind and go the opposite direction from the way you’re going now, and that is support Obama’s health care plan. There are going to be two insurance companies run by the government: All Statist and Statist Farm. ‘Like a Big Brother, Statist Farm will be there.’ Statist Farm is also where you will be put out to pasture once you’re 70 years old and in bad health. It’s just amazing. Listen to this audio sound bite. This is from Philadelphia at the National Constitution Center on Independence Mall. Kathleen Sebelius, the Health and Human Services Secretary, and Senator Specter held a town hall meeting to talk about health care reform, and during the Q&A an unidentified man had this exchange with Secretary Sebelius.
MAN: My question to you is when congressmen stop at the notion of reading legislation because they aren’t qualified or they aren’t competent to understand it, how can we be confident that those congressmen are competent to reengineer the entire health care system?
AUDIENCE: (cheering)
SEBELIUS: I am… I am not a member of Congress, have never been one.
AUDIENCE: (grumbling)
SEBELIUS: That’s just a fact. I’ve just — I’m just telling you.
MAN: You don’t have to have been!
SEBELIUS: My observation is, I have never seen members of Congress work harder and it — it is acceptable to me for somebody —
AUDIENCE: (boos and angry shouts)
SEBELIUS: Hours and hours and hours and hours have been spent. If people say they haven’t read the legislation, then tell ’em to go back and read it. It’s available.
RUSH: I’ll tell you what, this is just the beginning. This whole month is going to be like this if these people have the guts to go out and do these town hall meetings. I think that they won’t. I think they’ll do junkets. I think incidents like this like, as we discussed last week, will be dismissed. ‘Well, the audience, she shows up and they’re uninformed. They’ve been engined up by talk radio and it’s an unruly mob! I — I — I can’t even promise security.’ This is how they’re going to get out of doing this, but it isn’t gonna matter. This is a fever pitch that people have gotten themselves into over this, and this is easy to understand. They haven’t read the bill. It’s easy to understand: When you’ve got 72%, almost 80% of the people happy with their insurance, happy with their coverage, they don’t want to give it up — and they’re going to learn more and more, are learning each and every day that they will lose their private plan.
In fact, we’ve dug up some audio of Obama from a couple years ago stating that that’s his objective is to get rid of private insurance. He said it may take a little while to do it, but the public option is the end. Barney Frank is confirming it, too. You are going to lose your private insurance. It’s just… It’s the plan. It’s in the bill. It is going to happen. Obama is out there denying it when people ask him about it. Sebelius, I think, if you see that, she can barely hide her disdain for the voters showing up at these meetings. She has real contempt, and there’s surprise. You know, she is part of this cabal that thinks people look at government as though it’s parliamentarian royalty and that whenever anybody from The Government shows up, that we’re in awe and that we are totally trusting and that we believe everything they say and that they are instrumental to us in our lives. And when she gets out there and she sees this… These people never in touch with real America. Even though she saw governor of Kansas, these people are not in touch with real America, and they run up against stuff like this, and they’re totally shocked. They’re totally surprised that these people know more about what’s in the bill than Kathleen Sebelius even knows what’s in it, but she’s really shocked that these serfs have the audacity to object to anything she and Senator Specter say. Here’s the next bite. Sebelius and Specter had this little exchange.
SPECTER: We divide up the bill. We have to make judgments very fast…
AUDIENCE: (shouts and booing)
SPECTER: Every bill was read fully and understood by me before I voted.
AUDIENCE: (booing)
SEBELIUS: The Senate bill isn’t written, so don’t boot the senator for not reading a bill that isn’t written!
RUSH: That’s Sebelius there at the end saying, ‘The Senate bill isn’t written, so don’t boot the Senator for reading a bill that isn’t written. They know what that bill’s going to contain. There are a couple committees working on it. There’s some Republicans trying to come up with their own stupid (I think it’s idiotic) ‘bipartisan’ contribution to this thing. But the House bill, they ought to read that, too, because they’re going to be conferencing with it once the Senate bill gets done. But that crowd… I mean, this is Philadelphia, folks. This is not some red city or red state. This is Philadelphia. This is as Democrat union as you can get. This is a city that recently built a brand-new tall skyscraper and they did not install flush toilets and… Well, they installed newfangled toilets, and they didn’t install certain aspects of them because they weren’t needed. And the pipefitters union blew a gasket and they had to put in worthless pipes in the building just to keep the steamfitters and the pipefitters happy. This is a liberal town, and these people showing up, I’m sure that this was an unexpected reaction for both Specter and Sebelius. And you notice Specter said, ‘We have to make judgments very fast,’ people say, ‘No, you don’t!’ This bill doesn’t get implemented until 2013, four years from now. Why the haste? What really is the need for the speed? People are not stupid. This is easily understandable, and that’s why there’s so much trouble with it.
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RUSH: For those of you that are going to go to town meetings during the congressional recess this month, I have some specific questions that you need to start asking — and I’m going to be asking them, too. It is time to start demanding that Obama, Pelosi, and Reid and your member of Congress or your senator — you start demanding: What diseases and illnesses are covered? How much is covered? What drugs are covered. Let’s start getting specific with these people. Let’s move beyond, ‘Why don’t you read the bill first?’ and let’s start asking them specific questions. ‘How long will it take before I lose my own private insurance or my own employer insurance that I like? What diseases and illnesses are covered? And up to what age are these diseases covered? How much is covered? What drugs?’ Let’s start getting specific with these people. Here’s Nancy Pelosi on Political Capital, Bloomberg TV. Al Hunt interviewing her. Question: ‘You don’t expect health insurers to be part of my coalition that supports this bill?’
PELOSI (sped up): Well, I think — eh, uh, you know what? I don’t like using words like ‘villains,’ but people call me a villain all the time, so I figure that, uh, it’s probably okay to use it back. They have been the ones who have held — eh, eh, eh… The American people have been at their mercy, have not made healthier. They have made health care more costly. And it is important for us to have this legislation, um, that puts the leverage back in the hands of the patients. It’s about the American people.
RUSH: That just flat-out not true. You are not being given more leverage, you’re not being given more power, you’re not being given more coverage, and you’re not being given more care! You are being sandwiched and squeezed and all of that. And their purpose here is demonizing the insurance companies like they’ve always done to Big Pharma, Big Oil, big whatever. It’s now Big Insurance’s turn to be demonized and villainized by these people, because you don’t like what they see in the polling data. The polling data says more and more people now do not support the Obama health care plan than do. You note one of the groups, according to polling data, one of the groups that Obama’s losing the fastest is the precious independents.
Everybody in politics just goes gaga over ‘the independents,’ and the independents are bailing on this thing faster than any other identified political group and demographic. If they start losing those people, and when they start losing the seasoned citizens, folks? When that starts to happen — and it is — then there’s going to be hell to pay for these people. Here’s the bottom line: It doesn’t matter to them. It doesn’t matter what you think. It doesn’t matter what a majority of public opinion is. When they see a majority of public opinion opposed to them they start thinking, ‘How can we ram it down their throats anyway?’ Not listen to you. Not react to you. Not respond to you. This is about forcing something down all of our throats, even when a vast majority of people do not want it.
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RUSH: Let’s go back to one of these things in June. This is a Democrat. This is a town meeting in Setauket, New York, June 22nd, and it is Representative Tim Bishop, ripped at his own town hall meeting. We have three sound bites. Here’s the first.
MAN #1: Are you a veteran?
BISHOP: No, I’m not.
MAN #1: Have you ever been there? Have you ever been there as a vet? Okay, well, I have. And if I want to see a doctor, I don’t want to have to wait months. Do you know that?
AUDIENCE: Yeah! (applause)
BISHOP: Sir…
MAN #2: I’ve been there for years and you want to tell me how they run?
BISHOP: Sir, I understand the anger.
MAN #2: I’ll probably die in their hospital, so don’t lecture us that you know that the VA is an efficient medical system. It’s a very difficult system. It’s nothing to be proud of.
BISHOP: Shh! Sir? Sir! I am sorry, but I am proud of the VA.
MAN: Well, I’m not because I have (garbled).
RUSH: This whole thing started when Bishop started telling this town hall audience how proud he was of the VA system, and so that vet just launches into him. Now cap and trade comes up — and other thing… You know, another thing that’s happening to these town hall meetings is they are stunned at how informed you are. They are stunned at how educated you are about what they’re doing. In many cases you know more about legislation they’re going to vote on than they do. This next one is cap and trade. An unidentified guy says to Bishop, ‘Cap and trade’s got me scared to death.’
BISHOP: The overwhelming weight of the evidence, the scientific evidence, is that global warming is real. I also believe that it’s caused by human activity. I do. If in fact we go to cap and trade — and by the way, I don’t… There’s no guarantee that we will have it, but the vote —
AUDIENCE: (uproar)
BISHOP: Can I finish this sentence?
WOMAN: We need to know where you stand!
BISHOP: I’m about to tell you! Let me finish!
WOMAN: Yes or no.
BISHOP: I believe we have to reduce our carbon footprint, I believe that we have to get polluters under control and I believe that we have to make an investment in alternative and renewable sources of energy. That is the only path.
RUSH: All right, this guy is just reading talking points. He has been indoctrinated by Democrat Party leadership or whoever’s indoctrinating him because he’s just mouthing talking points. ‘We gotta reduce our carbon footprint! Manmade global warming is happening! We’re causing it. Human activity is causing it. We gotta get invested in renewable energy’ and this sort of thing. They have been working on this. You know, markets are an amazing thing. If there was an alternative energy out there, we’d have it. The fact is it isn’t there because there’s no market for it right now. The scare tactics are really coming out. Now somebody — it was a UK paper over the weekend? We are gonna hit peak oil production in ten years, and then it’s downhill after that.
That’s absolute BS. Get this about the New York Times: ‘New York Times Blames 2009’s Record Cold on Natural Factors; But Blamed Record Warmth in 2000 on Man-Made Global Warming! — The media and climate fear promoters appear to be in overdrive trying to spin recent global cooling and particularly the ‘year without a summer’ in many parts of the US … The New York Times reports that the record cold of 2009 is due to natural variations and even warned skeptics of man-made global warming not to be ‘buoyed’ by the brutal cold.’ But then back in 2000 they blamed all that record heat on global warming. Global warming is no different than health care; it’s no different than cap and trade. It is simply another branch of liberalism, statism, that is designed to expand government control over individuals and their liberty and their freedom and their income. It’s just that simple. And the worm’s turning on global warming, too. Do you realize the worm’s turning on that. More and more people are not buying this health care business whatsoever. The numbers on that are expanding with every poll. And if this plays out right, and we’re going to have a big role in this, you could do some great damage cultural to liberalism for a long time. Now, they’re never going to go away, and they’re always gonna keep trying this stuff. But they’re now out in the open, and they’re saying some of the most outrageous things that betray their real intentions. And their intentions are not what people want. Liberalism, statism is not what people want. Here’s the final sound bite from Tim Bishop’s June 22nd town hall in Setauket, New York. He gets a question from somebody to name a government agency that runs well.
MAN: What government agency has the government taken over that’s run beautifully and makes money?
BISHOP: Sir, we are not talking —
MAN: No, no, no! Please tell me. Please tell me.
BISHOP: That couldn’t —
MAN: I asked you a question. Please answer it.
BISHOP: Next! Okay when you stop talking I’ll be happy to answer. No one is talking about the government taking over health care.
MAN: Oh, no, no, no!
AUDIENCE: (roars boos) No!
BISHOP: One question at a time!
RUSH: ‘Nobody is talking about the government taking over health care,’ and this is a Democrat. This is a Democrat in New York, and his constituents are not buying it. This is back on June 22nd.
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RUSH: To Syracuse, Indiana, and this is Chris. I’m glad you waited, sir, and welcome to the program.
CALLER: Hello?
RUSH: Hi. Oh, I’m sorry you’re a female. That’s why you got confused. I’m sorry. I didn’t see that.
CALLER: Oh, I’m not confused. I think maybe you are. I know I’m a female.
RUSH: I was apologizing to you for calling you, sir, and that’s all.
CALLER: That’s okay.
RUSH: All right. Okay.
CALLER: I said ‘Chris’ instead of ‘Christine’ to the screener.
RUSH: Yeah. That was why.
CALLER: All right.
RUSH: It’s all my fault.
CALLER: Just a misunderstanding. Anyway, I’m calling because I was listening to your program driving Friday, and I heard about your Democrats facing horrors at town halls. And then I listened to Richard Wolffe on MSNBC, and he informed me that most of these town hall hoopla is coming from an organization. Well, actually it’s right-wing organization, and they are in cahoots with insurance companies, and it’s the same group that has orchestrated the tea bags (sic) and that most of this is all orchestrated, that some of the individuals are being bussed to these town hall meetings for Democrats and, uh, and um, they’re being told to be disruptive, they’re being instructed how to logistically stand in different portions of the room so that they, uh… They get more bang for their buck, and I was wondering if you had heard about that.
RUSH: No. NBC is not a credible source with me.
CALLER: But Politico is?
RUSH: Not everything on Politico is, but NBC clearly is not. And Richard Wolffe, I… But let’s ignore the source and let’s play a game, Chris.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: Let’s assume it’s true.
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: Let’s assume that everything you heard is true.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: You know my reaction?
CALLER: What?
RUSH: About damn time! We have had groups like ACORN and Democrat rent-a-mobs making up excuses and lying about things they oppose to effect public policy for years while people like me haven’t had time because we work. We do not protest for a living. We do not rent ourselves out to be part of mobs. So, if this is actually an orchestrated event, then I’m glad somebody on our side is getting in gear. I don’t happen to believe it ’cause I happen to see the polls — and I know what Richard Wolffe and NBC are doing, Chris. They’re trying to cover for Obama. These people are not ‘reporting’ anything about the health care program. They are repeating what they hear from the White House and from people there: Rahm Emanuel; Robert Gibbs, press secretary; Obama himself. It’s the definition of propaganda. It’s the definition of state-controlled media.
These people whoever they are and wherever they’re coming from they know what’s in the health bill. They are asking questions — and members of Congress at these town hall meetings, Chris, don’t know the answers. These are informed people. They know what’s in it and it hasn’t been because NBC and Richard Wolffe have told them. It hasn’t been because anybody at ABC or CBS or the New York Times or the Washington Post has told them what’s in the health care bill. There is an alternative media out there that’s getting the news out on this, and when people find out about it, they don’t like it. I don’t care… There are a lot of Democrats that don’t like this as well. These are Democrat districts where this is taking place!
You gotta understand something, too, Chris. People know who to protest. The Republicans can’t stop anything. The Republicans don’t have the votes in the House or the Senate to stop one thing. So why go protest Republicans? This isn’t a Republican initiative. The Republicans are not in charge of writing this health care bill. They don’t support it. They’re not in favor of it. They have no role — and even if the majority of the American people don’t want it, it’s still going to be rammed down their throats. So I’m glad you called. I’ll check. Have you heard this anywhere? Have you heard anybody else charge this? I haven’t heard it, either. It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other. The people who are showing up are genuinely angry. And if their transportation is being facilitated, it’s about dame time. You gotta take these people on the way they play the game. The aggressor sets the rules in a conflict.
Now, this next story this is from state-controlled Associated Press. Now, this story… The information in this story is a grand, perfect illustration of the folly of the Obama economic program. ‘Tax Revenues Post Biggest Drop Since Depression — The recession is starving the government of tax revenue, just as the president and Congress are piling a major expansion of health care and other programs on the nation’s plate and struggling to find money to pay the tab. The numbers could hardly be more stark: Tax receipts are on pace to drop 18 percent this year, the biggest single-year decline since the Great Depression, while the federal deficit balloons to a record $1.8 trillion,’ and it’s going to come in higher than that. ‘Other figures underscore the recession’s impact: Individual income tax receipts are down 22 percent from a year ago.
‘Corporate income taxes are down 57 percent. Social Security tax receipts could drop for only the second time since 1940, and Medicare taxes are on pace to drop for only the third time ever.’ We have gone beyond the malaise of Jimmy Carter. All of these job losses have led to fewer taxpayers. These numbers make total sense. Now, the question… See, to me this is basic. If you’re worried about government revenue, if you really want to generate some genuine revenue rather than print it, the mechanism for doing this is taxes. There are blueprints to show how you do this. Let me give you the numbers again. In 1981, Ronald Reagan when he was inaugurated, the top marginal income tax rate was 70%. And the annual take, the federal budget, was around $500 billion. In 1989 when Ronald Reagan left office, the top marginal rate was 28%, the tax take had doubled, almost doubled. It was $950 billion, after reducing tax rates from 70% to 28%.
Reducing the tax rates incentivized people in any number of ways. There was job creation. But we had a recession in ’82, and it was a bad one. And we stuck with this program. Cut people’s taxes. We got out of their way. The economy boomed and rebuilt and went all the way through the 1990s on a gigantic roll. Now, you come to the Obama administration. He takes office, 500 or 600,000 people a month losing their jobs. Since he’s taken office, over two million people have lost their jobs! That’s two million people who are not paying taxes anywhere. We know the value of people’s homes has gone way down. So there’s no state tax revenue being collected — and you know something? The states, they’re going to be lagging whenever this economic recovery does start, whenever it happens, they’re going to be lagging. The Democrats are running most of these states, especially the ones that are in deep doo-doo, and there may be hell to pay in the election of 2010, and don’t think the Democrats aren’t thinking about it.
But I have say… I have to ask the question. I don’t think Obama cares about revenue. I don’t think he cares. I don’t think Lawrence Summers cares. I don’t think Rahm Emanuel cares, and I don’t think Geithner cares. Two things they care about is convincing the ChiComs they’re going to reduce the deficit so the ChiComs go along and continue to buy our debt. But if they really cared about raising revenue, they would not be doing what they’re doing! What are they doing? They’re printing money. The cash for clunkers program they said is bankrupt? The government is bankrupt! The cash for clunkers program had no money before they put a billion dollars into it. Where did they get in the billion? We’re running a deficit of $1.8 trillion? Where did the money come from? There is no money! They can’t possibly care about raising revenue — and to the extent that people are losing their jobs…
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RUSH: This is Amanda in Jacksonville, Florida, as we go back to the phones. I really appreciate your patience, Amanda. Thanks for waiting.
CALLER: Hi. How are you?
RUSH: Fine. Thank you much.
CALLER: I wanted to call in response to the woman who said that obviously when conservatives go to tea parties, that we’re rented protesters, but when it’s the left… I mean, does she not know that we have a fear of what’s going on in the country?
RUSH: No, no. Let me explain this woman to you. She’s talking about Chris who called from Syracuse, Indiana.
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: Trust me on this. I can read the stitches on a fastball. Chris is a woman who only watches NBC or CBS or ABC. That’s it. She doesn’t listen much to talk radio. She probably does not access any of the alternative media. So she has never heard that people protesting Republicans are rent-a-mobs. She’s probably never heard that.
CALLER: (giggles)
RUSH: I probably told her something she didn’t know, that whenever ACORN or whoever lines up to protest some Republican or whenever there’s a meeting in the anti-globalists show up that they’re all Democrats. She doesn’t know that. She probably heard that for the first time in her life. When NBC told her that you and others like you are going to these town hall meetings that you’re bought and paid for that you’re given transportation, I’m sure this is the first time she’s ever heard it about any group.
CALLER: I bet you’re right. It’s just sad because I do my job, I work every day. My parents raised me in a conservative atmosphere and they worked hard their whole lives. I care about the country. I can rest assured tell Chris I’m not getting paid. It’s just the love of my country and I don’t want to see it sink into the sea. (giggles)
RUSH: I know. Look, I said, ‘Even being hypothetical. Let’s say the stories you heard in NBC is true. Fine and dandy with me.’
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: I’m telling you what. These are not people who have to be told what to say. These are people who are not just speaking in slogans. ‘No, we won’t!’ These are people showing up with specific questions, with specific knowledge of what’s in the bill. They are more informed than the members of Congress or the Senate that they’re talking to or whatever government official.
CALLER: That’s a good agenda.
RUSH: So how they got there is irrelevant to me. They are showing up and they’re genuine. I know you are. The tea party people are genuine. There’s a whole segment of this population that state-controlled media does not know exist. Well, they know it exists because they can see it in the polling data. But their objective is to ignore you and do what they can to persuade and change your mind and overwhelm you. You’re not part of the story. You represent an obstacle to them in their efforts to help Obama get what he wants.