RUSH: The plain-out false lie that he told the small business owners this morning in Washington.
OBAMA: There are those who have a vested interest in the status quo who are claiming otherwise. And they’re using misleading figures, so I want to try to explain as clearly as I can exactly what health reform would mean for small business owners like you and the workers you employ. The first thing I want to make clear is that if you are happy with the insurance plan that you have right now, if the costs you’re paying and the benefits you’re getting are what you want them to be, then you can keep offering that same plan. Nobody will make you change it.
RUSH: I’m sorry. It is an out-and-out lie. It is just an out-and-out lie. There have been five health care bills floating around the House and the Senate, and every damn one of them makes it very clear that at the end of the day there won’t be any private health insurance available. It may take five or ten years for all of this stuff to phase in, but they’re going to make the government option at first so cheap that employers are going to off-load. These small business guys, the first thing they’re going to do is off-load your health care to the government. You’re going to be thrown to the public option and Obama is lying through his teeth, he knows it, they know it. I would love to have seen the faces of people in this audience, these are small business people. You may find some liberal Democrats in there but they do understand dollars and cents, and they do understand that when somebody from the government comes along and says, ‘Hey, you like what you’re doing now and you don’t want to change it, you’re not going to have to change it and you’re not going to have to spend any more money.’
Meanwhile, Obama is talking about raising everybody’s taxes, and get this is from The Hill: ‘An excise tax on high-priced insurance policies might violate President Obama’s pledge to not raise taxes on the middle class, House Democratic Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) said Wednesday night. ‘I do not want to see anything jeopardize the president’s promise not to raise taxes on the middle-class,’ Clyburn told MSNBC. ‘And that could very well get us there.’ The House healthcare bill to be unveiled today will not include such a tax, but the Senate bill does. Under the Senate bill, an excise tax on so-called ‘Cadillac’ insurance policies would help pay for subsidies and expanded coverage.’ You who afford the best insurance policy, you’re going to pay a tax for being able to afford it, that’s in the Senate bill, and the Senate bill cannot have that provision removed from it and still maintain this fraudulent claim anyway that it’s deficit neutral.
Let me tell you something, folks. You look at Obamacare cap and tax, if a person doesn’t make low six figures, plan on moving back in with your parents by the time they get through. This Obamacare bill ought to be renamed the Move Back in with Mommy and Daddy Act of 2009, or ’10, whenever they get it passed. This is not a joke. These bills — cap and trade, health care — are going to destroy the housing sector, they are disposable income killers, forget canceling cable and skipping rent and mortgage payments, it will be the only way to make up the difference. We got a new phrase here for today’s under-30 crowd: Moving on Down. It used to be moving on up, we’re moving on down. There’s no tort reform in this bill, save a lot of money. There’s no portability of insurance. There is no letting you buy insurance from other states, no real changes at all in the things that would make sense and lower costs and permit more freedom in all of this. And Obama, this is a great example of he’s in a different world. He is clueless. He doesn’t have any idea what the American people know. He doesn’t get it that more Americans each day understand that they will be forced to a public option.
When he tells these small business guys that if they’re happy with the plan they have right now, and if the costs you’re paying and the benefits you’re getting are what you like, then you can keep offering the same plan, nobody’s going to make you change, it’s just an outright lie, and he doesn’t know or doesn’t care that more and more people understand what a fraud this thing is. I think it was CBS Radio News this morning touting a study that estimates children without health insurance are 60% more likely to die than children with insurance. In other words, children are going to die if we don’t pass health care now. Forget that we’ve passed SCHIP, where we’re insuring children all the way up to age 25. We have SCHIP, the women and children’s health insurance program, they got that passed and in that bill children up to age 25. They are considered a child up to age 25 to qualify for this federal program, and yet there’s a study that estimates that 60% of children without health insurance are more likely to die than children with health insurance.
I tell you, folks, the outright fraud and lying that is going on here is breathtaking. I gotta take a time-out. We’ll do it, we’ll be back and continue. (interruption) Well, no, very simple, Snerdley. I can’t believe you think I haven’t explained this well enough yet. Pelosi is protecting Big Labor. She protects Big Lawyer. No tort reform. She advances her ideology of big government by declaring war on the middle class. That’s what this really is. This is a war against the working people of America, the taxpayers, whatever their income, you are in the crosshairs with all of their agenda, not just health care. Cap and tax, whatever, all of us are in their crosshairs. This is a radical bunch of people.