An Explanation of Severability

RUSH: Let’s go Traverse City, Michigan, and we’ll start with Bob. Welcome, sir. Great to have you with us on the program.

CALLER: Thank you, Rush. I listen to your program so I can inoculate myself against the birdbrain flu.

RUSH: Well, I appreciate that, sir. Whatever the reason, we appreciate it.

CALLER: Well, my question is that Judge Vinson ruled that the Congress can’t regulate inactivity.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: And I know that immunization mandation comes from the state, I’m sure that’s (unintelligible) the Supreme Court, and I’m sure the Supreme Court’s upheld it, but how does this mandate to buy insurance much different from immunizations? Can you answer that?

RUSH: What is the difference in the state’s mandating people buy insurance and be immunized?

CALLER: Yeah, childhood immunizations.

RUSH: It’s a hearing problem. Is that what you said?

CALLER: Yeah, exactly.

RUSH: Well, the states could do far more things. The Constitution is very precise, very, very cogent, and the states have far more powers of that kind than the federal government will ever have. Thomas Jefferson and the boys saw to it.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: For example, the states can mandate that you have automobile insurance. The Feds cannot.

CALLER: But this immunization business, what I’m saying is it has to do with the inactivity. The auto insurance has been held up because you’re out putting people at risk and (unintelligible) automobile.

RUSH: No, no. The inactivity is just a logical conclusion. If they can make you buy something, then by logical extension they have the ability to tell you you can’t buy something else, which is used to illustrate the fallacy of the premise that they have the right to tell you to buy anything. They can isolate you in the state, for example, but in the federal government, can’t do that.

CALLER: So the states could mandate you do this program and the Feds can’t?

RUSH: The state does. Many states already do, but the federal government cannot.

CALLER: I got you.

RUSH: Very simply. And I’m glad you called, because a lot of people have the belief, and it’s furthered by people like ‘Pete’ Stark who says there’s nothing the federal government can’t do. It’s being run by people who have that attitude, and there’s a Constitution that makes it clear that the reason it exists is to keep the federal government from becoming an aristocracy or a kingdom or a dictatorship. That’s the express purpose of the Constitution, one of many. The first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, the reason the left doesn’t like it is because it tells the government what it cannot do to people, what it cannot do for people. Our Founders had fled a totalitarian dictatorship, a kingdom, for all intents and purposes, where everything about their lives was regulated. They had to adhere to a certain religion, they had to do this, they had to do that. If they didn’t they were heretics and they could be put in jail. They didn’t like that. They wanted all kinds of freedom, so they wrote a Constitution limiting what the federal government can do, and the Commerce Clause is very clear.

The Commerce Clause makes it clear the federal government cannot require any person buy a product or a service or anything of the sort, and by logical conclusion they can’t tell you that you have to forgo something at the same time. Don’t get caught up in a petty issue that you may have here with immunizations and whether to do it. The states can do what they want. The states can mandate that you have auto insurance. Federal governments never have the ability. They can urge you, they can have all these scare — Hillary Clinton and Bill up there saying you gotta have this vaccination, Kathleen Sebelius, the swine flu is coming, you’re all gonna die. They can’t make you get the vaccine. In fact, a lot of people will refuse to get a vaccine if the federal government’s pushing it simply because it’s the federal government pushing it and they don’t trust it, pure and simple. So get rid of this notion the federal government has omnipotent powers. It doesn’t. This bunch running the country thinks that they do and are acting under the premise that they do, and that’s what’s been struck down here and that’s what’s profound about this. Many of us are saying it’s about damn time somebody applied the brakes to this bunch and not just this bunch but everybody who thinks the federal government’s powers are limitless. Screw them!

Tom in Hanford, California. You’re next on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hi.

CALLER: It’s a pleasure, Rush. Hey, I believe this administration has basically wasted two years. They shoulda done all their homework, but instead they’re trying to force-feed their agenda and basically they should have been working on getting jobs together or trying to promote jobs, and now all of a sudden there’s a jobs crisis.

RUSH: Exactly as intended. Well, you say they wasted their time.

CALLER: Well, they wasted our time, they wasted their time, they spent countless dollars promoting this and trying to tell us how good it’s supposed to be. I mean there’s advertising campaigns, all kinds of crap.

RUSH: Right, exactly by design. They didn’t waste anything. Their intent was to get this health care law passed with this mandate and eventually get rid of the private sector insurance industry so that they were the only place you could go to for health care insurance and treatment. They as far as they’re concerned, their mistakes, if they will admit to any, what they’re going to realize their mistake was, was not putting a severability clause in the legislation. And the judge references this. A severability clause, many pieces of legislation have them and essentially it says if one part of this piece of legislation is ruled unconstitutional it does not mean the whole thing is. The judge says they did not ask for severability. Therefore they knew that if any aspect of this was ruled unconstitutional the whole thing goes down. And it did. They didn’t waste any money. They didn’t waste any time. They got flummoxed here. They’ve gotta go back to the drawing board.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, let me explain severability. I explained to you what it is. Let me tell you why they couldn’t put that clause in. Severability says if any part of this legislation is found to be unconstitutional, only that part will be struck. The rest of the legislation holds up, remains intact. The reason they didn’t put severability in is the CBO. They had to find a way to create the illusion of revenue being created to keep the cost of this thing over ten years under a trillion dollars. So you know some of the tricks. But the figure that’s relevant here, 32 million uninsured. The law mandating that you buy insurance adds 32 million times an annual premium, which is revenue. They had to have that. They had to have that, even if it was just theoretical, they had to be able to send to the CBO that 32 million people were going to be required to buy health insurance or face a fine.

There was gonna be a source of revenue from those 32 million one way or the other. Either they bought a policy or they paid a fine. If you take away the mandate which leads to revenue being generated from the uninsured, the CBO would not have been able to claim that it would lower the deficit and Obamacare would have to sunset in ten years just like the Bush tax cuts because if something doesn’t come in at a projected budget figure — I forget, it’s a formula, then it goes away. If it causes the deficit to go up, then it dies. And they had to find a monkey wrench way to show that the deficit would not go up, that in fact that it was going to be reduced. And so they found this magic number of 32 million uninsured, and they’re gonna get money out of ’em somehow, they’re either gonna force ’em to buy a policy or pay a fine if they don’t. So without the mandate there would be no savings and it would have to sunset and they would have lost a huge propaganda point, which is an outrageous lie anyway. And health insurance companies would have never supported the bill without that mandate. The insurance companies — wish I coulda talked to ’em — but the insurance companies were just looking two years down the road. They weren’t looking for the rest of their lives, they saw, ‘Wow, this stupid regime is gonna give us 32 million new customers. Hell, yes, we’re gonna support that.’

So they went along with it. They would have never supported the bill had there been no mandate. So you can’t allow severability. You can’t allow a federal judge to take that out. Because you take that out, and the rest of the bill goes by the wayside because it fails to meet the fiscal responsibility aspects of the law. So this whole thing, folks, was concocted on a series of lies, prevarications, frauds or what have you, and this is essentially what Judge Vinson has spotted and seen, and, frankly, what a number of us did. That mandate is unconstitutional, but without it this law can’t survive. I think they rolled the dice. I don’t know whether they thought it would be challenged. I don’t know if they had any idea that 26 states would file suit against it, I don’t know if they’ve figured somebody would say it’s unconstitutional. I don’t know what they thought. I don’t remember if they said anything about that. All I know is they couldn’t put a severability clause in it. They had to be thinking about it, obviously, because they couldn’t put the severability clause in, they couldn’t give a judge a right to take just that out of it and let the rest of it survive, because the truth is you take the mandate out and it all falls by the wayside.

And you watch, they’re gonna file for a stay, they keep implementing this, and their legal argument is going to center around the fact that the mandate is constitutional. That’s what this is all gonna be about, when it goes to the appellate court — there are gonna be some other things, too, that Judge Vinson ruled on, but it’ll focus on that, then up to the Supreme Court as well as to whether or not that mandate is constitutional, pure and simple. It’s fascinating to watch this and it’s such — I can’t tell you the swelling of pride in my heart last night when I heard this. This is one of the best affirmations that we as a country still exist as founded and as we’ve known it that we’ve had since this bunch was immaculated into office in 2009. I cannot tell you. And that is why I spent the first hour here trying to explain what the Republican Party strategery here is. They’ve got the biggest boost that they’ve ever had to defunding this thing and repealing it. I mean they’ve got the wind at their backs now. They don’t have to just simply rely on the people don’t want it because that doesn’t mean anything to the regime. Now we’re gonna find out if the Constitution means anything to the regime ’cause this law’s been voided, folks. It is unconstitutional. And again for the gazillionth time, the judge did not say that they can continue to implement it while it’s appealed. We’ll keep a sharp eye on this.

This is Ray, Chattanooga, Tennessee, welcome to the EIB Network, sir. Hi.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you doing?

RUSH: Very good, sir. Thank you.

CALLER: I’ll get right to my point. Earlier you were talking and you just now finished a monologue about what I’m gonna say, and that is you were talking about 70% agreeing with basically the principles of where the Tea Party is moving.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: And as is always true, it created an epiphany for me, which is, I’m in my mid-fifties, and I cannot remember a time when the American people were truly ready to right the ship in this country. And I will tell you this. If the politicians squander this opportunity, they not only squander their opportunity for power, in my opinion, they squander an opportunity to make the United States what it really is truly supposed to be.

RUSH: Wait a minute. You can’t remember a time when the American people were ready to right the ship, you mean correct it?

CALLER: No, not in my lifetime. I can’t remember when they were truly ready to tackle these problems and get things back on —

RUSH: Well, one of the reasons, there’s never been this kind of overreach by any administration. We’ve never had this before.

CALLER: That’s true.

RUSH: And it is heartwarming to see, there’s no question, I agree totally with you about that.

CALLER: Well, I mean what we have, and when you think about it, I mean Barack Obama is truly the founder of the Tea Party because it’s basically like the law of physics. For every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction.

RUSH: Yeah, I know. I know exactly what he’s saying. Who’s the Tea Party leader? They don’t have one; they’d be wise not to have one. It’s a grassroot effort that’s bubbled up, but it’s clear Barack Obama was the impetus. We’ve never had a president like Obama. We’ve never had a Tea Party movement like this other than during the founding. This is all good. Everything here is all good. Now we just have to see if the Republicans in Washington are gonna remain focused and not go lazy on us. Maybe they could sit there and say, ‘Okay, the court says it’s unconstitutional, let the court do the heavy lifting, we’ll just sit back awhile, stop putting our necks out on the line.’ Hope they don’t do that. I hope they understand here you got this Gallup USA Today poll, 70% of the American people think the Tea Party’s ideas are good, should be listened to. Federal judge, Reagan appointee, this thing is unconstitutional, void it, it has no business being a law in this country. Well, if they’re serious about repealing it this is a nuclear bomb in your ammo, this is a nuclear bomb in your arsenal. And this should be like an afterburner being turned on for you, and that’s what it ought to be.