RUSH: Now, look at this. CNN has a banner up, or they had one up just moments ago. “Soon: First Briefing Since Health Care Price Tag Revealed.” Meaning: Sean Spicer’s about to go out there and get scalped. The first White House briefing ever since the price tag of the Ryan-Trump health care bill was announced. So, that’s how it’s all set up. Of course, the CBO has now killed this, they say, because they’ve exposed the fraud, they’ve exposed the waste, they’ve exposed… The CBO score exposed the death and the killing that will occur resulting from people losing health insurance.

I mean, this is all out there now. And now CNN is saying that Paul Ryan doesn’t care. He’s not backing off of this no matter what anybody says. He doesn’t care what the CBO says, doesn’t care what Trump says. He’s not backing off. Meaning Ryan is not going to react to any of the backlash against this at all. But I want to go back to this CNN health care little headline here, their banner. “Soon: First Briefing Since Health Care Price Tag Revealed.” Price tag? Look, even the CBO… Here I’m violating my own statement. I said I was not gonna get into the weeds on this but now I’m gonna do it ’cause CNN is dragging me there with their irresponsible, fake news.

Look, the CBO said, if you must know, that the Ryan-Trump repeal-and-replace plan would save over $337 billion in 10 years. That’s right. They say that this will reduce the deficit by $337 billion in 10 years and that it would bring down the cost of premiums at least 10%. If that’s the price tag… I think all of that, frankly, is BS, folks. I don’t think anybody can possibly know what this is gonna be in 10 years because they don’t dynamically score this! It’s meaningless what the CBO says, except in terms of making it livable or unlivable to members of Congress.

But it doesn’t have one thing to do with reality, because they don’t score it dynamically. In other words, they don’t calculate what the impact of the changes will be on the way people live. And the best example I can give you of what I mean by dynamic-versus-static scoring, is CBO can only use the numbers they are given by people who write the legislation. That’s all they can do. So if the bill has a tax cut in it and if writers of the bill say, “We’re gonna cut taxes a half a trillion dollars, $500 billion over 10 years,” the CBO then subtracts $500 billion from the federal Treasury in 10 years, because the tax cut, well, they’re taking money away.

But what happens when you cut taxes? You often end up with more revenue. When you cut taxes, you happen to spur economic growth. When you cut taxes, you generally have new jobs created, and you generally have, then, more taxpayers, which is how you have additional tax revenue. The CBO doesn’t do any of that. In the CBO’s world, a tax cut automatically means the government loses whatever that amount of money is. A tax increase, by the same token, the government automatically gains that kind of money.

Well, let’s look at it that way. Let’s say this piece of legislation has $500 billion of tax increases in it. Well, only if people pay it. What if the tax increases result from behavior, such as a mandate to have health insurance? What about the people that say, “Screw you! I am not doing that!” Well, we got a fine mechanism over there and the CBO counts what that money is. They have no idea what effect… Well, they do not calculate — they don’t even try to calculate — the impact of a tax increase. They just assume everybody’s gonna pay it.

They just assume in a tax cut, everybody’s gonna get it. They do not — even with gazoons and gazoons of years of experience, they never even attempt to — dynamically score it. It’s straight-up-and-down numbers, and 10 years out, how can anybody…? These guys at the National Weather Service couldn’t even forecast where a blizzard was gonna hit 24 hours out, and it was on the map! We saw the blizzard! And they even gave themselves outs. I looked at AccuWeather.

They had three different paths this thing could take. They knew to cover their bases. But the Drive-Bys, of course, had to report that it was gonna hit the most densely populated places, and it was gonna kill, and it was going to ruin, and it was going to destroy. So the airlines cancel 8,000 flights. Airports in New York are at a standstill ’cause nothing’s going on there, and the storm may give eight inches, not two feet. There was no reason to do any of this.

But here you have a government agency that can’t even forecast when the blizzard’s out there! It’s coming in from Canada, it’s in the Northern Plains, and it’s moving right in with the jet stream or whatever other meteorological factors. I believe forecasts are political. I believe, just like in hurricanes, the early forecasts always including major population centers. I think the reason for that is it gets everybody’s attention, and if you’re trying to sell the idea that global warming creates more hurricanes and death and destruction and all that…

So you track it five or six days out or 10. The original track, nobody’s gonna pay attention if it tracks turning out into the ocean and not hitting land. So nobody pays attention to those. But just like this thing, they had the forecast hitting New York, then it was gonna destroy Boston, and before that was gonna destroy Providence, was gonna destroy Newport. Sorry, Newpo’t. Then it was gonna go out and destroy Kennebunkport, and it was gonna leave death and destruction and disaster. And that was last night. And this morning, “Uhhhhhh, you know what?

“It’s still gonna hit but it’s gonna be out there in parts of New York where people live but we just don’t care about ’em as much.” So there is a blizzard, but 24 hours out they had no idea where it was going, and we have the CBO telling us that in 10 years the deficit’s gonna be reduced by $337 billion. Do you realize, folks, that over 10 years we’re talking dimes and quarters? It’s nothing to get excited about either way, either increase the budget or decrease.

Ten years?

There’s no way that they can possibly know what legislation that might be signed next year, today, next week, is gonna mean 10 years from now.

It might be so bad that it has to get replaced between now and then. This is all such smoke and mirrors. I’m convinced CBO serves the purpose of giving legislators an out or giving them an in if they want to support something, and it also serves to keep the public totally confused. And it’s complicating something here that need not be complicated. What we know is Obamacare is bad, that it’s in a spiral of implosion here, and that it needs to be done away with because it’s irresponsible. It’s destroying things, it’s not helping people, and it’s running the danger of ruining the health care system.

It’s got to be gotten rid of and that premise is now invisible. And it’s been replaced by, “Well, I don’t know, you can repeal certain parts of it, yeah, but the other parts, Mr. Limbaugh, we need to go reconciliation, and that we can do, but non-reconciliation we gonna need 60 votes and we don’t got 60 votes.” I’ve been hearing that — well, as long as I’ve been talking to senators. “Rush, the only thing you need to know about the Senate, young man, the only thing you need to know, you can’t do anything without 60 votes.”

It’s the biggest excuse I have continuously heard, ’cause nobody ever has 60 votes. No party ever has that. Well, the Democrats once did, but the Republicans don’t. That’s another built-in excuse for not doing anything. Motivations, I don’t know. Some people think the Republicans are more comfortable as the losing party not having to govern, not having to take leadership, not having the responsibility. Some people think that the Republicans, the Democrats, are no different when it comes to Washington. They want it as big and powerful as it can be. Some people think that the Republicans are so embarrassed and angry that Trump’s elected they’re gonna do what they can to undermine him regardless what the Democrats do.

I mean, there’s all kinds of theories that explain the motivation, the behavior behind people that are posing this. But when you get down to brass tacks, common sense, there’s no reason — if you couple it with campaign promises, everybody knows this bill is a disaster. It was designed to be a disaster. That’s the thing that we need to have people start admitting. This thing was designed to be in the same situation, the exact place it’s in.

It was presumed that a Democrat would be president today. It was presumed that a Democrat would be president when Obamacare, by design, imploded on itself and collapsed. And at that point the Democrat president was gonna say, “You know what? We really gave markets a shot. I mean, we’ve never had more free market opportunities in health care than in Obamacare, and look what happened. The free market botched it, because of selfishness and greed and the insurance companies, so we must go the government taking it over and single payer or put everybody on Medicare.”

That was the design. And we are at the stage of design where implosion was slated to happen. The thing that’s upset the works is that a Democrat’s not in the White House. We have a Republican in the White House who promised to repeal and replace it. We have Republicans in the House and the Senate who heard the promise and themselves made the promise when they would never, ever have to really act on it, but now there aren’t any excuses ’cause they have the House and the Senate but they don’t have 60 votes in the Senate. They still can’t do anything.

So we have to chip away here, chip away there, and do it straight up here, reconciliation over here, and I’m sorry, but I think it’s all smoke and mirrors. And it appears to me that there are enough Republicans that don’t really want this to happen. As I say, I’m not gonna get into the motivation, ’cause there’s probably all kinds of different valid explanations or excuses. And there are plenty conservative Republicans in the House who are out there saying they’re never gonna sign this, that this is nothing more than a new welfare program, that it is not fulfilling the campaign promise that people made. So it’s not all Republicans, don’t misunderstand.

But CNN with this banner talking about price: “CBO score at first press briefing after cost of health care is –” if I didn’t know any better, just watching the Drive-By Media, I would think that there are 20 million people that we’re talking about here, that all that matter are 20 million people, 20 million people that don’t have health care. That’s all we’re talking about because that’s the focus, 20 million people are gonna die, 20 million people are gonna get sick, 20 million people are gonna bankrupt, 20 million here, 20 million there, but it’s always the people that ostensibly do not have health insurance.

Well, now, wait. Obama said that that’s the great thing about Obamacare is it’s covered 20 million people who didn’t have it, so how does it still eventuate that 20 million people don’t have Obamacare after Obama sings the praises of having 20 million people that didn’t have it covered? Were there 40 million people that didn’t have insurance when Obama started this whole thing? You look at the cost, you look at the analysis, you look at CNN and the fake news, and you would think that all we’re talking about here is 20 million people.

Okay, 300 million people in the country. Are we gonna do or not do, stop the presses, go forward on 20 million people and the impact on 20 million? But even this is to miss the point. None of this has to be the case. This is the United States of America with one of the greatest growing, natural, free market economies out there. I don’t pretend to have detailed, specific answers to every objectionable question that I would be asked.

But I know principles, and I know economic rules, and I know human behavior mixed with economic rules and reactions, and I can tell you that there is no way 2,000-plus pages of legislation is the way to administer the health care system of this country. In fact, 2,000 pages is the greatest evidence we have why it’s all wrong. And how it’s gotten wrong is the attempt by some to legislate virtually every aspect of going to the doctor, sitting in the waiting room, getting a Band-Aid.

It’s absurd. And then the presumption of elected officials, many of whom have never ever been anywhere near the health care industry, insurance industry, presuming to be the ones with all the answers. That was my big rub with Obama. He was the supposed expert in fixing everything, and he’d never done anything.