RUSH: What do you mean have I lost my spirit? Did it sound like I’ve lost my spirit the first hour? How could you ask me that? No, the government should not be deciding whether I’ve lost my spirit. But, sadly, the government is deciding. The government is affecting people’s spirit. That’s the whole damn problem. Anyway, greetings and welcome back here, folks. Rush Limbaugh, America’s real anchorman, your highly trained broadcast specialist behind the Golden EIB Microphone. 1-800-282-2882 and the e-mail address at elrushbo@eibnet.com.
Let me get personal here for a second on this health care business. Folks, I want to tell you right now, I don’t ever use health insurance for medical treatments. I don’t have to. I’m very fortunate. I have a blessed life. My parents would not believe it. My parents didn’t think that a life like I have is possible for someone of my background. I didn’t go to college. I eschewed all the social norms growing up. They wouldn’t believe it. And they also would not believe that this kind of success is possible without all kinds of insider greasing of the skids and so forth. I don’t make any excuses for it, but I’m going to talk about it a little bit here as an illustration on health care. Because, frankly, my friends, personally, I don’t care what they do. It isn’t going to affect me. And if I were like a member of Congress, I wouldn’t care, because I have a great plan. They’ve got a great plan. They’re not going to live under the plan they write for you. You need to ask them: Are you going to give up the health care plan you have for the Obama Public Option Plan when you make it law? And the answer that they will give you, being honest is: No, they’re not going to. If they’re not going to join the same plan they’re writing for you, then that plan has no future. That plan should not be.
I can sit here and I can ignore this topic because it’s not going to affect me. I don’t care what happens to me, I have the money to go get whatever treatment I want, wherever I want to go in the world to get it. So it would be simple for me to say: Screw it. I don’t care. Let them do what they want to do; it isn’t going to affect me, but it angers me to no end. And the reason is I want an America to survive which offers every one of you the same opportunity I had to reach the point I have reached. And this man is destroying it. He’s killing the opportunity. He’s destroying spirit people have for it. A lot of people’s attitude now is just to protect what they’ve got. Don’t cause any trouble. Don’t make waves. Don’t get noticed. Just try to enjoy it for as long as they can until it’s taken away. This is an attitude that is — hell, I encountered it out in Hawaii over the weekend. You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff I heard. I’ll just tell you one thing. One guy is saying he’s looking for property all over the world to move to.
I said, ‘You gotta be kidding me.’ He said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘How in the hell what happens on the mainland going to affect you here?’ He’s retired. He said, ‘Rush, we in Hawaii, we have a seven-day supply of anything. Virtually everything we have has to be shipped in here one way or another. We can’t feed ourselves on these islands. We don’t have any oil on these islands. We don’t have any refineries. Everything’s got to be delivered here. We have a seven-day supply. This guy starts monkeying around with all the systems in the economy to keep people prosperous, to hell with it. Hanging around here is a death sentence.’ That’s the way he’s looking at it. A couple other people were not that far gone, but they were talking about, ‘Yeah, you know, I just indulge myself as often as I can now. I try to enjoy myself as much as I can before all hell breaks loose.’ They’re not even thinking about what they can do to stop it. You can’t really blame them because they don’t see a party to vote for that’s standing up to any of this thing in spirit and with any kind of energy. I don’t mean to be bashing the Republican Party here. I’m describing people’s mindset. Even if they’re wrong about what the Republican Party is doing, it’s still what they think. Perceptions in politics are reality.
So back to me and health care. It doesn’t matter. In a personal sense they can do whatever they want and I don’t have to sign up for any of their plans. I’ve got a health care plan. I have to be a member of the union here. But I’ve never used it. I don’t know even where my insurance card is. I don’t know what company or insurance agency the coverage is with. I never use it and I’m never going to have to. So it would be simple for me to say, ‘Okay, folks, you’re on your own and let’s talk about Mark Sanford.’ But, frankly, Mark Sanford is irrelevant. It’s irrelevant to what’s going on here. Well, I know Snerdley, I’m going to pay for the plan. In fact, Obama admits it. Grab audio sound bite No. 7. Obama talks about his own wealth in this show last night. It’s a montage here of back and forth that he’s having with Charlie Gibson.
OBAMA: About a third of the costs will come from new revenue. And so what I proposed is that we cap the itemized deductions, that the top two or three percent get, people making over $250 a year, me and Charlie, so that we’re itemizing our deductions at the same level as most middle-class families are. I suspect that Charlie and I, again, two, three percent of the population, we’re the ones who would see our taxes go up a little bit to pay for that initial outlay.
RUSH: Okay. So it’s bye-bye itemized deductions. It’s hello 39 percent or greater tax rate. The Bush tax cuts are going to be sunsetted in 2010, 2011. And then there’s going to be other tax increases still on top of it. So all these people at $250,000 — by the way, Snerdley, people that make $250,000 a year right now do not have enough wealth to forgo an insurance plan and go anywhere they want regardless of the cost to get health care treatment. It is a myth that $250,000 gives you economic freedom when it comes to health care. It doesn’t. This is exactly right, Subchapter Ss, people that formed these little small businesses and pay their taxes on their personal return, using a Sub S corporation, are going to be taxed as though they’re $250,000 or more. You can’t afford what Obama’s plan is, and you, by his own admission, are going to be paying for it. I don’t want to get too personal with this. My point is that if I wanted to, I could say to hell with it. Not quit the radio show. Just say the hell with worrying about any of this stuff. None of it is going to affect me in a major way.
These tax increases, I know I’m going to get creamed, but even after I get creamed, I’m not going to have to join some public option for health care unless I’m forced to, and I might be forced to at some point. They might make it so doctors can’t treat anybody that’s not part of the government plan. There will be a black market. I know there will be a black market. It might exist outside the borders of this country, but there will be a black market. Now, I have no interest in acting as though I don’t care, because I care greatly because I’m an American and I literally despise and detest what this man and his administration intend to do to this country, and their attempt to destroy the economic opportunity and the engine of growth that made it possible for millions of Americans to enjoy a standard of living unknown to exist in the rest of the world. That is what led to American exceptionalism, American greatness, the American dream and it’s all being threatened. When you kill people’s spirit to achieve it, you’re halfway there. You’re Obama, you kill people’s spirit and you’re halfway there to getting this dictatorial-type control, this authoritarian-type control, this despot type of control that you want.
So, I’ve not lost my spirit, and I am literally outraged by all this. And the answer to all of this, I don’t care whether it’s cap and trade or this health care boondoggle or immigration reform or whatever the hell else, none of it has worked. Not just when he’s tried it but in the entire scope of human history, none of this as an approach to economic prosperity has worked. None of this in terms of improving the quality or standard of life has ever worked. So the answer, to me, to all of it is just no. Plain and simple. You might want to put a ‘hell no’ in front of it, but the answer is simply no. This is not who we are. All of this is not who we as Americans are or what the United States of America is all about. The answer to all of it is just no.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Obama’s out there and he’s got this slogan when he goes out and makes these speeches: ‘Yes, we can.’ The audience response is: ‘No, you won’t.’ The response to: ‘Yes, we can’ is: ‘No, you won’t.’ And after saying, ‘No, you won’t,’ then you say, ‘No, we won’t.’ ‘Yes, we can’ is met with, ‘No, you won’t’ and, ‘No, we won’t.’