RUSH: President Obama, ladies and gentlemen, was scheduled to do a brief, it’s not a news conference, that’s tomorrow night. But it was a statement on health care at 12:15, basically 19 or 20 
minutes ago. He still has not shown up at the podium, wherever this is going to happen. He uses a different room in the White House for every speech and there’s clearly one reason why. He had to wait for his staff, or maybe he listened himself, to tell him what I said before going out and making comments. They’re on defense at the White House about this. The instability of this White House and the unhinged behavior regarding this health care bill is breathtaking to watch. You’re not going to have that characterization of this White House portrayed by the State-Run Media, of course. (interruption) No, Snerdley, I’m not joking and I’m not being pompous. I’m never pompous and I’m not being braggadocios. You’re not bragging if you can do it.
You know, this markup thing today, last night, I will tell you that I heard — I wasn’t going to mention this at all today. But now I can. There were rumors floating around last night that the House Democrats, not just in the Energy and Commerce Committee, but the whole House, were in rebellion over the sweeping nature of this whole health care bill. But number two, they’re really upset that they have to fall on the sword and go first before the Senate does. The Senate has their own bill. And, by the way, did you know that there is a Republican version of a health care bill in the Senate that features, among other things, the deductibility of health insurance on your taxes? No, you don’t know that because it hasn’t been reported, but I have little doubt if he’s listening to what Jim DeMint is saying he’s listening to this program as people in the White House are to get an idea of what the reaction to the markup is today, Obama will be out shortly I’m sure with his reaction.
Let’s give you a flavor, a taste, of how it’s going out there in the public as various members in the administration and members of Congress fan out to do town meetings on health care. We have in Maryland, first up Senator Ben Cardin, held a town hall meeting. Audience member Robert Broadus of Clinton, Maryland, lost his job, replaced it with one that paid him far less money, had this exchange with Senator Cardin.
BROADUS: That’s working out fine for me because I’m able to save that extra money and give it to my family members and use it on myself.
AUDIENCE: (applause)
BROADUS: Senator Cardin, I want to know, are you going to tell me, an individual, that I have to buy health care or else you’re going to fine me $2,500 every year that I don’t pay it?
AUDIENCE: (applause)
CARDIN: What happens if you get sick? What happens if you are in a car accident or what happens if you happen to slip and you have a broken bone and you end up in the emergency room? You don’t pay. You are part of the population that shifts its cost over to a person who does pay. And they’re paying for you.
RUSH: I shoulda said he’s not buying health insurance and he’s using that money for other things. Right now he’s young, he doesn’t want to buy health insurance, he’s one of these 47 million that does not want it for whatever reason. So he’s asking if he’s going to be forced to buy or be fined $2,500 if he doesn’t. Now, I guarantee you he’s had to have heard that on talk radio. He’s had to have heard that or read that on a blog. He has not heard that from State-Run Media. He hasn’t read that in the New York Times or the Washington Post or TIME Magazine or Newsweek or anything else. He hasn’t seen it on television. Mr. Broadus knows this. We talked about it yesterday. It’s in the bill. That’s in the McCaughey story. If you don’t have health insurance, if you can’t prove to the IRS — remember that — that you have health insurance, if you can’t prove it you get fined $2,500 bucks. So Cardin comes back and says, ‘All well and good, but then you get sick or have a catastrophe, other people who are paying are going to have to pay for your health care.’ What a convoluted system. But the point here is that people are informed about this, and they are really taking it to members of Congress. Let’s go to Reserve, Louisiana, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius held a town hall meeting, and an unidentified audience member had this exchange with her.
MAN: It will be a cold day in hell before he socializes my country.
AUDIENCE: (wild cheering)
SEBELIUS: Excuse me. Excuse me. The federal employee health system would stay in place, as would other employer based coverage.
AUDIENCE: (booing)
RUSH: She’s getting booed, she’s getting booed. People know, ladies and gentlemen. ‘It will be a cold day in hell before he socializes my country.’ ‘Excuse me, excuse me, the federal employee health system will stay in place,’ and it would. They won’t have to go to the public option, either. The federal employee health system is a great one, they’re not going to have to go to the public option. This guy knows it. Kathleen Sebelius didn’t know what hit her. These people in the Obama administration think they’re all going to be junior gods when they go out because they think Obama is universally loved as a god, and he may be by a lot of people but his policies are not loved as though they are biblical. His policies are not even supported by a majority of people. Let’s now go to the president himself. This was a conference call with left-wing bloggers yesterday in Washington. A blogger from Maine had this exchange with President Obama.
BLOGGER: Investor’s Business Daily, they’re saying that H.R. 3200 will make individual private medical insurance illegal. Is this true? Will people be able to keep their insurance and will insurers be able to write new policies even though H.R. 3200 is passed?
OBAMA (sped up): You know, I have to say that I am not familiar with the provision you’re talking about.
RUSH: He doesn’t know what’s in the bill! He admits he doesn’t know! We’re speeding up Obama, Barney Frank, Pelosi, because they’re in such a hurry to get this garbage done before we find out what it’s in it. Of course, it’s too late. We know what’s in it. So we’re speeding them up to illustrate the haste that they are engaged in. We’ll make individual private medical insurance illegal. It will. It will. Guy asks the president, a left-wing blogger — how did that question get into a left-wing blogger conference call in the first place? And so Obama says he doesn’t know if the House bill outlaws private insurance.
BLOGGER: Investor’s Business Daily, they’re saying that H.R. 3200 will make individual private medical insurance illegal. Is this true? Will people be able to keep their insurance and will insurers be able to write new policies even though H.R. 3200 is passed?
OBAMA (sped up): You know, I have to say that I am not familiar with the provision you’re talking about.
RUSH: Then the president goes on and promises he won’t sign a bill that does that. If that’s true, he cannot sign this bill.
OBAMA (sped up): I have committed myself consistently to a very simple proposition. If you have health insurance and you like it, and you have a doctor that you like, then you can keep it, period, and I won’t sign a bill that somehow would make it tougher for people to keep their health insurance.
RUSH: Now, folks, I told you yesterday how difficult it is for me to accuse the president of the United States of lying. If he doesn’t know what’s in the bill, which is entirely possible, he may not know what’s in it. He’s got this grand, grand statist, giant government vision of things, and he actually believes that’s going to make things better for everybody. And somebody may have told him — I know this sounds hard to believe — somebody may have told him, ‘No, we’re not messing with private. If people want to keep their plans, they get to keep their plans.’ But that’s not the case. I don’t know how many times I have to say this, but we’ll keep saying it. People are beginning to understand this. There will be no private plans offered because private plans will not be able to compete with a government that does not have to make a profit in their health insurance plan. They can print money. There will never be a loss on their books. There’s no way to compete. Plus the plan specifically says if you change your policy or lose your job, you’re done, you have to go public option. It says that. He doesn’t even know that. Let’s go back to the campaign. Here’s an ad that Senator Obama ran about Senator McCain.
OBAMA: I’m Barack Obama and I approve this message.
ANNOUNCER: Maybe you’re struggling just to pay the mortgage on your home. But recently John McCain said the fundamentals of our economy are strong. Hmm. Then again, that same day, when asked how many houses he owns, McCain lost track. He couldn’t remember. Well, it’s seven. Seven houses. And here’s one house America can’t afford to let John McCain move into.
RUSH: So running ads out there making fun of McCain not knowing how many houses and condos he has. His wife owns them, that’s why he doesn’t know. And Obama doesn’t know what’s in the health 
care bill, admits, ‘I didn’t know that provision was in there.’ Did you also hear President Obama say, ‘This is not about me’? We’re gonna destroy that later in the program, too. And he also said, defended his response to the economic crisis. He said, ‘The fire is now out.’ He said this on PBS. We’ve got it coming up here. I think we’ve stepped back from the abyss, I think we’ve put out the fire. What did he say out in Hollywood? He said we’ve turned back from the brink. It was a couple months ago. Other days it’s going to get worse out there, folks, but we put out the fire, fire is out now.
The analogy I use sometimes is we had this beautiful house and there was a fire. We came in, we had to hose it down, the fire is now out, but what we’ve discovered is we need some new tuck pointing, the roof’s leaking, the boiler’s out, oh, and, by the way, we’re way behind on our mortgage. So maybe there was arson. If the fire is out now, we’ve gotta ask who started the fire. Obama loves attention and adulation, so he goes into your house and starts the fire, he took office, he’s an arsonist, he started the fire. After he starts the fire, he runs out of the house, he waits for the smoke, and then he starts yelling, ‘Fire, fire, fire, fire!’ He then gets the hose, and he starts spraying your house, all to get the credit as the hero who noticed and put out the fire that he started, leaving you with a big soggy mess of a home, when he started it in the first place.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I want to go back to the sound bite here from the town meeting with Benjamin Cardin and audience member Robert Broadus. I was in such a hurry to get all of this in in the first segment that I forgot to answer something very crucial here in this sound bite. Here’s the bite again.
BROADUS: That’s working out fine for me because I’m able to save that extra money and give it to my family members and use it on myself.
AUDIENCE: (applause)
BROADUS: Senator Cardin, I want to know, are you going to tell me, an individual, that I have to buy health care or else you’re going to fine me $2,500 every year that I don’t pay it?
AUDIENCE: (applause)
CARDIN: What happens if you get sick? What happens if you are in a car accident or what happens if you happen to slip and you have a broken bone and you end up in the emergency room? You don’t pay. You are part of the population that shifts its cost over to a person who does pay. And they’re paying for you.