RUSH: It is increasingly clear as we travel around the country. I watched town hall meetings with membership of Congress on health care. It is clear that voters know much more than government officials do about what’s in the plan. We had Kathleen Sebelius down there in Reserve, Louisiana. A guy stands up and says, ‘It’ll be a cold day in hell before he socializes my country.’ She had no clue. She lost it, because these are junior gods! Obama is god. These people think that they’re universally loved like he is. Ben Cardin he got hit up pretty good by a guy in Maryland. And Russ Carnahan, this may take the cake. Russ Carnahan. You know, you might be able to take the combined IQ of the Carnahan family and it wouldn’t equal a pencil eraser. I’m telling you these people, this is just hilarious. This is Monday at Forest Park Campus, St. Louis Community College in St. Louis. Representative Russ Carnahan (Democrat-Missouri) held a town hall meeting to talk about health care reform. Here is a portion of his remarks.
CARNAHAN: The overall cost of the package has been estimated at about a trillion dollars over ten years. About half of that comes from savings and inefficiencies in the system.
AUDIENCE: (laughter)
CARNAHAN: Part of that Congressional Budget Office —
RUSH: Hold it. Hold it a minute. Now, recue that. They laughed. They laughed when Russ Carnahan said, ‘The estimated cost is a trillion dollars over ten years, and about half of that comes from savings and inefficiencies.’ Now, do you know who first said ‘inefficiencies’? Obama! He misspoke. He meant to say ‘efficiencies.’ They had to rush out a correction from the White House and they said, ‘Everybody knew what he meant.’ Russ Carnahan didn’t get the memo. Russ Carnahan stuck with inefficiencies! Here it is from the top.
CARNAHAN: The overall cost of the package has been estimated at about a trillion dollars over ten years. About half of that comes from savings and inefficiencies in the system.
AUDIENCE: (laughter)
CARNAHAN: Part of that Congressional Budget Office most recently came out, uh, and analyzed the current plan and said that it was not only deficit neutral — which has been one of the important factors for the president and congressional leaders — but also that over ten years it would create a $6 billion surplus.
AUDIENCE: (laughter)
CARNAHAN: So the —
RUSH: They’re laughing at him! They know more than he does! They’re laughing at their congressman. They’re laughing at their Democrat congressman at Forest Park Campus in the St. Louis Community College in St. Louis. Here’s another portion of this town hall.
CARNAHAN: When you have the larger pool, uh, we also have the ability to spread and shrink those administrative costs so that a larger portion of our health care dollar is actually going to treating a patient, as opposed to administrative costs. Novel concept.
AUDIENCE: (chuckling)
CARNAHAN: But it’s a very important part of — of creating those larger pools.
MAN #1: If it’s so good, why doesn’t the Congress have to be on it?
MAN #2: Yeah, right!
AUDIENCE: (cheers and applause)
RUSH: ‘If it’s so good, why doesn’t the Congress have to be on it?’ As I said earlier, the health plan… We hear about the health plan that Congress has. It’s not government-run. It is a smorgasbord of choices. It’s paid for by us, but it’s not government-run. They have private sector health coverage, folks. Everybody misunderstands this. They think it’s a government-run program. It’s not. These clowns are the government, and they would no more entrust their health care to each other than they would entrust their lives to each other. But they’ll put us in the system. Their health care, after Obamacare gets done, will continue to be private sector health care. They’re not opting into this. Their health care is not government-run. All right, let’s go back. So Russ Carnahan got laughed at and ridiculed by his own constituents. Let’s go back and let’s revisit Monday in Maryland, Ben Cardin talking to a constituent who’s chosen to not buy insurance, likes his life that way.
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 are a — a — You don’t pay. You are part of the population that shifts its cost over to a person who does pay.
RUSH: Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
AUDIENCE: (applause)
CARDIN: And they’re paying for you!
RUSH: Wrong. Wrong. The truth of the matter is here that he didn’t deny the guy’s question. The guy asked, ‘You gonna make me buy insurance or fine me?’ Cardin says, ‘Yeah, and you know why? Because you don’t have the guts to pay. You don’t have a plan, and so you’re going to be paid for by others.’ Wrong, you go to emergency room, they treat you. It’s federal law. They send you a bill. You don’t pay it they come repossess one of your kids, your car, whatever they can get. Yeah, you can be fine if you don’t have it. It’s a ‘right,’ you understand, and you can be fine if you don’t have that right. Ha. Let’s go back to Kathleeeeeeeeen Sebelius in Reserve, Louisiana, also on Monday.
MAN: It would be a cold day in hell before he socializes my country.
SEBELIUS: Excuse me. Excuse me. The federal employee health system would stay in place, as would other employer-based coverage.
AUDIENCE: (booing)
RUSH: No, the federal employee health system would stay in place in the private sector. Other employer-based coverage would vanish because they would opt out of it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Listen to this. I have just been handed, ladies and gentlemen, this is intel, intercepted intel. An e-mail from a liberal pro-government-run health care advocate in Virginia to his organizing group, get ’em all fired up. Here’s the e-mail: ‘We are at a transformational time, especially when it comes to the possibility of getting health care coverage for every person in this country. Unfortunately, conservative talk radio has people all wound up and calls to some of our members of Congress this week are running 15 to 1 against health care reform. How can anyone advocate keeping things the way they are?’ The libs are upset with me again.
By the way, folks, we now know why this health care plan has to be passed before the August recess. We have learned it in this half hour. Obama says you need a deadline to get anything done. No. That’s not the answer. The answer is what we’ve heard in these town hall meetings from Kathleen Sebelius in Reserve, Louisiana, Russ Carnahan in St. Louis, and Ben Cardin in Maryland. What Obama and Rahm are going to tell members of Congress is, if you don’t do this before the August recess, you’re going to go home, you’re going to do your town meetings, and your constituents are gonna hang you out to dry. They’re going to beat you up and there’s going to be audio and video of it and by the time you get back here, Limbaugh and Hannity on TV and everybody is going to be playing all of this footage of town meetings where your constituents are ripping you to shreds and laughing at you. That’s why you gotta get it done before the August recess. I’ll lay you 10 to 1, after these three incidents here, I guarantee you Rahm Emanuel is going to tell ’em that. You better get this done or you’re going to get destroyed when you go home for your recess, and they’re going to make clowns outta you for the rest of your career.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: To illustrate my point here, ladies and gentlemen, I guarantee you, Obama, Emanuel are telling members of Congress, ‘You’ve seen what’s happened to Carnahan. You saw what happened to Kathleen Sebelius. You have seen what happened to Ben Cardin. The constituencies out there know more about this bill than you do or I do.’ This is what Obama is telling them, ‘And they are gonna pepper you with stuff and you are going to be made to look like a laughingstock and Limbaugh and everybody else are going to be playing footage of these town meetings you’re gonna have in the recess. You better get this done now before you leave.’ That’s the reason for the deadline. Remember Monday, Obama, he doesn’t even know what’s in the bill. He had a conference call with left-wing bloggers and a liberal blogger from Maine had this exchange.
MAN: 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: You know, I have to say that I am not familiar with the provision you’re talking about.
RUSH: So you don’t want to be laughed at like I’ve been laughed at, and you don’t want to be laughed at like Russ Carnahan has been laughed at — of course, he’s laughed at a lot, not just this at a town meeting. You don’t want to get laughed at like Cardin got laughed at. You don’t want to get treated like Kathleen Sebelius got treated. So hurry up. And I want you to hear this again. This is from the ABC Obama special on health care from back in June. Jane Sturm stands up, ‘My mother is 105. At 100 the doctor said to her, ‘I can’t do anything more unless you have a pacemaker.’ I said go for it, she said go for it, the specialist said nah, she’s too old. She went to another specialist who saw her joy of life, and that specialist said, ‘I’m going for it,’ and five years ago she got the pacemaker. My question to you, Mr. President, outside the medical criteria for prolonging life for somebody who’s elderly, is there any consideration that could be given for a certain spirit?’ You know, this question in the United States of America, we actually have a citizen asking the president, ‘Mr. President, is there something you can do to take into account somebody’s life before killing them because of health care?’ And here’s Obama’s answer.
OBAMA: I don’t think that we can make judgments based on people’s spirit. That would be a pretty subjective decision to be making. I think we have to have rules that say that we are gonna provide good quality care for all people. End-of-life care is one of the most difficult sets of decisions that we’re going to have to make. But understand that those decisions already are being made in one way or another. If they’re not being made under Medicare and Medicaid, they’re being made by private insurers. At least we can let doctors know and your mom know that, you know what, maybe this isn’t going to help. Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery but taking the painkiller.
RUSH: Let’s just zone you out. Let’s just zone your grandmother out, loop her out, put her on the pain medicine, and she won’t even know that she’s going to die. She won’t remember dying. Can you believe this is happening in our country? I can understand somebody calling up Kim Jong-il. I can understand somebody calling up Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro, if they could get through, saying, ‘Can you do something, my grandmother is only 50 and –‘ ‘Nah, too old, no money, dead.’ Hang up. But calling the president of the United States and asking this kind of question?