Senator Max Baucus, Party of One

RUSH: All right, Max Baucus has introduced his health care bill, and everybody is ripping it to shreds. I mean Charles Grassley, who is a Republican on that committee and was one of the Gang of Six, ‘It looks like we’ve been overlooked. It looks like we don’t matter here.’ Apparently Baucus just went out there, he got fed up with waiting to get any kind of agreement on the committee, just went out and said, ‘It’s my bill,’ except he’s not saying ‘I.’ He’s saying ‘we’ and ‘ours.’ So we’ve put this montage together. I mean, the Democrats don’t like Baucus’ plan, the Republicans don’t like it. In fact, I’ll give you an illustration here from ABC News: ‘It’s not every day that you hear a Democratic senator charge that a fellow Democrat is proposing to raise taxes on the middle class, but that is what happened on Tuesday when Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-WV, ripped into the health-care bill developed by Sen. Max Baucus, D-MT, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

‘The Baucus proposal would impose, starting in 2013, a 35 percent excise tax on insurance companies for ‘high-cost plans’ — defined as those above $8,000 for individuals and $21,000 for family plans. Health economists believe a tax on high-priced benefits could help slow the growth of health costs by making consumers more sensitive to prices.’ Now, wait a second here. Costs can be controlled by making consumers more sensitive to prices? That’s what we have been saying all along in this debate! Reconnect the consumer with the cost of services and you will see the cost of services go down, just like the lady who called here with the $20 X-ray. But liberals only connect these dots when it comes to the taxes. So Jay Rockefeller, ‘I’m not going to go for this. It raises taxes on the middle class.’ So here’s this montage of Baucus, and when he says ‘we’ here, he means ‘me.’

BAUCUS: It reflects months of work, of preparation by our committee. We need to hold the insurance industry accountable. We’re presenting this package. Our mark ensures choice. Our package makes clear. Our reforms. Our package. We’ve done everything. All of us working for reform. All of our first choices. We all shared. And we will act. We will act to pass health reform.

OBAMA: He’s a jackass.

RUSH: Nobody likes his plan. Nobody likes the plan.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here is the Speaker of the House, CNN’s Newsroom, she is not abandoning the public option.

PELOSI: If we’re going to mandate health insurance for all Americans, if we’re going to subsidize the health care for tens of millions of people, how can we give all of these new consumers to the health insurance industry with no accountability, no competition, and no real challenge for them to honor the reforms that we have in the bill? No, we’re in pretty good shape on that.

OBAMA: He’s a jackass.