RUSH: ‘U.S. Sen. Harry Reid launched his re-election campaign Monday with a sentimental send-off from his hometown of Searchlight, cheered on by more than 100 close supporters.’ Cheered on by ‘more than 100’? Hell, at the tea party event in Searchlight they had over 10,000. One hundred? That’s from the Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper. Harry Reid says, ‘We have changed America forever.’ This is from TheHill.com: ‘Healthcare reform has ‘changed America forever,’ Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) confidently proclaimed Monday night. ‘People compare it to Medicare. Bigger than Medicare,’ Reid told Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren. ‘Medicare just affected old people. Bigger than social Security, beacuse at the time Social Security passed it dealt only with old people. This affects everybody,” which is the problem. And that’s why it was so important for the Democrats to ramrod this through, no matter the cost.
‘Reid acknowledged that there were flaws in the bill, but suggested lawmakers could fix those later. ‘If we have to go back and patch things up and fix a few things we can do that. This is not a perfect piece of legislation,’ Reid said. The Nevada Democrat also expressed surprise that Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) didn’t brag more about the so-called ‘Cornhusker kickback’ that secured extra Medicaid funding for Nebraska. (That provision has since been extended to all the states,) in the supplemental bill the House passed and sent over to the Senate for reconciliation. Reid said, ‘If I’d gotten that for Nevada, I’d have yelled it from the rooftops. He didn’t, and that’s a decision he made.” Now, this is very revealing, very revealing indeed. Harry Reid cannot even comprehend how some people might view selling one’s vote as unethical. It’s simply beyond his ability, being such a devout Mormon, of course. You know.
So here’s Harry Reid. We have a couple sound bites. And remember the Democrats — Harry Reid, Pelosi, Obama, Bill Clinton — told every one of these Democrats, ‘Now, look: If you want to get reelected, you gotta pass this bill.’
‘The reason I lost Congress in ’94,’ Clinton said, ‘is because we didn’t pass health care.’ So these guys listened to them, they passed health care, and now they’re going home and they’re meeting their constituents. Their constituents are not happy with them. That’s why the media is unilaterally using the term ‘rage’ to describe people like us who oppose the health care bill. It’s not working. But Dingy Harry puts the lie to it. Last night with Greta, question: ‘Why do you think there’s such — I don’t want to use a term that overstates it, but there were an awful lot of people who didn’t like it, many people were unhappy, I think, with the health care bill than were happy with it. Why do you think that?’
REID: Because the loud minority made a lot of noise. Now that the legislation passed, it’s amazing how much different people’s attitude is. I mean, traveling on an airplane people are so nice to me. We have — we have people — and it wasn’t that way before. We have people come — sending me notes in church, you know, ‘I have a disabled daughter. Thank you very much for taking care of her.’ I mean they — people have changed. Even the Republicans have changed their tune. So everybody acknowledges, with rare exception, that what we did was terrific and if there’s some problems in the out years, we’ll be happy to take a look at that.
RUSH: Oh, yeah! Problems? We’ll be happy to look at that. I don’t buy a word of this. I bet they’re throwing spitballs on the airplane. Nobody is coming up to Harry Reid saying, ‘Thank you for helping my special needs daughter,’ because nobody’s special needs daughter is being helped yet! ‘Loud minority,’ that’s a code word for ‘racist.’ By the way, Dingy Harry, we are not a minority. We are the majority. You in the regime are the minority here. Never forget that. So Dingy Harry makes a point. He goes to church and fellow churchgoers come up and thank him for taking care of their special needs daughter. Don’t forget how Reid made up all those stories about people calling him with sob stories. He was never, ever able to produce the truth. So Greta then said to him, ‘What about Ben Nelson? You gave the Nebraska deal. Massachusetts, they were furious about the Nebraska deal.’
REID: Remember, the Nebraska deal was terrific for our country. Why do I say that? Because now everybody has a Nebraska deal. Every state in the union has a Nebraska deal.
VAN SUSTEREN: I don’t think a lot of people feel like you do, Senator, on that. I think there were a lot of people who were disturbed about the fact that on the eve of the vote, that two United States senators meet and, you know, President Obama had promised transparency — and so all of a sudden Senator Ben Nelson walks out, and he suddenly says, ‘I’m going to vote on this, and I got a special deal for my state,’ and now the other states are just standing around saying, ‘Well, what about us?’
REID: Well, do you think it would have been better that I just let the bill fail?
VAN SUSTEREN: I — I — I mean I — I don’t —
REID: You’re speechless.
VAN SUSTEREN: Speechless?
REID: Legis– legis–
VAN SUSTEREN: This is the way it appeared to the American people, is that this Senator — Senator Ben Nelson — was for sale.
RUSH: See, here’s Harry Reid bragging, ‘Every state got a Nebraska deal.’ Oh, yeah, the Nebraska deal was unethical. It was a bribe. Same thing with the Louisiana Purchase. But he doesn’t even understand what she’s asking. They’re not even on the same page. He has no clue what she’s asking about — or if he does, he doesn’t want to go there. But he’s pulling out all the stops. He’s down double digits. Let me get the polling data on this. The latest polling data is that Dingy Harry is down double digits in his reelection campaign, and so is a California congresswoman. There’s a big story about it, just another of the many stories I have of Democrats going home and finding hell to pay rather than accolades and slaps on the back and all of that. So Dingy Harry’s down by double digits to two different Republicans in Nevada. Nothing has changed. He’s just trying to put the best spin on it he can.
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RUSH: Back to Greta Van Susteren. She asks Harry Reid, ‘What about all the people that are gonna scam the system?’
REID: Most people aren’t going to be out looking for ways to scam the system.
VAN SUSTEREN: You don’t think so?
REID: No, I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I think that most people are going to comply with what the rules are, and the rules are that people should have insurance, and I think people are not willing to do that gamble.
VAN SUSTEREN: I wish people were as decent as that. You know, I don’t mean to be a cynic, but I could even point to members of the Congress and Senate that are sort of gaming the system. You’ve got people in this country who are here not legally. You got people cheating on their income taxes. I would like to think that everyone is so noble as you say, although I’m a little bit suspicious.
RUSH: Dingy Harry, ‘Oh, no, no! Nobody’s going to scam the system.’ They already are! (laughing) Now, the IRS… You know, to people that live in blue cities, their refund check? The common term for it is Christmas in July, Christmas in the summertime. And if they don’t get it, you ever heard the term ‘long, hot summer’? So the IRS people, if they start tampering with people’s refunds — ’cause they are important to people. I mean people plan all year. People think they are shafting the government when they get a big refund. They really think they are sticking it to the government — which, of course, is not true. I understand the lure of wanting a relatively big pile of cash to go spend or save or invest or what have you.
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RUSH: Harry Reid says that there’s no fraud out there. From the Houston Chronicle, today: ‘The former co-owner of a Houston durable medical equipment company has been convicted of bilking Medicaid of nearly $1 million in a scheme involving adult diapers,’ the kind of stuff that Patrick Leahy, Senator Depends, wears. ‘Fred Jessie Cole Jr., 44, pleaded guilty to 14 counts of health care fraud,’ don’t tell Dingy Harry about this, ‘connected to a scam to file fraudulent claims for incontinence supplies, such as diapers and briefs, federal authorities said late Monday.’ From January 18 of this year, from Reuters, unfazed: ‘Some 180 billion euros ($260 bln) is lost globally every year to fraud and error in healthcare — enough to quadruple the World Health Organisation’s and UNICEF’s budgets and control malaria in Africa…’ So $260 billion, and that’s all they found. There’s undoubtedly more. This from CNN on October 22nd of last year: ‘Experienced in running drug, prostitution and gambling rings, crime groups of various ethnicities and nationalities are learning it’s safer and potentially more profitable to file fraudulent claims with the federal Medicare program and state-run Medicaid plans.’ So the mob is involved. There’s fraud and abuse all over. Remember Dingy Harry said, ‘No, no, no! There won’t be any of that. People aren’t going to scam the system.’ Remember Obama said, ‘You know, Republicans have a good idea,’ at the health care summit. ‘We ought to incorporate that in our plan, eliminating fraud and abuse,’ as though if we don’t incorporate the Republican plan to eliminate fraud and abuse, we’re not going to have it in the plan. We’re going to be sponsoring fraud and abuse.