Obamacare Sinks Alan Mollohan; Repeal Movement Well Underway

RUSH: Big election news here. Alan Mollohan, this is the guy who enriched himself to the tune of gazillions, a Democrat from West Virginia. This seat has been held by Democrats for generations. It’s now up for grabs because Mollohan, 14-term incumbent, ‘was swept out of office on a wave of voter unrest that an opponent called a referendum on President Obama. Mollohan is the first US House incumbent to be ousted this spring primary season amid widespread anti-incumbent sentiment.’ Now, this is the AP and of course they think it’s anti-incumbent, but it’s not. It’s anti-Democrat; it’s anti-liberal; it’s anti-anybody who is in bed or on the golf course with Obama. ‘The same unrest helped end the 17-year career of Utah Republican Sen. Bob Bennett, who lost a GOP convention on Saturday.’ Obama ended up beating Bennett. Wall Street Journal has a great editorial on that today, more details.

Anyway, Mollohan, he voted for Obamacare. And we remember Clinton, (impersonating Clinton) ‘Hey, you guys, you remember what happened back in 1994, we lost the House, that’s ’cause we didn’t pass health care. If you’d have passed health care back then, I’d have never lost the House, you wouldn’t either. If you want to avoid that same kind of tragedy happening this year, you gotta vote for health care.’ And so they went out and they fell on the sword, and this guy, Mollohan was defeated by a Democrat in the primary, he was defeated by a Democrat who ran on the fact that Mollohan voted for Obamacare. The Democrat that beat Mollohan does not like cap and trade. Now, of course West Virginia is a coal state, and that would make sense. But liberals like to say that the right is nuts and full of wackos, out of the mainstream on these issues which is why it’s important to point out here that Mollohan was beaten by a Democrat because he voted with socialists like Obama and Nancy Pelosi. This is just one of many little telltale signs out there.

Obama health care, all kinds of stories today on how the unrest and the dissatisfaction, the opposition to Obamacare is rising, making repeal even more possible and more likely. And the CBO: health care is gonna end up costing over a trillion dollars, like we told you here, $115 billion more than they initially knew. This is in response to a question from a couple Republicans that the CBO got before the vote on health care, but they just now had the time to get back and answer it. You talk about out of control spending, the CBO is just as culpable. The CBO is just as culpable because they knew all of this stuff that they’re reporting now in advance. Everybody involved knew that they had to keep that number under a trillion because that’s what the Iraq war cost.

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RUSH: Let’s move to health care for just a second. ‘Congressional Budget Office estimates released Tuesday predict the health care overhaul will likely cost about $115 billion more in discretionary spending over ten years than the original cost projections. The additional spending — if approved over the years by Congress — would bring the total estimated cost of the overhaul to over $1 trillion.’

Now, you and I are not surprised by any of this.

‘The CBO released the estimates in response to a request from California Rep. Jerry Lewis, ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee. A spokeswoman for Lewis said the inquiry was filed before the House voted on the bill. ‘[L]arge sums of discretionary spending in both the House and Senate versions of the health care reform bills have not yet been included in estimates by the CBO, rendering it impossible to make informed decisions regarding the outcome of this legislation,’ Lewis wrote in a February letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, asking her to postpone votes until the discretionary spending analysis was complete.’ Well, guess what? Now, after the bill has been signed, it is complete.

‘The nonpartisan’ ah-heh-hem ‘CBO expects the Internal Revenue Service to spend another $5 billion to $10 billion on implementing the rules regarding premiums and cost-sharing credits.’ We had the story yesterday that, ‘Oh, guess what? You know what? You got this great new part of health care that you can keep your kids on your health care plan when they graduate college all the way up to age 26. Oh, thank God! I don’t have to worry about getting my kids health care.’ Ah, ah, ah. It’s going to cost additional premium. (Gasp!) It’s been discovered it’s going to cost you. People thought that was just going to be free because the Democrats and Obama made this sound like everybody else but you was going to be paying for it. A couple millionaires were going to be paying for it. ‘Oh, yeah! Your premium is going to go down 2,500 bucks!’

They were going to reduce your premium. They were going to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars over 20 years, and the news ever since it’s been signed is how much the deficit is going to expand after this. The Heritage Foundation Morning Bell: ‘The Road to Repeal is Well Underway,’ and, folks, I’m going to tell you something. Do not think that repeal is out of the question. In fact, repealing the health care plan is something that may well really happen, and the reason is it’s not just the constitutional question of whether or not the government can mandate that we buy insurance and if the government can fine us for not doing something. It is that the states simply can’t afford the Medicare mandates that have been slapped on them in the bill, and here is an example. From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch yesterday: ‘Missouri lawmakers set an August vote today on a referendum that will allow Missourians to voice their opinions on the federal health care legislation that passed earlier this year.

‘The Aug. 2 ballot issue will ask voters to decide whether to amend state statutes to ‘deny the government authority to penalize citizens for refusing to purchase private health insurance.’ … ‘This will set up a constitutional showdown,’ said state Rep. Tim Jones, R-Eureka. … Democrats referred to the bill as an ‘election-year stunt,” but the states can’t afford this and they’re going to try to go at this in any number of ways. The constitutional route is just one of them. Nancy Pelosi. ”We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,’ Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, told us just weeks before Congress passed President Barack Obama’s health care plan. Well, the nation’s post-passage Obamacare education continued yesterday when the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) confirmed that the federal government will have to spend an additional $115 billion implementing the law, bringing the total estimated cost to over $1 trillion.’

We all know the $115 billion is low and we all know the $1 trillion is low, and we know that ‘The estimate had been requested before passage of the bill by Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), but the CBO was too overwhelmed with the Democrats’ other constant revisions to the law to get back to Lewis before the final vote. This is by far not the only nasty little surprise that has come back to bite Obamacare after passage. Shortly after it became law, US employers began reporting hundreds of millions of dollars in losses thanks to tax changes in the bill. AT&T and Verizon alone pegged their Obamacare tax losses at around $1 billion each.’ Remember Henry Waxman said, ‘You can’t do that! Everybody knows this is going to lower costs! You guys get up here!’

He sent out a letter like a subpoena. ‘You guys get up here! You bring your e-mails and you bring your books. We’re going to see. You can’t do this.’ The law gets you one way. If you don’t like that, the regime is going to go after you. The regime went after them, and then they discovered they were being honest, so regime canceled the hearings because the regime didn’t want these guys coming up selling the rest of the country everything that’s in this monstrosity and disaster. Remember that? ‘At first, Democrats in Congress were outraged by the announcements and threatened to hold hearings persecuting these companies. But then the Democrats not only found out the companies were obligated by law to report their Obamacare related losses, but that the losses were a signal these companies might have to dump their employees’ and retirees’ health care coverage all together.’

Then we got a story later on that that’s exactly what a lot of companies are going to do. ‘Then the Obama administration’s own Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released its final cost projections for Obamacare, finding that, contrary to White House claims, the legislation will increase national health care spending by $311 billion over the next decade. The CMS report also revealed that: 1) 18 million Americans will pay $33 billion in penalties for failing to comply with Obamacare’s individual mandate and still receive no health care; 2) US employers will pay $87 billion in employer mandate penalties; 3) 14 million Americans will lose their current employer-based health coverage.’ This is Obama’s own Medicare group saying this.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service, this is Medicare actuary, the government is saying all this, not Heritage Foundation, not some other think tank. ‘4) 7.4 million seniors will lose their current Medicare Advantage benefits; 5) 15% of all Medicare providers will be made unprofitable, thus ‘jeopardizing access to care for beneficiaries.’ Facing this onslaught of reality, the Obama administration has swooped into full spin mode, devoting the Weekly Presidential Address to explaining the ‘real benefits’ Obamacare is ‘already delivering’ to Americans. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius then sent letters to House and Senate leaders touting her ‘progress’ in implementing the law. And then last night White House aides Nancy-Ann DeParle and Stephanie Cutter briefed the House Democratic Caucus on the ‘tangible benefits’ of the law. The sales pitch for all three events was the same…’

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RUSH: So the White House in gear now to counter all of the truthful news about the exploding costs of Obamacare. ‘Last night White House aides Nancy-Ann DeParle and Stephanie Cutter briefed the House Democratic Caucus on the ‘tangible benefits’ of the law. The sales pitch for all three events was the same: 1) ‘adults’ age 26 and younger can be added to their parents’ plan (never mind that this drives up their parents’ health care costs); 2) new high-risk pools for Americans with pre-existing conditions (never mind that 19 states have rejected working with HHS since Obamacare massively underfunded the pools.’ This is what I was talking about earlier. They can’t afford the Medicare mandates, these states, and that’s where the real likelihood of repealing this monstrosity lies. And number three, ‘supplementing insurance for early retirees,’ that’s a tangible benefit, ‘(never mind that the Medicare Advantage cuts and tax changes mentioned above are a big reason why seniors will need supplemental coverage).’

Now, the dirty little secret here, folks, is the Democrats know that the American people are not buying what they are saying. Here’s the Washington Times: ‘Congressional Democrats and the Obama administration are still feeling the euphoria after establishing a federal role in dictating health care coverage. Enacting an unpopular new law in the face of solid Republican opposition may have demonstrated broad legislative power, but the administration’s deafness to public opinion may prove to be Obamacare’s undoing. So far, lawmakers representing half the country have introduced legislation that would exempt residents from the federal health care mandates.’ And we have the Missouri General Assembly story I just mentioned to you. The fact is it’s an increasing number of Americans that oppose the bill in whatever survey you look at. The administration thought this would all die down, just like they thought that the Arizona law, ‘Well, people are going to be embarrassed about this, and support for the Arizona law, that will die.’ It’s not. It’s just the exact opposite. Opposition to Obama’s health care plan is growing. The momentum to repeal — outside Washington, anyway — is growing.

There is no massive momentum to accept this monstrosity. The left can’t even figure out what is in the bill. The latest Rasmussen Report shows that 63% of likely voters now believe it will increase the deficit. Fifty-six percent now favor repeal of the bill. It’s on life support. Well, I can’t say it’s on life support. But the momentum to get rid of this or to change it drastically is building. The Democrats know it; Obama knows it. You’ve got this Mollohan guy who lost after 14 terms of Congress, defeated in a primary in West Virginia by a Democrat reminding everybody that Mollohan voted for Obamacare. You’ve got David Obey, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, retiring, quitting because he’s going to lose reelection. He’s the guy that pounded the gavel to announce passage of Obamacare, using the same gavel that was pounded when they passed Medicare.

This administration is governing against the will of the people. They know it, but they don’t care. They’re doing it arrogantly. They cannot win a policy argument. The administration is not winning anything by convincing a majority of anybody that they’re right or to support them. They’re bribing members of Congress; they’re threatening members of Congress; they’re using thuggery; they are using lawlessness. They’re not winning any argument whatsoever. Seventy percent in Massachusetts favor a ban on public benefits for illegal immigrants, 70% in Massachusetts!

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RUSH: So the bill is this unpopular, and we haven’t even started paying for it yet. Wait ’til we start paying for Obamacare. Now, the sad reality is it will never be repealed as long as Obama’s in office, even if we have a landslide Senate win in November, they’ll still have enough Senators to veto or to at least filibuster. We could defund parts of it, perhaps, but to really get rid of this thing Obama is going to have to be defeated in 2012. We have to take the presidency and Congress to beat this back, folks. Don’t doubt me.

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RUSH: I’ve got a story that just cleared the FoxNews.com wire: ‘The Obama administration threatened to veto parts of its own health care bill after budget scorekeepers found that the package would add at least $115 billion more to government health care spending. President Obama’s budget office charged Congress with finding $115 billion in spending cuts or tax increases to offset the price tag hike. The figure approached the amount of money the Congressional Budget Office previously estimated the law would save, and pushed the total 10-year cost of the package past $1 trillion. … But the Office of Management and Budget stood by the administration’s original claims that the law would reduce the deficit and tasked Congress with making sure that happens — or else. ‘The Affordable Care Act will reduce the deficit by more than $100 billion in the first decade, and that will not change unless Congress acts to change it,’ budget office spokesman Ken Baer said. ‘If these authorizations are funded, they must be offset somewhere else in the discretionary budget. The president has called for a non-security discretionary spending freeze, and he will enforce that with his veto pen.”

So close Gitmo, I know, but how do you veto something that you’ve already signed into law? And what is this: ‘Administration Threatens to Veto Health Spending Bill After Price Tag Jumps.’ This is not a new piece of legislation. This is a new calculation that says the bill Obama’s already signed will add $115 billion to it. And now they’re threatening to veto health spending? I mean this is an excuse to raise taxes somewhere $115 billion, but it’s still the strangest story. ‘Administration Threatens to Veto Health Spending Bill After Price Tag Jumps.’ It’s his bill! But he’s dumping on Congress, throwing them overboard here. It’s amazing.