RUSH: My e-mail today, I’m watching television, everybody’s outraged over the recess appointment of this guy Donald Berwick to be the Medicare/Medicaid administrator for health care. All over television and the news, show prep here, people on our side are all upset this guy’s been recess appointed. I look at this and I say, ‘Why is anybody shocked at anything Obama does and why are they shocked at anybody he picks to head up a cabinet position?’ This NASA guy, he misspoke. No, he didn’t. Obama’s backed the guy up. Everybody in this administration is handpicked by Obama or people of like mind. This is not an accident. Obama is not some innocent waif running around there being sabotaged and undermined by a bunch of radicals in this administration. He is the radical undermining the country and he’s got his buddies appointed to do the work.
The AP is happy as they can be about this: ‘President Barack Obama intends to use the congressional recess to bypass the Senate and appoint Dr. Donald Berwick, an expert on patient care who’s drawn fire from the GOP, to oversee Medicare and Medicaid, the White House announced late Tuesday. The appointment was to be made Wednesday, with lawmakers out of town for their annual July Fourth break. … The decision means Berwick can assume the post of administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services without undergoing confirmation hearings in the Senate.’ Now, the argument is, well, yeah, recess appointments have been used before and Republicans have done it, and this is true, and one of the cases that the defenders of Obama are citing today is John Bolton. Well, John Bolton was not a policy maker. John Bolton also went through a Senate confirmation hearing. We remember it well. They tarred and feathered the guy. But people looking for decency, fairness, whatever for the best of the country from this administration had better wise up real fast. It’s not for the betterment of the country. Everything Obama does is political. Now, who is this guy? Let’s go to the audio sound bites. This Berwick guy, this is a sound bite from 2008, July 1st in London at the National Health Service conference celebrating 60 years of England’s socialized medicine, which, of course, is a disaster. And this is what Donald Berwick said. This is just a little portion of his remarks.
BERWICK: Sick people tend to be poorer and that poor people tend to be sicker and that any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized, and humane must, must redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent health care is by definition redistributional. Britain, you chose well.
RUSH: Okay, so we’ve got a socialist, we’ve got a Marxist, we’ve got a redistributionist who is now head administrator for Medicare and Medicaid. So, what’s out of character here? What’s so shocking? What is so shocking that the regime would recess-appoint this guy without any confirmation hearings? The regime is who it is. Obama is who he is. I’ve had to marvel today. So many people on our side of the aisle are shocked and outraged. Why? The time to be shocked and outraged is during the campaign. The time to beat this guy was during the campaign. Now it’s too late. You’re not going to stop this guy from making his recess appointments. You’re not going to stop this guy from redistributing wealth. We’re well down the road. All this crying and caterwauling is a little bit too late now. I mean you might want to say, ‘Well, the American people need to be informed and educated about this.’ Well, they will be soon enough when this stuff gets implemented. Try next year. Try next January when all these tax increases hit and all the rationing for health care hits. There’s no way to stop it. It’s going to happen. And then people will get their fill of it and find out what it was they elected and what they voted for.
But Obama is totally within character here. What he’s doing here is exactly predictable. He’s been precisely who he is. The fact that he instructs his NASA guy to reach out to Muslims is totally who Obama is. This should be no shock. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be any anger or any outrage, but there shouldn’t be any surprise over this. ‘But, Rush, but, Rush, he was so articulate, he was so brilliant.’ What does that matter? Let’s redefine smart. How smart is it to destroy the United States economy? What kind of an IQ do you need for that? What does intelligence matter here? How smart is it if it’s diabolical in its intentions? We want to be satisfied with the notion the guy’s smart? This AP story is amazing: ‘Republicans have indicated they’re prepared to oppose [Berwick] over comments he’s made on rationing of medical care and other matters. Democrats want to avoid a nasty confirmation fight that could reopen the health care debate.’
Of course they don’t want to reopen the health care debate ’cause it’s massively unpopular. Although the Democrats tell us how popular it is, 60% of the American people want it repealed. Forty-one percent don’t think it will be, but 60% want it repealed. ‘Berwick was nominated in April but no confirmation hearing had been scheduled,’ and there’s a reason for that. The Democrats don’t want the country hearing about this guy. The Democrats don’t want this guy speaking in public hearings just like they didn’t want Elena Kagan to tell everybody who she really is. I mean we have an administration that at one point, one time, are wide open and out in the open and telling us who they are, not hiding anything, and then the next moment they don’t want us to know what they’re really up to. But it doesn’t take a whole lot of intelligence to know what they’re really up to. So I don’t know. Maybe it’s just because I’m in a foul mood here today, but I don’t have a lot of sympathy for people who shoulda gotten it before the election who are only now starting to realize the disaster that we’ve got. It’s too late! November is the first chance we’ve got to — the government is suing Arizona. And, you know what? In this lawsuit they’re not even citing profiling, all the public reasons for opposing, not even citing that. The supremacy clause. It’s all political.
They’re not doing this for the sake of immigration or the federal government maintaining its control. If they really cared about states and cities violating federal law they’d shut down every sanctuary city. They’d shut down San Francisco and every other one that welcomes illegal immigrants and puts ’em on the welfare rolls. They’re not serious about that. What they’re serious about is upending the country. What they’re serious about is getting even with this country over its successes and its power. What they’re about is redistributing wealth. Here, listen to it again. This is the guy running Obamacare, and he’s recess-appointed. There’s nothing anybody can do, and this is Obama. This is a clone, same thing with Kagan. When this guy speaks, you may as well think and realize these are Obama’s words. Same thing with the NASA guy. Listen to this again.
BERWICK: Sick people tend to be poorer and that poor people tend to be sicker and that any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized, and humane must, must redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent health care is by definition redistributional. Britain, you chose well.
RUSH: Everything else is redistributionist. Everything is going to be redistributed. Everything. Not just health care. Everything. Now, for the fun of it, let’s go back and let’s listen to some of the outrage from the leftists in the media and in politics over recess appointments Republicans have made in the past, particularly John Bolton. This is July 31st, 2005, Fox News Sunday, Chris Matthews talking to Senator Chris Dodd, the question: ‘Senator, it looks like Bolton’s going to be there, recess appointment, what do you think effect that will have on things?’
DODD: He’s damaged goods. This is a person who lacks credibility. That’s not what you want to send up, a person who doesn’t have the confidence of the Congress. The recess appointment process is being abused by Democrats and Republicans. Remember, this was written under the Constitution to provide during these long periods when Congress was not going to be around at all and you had to put people in place. It’s an abuse of the process whether Democrats or Republicans use it.
RUSH: Right, okay, so they’re hypocrites. Again, what’s new? What’s new about the Democrats being hypocrites? So when the Republicans do it, it stinks, it’s a violation of principle, it’s shredding the Constitution. When Obama does it, it has to be done, it’s too important not to get done, it has to be done, we’ll look the other way. Here’s Katie Couric and Chris Matthews. This is from the Today show August 1st of 2005, and they’re talking about Bolton being recess-appointed to be UN ambassador.
COURIC: Over the weekend the White House seemed to indicate that President Bush is poised to use his recess appointment power and send John Bolton to the UN without a Senate confirmation vote. How can he do that?
MATTHEWS: Well he can do it under the law and he can make the appointment through the end of this Congress. It will be a recess appointment only good for one Congress. He really won’t have the full authority of someone like Daniel Patrick Moynihan who spoke for the whole country, not just for the president.
RUSH: So they’re both fit to be tied over this happening as well, and Katie Couric, who only anchors the evening news, ‘How can he do this?’ Katie, you know something, you ought to be asking that 15 times a night on the CBS Evening News reporting the latest news on the Obama regime and what it’s doing. How can he do this? How can he do that? That’s what needs to be asked, how can Obama do this?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: There is another reason why Obama and the Democrats do not want any confirmation hearings on Donald Berwick, and that’s because we will hear that the death panels are back. In fact, they never left. We would hear that death panels are in and here to stay in Obamacare.
Now, we go through the history of Bolton and what happened — and it might be wise to do that. Bolton’s recess appointment was temporary, only until the end of that current Congress, and when that current Congress ended Bolton just stepped down. But anybody want to bet that Berwick will not step down? Just like Geithner. Even though he’s a tax cheat, had to stay on as Treasury secretary ’cause he was the only guy — the only guy in America — who had the talent, the intelligence, the ability to deal with the financial crisis. Berwick will be the only guy who can really make this Obamacare work. He studied it; he believes in it. So Berwick is not gonna go anywhere when his recess appointment ends. And the Democrats do not want hearings on this ’cause they don’t want this guy on television coast to coast explaining who he is and what he believes in because it will give the lie to what they’re saying about Obamacare.
Now, Bolton had to resign at the end of the Congress in which he was recess appointed because the Democrats controlled the Senate at that time and they wouldn’t send his nomination to the floor. They had the votes. They had the votes to confirm Bolton beyond his recess appointment, but Biden, who then ran the Senate, would not send his nomination to the floor. Now, we can get all upset about this, but it’s time to realize this is how the Democrats play the game. We don’t. Our side doesn’t play the game this way. We’re out there caterwauling and wailing and moaning about a recess appointment. That’s all we’re doing. We’re talking about how, ‘Well, it’s horrible. That’s a bastardization of the process.’ This is a bastardization of the Constitution. This whole administration is. Bolton had to resign, and the New York Times was very happy about it. ‘Bolton to Leave Post as US Envoy to United Nations,’ even though he had the votes.