RUSH: I checked the e-mail during the break, and people asked me, “Do you really mean it, when you say, our freedom of choice just met its death panel?” Yes, I do. Our last caller, who mentioned the precedent set by this, had it right. Even if this is repealed, if any tax increase that’s happened in the past is repealed, the precedent has still been set now. The court got out of the way. There are no limits, folks, on what can be taxed, because this essentially is the federal government being granted the permission to tax behavior. This is the federal government being permitted to tax choices that you make, if you don’t make the right one. So essentially your choice now costs you. In the case of health care, you must buy it now.
The Supreme Court said that the Congress did not have the power to mandate that you buy health insurance. The Commerce Clause did not permit that. But, that doesn’t matter, because the Congress can tax you. They can make you buy anything now and call it a tax. If they want to make you buy broccoli, if you don’t, you will pay a penalty. If somebody passes a law, somebody signs it into law that everybody has to eat broccoli, you might think that that’s an extreme example, and it’s only extreme in the sense you don’t think anybody would ever mandate something like that, but we’re here.
So now behavior is taxed. There’s no limits, even if Obamacare is repealed as a result of the election in November. And don’t forget, the Tea Party came into existence because health care was passed. It was the passage of Obamacare that led to the Tea Party evolving from the grassroots, effervescing from nowhere. Everyday ordinary American citizens fed up already with all of Obama’s spending, all of his other tax increases. Then health care came along, and it was passed in a very unorthodox way that went against the grain of most people’s sense of how things get done in this country. And then after it was passed the Democrats spiked the football and walked all through the Capitol with that giant gavel. Then they made up lies about being spat upon and having racial epithets shouted at them.
And so the Tea Party was born, and it led to all of those town hall meetings and it led to all the union violence at some of these town hall meetings. And the question now is just to what extent will history repeat itself, in terms of the Tea Party expanding. It never did go away. The Tea Party never went away. The left hopes that it did. The left tried to tell themselves that it went away, but it didn’t. It just transformed. It started as a protest movement and now is eventually a grassroots movement designed to find nominees and then get them elected. And it’s having pretty decent success. But now it’s gonna reenergize even more. And November 2012 stands to be an even bigger repeat than what November 2010, the midterm elections, were.
I would not want to be a Democrat. They may be temporarily happy. They may be spiking the football and so forth, but you’re going to see more of them declining to go to the Democrat convention. You’re gonna see more of them declining to be campaigning side-by-side with Barack Obama. This is just gonna make the Tea Party boil. Look, I’m in the tea business now, I’m a tea expert, and I happen to know what happens when you boil tea. It gets stronger. That’s how you make it stronger. You boil it. You steep it. You leave it in the hot water. And it gets stronger. And that’s exactly what is going to happen now. It’s happening even now, as we speak. But despite all that, the caller had it exactly right, the precedent has been set, that there is no limit on what the government can tax.
In fact, the court went looking, the court went mining for a way to make this possible. The notion of a limitless expansion of the power of the federal government was affirmed today by the Supreme Court of the United States. And that’s why there’s so much spiking the football on the left. And that’s why there is such happiness, because they know what this decision ultimately means. When the federal government has the power to tax behavior, there is no end to what can be taxed. And that’s what Obamacare was always about from the get-go. Obamacare is not about health care for the uninsured. It’s not about improving health care. It’s not about insurance. It’s about the limitless expansion on the federal government and the federal government’s ability to exert behavioral control over the American people. And the reason they sought health care as the vehicle for that is that you can virtually tie any expense, any behavior to health care expense.
You can tax the way people eat. You can tax whether or not they exercise, whatever old wives’ tale you believe about health. And I just ask you to consider all the things you heard the last 30 years, things that you should eat, shouldn’t eat, to prolong the length of your life or that will curtail the length of your life. Imagine the federal government having the power to tax all of those things. Just use the oat bran example. Twenty years ago, oat bran was the single healthiest thing you could eat. Imagine the federal government, some wacko liberal at the FDA or at Health and Human Services, then deciding because some research survey has just said oat bran will make everybody live ten years longer mandating that everybody go eat it, and you don’t.
Why do you think there are thousands of new IRS agents? Why do you think that’s part of this bill? That’s a pure police force enforcement mechanism. But that’s what health care has always been. Obamacare has always been a stealth way for behavioral control over the American people. Sixteen thousand new IRS agents. During the 2010 campaign, during those midterms, the Democrat National Committee told all of its candidates to avoid mentioning Obamacare. Don’t talk about it. It was such a negative. They can’t avoid talking about it now. And they’re going to be forced to lie about it. And they’re gonna be forced to blatantly lie about it. And they’re gonna be forced to lie about it in ways in which the American people, the majority of, know they’re being lied to.
They know that their premiums are not going down. The American people know that they’re not gonna be able to keep their doctor. The American people know that they’re not gonna be able to keep their current plan. The reason is that Obamacare specifically ultimately destroys the private sector insurance market. It will eventually shuffle everybody off to these state exchanges run by the federal government. And it won’t be long before the only place any of us can go for health insurance will be a government office.
Whether you like your doctor won’t matter. Whether you have your plan now won’t matter. Your business… If you get your plan through your employer, it is not gonna be provided by them for long if this isn’t repealed. It’s not gonna be long before your employer takes advantage of the opportunity to pay the fine rather than the premium, ’cause that didn’t change. The fine for the first two to three years — the tax for not buying it — is much cheaper than the policy. By design, employers will off-load the responsibility of health insurance to the state exchanges.
That was always in the cards.
That was always in the plan.
I think the court has said there’s no limit to what the government can tax. Don’t be buffaloed and fooled into thinking this tax increase was tied exclusively to health insurance or health-related matters. All that really has happened here is that the court told the government it can’t make people buy things under the Commerce Clause, but it can with the tax code. That’s as simple as I can make it.
They can’t use the Commerce Clause to make you buy health insurance or whatever else they want to make you buy now. But they can levy a tax on you for not buying it. So, what do you do? If you don’t buy what is commanded to be bought, if you don’t do what is commanded to be done — and if a fine or a penalty or a tax has been set up — these 16,000 IRS agents eventually will find you. That’s essentially what’s happened. That is the massive precedent the previous caller was talking about. That’s what has been established here. This must be what Obama has meant all along when he’s talked about “tax reform.” That’s the simplest way I can think of to have people understand this.
The court says, “You can’t use the Commerce Clause to make people buy health insurance, but you can tax people who don’t.” Well, why stop at health insurance? If you are people that believe in massive federal power and love the exercise of massive federal power — and when it’s all done under the guise of social justice and fairness — why not? It’s all done under the guise that the rich have everything they want because they’ve been able to steal it from the poor, and now we’re gonna make ’em give it back!
“Is my health care free now, Mr. Limbaugh? Is my health care free?”
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