RUSH: The Senate did vote to maintain their subsidy. They did that. One of the things the Republicans sent over from the House was an offer to not shut down if the Democrats would give that up.
The Democrats in the Senate voted to keep their subsidies. I think a big deal needs to be made of that, and we will do our part here, as we did yesterday. “The Office of Personnel Management ruled Monday that members of Congress and their staffs,” in addition to getting their 75% subsidy on the purchase of insurance at the exchanges, “will be able to buy health care plans that pay for abortions, even though the premiums are funded largely by taxpayer money,” and that makes it illegal.
There is federal law on this, and federal law is being broken by virtue of this ruling from the Office of Personnel Management. “Under the terms of Obamacare, lawmakers and their aides are required to ditch their government-sponsored plans and buy insurance on state-based health care exchanges,” for which they’ll be paid those subsidies, “though unlike most people on the exchanges, the staffers and members will have most of the costs of their premiums paid by their employer — in this case, taxpayers.”
Us!
“Federal law generally prevents taxpayer money from being used to pay for abortions, but OPM said the health care plans offered through the exchange were private.” They just made a random ruling that the insurance plans — being subsidized by taxpayer, public money — are all of the private. The Office of Personnel Management “said it will make sure the money is segregated so that the portion that pays for abortions comes out of the employees’ own contributions, which amounts to about [25%] of the premiums.”
This is snake oil. This is bait-and-switch. This is an abject lie. Members of Congress and their staffs are going to have any abortions they want — and any abortions on members of their family or friends who are covered by their policy — paid for by you. Now, there’s a very active pro-life member of Congress from New Jersey. His name is Christopher Smith. He says that the Office of Personnel Management is violating a law that he wrote in 1983.
It is “the law of the land.”
It “prohibits OPM from paying any expenses to administer plans that cover abortion, except in cases of rape or incest or when the motherÂ’s life is in danger. ‘You can’t break the law, Mr. President, and just issue a final rule as if somehow youÂ’re comporting with the law,’ Mr. Smith told The Washington Times. ‘We donÂ’t want to subsidize abortion on demand, and the public is absolutely with us,'” but it’s a violation of law. Of course, “Democrats applauded the ruling, saying it ensures equal access to abortions.”
The law of the land is that taxpayer money cannot be used for this, but the Office of Personnel Management (which is Obama) has basically said that taxpayer money can be used. Now, this issue, this abortion issue, is rooted, really, in life. It’s been masked over and papered over with supposed feminist policy concerns, but what it is really the root of the deterioration throughout our culture, particularly among young people, of the loss of respect for the sanctity of life.
This is a price this culture continues to pay, our society continues to pay for these 1.3 million abortions a year. You just can’t have that happen since 1973, 1.3 million a year, and it not have an impact on the culture, even if it’s subconscious. But this is just a wanton violation of law. The law of the land says that this cannot happen, but the Office of Personnel Management says, “To hell with that! We’re gonna make sure that members of Congress and their staff if they want borings are covered under Obamacare.”
Remember, up to 75% of the premiums of members of Congress and the staff subsidized by you, by us, the taxpayers. You may not qualify for a subsidy. Members of Congress and their staff make anywhere from $100,000 to $174,000 a year and they were bellyaching and whining and moaning a couple of weeks ago they couldn’t afford Obamacare on their income. So Obama rode to the rescue and said, “The Office of Personnel Management will subsidize your premiums, through the exchanges!”
Now, the Office of Personnel Management’s not gonna subsidize anybody else. This is just the government workers, but it’s still taxpayer money that’s gonna be used for the subsidy. “Mr. Smith said his law, which has been in effect for all but two years since 1983, has a long legislative history that is very clear, and he said the Obama [regime] ignored it.”
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You know, this is great. The World War II memorial in Washington shut down because of the shutdown. It’s barricaded. So a bunch of World War II vets showed up today, they had a plan to go see it, and they said, “To hell with this,” and they just tore the barricades down and went into the memorial. I mean, these people took Normandy. They took the beaches. They’re not gonna be shut down by a bunch of Obama barriers in Washington.
You know, I got a question. If the Democrats can just exempt themselves from having to pay for Obamacare, why didn’t they just exempt themselves from paying taxes? What’s to stop them? If the law of the land says that taxpayer money cannot be used to fund abortions and they have a plan that does that, why not just exempt themselves from paying taxes? Why not just bonus themselves any amount of money they want to pay their taxes.
What’s to stop them?
They are not deterred by the law in any way, shape, manner, or form and they certainly are not gonna be deterred by the fact that you and I cannot get the same deal they’ve got. It’s readily apparent that laws do not apply to Congress or the president or their families. I think they ought to just make that official and make it comprehensive. Why doesn’t Dingy Harry just declare that Democrats are exempt from paying taxes?
“Democrats in the Senate are exempt from paying taxes. It’s too hard to live on what they make and their jobs are so important, they gotta be in a good mood every day. They can’t have any stress.” They’ll have their own separate HealthCare.gov website that will not be shut down, and they won’t have to deal with these navigators from ACORN. By the way, if you think I’m making that up, we had the story on this back in June.
It was a Betsy McCaughey piece, “Using Obamacare to Create a Permanent Democrat Majority — “Last month, Covered California announced $37 million in grants to 48 organizations to build public awareness about the opening of the health exchange on Oct. 1. Of the 48 organizations that got grants, only a handful are health-care related. The California NAACP received $600,000 to do door-to-door canvassing and presentations at community organizations.” This is from exchange money.
“Service Employees International Union, which says its mission is ‘economic justice,’ received two grants totaling $2 million to make phone calls, robo-calls and go door to door.” For what? They’re not going out and ringing doorbells for Obamacare. They don’t have to. That’s the law of the land. So what is SEIU doing getting exchange money and then making phone calls with it? They are signing up Democrat voters.
“The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor AFL-CIO got $1 million for door-to-door, one-on-one education and social networking.” These are the navigators. These are the health exchange navigators, in part, who are administering these exchanges — i.e., these websites and these organizations closely allied with the Democrat Party are being funded by tax dollars to ostensibly run the exchanges. But what they’re doing is conducting outreach to register Democrat voters. Phone banks, door-to-door canvassing, this is what activists do to turn out the vote.
They’re not doing this to go out and get people to sign up for Obamacare.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
Here’s the Dennis in Stewartstown, Pennsylvania. Hi, Dennis. I’m glad you waited. Great to have you on the program. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Long-time listener, first-time caller.
RUSH: Happy to have you here, sir. Thank you.
CALLER: Thank you. Thanks for taking my call. I’m calling about the new federal tax law, a/k/a Obamacare. John Obama Roberts, he rewrote the law, correct? It’s a US federal tax law — and Obama, Obama he couldn’t give a cockroach a waiver from paying federal taxes, and I think you’re the person that needs to put the chant out there to the other conservative talking heads to get the message out.
RUSH: And what’s the chant?
CALLER: Oh, I’m sorry. For John Boehner… I’m a little… a little… I’ve been waiting a long time and I-m a little nervous right now. I’ve been waiting for John Boehner to get in front of a federal judge demanding that this law take effect on January 1st for every person in the country, every taxpayer in the country. It needs to be done, because like I said, Obama couldn’t give a pardon on federal taxes to anyone in this country.
RUSH: Ummm.
CALLER: He could give ’em a pardon if they’re convicted, he can, you know, pardon the cockroach.
RUSH: I’m lost. I must admit. It is the law of the land. Boehner’s not gonna go to the Supreme Court. Well, okay, so what he wants is for Boehner to go to the court, say, ” Obama, you can’t give these people waivers, and you…” Look, I don’t know what to do about this, because there is genuine lawlessness. The opening story that I focused on when the program began today is they have just found a way for taxpayer funded abortion via Obamacare.
It’s against the law. There are all kinds of lawless things happening. Obama cannot just grant waivers here or there, but he’s doing it. I think what Dennis is upset about is that Obama says, “Congress isn’t there! I’m gonna do whatever I want to do for or against whoever I want to do it, and I don’t care who’s running Congress,” and the Democrats in Congress are perfectly fine for this to happen because the Republicans run the House, but there’s lawlessness everywhere.
It’s become so common that it’s not even an outrage. It’s become so common that people… I don’t know what. Accept it? They just feel powerless to do anything about it. So in that sense, I understand what he’s saying. What he wants, therefore, is somebody to go back to the Supreme Court or some court, and charge Obama with behaving in a lawless fashion, in the administering and the implementation of the health care law, which clearly is happening.
Not just with the health care law. All these executive orders on things. We’ve got… I don’t know. A dictatorship? That’s not gonna persuade anybody. But we’re close to statist, you know, banana republic kind of power being employed here — and there’s no opposition to it in the media, of course. Because the only people objecting to it are hated by the media and the Democrats, and that would be Republicans and conservatives.
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