RUSH: I’ll tell you, I can’t keep up anymore. Obamacare is falling apart so fast. It is changing. It is deteriorating. It is just an absolute mess. It is impossible for anybody to keep up with this. The only thing that we know for sure is that the IRS is going to be collecting taxes on this no matter what else happens. I don’t care if they’re extending deadlines. I don’t care if they don’t know what the deadlines are. They don’t have a back end on the website. Do you know they don’t even have a back end yet?
Do you know that the website, HealthCare.gov, cannot even report to insurance companies yet? Without that, the insurance companies are not gonna get paid. Without that, this can’t happen. The back end of Obamacare hasn’t even been built yet, after all of this. That was the focus area last November when this thing went live and it was a mess and they said they’re gonna bring in the brightest wizards of smart in the tech field and get this thing all oiled and smooth and running. They haven’t even gotten to the back end yet. They don’t even know anywhere who’s enrolled and how many have paid because the website cannot report that information.
You might have gone to the website, logged on, and clicked “pay” or whatever the button is to check out, and you assume that the insurance company has a record. There’s no guarantee of that because the back end is not done. But this delay business, folks, I’m kind of surprised that this is news today, because last week at some point we made a big deal that this was coming.
These See, I Told You So’s, I know it’s tough. I’ll be honest with you. I was looking at some stuff in show prep today, ’cause when the news hit that Sebelius is gonna delay it I said, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. She said that she didn’t have the right to delay it. She said she didn’t have statutory permission to delay it.” And then I remembered I had predicted they were gonna delay it, but even I, host of the show, didn’t remember specifically when I’d said what.
So it’s impossible to expect you to remember everything I say, ’cause it’s voluminous here. There’s nobody that puts out this amount of content, nobody comes even close. And it’s so much that not even I can remember it all. That’s why we have the archives. And I went back, and we had this story from the Washington Post today, just to pick one to start. We could start anywhere. “Obama Administration Will Allow More Time To Enroll In Health Care On Federal Marketplace.”
And, look, I’m not trying to be snarky, folks, when I express a little bit of surprise here that everybody’s treating this as breaking news, because we had this last week. We reported this extension was going to happen last week, and I’ve got it right here in the Quick Hits page at my website, RushLimbaugh.com. “Obamacare Website Plans Deadline Leeway.” You might remember, when I remind you here, of what we said last week. Last week we said the White House was going to delay the deadline for anybody who claimed they had a hardship in signing up. We pointed out that the way they were constructing this was that all you had to do was claim that signing up was a hardship, and you would qualify. It was gonna be the honor system.
No proof was required that you didn’t qualify. All you had to do was show up and say it’s a hardship, and you would be exempted from signing up. It means anybody could get an extension on the March 31st deadline. This was last week. Now, the rest of the media either completely ignored that news last week, or they tried to pretend that it didn’t matter since this would only affect a few people, but our analysis turned out to be perfectly accurate.
Has Obama ever met a deadline? There have been 10 delays now in this. Impossible for people to keep up. It’s literally impossible for your average American citizen to know what’s what on this. It is impossible for your average American citizen to know whether he is complying with the law or not.
“The Obama administration has decided to give extra time to Americans who say that they are unable to enroll in health plans through the federal insurance marketplace by the March 31 deadline. Federal officials confirmed Tuesday evening that all consumers who have begun to apply for coverage on HealthCare.gov, but who do not finish by Monday, will have until about mid-April to ask for an extension.”
Look, I’m not trying to be snarky. We reported last week that this was going to happen. I know, until I saw it, I had forgotten, too. So it’s reasonable if you don’t remember. There is so much health care news. This is Fox News. This was last night at ten o’clock. “The Obama administration will grant extra time to Americans who say they are unable to enroll.” This is just a rehash again of what we had last week. What’s interesting to do is just go back to the past when they said this wouldn’t happen, and they’re on the record I don’t know how many times saying there would not be any extension, that there would not be any delay.
“The Obama administration will not delay ObamaCare’s individual mandate or the March 31 deadline for enrolling in the new healthcare law, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Wednesday. Sebelius ruled out the changes during testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee, where Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) noted the administration has made dozens of other changes or delays to the law. Given the problems caused by ObamaCare’s faulty website last year, Brady asked Sebelius directly if delays to the individual mandate or enrollment deadline would be next. ‘No, sir,’ Sebelius responded.”
Let’s go back to November 22nd, start with audio sound bite number one Mr. Broadcast Engineer. This is basically where I first began talking about a delay in the mandatory enrollment. Now, remember, this is all the way back to November of last year.
RUSH ARCHIVE: This is how little they think of you and how dumb they think you are. If they just delay by a month or two, just delay the mandatory enrollment, you’ve got to be signed up, you’ve got to pay your money to Obamacare, you’ve got to have insurance, until after the election, that you’ll vote Democrat, happily, supportively, and then, after the election, when you figure out what’s happened, you’ll have no power to do anything about it other than get mad, and they don’t care if you get mad after the election. They don’t care if you realize you have just been shafted after the election. … You are getting the shaft. We all are. We are getting the royal shaft. Obama just thinks you’re stupid enough to not realize it before November of 2014.
RUSH: And, by the way, folks, that’s right on the money. Some delays go beyond the elections this year. Some of the delays go beyond November 2016. Is it not obvious they think you are so dumb that you won’t realize what they’re doing? They’re delaying the pain so that you don’t feel it, so that you won’t vote against Democrats until after the election. Then you’ll feel the pain and you’ll have already voted for Democrats, is the theory.
But you won’t be able to do anything about it. At that point, you might realize you’ve been hoodwinked but there’s nothing you can do. At this point in time, that’s how stupid they think you are, that they can keep delaying this past elections, and that you won’t know why. Now, here’s Kevin Brady. This is March the 12th, two weeks ago. He’s talking with Kathleen Sebelius about the delay and whether or not March 31st is hard and fast.
BRADY: Are you going to delay the mandate that individuals have to buy government-approved health care or pay a tax?
SEBELIUS: No, sir.
BRADY: Are you going to delay the open enrollment beyond March 31?
SEBELIUS: No, sir.
RUSH: They did. This is the point. They announced a delay last night. Now the delay is to the middle of March. But of course, we told you last week that they were gonna do this. We didn’t just grab it out of thin air. It was reported last week that the Regime was thinking about doing this, and it was the hardship. All you had to do is the honor system. All you had to do is claim you couldn’t make it by March 13th.
For whatever reason, including the very act of complying, itself. Not because you couldn’t afford it, or not because of anything. The actual act of complying, you could say, was a hardship, and you would be granted an exemption from the delay. March 16th, four days later, on Meet the Depressed, David Gregory was talking to White House senior advisor Dan Pfeiffer. He said, “Can you rule out the idea that the president doesn’t delay the individual mandate?”
PFEIFFER: Yes, I can.
GREGORY: You can? That will not happen?
PFEIFFER: That will not happen.
RUSH: “That will not happen,” and yet it has.
I’ve got stories here. “Sebelius Says Mandate Won’t Be Delayed,” and then another one: “On a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services spokeswoman Julie Bataille said even if officials wanted to, her agency didn’t have the authority to delay the enrollment deadline. ‘We have no plans to extend the open enrollment period,’ Bataille said.
“‘In fact, we don’t actually have the statutory authority to extend the open enrollment period in 2014.'” Sebelius says the mandate won’t be delayed; then Pfeiffer says it won’t be delayed. The spokesperson says, “[W]e don’t actually have the statutory authority to” do it, and yet last night they announced the delay. This kind of stuff has to stop, folks. I don’t know what’s gonna make it stop, but it just has to.
I don’t know if it does. This is becoming such an albatross for the Democrats. You know Celinda Lake? She’s a Democrat pollster. She’s part of the Battleground poll. She’s half of it. The other half is Ed Goeas. She’s a Democrat; he’s a Republican. It’s a fairly credible poll. The name of Celinda Lake’s company is Lake Research Partners, and she provided a Democrat analysis of the latest Battleground poll.
It was released yesterday morning, and she summed up her advice to Democrats when it comes to Obamacare: “Don’t defend” it. “In unveiling the poll, she said that the new Democratic strategy should be for candidates to promise to fix the troubled system while pledging to help keep Americans out of the claws of greedy insurance firms.” She said in terms of Obamacare, don’t defend it; there’s nothing to defend.
The American people don’t like it, they don’t want any part of it, so don’t defend it. Just say it was “flawed from the beginning.” Now, where have you heard this before, if I might do another See, I Told You So? (interruption) There you go laughing in there. Do you know what I’m talking about now? Do you remember when the polling data came out that showed the Republicans were gonna clean the clock because nobody wanted Obamacare?
I warned you that Democrats could see the same poll, and the Democrats could see the same data, and they could run against Obamacare by saying, “This is not what I voted for. This thing’s changed so many times, this is not what I voted for. I don’t want it. I’m not in on it,” and, you know, that could be interpreted as unloading on Obama. But my point was that it wasn’t just an opportunity for Republicans to run against Obamacare.
Some of these Democrats in trouble in the Senate could do the same thing, and here comes Celinda Lake telling them how to do it. (paraphrased) “It was flawed from the beginning,” i.e., “It’s not what I voted for! It was flawed from the beginning! It’s not what I voted for.” Don’t defend it. “We’re going to fix it, and we’re gonna make sure the insurance companies don’t screw you.” That’s what she is advising Democrat candidates to say, in the midst of an absolute disaster!
The greatest health care system in the world ever devised is disintegrating before our eyes, and there isn’t anybody apparently in leadership anywhere who knows how to fix this. All anybody wants to be seen doing now is running away from this. They gave it to us. The Democrat Party owns this one. Not one Republican voted for this any time, anywhere — and now the Democrats’ campaign strategy is to run away from it. They’re being advised to just run away from it, to not defend it, and then blame it on the insurance companies.