RUSH: Now, you Millennials out there, you know who you are, and I have read that many of you are unhappy with the Republican health care reform plan that has been put forward by Senator Cruz of Texas, because you think — there was a survey of college students. Our old buddies at Campus Reform did this. Campus Reform published a video. This was yesterday, I think, showing college students in Washington, D.C., responding to two questions.
The first question was, “Do you think socialism is good or bad?” The second question was, “What is socialism?” Now, there’s a video attached here. I found this at our old buddies at Hot Air. I didn’t click on the video. I do not watch videos very much. If the captioning doesn’t come on automatically, I just don’t watch it. I read what other people say is in the video. At any rate — and, you know, I need to start watching the videos ’cause that’s how Millennials get their news, is videos on the Web.
I have an obstruction in my mind about ’em, but, anyway, it’s reported here that there was enthusiastic agreement from the students that socialism was a good idea because it’s all about helping people and spreading the wealth. Some of the students seem defensive, noting that socialism has a bad reputation. They like it, but they’re afraid to say so because it has a bad reputation, but they don’t think it’s bad. It’s really good. When they were then asked what it is, all the students who were confident socialism was a good idea didn’t seem able to be able to explain what it is or how it produces all of these wonderful outcomes.
One student refers to “socialism gets rid of the wealth gap.” One student who seems like she might have more to say on the topic, vast majority of respondents don’t seem to have a clue, their thinking about socialism is that it’s kind of a magical thing. It’s an emotional attachment, which we knew, that promotes equality and respect and outcomes and it’s wonderful. But they don’t know what it is. They don’t know the classic definition. And they simply think that it’s the fairest way of doing things.
And if you give them the classic definition of socialism, which is nothing more than a command-and-control authority owning the means of production. There is no private sector in socialism. They don’t know that. “You mean the government would own Netflix?” Yep. “You mean the government would own Apple?” Yep. “You mean the government would own Tesla?” Well, they already do. “They do?” Well, yeah. They still like it. Fair, distribution of income, equality, sustainability.
So I’m hearing that these Millennials don’t like Cruz’s health care business, his proposal, because the words being used to sell it are cheaper, stripped down, bare bones. So we’re selling it under the auspices of we’re getting rid of Big Government. What if most people think of Big Government as efficiency at the state or federal office building where you go to cash your check? What if when you tell people you want to reduce the size of government, that what you’re really doing is closing half of the aisles at the DMV?
What if people who don’t know what you mean, Big Government versus small government, efficient versus large, who already think socialism’s a good thing, and you start talking about smaller government, what if in their minds that means, “Gee, there’s only gonna be six windows open at the DMV instead of 18. At the Social Security office there’s only gonna be two windows instead of 20, is that what you mean?” No. That’s not what we mean.
So when they hear the words associated with Cruz: cheap, stripped down, and bare bones, whereas we think good, this is what gets rid of the bloat. They think, “Oh, my God, it’s being cut out.” So you Millennials, let me run an analogy by you. You all hate cable TV. I know this. You hate cable TV. What if you could choose the channels you want from cable companies and those choices dramatically cut your monthly bill, you get the networks you watch, only what you watch, would you call that cheap, stripped down, and bare bones?
You would, and you would love it. You would love it if you could get rid of the bloat in your cable bill and all these other things. Millennials, try thinking of health care the same way. Why do you have to buy insurance for things you’re never gonna watch? Why do you have to buy insurance for things you never want to tune into or that you’re never gonna have? We’re gonna get ’em on this, folks. I have figured out how we’re gonna do it. First step right here.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let me finish this analogy here with the Millennials. The Millennials… Not all of them, of course, but many young people — like many young people throughout the history of time — fall for the ruse of socialism. “It’s fair. It treats people nicely. It’s equal. It redistributes wealth. It gets rid of the income gap and everybody’s the same,” and all that happy horse malarkey that never really happens. And of course they don’t know what the definition is. But they know that it requires Big Government, and so, “Big Government is good because Big Government is equal and Big Government’s equality. Big Government’s fair!”
So we want to fix Obamacare. Obamacare’s an albatross. It’s destroying health care. It’s destroying health insurance by design so that the only solution after trying so many things will be government-run health care, single payer. So here come the Republicans; they can’t get their act in gear on repealing Obamacare, which they’ve been promising to do for seven years. I don’t think they really want to do it. That’s all there is to this. They don’t really want to. Now, some people say, “Why do you think they don’t want to?”
Well, there are many answers to that. I’ll just give you a few. They don’t want to because it’s too much work. They didn’t expect to win. That really is a lot of it: They didn’t expect to win. They didn’t think Trump was gonna win. They never dreamed that they would actually have the chance to do what they’ve been promising to do for seven years, and so they weren’t prepared for it. The second thing is, not all of them are happy (we’re talking Republicans here) that Trump won, and some of them don’t think he’s gonna last.
So why do anything in support of a guy that most of the country hates (’cause they listen to the media). Most of the country doesn’t hate him, but they think so. And then the old saw: “Hey, you know, people want it. It’s an entitlement. They think their health care is free; we don’t want to take that away.” “It’s a losing proposition,” they say. Still others say, “The media is going to kill us for hating people and starving kids and kicking grandma off the cliff and all this.” So they don’t want to do it. I’m convinced they don’t want to do it, ’cause it isn’t this hard if you want to do it.
If you want to do anything, the desire to do it is over 80% of achievement. Do not doubt that. Whatever you want to do in life, 80% of succeeding in it is desire — an unquenchable, unstoppable desire. It’s the desire that will make you do whatever you have to do to achieve what you want. And if that’s not there, then you’re just twiddling your thumbs. And I don’t think it’s there. So Cruz has come up with the Cruz amendment, and the objective here is not to totally obliterate it. It’s to lower premiums.
The objective, as far as the Republicans are concerned, is, “If we can just fix this so that premiums are lower, then we can sing its praises, and we will have done what we said we were gonna do. We were gonna lower the cost of premiums — and if everything else stays the same, fine and dandy.” Of course, lowering the premiums while leaving everything the same cannot happen. (chuckling) It’s not possible, by definition. So Senator Cruz has proposed an amendment that is described as cheap, stripped down, and bare bones.
What he means by this is — and my analogy for you Millennials is to cable TV. You despise it. I know you do. I read about how much you hate cable TV. Do you know that of the three supposedly most hated companies in the world, two of them are cable companies? I’m not gonna mention them ’cause I don’t hate them. But Millennials do, because to them entertainment should be free. TV should be free. Music, streaming, free! “Why should we have to pay to watch Game of Thrones? Why should we have to pay to watch Judge Judy or whatever?”
So what Millennials want when it comes to TV, they want cheap, they want stripped down, and they want bare bones! They want to be able to watch what they want to watch. They don’t want to have to pay for things that they’re never going to watch. They don’t want to have to even be presented with the option to watch something they don’t want to watch just so they have to pay for it. So I think you Millennials ought to look at the Cruz amendment and the overall objective health care the same way.
The insurance coverage of specific conditions and situations equals you only paying for what you want to watch. The quality is the same. It’s just you don’t have to buy the things you don’t want. Coverage choices are fewer in number. Men, for example, will not have to buy quality maternity care. They do have to do that now, under the Obama health benefits, the mandates in Title I. All kinds of people have to buy all kinds of health insurance that they will never, ever use — and in some cases would be impossible to use.
You don’t have to buy anything or you can buy everything. Whatever you want, you can buy, with nobody telling you that you have to. That’s all Cruz is proposing. What Cruz needs to do is somehow find a way to add the word “sustainable” in his pitch, and he would cross a bridge and be in Millennial land. “Sustainable” is one of the big magic words for Millennials. “Sustainable,” “sustainability.” It’s particularly important climate change, which is another ruse that they’re falling for. So I wanted to finish my thought.
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