RUSH: I have this in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers from the Communist Party USA’s People’s World, formerly the Daily Worker. Columbus, Ohio: ”I’m tired of rallies. I want to fight!’ So said Tim Burga, operations director of the Ohio AFL-CIO, addressing the hundreds who had braved the cold Feb. 20 to attend a ‘Pass It Now’ rally for health care reform at the SEIU Local 1199 hall here.’ In other words, Obama’s number one supporters showed up, these union thugs, and they said: ‘We want to fight! We don’t want any more rallies, we don’t want any more speeches, we want to fight.’
‘There was a sense of real urgency in the hall, as speaker after speaker pounded on the point that, as Brian Rothenberg of Progress Ohio stated, ‘We now have 6 weeks to win the fight our people have been fighting since the Truman administration: health care for all!” Exactly what I told you yesterday. It’s the Lord of the Rings being played out right before our very eyes. ‘Becky Williams, president of SEIU, 1199, was interrupted by loud cheers as she led off the rally, telling the crowd, ‘We have three things to tell the administration and the majority in congress. One — we worked for and voted for change last year. That means actually changing what was there when you got there. Two — we need for you to lead with courage, not be intimidated by Fox News and Teabaggers. Three, don’t be fooled by lies!’ she said. ‘If you do these things we’ll be with you, and the 66% of Americans who, according to polls are demanding that health care reform be passed.” That’s a wrong number, union thugs.
But look where we get the information, from the Communist Party USA. You don’t get this from the State-Controlled Media. You get this from the Communist Party USA, and they’re out there. Let me check something. Grab audio sound bite number 13. More union thug stuff here. This is last Friday in Los Angeles at the SEIU offices, Service Employees International Union, the same bunch of thugs demanding a fight, no more rallies in Ohio on the 20th of February. This is the Reform Immigration for America rally, Representative Xavier Becerra, Democrat, California, is in attendance, and an unidentified man, unidentified female rally leader have this exchange about how to start the meeting.
MAN: Can we start this meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance? (laughing) No, I’m serious, Congressman, shouldn’t we say the Pledge of Allegiance if we all want to be citizens? Wouldn’t that be appropriate to say the Pledge of Allegiance?
WOMAN: Sure, of course.
MAN: Okay, let’s do that. Can everybody stand? I’m happy to lead the Pledge of Allegiance.
WOMAN: Okay, let’s go for it.
RUSH: If you see this, the room breaks out in laughter. And this congressman, Xavier Becerra, is laughing along with the rest of the crowd at the thought of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. They then say okay and they do it
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RUSH: Okay, here’s that David ‘Rodham’ Gergen sound bite I was looking for, and the reason I didn’t find it is because I looked — now, never mind. It’s a labeling thing. Anyway, this is on CNN’s Situation Room last night, and Wolf Blitzer is talking to Gloria Borger and David ‘Rodham’ Gergen about Obama’s health reform bill, and Blitzer says, ‘It’s unlikely to get the 60 votes to break a filibuster. They may not even be able to get 51 votes on this so-called reconciliation procedure. What are you hearing, Gloria from your sources?’ which are just other people in the media.
BORGER: Everybody feels like their back is to the wall. We have no choice but to get this done. I’m told the president is going to refer to this as a, quote, starting document so that he can invite Republicans to join in and change the legislation.
BLITZER: David, you’re smiling. Why are you smiling?
GERGEN: Because it’s not a starting document. As the — they’re putting it forward as the bill itself and you guys can come and make a few amendments, and the Republicans are saying, ‘Nonsense,’ you know, ‘If you’re serious about this, let’s start over.’ The president may have trouble getting this through the House if he —
BORGER: Right.
GERGEN: — goes to the reconciliation process. Rounding up the votes in the House is not going to be an easy task.
RUSH: David ‘Rodham’ Gergen is right about that. Everybody is looking at the Senate here, and that’s not the place to look anymore, because they likely can get 51 votes if they go reconciliation. I still think they’re bluffing about that, but they might not be. But the House is where they’re going to have real problems. That’s where they’re going to have problems. You got people like Heath Shuler, who, on a normal day has an IQ a little bit north of a pencil eraser, saying, why are they bringing it back? Can’t we just let this die? These Blue Dogs don’t want any part of this. And Newt had a good idea. Yes, Newt had a good idea. He said Obama says this is bipartisan, fine, Republicans ought to say you take three hours of this six-hour thing on Thursday and you give us three hours to run it ourselves, you run three and we’ll run three. Of course Obama will reject that and out the door will go the notion of bipartisanship, which doesn’t exist anyway.
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RUSH: Just in from TheHill.com: ‘House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told his colleagues on Tuesday that Republicans plan to attend the president’s high-profile healthcare summit this week in order to ‘crash the party.’ According to a House GOP leadership aide familiar with [Boehner]’s remarks at the weekly closed-door conference meeting, Boehner appealed to skeptical Republican lawmakers, saying, ‘We shouldn’t let the White House have a six-hour taxpayer-funded infomercial on ObamaCare. We need to show up. We need to crash the party.’ … Boehner explained that leaders are waiting for a response from White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to a letter they sent earlier this month that asked a series of questions on the bipartisan summit. ‘It’s our intent to be there on Thursday. We’re waiting on a response and we’re hopeful that we’ll receive one soon,’ Boehner explained.’ I remember that letter. It was all about, ‘Sounds to me like you guys already have your minds made up here, that this is just a trick. Many of your own people, Rahm, are saying it’s just a trick just to get us up there. Is this true?’ They also sent the letter to Harry Reid and Pelosi.
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RUSH: The Heritage Foundation has weighed in on Obama’s latest health care plan and the health care summit this Thursday. Now, you heard me yesterday if you were listening, you heard me give my idea of a health care plan on this program and you heard Stacy, our insurance woman from Georgia immediately review the Obama plan, she’s the insurance guru here. Heritage calls this meeting on Thursday a press stunt, which it is. They said if it’s truly a sham of a meeting conservatives ought to boycott the event and call it for what it is. But if they’re going to go, if they’re going to attend and the liberals are serious about bipartisan reform ideas, then Heritage has a whole bunch of them, and of course they always say that we never offer any ideas. Well, how about allowing Americans to buy health insurance anywhere in the country? How about opening up state insurance markets and forcing the nation’s health insurance companies, 1300 of them out there, to compete directly for consumers’ dollars without a bunch of state mandates getting in the way? That’s what Heritage is thinking, and they got 101 other ideas all related to this press event on Thursday, good ideas for Americans, and they’re born at Heritage every day.
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RUSH: Get this from State-Controlled Associated Press: ‘Outlook No Brighter for Obama’s New Health Plan — Starting over on health care, President Barack Obama knows his chances aren’t looking much more promising. A year after he called for a far-reaching overhaul, Obama unveiled his most detailed plan yet on Monday. Realistically, he’s just hoping to win a big enough slice to silence the talk of a failing presidency.’ Yeah, it’s from State-Controlled Associated Press. And then Steny Hoyer is out there saying — how many times you going to hear this? — ‘Public option on healthcare likely dead.’ Those union thugs who want to fight out there in Ohio are not going to be happy to hear about these two stories, my friends. And yet. Never mind. I’m not going to say it again.
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RUSH: Douglas Elmendorf, who runs the CBO, said that they can’t score Obama’s health care plan, there aren’t enough details. ‘This morning the Obama Administration released a description of its health care proposal, and CBO has already received several requests to provide a cost estimate for that proposal. We had not previously received the proposal, and we have just begun the process of reviewing it — a process that will take some time, given the complexity of the issues involved,’ blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. ‘Therefore, CBO cannot provide a cost estimate for the proposal without additional detail, and, even if such detail were provided, analyzing the proposal would be a time-consuming process that could not be completed this week.’ Certainly not by Thursday and the summit. So they can’t score it, yet Obama is out there, ‘Oh, yeah, it won’t even cost a trillion. It’s not going to add to the deficit.’ The CBO guy is taking a big risk here by authoring this himself.
Now, the dirty little secret is, my friends, that it’s not an accident that Obama’s plan does not provide the CBO either the detail or the time to give a cost estimate. See, that way Obama can continue to pretend that his $1 trillion plan doesn’t raise the deficit. (laughing) I can’t believe I said that. After all, remember, Obama promised during his address to a joint session of Congress back in September, ‘I won’t sign any health care legislation if it adds one dime to the deficit now or in the future.’ That’s the same speech during which Congressman Joe Wilson got into so much trouble for blurting out ‘You lie.’ And yet the president continues to do just that. I mean this is not even a plan. It’s just another phony promise, typical Obama, still out there hustling hope and change.
Imagine this. Imagine, ladies and gentlemen, a new business asking a bank for a loan and submitting a plan without a budget that extends at least three years out. A banker would throw you out of his office, especially now. Obama has submitted talking points. He’s calling these talking points a plan. The private sector would never stand for this, couldn’t get away with it. The president wanted to say he had a plan like all the other guys wearing big boy pants and there was one guy out there saying, ‘Mr. President, where is your plan?’ He doesn’t have a plan. So I think it’s safe to say I can take blame for Obama presenting this thing. There’s nothing to discuss. Obama has once again embarrassed himself. I don’t know who’s advising this guy. He’s an agitator without experience or a compass. He’s not grounded in reality and he doesn’t have a plan, specifically. We know what the objective is. It’s to take over the economy, health care particularly, for all of the reasons that we’ve stated, time in and time out.
Now, here from CNNmoney.com is a story about how Obama wants to pay for health reform and basically it’s tax, tax, tax, tax, tax, tax, tax. I was going through this, picking out certain really offensive nuggets, but I gave up because the bottom line in this entire approach is sick, and I mean in a twisted, hubristic way of a special sickness. This comes at the health insurance question from the perspective of refusing to recognize the sovereignty of the individual vis-a-vis the state. And what’s worse, none of this is gonna work. It will never be possible to tax our way to deficit reduction. The money will be spent faster than the Bam gang could ever hope to have it come in, and what’s even more sick is they know this and they stand there and they just lie and lie and lie about it. If Obama gets his way, a freely born American cannot even refuse the government’s help without being taxed.
I’ll share with you as far as I got excerpting this. Headline: ‘How Obama Wants to Pay for Health Reform — Many of the changes the proposal calls for aren’t free. Obama proposes to pay for the additional burden on the federal coffers in several ways. Among those that would have a direct bearing on individuals and businesses, he would: Tax high-cost medical plans … Increase Medicare tax on high-income households … Require insurance coverage. He would impose a financial penalty on most Americans who don’t buy health insurance. … Require employers to pay if they don’t provide coverage. … Impose new fees on the health industry. … Trim various health-related tax breaks.’ I mean, it’s a tax bill, what he’s proposed here, and it always has been.