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RUSH: Now, I got an e-mail note from a friend. “Hey, Rush, why are the markets plunging? Volume is at a four-year low.” So I looked up there. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 149. That\u2019s no big deal. We\u2019re still at 12,700, but volume, trading is down. The amount of activity going on in the stock market is at a four-year low. I don\u2019t know. I guess they read that Obamacare is gonna add to the deficit. Maybe these people up there just figured that out for the first time today. Folks, today\u2019s report did remind me of one thing about Obamacare that I had almost forgotten. Not only does Obamacare create a new tax on the uninsured and employers who don\u2019t provide insurance — that\u2019s the fine — and the requirement to buy it.<\/p>\n
And I think the question should be asked frequently: “What do 4,000 IRS agents have to do with making sick people well?” Why are they even needed? And the regime, by the way, just this week (or maybe it was Friday, I forget which) confirmed that the 4,000 agents are being hired and $500 million is being diverted from somewhere to hire them.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Investor\u2019s Business Daily — or I guess it\u2019s just now Investors.com — has an editorial on the army of IRS enforcers. “After foisting its 2,700-page health law on the public, the White House now plans to enforce its detested mandate by siccing the IRS on unwilling citizens. All that stands in the way is ‘the consent of the governed.\u2019 Back in 2009, when ObamaCare was being debated in Congress, then-House Minority Leader John Boehner warned that the takeover of the health care system could only lead to armies of enforcers from the Internal Revenue Service forcing Americans to buy insurance of the government\u2019s choosing.<\/p>\n
“Boehner recognized that this so-called reform would inevitably trigger major public resistance. Boehner was mocked as an alarmist by Obama\u2019s Democratic allies. But in reality, he was right, and nobody knew it better than the Obama administration itself. That\u2019s why the behemoth ObamaCare bill sneakily left out the detail that it intended to hire 500 Internal Revenue Service agents to enforce the unpopular mandate, while 300 other IRS operatives would be added to push ‘free\u2019 benefits to the indigent to ensure their complete dependence on the state.”<\/p>\n
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BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n
RUSH: It is 4,000 agents. This Investor\u2019s Business Daily has a typo in it. I\u2019ve looked at a bunch of different sources and, by all accounts, the best estimate is the IRS is gonna hire at least 4,000 more agents. The Washington Examiner had it. “IRS Seeks 4,000 Agents, $303 Million for Obamacare.” What does the IRS know about Obamacare that we don\u2019t?<\/p>\n
RUSH: There is another lie that Obama keeps repeating, and this is it. It\u2019s a direct quote: “What drags down our entire economy is the growing gap between the ultra-rich and everybody else.” Direct quote. And this stems, ladies and gentlemen, from his belief that the founding of this country was unjust and immoral, and it\u2019s gone on for 200-plus years. And now finally, a little over three years ago, we started — finally! — to get it right. It\u2019s gonna take a while. And the big problem with this country since its founding is “the gap between the ultra-rich and everybody else.” And the founders were ultra-rich and they set up a system to maintain that for themselves and their family and everybody else in their group, and at the same time make it impossible with this you\u2019re-on-your-own economy.<\/p>\n
Because most people, on their own, are incompetent. Most people, on their own, will be walked all over. Most people, on their own, are weak and helpless. This is how the left looks at people. But quite simply, this is preposterous. There are no facts to back up this assertion that what drags down the economy is “the growing gap between the ultra-rich and everybody else.” What drags down the economy is Obama. What drags down the economy is the government looting the private sector, transferring wealth from people who produce it to themselves and government and then giving it to people that they ultimately want to vote for them.<\/p>\n
When you loot the private sector, when you make it smaller, you are by definition reducing the size of our economy and its potential to grow. In fact, you might say that the opposite is true. If anything, you need very rich people to drive the economy, which some of our news media have even admitted in previous random acts of journalism. And the most recent example I could give you is the Christmas season when they lamented (and they were rubbing their hands together) that the luxury segment was suffering. Remember that? The rich just were not going to Neiman Marcus or Saks or wherever they go.<\/p>\n
Luxury sales were down, and this was bad for all of the sensible reasons. It was gonna hurt future employment. It was gonna hurt overall economic growth. So they do engage in random acts of journalism now and then. There\u2019s no capitalism without capital, and there\u2019s no capital without the rich. Everybody has had a story today on the health care law adding $340 billion to the deficit — except the New York Times. I looked. AP\u2019s got it and Reuters has it. Everybody\u2019s got it and is breathless talking about it as though it\u2019s some sort of big news. I looked at the New York Times website; it\u2019s not there. I Googled the words to find it. Not there. Maybe I\u2019m not looking in the right place.<\/p>\n
I wanted to see what the New York Times had to say about the fact that Obamacare blows up the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars. ‘Cause it is news to people. Amazingly, this is news to people. So I went to the Washington Post, and, lo and behold, there it is! I have it right here (shuffling paper). In my formerly nicotine-stained fingers, I have it. And they actually report this fraud, this massive fraud perpetrated on the American public by Obama and virtually every Democrat in Congress. It\u2019s outrageous what Obamacare does to the economy, to doctors, patients, private health insurance companies. We\u2019ve talked about it before, but the New York Times has nothing. In fact, by the way, Jay Carney, the spokeskid at the White House…<\/p>\n
You know, I know Jay Carney and his wife, Claire Shipman. Claire Shipman is a reporter for ABC News. She used to be at CNN. Jay Carney used to be at TIME Magazine. He\u2019s now at the White House. But before he was at the White House, he was at Biden\u2019s office. He might have been the spokeskid for Biden or something else in Biden\u2019s office but he moved up the chain when Robert Gibbs left. Gibbs left to go earn some money while there still is some. (interruption) Gibbs? Oh, okay. I guess he earned enough money while there is some to earn and he left that and went back to the campaign now. Oh, okay.<\/p>\n
Anyway, Carney when he was at TIME Magazine, called me one day to ask me a question about a story he was working on. I wasn\u2019t in, but they left a message for me to call back. So I did. I called back, and he picked up the phone. He said, “You return your own calls?” I said, “Yeah.” “Wow!” He was really impressed that I didn\u2019t have a secretary to place my calls for me. What I didn\u2019t tell him was that I don\u2019t really do the phone much. And then I saw him once at a Washington Redskins game in the owners box back in that season where I spent five games with ESPN. The opener ESPN covered, we did the ESPN pregame show, and Dan Snyder invited the ESPN crew to his suite to watch the game.<\/p>\n
Claire Shipman and Jay Carney were there. I said hi. They\u2019re very nice people. Now he\u2019s the spokeskid for Obama. From TIME Magazine to the White House, and I\u2019m sure when this ends he goes back to some magazine. Anyway, yesterday Carney was asked about the IRS agents. At the White House press briefing, Wendell Goler at Fox said, “Hey, Jay, there\u2019s a report in The Hill that says a couple hundred million dollars of IRS money been used to fund aspects of Obamacare, and there\u2019s some Republicans on the Hill who feel that this is improper given that there is already a fund for implementation of Obamacare. Can you react to their criticism?”<\/p>\n
CARNEY: This is about, uh, enabling the IRS to provide the, uhhh — essentially the — the — the tax breaks to small businesses and individuals, uh, to assist them, uh, in acquiring health insurance. Or in the case of small businesses, providing health insurance.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Okay! So there, ladies and gentlemen, is our answer! Four thousand IRS agents, according to Obama\u2019s spokeskid, to help small business and individuals in acquiring health insurance. Did you know that? Did you know that you were going to get “assistance” from the IRS in complying with the mandate? Did you know that, folks? That you are gonna have “assistance” from the IRS to acquire health insurance? Yeah, the IRS is gonna come and they\u2019re going to help you! It says here, small businesses… The IRS is gonna essentially tell you of the tax breaks. The IRS is gonna come along and they\u2019re gonna knock on your door. I don\u2019t know how they\u2019re gonna find you but they will if you haven\u2019t bought health insurance.<\/p>\n
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You know, you\u2019re from the Acme small business, and your primary customer is the Coyote, and the Coyote has had a bunch of trouble catching the Road Runner and none of what you have sent the Coyote is working, and every from Acme fails. You ever watch the Road Runner? Okay. So you\u2019re having trouble making ends meet at Acme, and here comes the IRS, and they knock on your door. “Hi. We see that you don\u2019t have health insurance. We\u2019re here to help you get it.” What is your reaction going to be? And what happens if you don\u2019t buy it?<\/p>\n
What if the IRS comes in and you don\u2019t like the menu of services being offered by the IRS, and if you say, “I\u2019m sorry. I appreciate your concern but I really don\u2019t need or want health insurance”? What happens to you then? Well, what happens is, you are going to be fined. You will pay a fine. And early on in Obamacare, the fine is not very much money. It\u2019s much less than what a policy would cost you. And if I may be bluntly honest, that is by design, too, folks. The fine is seductively low in cost. Anybody who is young or has a small business would choose, if it\u2019s legal, to pay the fine instead of buying health insurance. (interruption)<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think most people will tell the IRS agent, “Take your health insurance and shove it.”<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think that\u2019s gonna happen, Snerdley. That\u2019s why it\u2019s the IRS that has been hired to help citizens get their health insurance. I don\u2019t think that citizens are going to tell the IRS to pound sand here. What instead will happen is the IRS will present all of the wonderful options available, and here\u2019s the cost of your average policy, and here\u2019s the cost of the fine. Well, the fine is gonna be so much cheaper, at first, than the health insurance policy, and if it\u2019s legal to pay the fine and the IRS will wave good-bye and leave, you\u2019ll do that. That\u2019s by design, folks. It\u2019s by design. The fine is purposely priced much lower for the first two or three years. <\/p>\n
Now, what happens when all of these people choose the fine instead of the policy? Well, who is hurt then? Insurance companies. Now, remember, the insurance companies were among the early adopters for Obamacare because of the mandate requiring people to buy health insurance, that was a godsend. That made most insurance companies forget Republican versus Democrat, liberal versus conservative. All they saw, and applauded, was a powerful force like the government making everybody buy their product. My ship has come in and I\u2019m at the dock. If you\u2019re an insurance company, this is the greatest day of your life. The federal government, in association with the IRS, is making everybody by health insurance. Whoa.<\/p>\n
If you sold Happy Meals, wouldn\u2019t you love it if every American had to buy a Happy Meal? Wouldn\u2019t you support that if you were McDonald\u2019s? If you were General Motors and an order came down that everybody has to have a Volt, would you care if it was Josef Stalin who issued the order? No. You\u2019d sit there and go, “Right on.” So the insurance companies, folks, didn\u2019t care. They forgot whether they were Republicans or Democrats, liberal or conservative. They didn\u2019t even think about the future of country. They just saw, “Man, everybody hates us. We\u2019re insurance companies, but now, doesn\u2019t matter, they\u2019ve been ordered to buy our product.” Yes, they have. But guess what the insurance companies weren\u2019t told? There\u2019s an opt-out, a much cheaper opt-out. You pay a fine. <\/p>\n
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<\/a>So all of these 30 million, whatever the number is uninsured, pay the fine instead of buy the policy. What happens to the industry of private insurance? Just like the coyote falling off the cliff trying to catch the road runner using an Acme product, bam. The insurance industry ceases to exist. And then, after three years, folks, the fines all of a sudden become more expensive than the policy. Doesn\u2019t take long. This is all in Obamacare. This is in the plan after three years, four years, whatever, it doesn\u2019t take long. The fines end up costing much more than the policy, which means you will then, as a matter of economics, buy the policy, \u2019cause you have to now, remember, the mandate. <\/p>\n