RUSH: Well, the State-Controlled Media is just over the top here, folks. They can’t believe it. News flash, news alert, ‘Republican Olympia Snowe has announced that she will vote for the Baucus bill,’ surprise, surprise, oh, goody goody goody. This is the same Republican, Olympia Snowe, who says the party left her, that she didn’t leave the Republican Party, that she is a fiscal conservative. Olympia Snowe is a predictable joke. She has voted for all of Obama’s big spending radical agenda. If the Republicans had any intelligence not only would they vote ‘no’ on the Baucus bill, they wouldn’t even show up for the vote. The Republicans have no business helping this thing get passed, the Republicans have no business politically, I mean it’s death for them to have any role whatsoever in this health care bill being passed. They ought to not even show up. I mean the committee had a bunch of meetings, Baucus committee, didn’t even tell the Republicans the meetings were taking place, they ought not even show up and vote, even if they’re going to vote ‘no,’ don’t show up, don’t get anywhere near this.
Greetings and welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
I want to explain something I explained last week when I was talking to you about how the CBO, Congressional Budget Office, scored the Baucus bill and proclaimed, ‘Hey, it’s actually going to reduce the deficit.’ I explained this in great detail last week, and now the commentators on the chat shows have finally, once again, caught up with me and explained it themselves in the past couple of nights. There are two factors here. The first is that there was no legislation. There was no bill. Baucus had not completed the writing of the actual legislation that he submitted to the CBO. What he submitted to them was a draft, and he had numbers and gimmicks in it designed to produce this exact result. The CBO even said in their analysis that this is all subject to great change because they were dealing only with estimates. The hard numbers were not in the draft that they scored. So after Baucus got the favorable CBO report, then he went back to work and started writing the exact bill. And Obama has not come out and said that he supports it 100%. But it doesn’t matter. This is the framework for all of the little, bitty tiny radical things they’re going to add into this each and every legislative session, after they get this big shell done.
Now, the trick, in addition to presenting the CBO with a draft and not real legislation, the trick in the Baucus structure of the thing was this — the plan does not get implemented until 2013. Now, remember, the CBO forecasts ten years out on these things. The plan doesn’t get implemented until 2013. But the taxes, the increase in taxes and the increased charges for health care will happen immediately. And this is something I want all of you to know. The tax increases that you’re hearing about on health plans, insurance plans that start at $8,000, go up to $21,000, those taxes will happen when Obama signs the bill. So in theory, even though there’s 10% unemployment, in theory they think they’ve got a great new source of revenue that’s going to be coming in, with these new taxes that are going to be placed on health insurance plans. Even from your employer. Taxing benefits is essentially what this is, and that will happen immediately. But the spending doesn’t start for four years, 2013, after Obama theoretically gets reelected and therefore will not have to face the revolt that’s sure to happen from people because he will already have won reelection. This is the theme.
So if the taxes and the new charges are implemented immediately and are in place for three years, and the plan doesn’t get implemented for three years, well, of course they can say that it will produce a surplus in ten years because you’ll have ten years of taxes and seven years of the new health care plan. I think all that’s bogus anyway. I think the costs are going to skyrocket. There’s no way that this is going to be revenue neutral. There is no way that it’s not going to raise the deficit. There’s no way it’s going to come in under budget. I mean all of this is just absurd and they are playing games and gimmicks. Nobody’s going to read the bill. Shut up and vote. What about $400 billion in Medicare? Shut up and vote. What about all the new tax increases on the health plan? Shut up and vote. Well, what about all the end-of-life decisions that some government panel is going to be making? Shut up and vote. Did the Founding Fathers read the Constitution before the — shut up and vote. Did the Founding Fathers read the Declaration of Independence before they — shut up and vote. 
That’s the new mantra at the United States Congress, in the House and the Senate: shut up and vote. Don’t read it; don’t ask any questions; just shut up and vote. The Republicans in the Senate on this Finance Committee, the Baucus committee, ought to be nowhere near when this vote happens. If they do show up, they should vote ‘no.’ Snowe is going to vote yes. ‘Oh, wonderful, Olympia Snowe, we’ve got a bipartisanship, Mr. Limbaugh, we have bipartisanship and this means that Obama cannot be totally blamed. Obama can’t be totally blamed because now there’s bipartisanship, Mr. Limbaugh. This is how Congress is supposed to work. This is how the wonderful nature of the US government is supposed to work, Mr. Limbaugh.’ This voice, by the way, is the voice of the New Castrati, those who have lost all manhood, gonads, guts, and courage throughout our culture and our political system. ‘That’s right, Mr. Limbaugh, but it’s necessary for the civility to return to the American political marketplace, Mr. Limbaugh, because now there’s bipartisanship. Olympia Snowe is voting with Obama.’ Yeah, bipartisanship, got one Republican vote on the committee.
Senator Blanche Lincoln, a Democrat, Arkansas, phony moderate, phony Blue Dog from Arkansas, a state that McCain won with 60%, is talking like she’s a ‘yes’ vote. In the end she’s a Democrat hack who is in Obama’s back pocket. Take the word Blue Dog out of it because at the end of the day they’re still Democrats. At the end of the day the Republicans do not have the votes to stop this. The Republicans are not the obstacle to anything getting done here. It’s a shame that they aren’t. It’s a shame that this whole thing is happening. This is a disaster. We are in the midst of a manmade disaster, the Barack Obama presidency. This economy is a purposeful wreck, it is getting worse, there’s no end in sight. The very people who thought that he was going to reverse circumstances that made their lives bad or poor, the very people who thought that they were going to start getting theirs, the very people who thought that we’re going to get rid of all the arguments and the partisanship, the little guy, the little guy who is always the supposed to beneficiary of liberal Democrat policies is getting creamed. Fifty-two percent unemployment among young people.
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RUSH: The media is going nuts. Chyron graphics: ‘Awaiting Senate Finance Committee vote on health care bill!’ (panting) As though nobody knows what’s going to happen? What? Olympia Snowe is gonna vote with the Democrats. Are there going to be some Democrat defections? You have Bill Nelson of Florida. He’s another phony moderate out there. He looks like he’s voting to kill Medicare and slash health care to senior citizens today as well, which is what we’re all going to be voting on. Kill Medicare and slash health care for senior citizens. That’s the essence of the Baucus bill. There can be no other way.
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RUSH: Port Charlotte, Florida, this is Bob. Welcome to the program, sir. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Afternoon, Rush. Pleasure to talk to you. I’m so furious with Olympia Snowe today I could scream.
RUSH: I want to help out here. I can understand the temptation to get mad, but why waste the energy when you knew what she was going to do in the first place?
CALLER: Well, I would like to encourage every Republican to send money to defeat this woman the next time she’s up for reelection, be it the Republican primary or the general election, because I’m sick of a Republican stabbing the party in the back at every opportunity. She was only one of three Republicans to vote for that stupid stimulus bill, which has stimulated anything but the national debt. She sat on that committee for two months watched every reasonable amendment defeated on a party line vote, watched every attempt at transparency defeated, watched every attempt to get a final scoring by CBO on this bill before it was passed defeated. But yet she’s still going to vote for it? I’m sick of it, Rush. I don’t need a Republican like that in the party.
RUSH: Join the club. I mean, look, my brother, this is why I have been beseeching people to forget this moderate direction the Republican Party wants to go. It’s going to take us right to the direction of Olympia Snowe.
CALLER: I mean what if the situation was the opposite, we have 60 Republicans in the Senate and there were 40 Democrats, she would be the lone Republican to mess things up.
RUSH: Nope. Nope. Not the lone, not the lone, not the lone, not the lone. McCain —
CALLER: Well, maybe McCain.
RUSH: If that were the case they would feel guilty about our majority. Hey, Lindsey Graham’s already gone south on cap and trade.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: Lindsey Graham’s out there talking about the new friendship he’s got with John Kerry on this.
CALLER: She was only one of three Republicans to vote for the stimulus.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: And that didn’t teach her anything. Where are the jobs, Olympia? Show me the jobs.
RUSH: Well, what she cares about every six years is voters in Maine, not voters in Florida.
CALLER: Well, that’s another whole story, Maine. What’s wrong with those people? That was a part of the country that created the American Revolution.
RUSH: I’ll tell you what it’s time for, Goldwater had it right, let’s saw the state off and let it float out to sea. (laughing)
CALLER: I don’t know. They need to look up their heritage, the people of Maine, and look at the effect that they had on the American Revolution, you know, and go back to their roots because somewhere along the way they’ve lost their way.
RUSH: You’re preaching to the choir here, my brother.
CALLER: Jeez.
RUSH: You’re preaching to the choir, and there are millions, millions more Americans with you than you possibly know. We just don’t have enough votes in Congress right now to stop any of this. That’s the problem. It’s up to us.
Okay, Charles in Ft. Lauderdale, two calls from Florida in a row, great to have you here, Charles.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. How you doing?
RUSH: Fine, sir. Thank you.
CALLER: Yeah, I was calling with the interpretation of the New York Times, their mind-set on what it means to reduce health care costs from their point of view.
RUSH: What is your interpretation?
CALLER: Well, my interpretation is that this is going — the increase in taxes, which you and I would call tax and spend, is going to reduce the health care costs for the government.
RUSH: Are you supporting that?
CALLER: Certainly not. To me it’s a horrible thing but you said your head was exploding because you read what you said were contradictory statements, that taxes were going to go up —
RUSH: I think we lost him. I never got my arms around this guy’s point. Was he talking about something I said in the first hour? Well, it was the New York Times story where they said costs are going to go down and go up, or they contradicted themselves within two paragraphs. We’re going to spend more but costs were going to go down was what they said. I don’t know how anybody with one half a brain — I can get by with it, but I don’t know how anybody with just half a brain can ever believe that the cost of anything the government’s involved in is going to go down. Look at all the times that McCain’s Commerce Committee, ‘Well, cable guys are ripping people off out there, we’re going to have legislation here that’s going to reduce cable –‘ have your cable charges gone down, ever? Yeah, if you drop some service. The idea that, okay, we’re going to raise taxes and that’s going to make the government spend less? The theory from the New York Times is the government has its own stash of money here, has it automatically, which it does because they have a printing press, and then the government’s going to tax us more, which will give the government even more money, so the government outlays will theoretically be less. That’s the point they’re trying to make. It’s as convoluted and nonsensical and ignorant economically as anything that you would see in a junior high school economic paper.
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RUSH: Ah, the Senate Finance Committee has passed the health care bill. Big news, 14-9. Big whoop. Big surprise. On to fascism, folks