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RUSH: Hey, is everybody having fun now? House Democrats meeting behind closed doors. Even as we speak, they’ve been meeting behind closed doors since I got here this morning. They are trying to come up with a new rule, the Slaughter Rule, appropriately named after what they’re trying to do to the country. This is Louise Slaughter, she’s head of the House Rules Committee, and basically what they want to do is just deem the Senate bill to have been passed, without voting on it, just deem it to have passed, in the House, and then write their own corrections bill, reconciliation bill, send that back to the Senate, and put the onus on them to pass what the House wants. That’s what the big meeting behind closed doors is about, that and I’m sure some other things.

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RUSH: The updates of what’s happening here with the health care bill and how the House Democrats — I mean, really, they can probably do it, they can make their own rules, so they can just say, ‘Yeah, we’re going to deem the Senate bill passed in the House. Nobody’s going to vote for it, we’re just gonna deem it passed, we’re gonna add our change and send it back over there to the Senate and make them deal with it.’ They want to take out the Cornhusker Kickback. They want to take out the Louisiana Purchase and all that. So let’s see.

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RUSH: I just received an urgent message. The Obama people are out in force today, seminar calling talk shows. I just got a heads-up. I just warned Mr. Snerdley. I didn’t ‘warn’ him, I alerted him. Apparently, the Obama droids from Organizing for America and other White House websites (basically union thugs) are under orders today to call every talk show that begins discussing health care and to try to flood the lines. Now, we heard of this the last time they tried it, and we eagerly sought out some of these seminar calls, and we didn’t get any. None of them made it. In fact, Snerdley didn’t even get any to assess whether they’re air-worthy or not. So I just warned Snerdley or alerted him to be on the lookout, and if he finds one — ’cause they’re kind of like aliens on this show — put him at the in front of the line.

We gotta talk about health care, right, to qualify for the smear calls, spam calls? So here’s a story. This is from the Communist Party USA’s newspaper called The People’s World, formerly The Daily Worker, and it was published yesterday: ‘Some 5,000 activists demanding ‘Health Care Now!’ descended on the nation’s capital March 9 to call for the arrest of the nation’s leading health insurance executives, who had gathered at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel here.’ Now, understand, this is being done within the Obama imprimatur. This is being done with the approval of and probably under the orders of Obama. These are the same people that showed up on the front yards of AIG execs to hassle them over bonuses. Now you got the Service Employee International Union (primarily who did this but there were a lot of others) showing up at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington demanding that insurance company executives be arrested!

Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO said: ‘Inside that building are the titans of the healthcare industry, the titans of greed. They won’t stop unless we stop them. The only thing that will stop them is legislation that forces them to become more humane. We’re here to turn them over to the police and to say ‘do your duty, we’re here to help you.” That’s the Communist Party USA publication, People’s World. It goes to all government union workers. Arrest insurance executives! Now, I’ve mentioned the guts of this story three times here in the last five minutes, and I haven’t gotten one outraged facial expression from anybody on my staff. ‘Oh, really? Okay. Ho-hum.’ There are union people running around Washington demanding insurance company execs be arrested, and it’s, ‘Ah, just another news day.’ I mean, unions — communist Party publication, People’s World, AFL-CIO leader — demanding insurance company executives being arrested, turned over to the cops? It’s a ho-hummer? I think it’s a pretty big deal here that Obama is ordering this to happen. Arrest them? Turn ’em over to the cops? You know, storm their convention, their meeting and turn them over to the cops? All right, now we’ve discussed health care, so we qualify for the spam calls from Obama’s seminar callers.

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RUSH: All right, Cookie was rolling on it. I caught the bare end of this. Pelosi just came out of the bat cave with an announcement of whatever it is she and the Democrats have decided to do regarding health care and reconciliation, and I caught the tail end of it. I can only surmise. We were rolling on it. We’ll have the sound bites coming up in moments, but from what I heard, it sounds like that the news reports today about the Slaughter Rule are what she was talking about. I heard her say, ‘We’re gonna take out the Cornhusker Kickback and we’re going to take out the Louisiana Purchase and we’re going to add in something.’ Something Obama wants to do is increase the Medicare tax by applying it to any gains that you make on your investment portfolio, what was called ‘unearned income.’ So, in addition to the payroll tax in Medicare they want to get more Medicare tax by taxing investment profits, and she mentioned that.

She said it was great to have heard from the president to find out what he wants. So it sounds to me like what they’re going to do — and John Boehner put this on his website earlier today — is they basically want to pass the Senate bill without voting on it. And here again, the process is just going to enrage everybody. It’s already being forced down people’s throats who want no part of this. They don’t have the votes for it in any way, shape, manner, or form following existing rules. So they’re trying reconciliation. That apparently isn’t gonna work because the House and the Senate don’t trust each other, the Democrats. The House does not have the votes to pass the Senate bill as is. It doesn’t have the right abortion language for Stupak. It has all giveaways to two states or three or four states, but not enough other states, like the Cornhusker Kickback and a bunch of others. It does not have a specifically spelled out public option.

The Senate bill to the House Democrats is like the cross to Dracula. They just don’t like it. So the scheme, the twisted scheme by which the Democrat leaders plan to bend the rules and ram Obama’s legislation through Congress now has a name: The Slaughter Solution. Louise Slaughter (Democrat-New York) is chairwoman of the rules committee and a very important key ally of Pelosi. They are just going to ‘deem’ the House to have passed the Senate bill, without voting on it. Now, to you and I say, ‘Wait a minute. Why don’t we just ‘deem’ Obama the president in 2012 and suspend the vote?’ Why even bother with Congress? Why even have legislation? If we’re just going to ‘deem’ things to have passed, things that we want? ‘Okay, we’re just going to pretend we passed the Senate bill, and we’re going to amend it. Then we’re going to mark it up and we’re going to add our changes to it and then we’re going to send it back.’

Look, they can make their own rules there. I’m not enough of a parliamentary expert, congressional expert to say. You know, these guys, if they want to hide $90,000 in cold cash in a refrigerator in their office they can keep the FBI out of there from searching for it. It’s separation of powers. The FBI is part of the executive branch. They’re the congressional branch, legislative. Just as an example. So why do you even need Congress? If Obama just says, ‘Look, I ‘deem’ health care to have passed, and I’m going to sign what I ‘deem’ to have passed,’ where does this end? This is what you have, folks. These are pure, unadulterated statists getting close to totalitarians. This is what you have to do if you want overthrow from within the US government when you don’t have the votes of the American people to do it. So they’re going to ‘deem’ the Senate bill to have been passed without an actual vote by members.

They’re going to pass the Senate bill with no vote on it, and then they’re going to do their own reconciliation of it. They’re going to take things out of it, they’re going to add things to it, and then — I don’t know — send it up to Obama or send it back to the Senate. I don’t know what the process is after that. So they want to pass a bill that they haven’t voted on and a bill that’s essentially unwritten right now. Again, I don’t know if this is legal. It probably is. I do know this: If the House passes the reconciliation bill without a vote in the Senate it will be a slap in our face like you can’t believe. They’ll be spitting in our face, doing this. That’s the only way to describe it. And the CBO, let me find this. This is just outrageous, too.

The CBO now has a score of the Senate-passed health bill, an estimate of the budgetary effects of the Senate-passed health bill, and they say that it’s going to reduce the deficit by $118 billion. Now, the bill’s passed in the Senate on Christmas Eve, and ‘CBO has just released an estimate of the budgetary effects of the health bill, HR 3590, that passed the Senate on December 24. Today’s estimate differs from the estimate for a slightly earlier version of the legislation that we released on December 19 in that it encompasses all of the amendments that were adopted by the Senate, reflects a revised assumption about its enactment date, and incorporates some technical revisions. … The CBO and the staff [Joint Committee on Taxation] now estimate that, on balance, the direct (mandatory) spending and revenue effects of enacting HR 3590 as passed by the Senate would yield a net reduction in federal deficits of $118 billion over the 2010–2019 period.

That’s, frankly, a lie. There’s no way any of this is going to reduce the deficit. This is just another estimate of the already-passed Senate bill. This is not an estimate of the reconciliation bill that the House and Pelosi are somehow working on now. This CBO estimate’s based on numerous cheats, numerous shams such as front-loading the taxes for four years before any so-called health care reform benefits begin being paid. And don’t forget this Congress has off-loaded many costs to Medicare and Medicaid like the $250 billion so-called doctor fix. This is nothing but a bunch of gimmicks. So everybody in Washington, ‘Bzz bzz bzz bzz bzz bzz bzz. What will the CBO say? What will the CBO say?’ It doesn’t make any difference what the CBO says! The CBO will score Obamacare the gimmick, not the reality. This whole thing is a gimmick. CBO’s scoring will tell us what it will cost for Congress to keep its word, which does not happen. Basically they’re saying, ‘Well, if Congress does what it says here, this is what the financial result is going to be.’ See, the House Democrats don’t trust Senate Democrats to keep their word and vice-versa, and the CBO is going to tell you what it will cost if both of them keep their word? (laughing) More of a sham.

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RUSH: All right, here’s Pelosi from last hour. This is during her weekly news conference as she came out of the big closed-door meeting with House Democrats. They canceled all committee hearings today and all the House business, and had this big confab behind closed doors where we assume they were discussing the Slaughter Rule. Again, the Slaughter Rule is the Democrats are just going to ‘deem’ themselves to have passed the Senate bill without voting on it. Of course, why even have Congress? In fact, why not just ‘deem’ full employment? Why not just ‘deem’ budget surpluses? Why not just ‘deem’ the end of the Republican Party? Where does this stuff stop? So they’re going to deem themselves to have passed the Senate bill without having voted on it and going to add their changes. That’s what we think they were doing. Pelosi came out and did this.

PELOSI: Correcting the Nebraska agreement — fix, whatever you want to call that — but having more equity for the states. We don’t want to have unnecessary burdens on the state, and this legislation comes closer to what the House had in mind. In addition to that — that’s with the investments — on the pay-for side, as you know, the so-called Cadillac plans and Nancy discussed, 80% of it would be removed from the bill, and that’s a real victory for the House. And discuss further how that is represented in the bill and what is used instead, which is a Medicare tax on unearned income for — for the bulk of it. So it was — it was very productive in terms of hearing directly from the White House when the president’s proposal was.

RUSH: Whoa! Wait a minute. So somebody from the White House was in there and only today they found out what Obama wants? Just today? Well, shazam! They just today found out what Obama wants. There is no legislation. So it looks like it’s full speed ahead for the Slaughter Rule. They’re already assuming they’ve passed the Senate bill and now they’re going to make these changes in what she is calling ‘legislation.’ So the Cornhusker Kickback is gone, the Louisiana Purchase is gone, and so is the tax on Cadillac health plans. The unions don’t like that. It’s in the Senate bill, but doesn’t kick in ’til 2018. But they’re going to take it out in the House and replace it with an increase in the Medicare tax on ‘unearned income,’ meaning your investment portfolio, your stocks and whatever else. Any profits there will be taxed, but the Medicare rate will be tacked onto the capital gains rate. So this is what they’re planning. Here’s an ex-Obama advisor, audio sound bite number two here, CNN this morning, former deputy national campaign director for ’08, Steve Hildebrand said this about the 2010 midterm elections.

HILDEBRAND: There’s a real shot that we’re going to get slaughtered in elections this fall if we aren’t leading the efforts to reform Washington. It’s what we campaigned on in ’06 and ’08, and if voters don’t see that change, we haven’t lived up to our promise.

RUSH: Hey, Mr. Hildebrand? What’s obvious is that voters realize you lied. You didn’t promise to reform Washington. You came to further corrupt it, and take it over and make it over as it existed. That’s what you came to town to do, and that’s what you’re doing! Yeah, you are going to get slaughtered. You’re going to get slaughtered. You’re gonna get slaughtered because of the Slaughter Rule. You’re going to get slaughtered because of Obama and the House Democrats and all that. You’re going to get slaughtered.

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RUSH: Hey, what happened to the debate’s over? What happened to Obama demanding an up-and-down vote? What happened to that? I guess that’s off the table now. Obama’s been demanding an up-or-down vote. Now it’s no up and now it’s no down; now it’s only Slaughter. So we’re gonna have Slaughter vote which means we just deem it.

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RUSH: Nancy in Santa Rosa, California, I’m glad you waited. Welcome to the program.

CALLER: Yes, sir. I thought this was important enough to wait. My husband and I are with Anthem Blue Cross, we have a Medicare supplement plan with them, and I believe Obama mentioned them by name as one of the greedy ones.

RUSH: Yeah, these are the pirates that raised your premiums 39%.

CALLER: Well, yeah, they lowered ours by 31 dollars a month.

RUSH: What?

CALLER: They lowered our premium. We got a letter in February —

RUSH: The hell you say.

CALLER: — in January —

RUSH: The hell you say.

CALLER: — saying based on a review of the cost and use of benefits by members of your plan in your area over the past year, we’ll be able to reduce your Medicare supplement premium effective March 1st, 2010.

RUSH: Use of benefits by members of your plan. What is that?

CALLER: Medicare supplement plan.

RUSH: No, no, no. I understand that. But the use of benefits, does that mean you’ve had fewer people making health claims?

CALLER: Well, yeah, I guess so. They certainly don’t owe us anything. They have paid and paid and paid for us, and without any qualms or questions.

RUSH: Well, hmm. So these guys are not the bad guys that —

CALLER: Not as far as I’m concerned.

RUSH: Yeah, $31-a-month — that’s a month, right?

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: Premium reduction.

CALLER: They lowered it from $412 to $381.

RUSH: Well, so they’re not the bandits and thieves that Obama has portrayed them to be.

CALLER: They’ve been very good to us.

RUSH: I’m happy to hear that. That’s Anthem Blue Cross?

CALLER: Anthem Blue Cross, yes.

RUSH: Thanks, Nancy, very much, by the way, in case your voice is recognized you might want to hire security in the front and back of your house in case there are any SEIU union thugs tuning in. This is a big health care day for Obama supporters and spam callers, and this is not what they want to hear. I mean they want to put the people you deal with at Anthem Blue Cross in jail. I don’t mean to scare you, but, I mean, you gotta take steps, we all do, whether the turtles force you to turn out the lights or what have you.

John in Goodview, Virginia, welcome to the EIB Network. Great to have you here. Hello.

CALLER: Good afternoon, my brother. Mega dittos to you. It’s a privilege to talk to you.

RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much. I appreciate that.

CALLER: And I’m going to be brief and I’m going to be quick. I am a union member. I am a locomotive engineer on a major class one railroad.

RUSH: Yeah, but who owns the railroad?

CALLER: The stockholders.

RUSH: Okay, so you’re not a government union employee?

CALLER: No.

RUSH: Okay.

CALLER: No, I’m a member of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers.

RUSH: A great brotherhood, great brotherhood.

CALLER: Hey, at any rate, I’m a conservative, as a matter of fact I’m one of the few conservatives you’ll find in a union.

RUSH: Still alive, yeah.

CALLER: This health care thing, they’re going to either take my benefits away from me, which would be the correct business decision to make, or they’re going to run my insurance company completely out of business. Now, I pay for my insurance, I pay a couple of hundred bucks a month for my insurance. My company pays about a thousand, $1,100 a month for my insurance. It’s a managed care plan. We’re very happy with it. It’s not the best in the world. By no means is it a Cadillac plan, so I probably won’t get taxed on it yet. But I will eventually because this is about power. They don’t want us to have insurance. They want to tell us what we can do with our health care as opposed to letting us make the decisions.

RUSH: That’s right. They want you to have insurance. They just want you to have to go get it from the government, from them.

CALLER: Exactly. So I make about 80 grand a year. You know, hell, anybody that works for the railroad knows how much money I make a year. If the railroad decided when this crap passes —

RUSH: Yeah? Quickly.

CALLER: Hey, 8% of 80 grand, that’s $6,400 hundred bucks. We’re saving ourselves a ton of money.

RUSH: Exactly right. Well said.

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RUSH: Mike in eastern North Carolina. It’s great to have you, sir, on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hi.

CALLER: How you doing, sir?

RUSH: Very well.

CALLER: Mega dittos. You’re a great American.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: I was traveling down I-95, and you said something on the radio that put a fire in me. The slaughterhouse tactic they’re talking about. What in the world…? How they can get away with doing something like that? It sounds like it’s just dirty.

RUSH: It is. It’s Democrats.

CALLER: I mean, if they get away with that is there anything we can do? Put ’em in jail or something for breaking the laws?

RUSH: They can set their own rules. And Louise Slaughter is writing one here. Louise Slaughter from New York is the chairman of the rules committee in the House.

CALLER: The Constitution doesn’t matter?

RUSH: Well, somebody has to challenge this on constitutional grounds. Maybe the House Republicans could, but if they want to ‘deem’ themselves to have voted for the bill and they haven’t, they can do it, I guess. Until I get some legal scholar telling me that they can’t do this, I have to assume they can or they wouldn’t be trying it.

CALLER: It’s just wrong.

RUSH: Of course it’s wrong. They’re wrong. These people are repugnant.

CALLER: Well, Rush, keep doing what you’re doing. I enjoy it.

RUSH: Thank you. I tell you, Mike, I tell you what I would do if I were you. I would just ‘deem’ yourself a million dollars and go spend it.

CALLER: (laughing)

RUSH: And then when the people want to actually be paid for it, ‘Oh, I’m just following the example set by Louise Slaughter and Nancy Pelosi in the House of Representatives. They ‘deem’ themselves to have voted on something they didn’t vote on and I guess they can do it. So I’m just going to ‘deem’ myself to have a million bucks.’

CALLER: Well, the difference is, sir, I want to earn my money. I don’t want to steal it that way.

RUSH: Well, I appreciate that. I understand that. It’s just an idea.

CALLER: Yes, sir.

RUSH: Once this stuff starts, why do we even need Congress? Why can’t Obama just ‘deem’ this done? (interruption) Mmm. Well, ‘That’s the Constitution,’ but what the hell does the Constitution matter? Snerdley says, ‘Because only the House has the right constitutionally to originate spending measures.’ That’s true. So? So? (interruption) So, it doesn’t matter. Rules, Democrats, equals rules don’t matter. Are you telling me that…? Look, they’re already shredding the Constitution, with all these federal mandates that you buy insurance. (interruption) The Constitution is already in tatters with these people. Here’s Josh in Sugar City, Idaho. Great to have you here.

CALLER: It’s great talking to you again, Rush. You know, I was listening to your program the other day, and you made mention of a North Korean man getting publicly executed because he was talking on an illegal cell phone to his brother in South Korea. And you made mention this morning of those union thugs wanting those executive insurance people arrested, and I thought to myself, ‘Well, shoot. We’re right on track with North Korea.’ If you give these union thugs more and more power, you know, it might be 20 years from now, but we might have public executions in this country for stupid crap because it’s —

RUSH: It’s not going to go that far. American people —

CALLER: You hope it doesn’t, but it’s the same flippin’ thing. You —

RUSH: I understand but we’re not going that far. You know, at some point, like I said yesterday, the American people now a great majority realize that they made a mistake, that they were defrauded, fooled, scammed, and they see all this stuff. They see stuff like the salt ban in New York. I want to tell you people something, by the way. You hear this stuff, and you say, ‘Ah Rush, don’t worry about it. It’ll never happen. Ban salt? I mean, the human body is 0.9% salt. They can’t ban salt. We can’t live without salt. It’ll never happen, Rush.’ That’s what they told me when I warned them about the SUV ban that was starting in 1996. Remember that? ‘Ah, come on, Rush. They’re never going to be able to tell us what kind of car you can drive. You know, you take these people too seriously. You give them too much credit. They’re just a bunch of kooks out there.’

Yeah, well, look where we are now. You can’t find a Hummer, the ChiComs won’t even build them. That deal fell south. If you drive around an SUV, you may as well be a marked person. You’re driving around in a stigma. In fact, I think somebody ought to make an SUV make that the model name: The GM Stigma or the Chevrolet Stigma, what have you. This ban on salt, these people… In fact, in this health care bill… Where is it? Where is it? No, it’s in the stimulus bill. I have to look in the right stack. In the stimulus bill already there are tax increases on sugared drinks. In the stimulus bill. It’s already there. They’ve already passed it. Obama’s already signed it into law. Everybody thinks this stuff is not going to happen. It’s too weird. It’s too crazy. But they’re on the salt business, and once they start this kind of stuff, folks, it never goes away. They never give it up. They continue and continue and finance with it. I’ll find that story. It’s in one of these two stacks.

This is from TheHill.com, by the way. ‘More than two dozen Democrats…’ This is why they have to Slaughter this whole thing. ‘More than two dozen Democrats are expected to vote against the healthcare reform bill that will hit the House floor in the coming weeks. At least 25 House Democrats will reject the healthcare reform legislation, according to a survey by The Hill, a review of other media reports and interviews with lawmakers, aides and lobbyists. Dozens of House Democrats are undecided or won’t comment on their position on the measure. The 25 opposed include firm ‘no’ votes and members who are likely ‘no’ votes. Most Democrats on The Hill’s whip list are definitely going to vote no, but others, such as Reps. Lincoln Davis (Tenn.) and Harry Teague (NM), could vote yes.’ Then there’s the added problem here that the Congressional Black Caucus all bent outta shape over this and so is the Hispanic Caucus.

‘A group of Hispanic lawmakers on [today] will tell President Barack Obama that they may not vote for healthcare reform unless changes are made to the bill’s immigration provisions. The scheduled meeting comes as Democratic leaders and the White House are struggling to craft a final bill that will attract 216 votes in the lower chamber. Unlike abortion, immigration has flown beneath the radar, and almost seemed to vanish altogether … But immigration remains just as explosive an issue and carries the same potential to derail the entire healthcare endgame, a number of Democrats said. ‘It’s still one of those issues that’s out there,’ said Rep. Xavier Becerra (Calif.), the Democratic Caucus vice chairman and the only Hispanic member of House leadership,’ and then the Congressional Black Caucus is upset ’cause there aren’t enough jobs and there’s not a black agenda in the stimulus bill. Well, this is what these people are saying publicly. Well, that’s probably true. I think they’re just angles for their payoff here by saying, ‘You can’t count on our vote, Obama,’ because they know Obama is writing checks. They know Obama is handing out money to anybody who would like it.

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RUSH: Ray in Atlanta, great to have you, sir. Rush Limbaugh saying hi, the EIB Network.

CALLER: Hello, Rush. How you doing?

RUSH: Excellent. Thank you.

CALLER: I wanted to talk a little bit about this whole thing on preconditions that both sides seem to be worried about.

RUSH: Preexisting conditions, yes.

CALLER: My question to you is what in life doesn’t have some type of preexisting conditions? For example, I have two teenaged boys who drive cars. My neighbor pays less insurance than I do. The only thing that I can see that’s different is, one happens to be, you know, male, one happens to be female.

RUSH: So you’re saying that you have a preexisting condition known as teenagers.

CALLER: Correct.

RUSH: Who are more prone to accidents —

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: — and so you have to pay a higher premium?

CALLER: Absolutely.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: And what about, you know, for example, if I had a DUI and I wanted to apply for a job, and they refuse me because I had a DUI, well, that’s a preexisting condition.

RUSH: No, just call the NFL.

CALLER: (laughing) My point is, and this might even be a legal challenge, can the insurance industry say —

RUSH: In fact, if you want to have five kids with four women they’ll pay the child support, the NFL. You talk about a preexisting condition.

CALLER: (laughing) It just seems silly to me that, you know —

RUSH: Antonio Cromartie just traded to the Jets from the San Diego Chargers. Well, it’s happened. I mean I’m just commenting on the news here, no editorial comment by any stretch of the imagination, but if you want a preexisting condition, that’s it.

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