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Sebelius Hearing: A Missed Opportunity

by Rush Limbaugh - Oct 31,2013

RUSH: This is Juan Williams, our old buddy Juan Williams on Fox News last night on the panel at Special Report. They’re talking about Sebelius’ testimony before Congress yesterday. This is what Juan Williams said.


WILLIAMS: I thought today was pure theater. I thought it was a big stage show with Republicans attacking Sebelius. Meanwhile, Democrats trying to rescue their partner in the ring by giving her a recess and launching into speeches of their own in defense of Obamacare. All this is in the weeds. What do I care about how things are put into computers and, you know, who’s to blame, who’s not to blame.

RUSH: It’s just a website. Juan Williams, he doesn’t care. “What do I care about inputting data into a website? That doesn’t matter.” Let me tell you how it does matter. If Kathleen Sebelius — and she’s the Health and Human Services secretary, and the Obamacare law, if you read the text, has that phrase in it, “as the secretary shall determine” many, many times. I mean, it’s clear that the secretary of Health and Human Services has a lot of autonomy to just arbitrarily do whatever he or she wants to do in writing regulations and administering Obamacare. And if Health and Human Services, Sebelius or whoever, if they — Juan, this is why the website matters — if they can’t even launch a website, how in the hell can they possibly be competent to oversee one-sixth of the economy?

You can sit there and you can try to diminish this by saying, “Well, it’s just a website.” No, no, no, no. It’s far more than that. They have no competence in administering this law. There is nobody in this regime that has the experience. We’re not even talking about intelligence or instinct. They don’t even have the experience to do this. What does Kathleen Sebelius know about health care except that she’s pro-choice, pro-abortion? That’s the extent of her knowledge. Nobody in this regime has the slightest idea, and the fact that they can’t even launch a website with $680 million? Give me half a million, I’ll get a website up and running. I’ve done it twice. We didn’t spend $600 million on TwoIfByTea.com or RushLimbaugh.com. Nobody does.


These people had three years, $600 plus million and they can’t even launch a website. So the reaction, “Well, it’s just a website. That doesn’t mean anything.” It means everything. If they can’t even do that — and they didn’t have to do it. You know, they went out and they hired Valerie Jarrett cronies and they hired Michelle Obama cronies, who had no idea. This is typical of the way the left does things. They just give these contracts to their buddies, spread the wealth. It’s a money-laundering scheme, essentially. They’re given the money just like the Solyndra guys are given the money to run a green energy solar firm. They don’t know what they’re doing, goes bankrupt, doesn’t matter, they’ve got the money. Some of it comes back in campaign contributions. They’ve washed the money.

Obama’s got more money than he had before the whole thing started, never mind that Obamacare doesn’t work. He doesn’t care about the details of it not working. The only thing he cares about is making sure it’s not repealed or defunded. That’s all he cares about. He doesn’t care if Kathleen Sebelius knows what she’s doing. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t know enough to know whether she knows what she’s doing. Nobody in that regime, Valerie Jarrett doesn’t know enough to know whether Sebelius is qualified. Nobody does. And the fact they can’t get a website up and running is illustration enough, for me, that they don’t know how to do and shouldn’t be allowed to do anything else.

It would be like if a contractor doesn’t know how to build a door, why would you let him build the building? These clowns can’t even build a doorway to their system. Why in the hell do we think they can build a system? Well, because to these people, the website’s just the entry point, that doesn’t matter, we can fix that. Yeah, well, most contractors can build a door, too. But how about a building that doesn’t crumble, implode on people. This is such a nightmare. It’s an embarrassment. All of this stuff, what would it have taken for any Republican to point this stuff out yesterday? It’s just another gloriously missed opportunity.


So here’s Sebelius, in her proud incompetence, going on and on and on about the “good” things of Obamacare like not denying anybody with previous conditions, or kids being able to stay on their parents’ policies ’til they’re 26. Every Republican shoulda stood up and said, “Yeah, and that’s why nobody can afford it! Yeah, that’s why costs are skyrocketing. It’s because you’re putting stupid things like that in it which can’t be paid for, which are not affordable.”

But the biggest thing… You know, I love basics in terms of persuading people, informing them, educating ’em. Why did we do this? Why are we redoing health care? Well, because we had (depending on the day) 15 million, 30 million, 43 million uninsured. That was considered immoral. “In one of the wealthiest nations on earth, that there are that many uninsured people that don’t have health care, that’s just unacceptable.” Okay, fine.


Then why write a 2,700-page mess with hundreds of thousands more pages of regulations just to provide insurance for 15, 30, 43 million people? Do you realize how much less it would cost just to subsidize insurance for people that couldn’t afford it without doing all of this other stuff? That then leads to the reason why all this other stuff is really being done, and it doesn’t have anything to do with health care. It has to do with making government more powerful and giving government more reach into everybody’s life.

It has to do with shrinking the economy by one-sixth of its size. Republicans are worried that they don’t have an alternative. “Well, Mr. Limbaugh, we just can’t stand up there and start beating up on Obamacare! We gotta have an alternative.” No, you don’t. But if you want an alternative, how about let’s just do a plan that ensures 15 million people that don’t have it and be done with it? I guarantee you it’d be a lot less expensive, and it would be a lot less disruptive.

And then, when you tell people they get to keep their plan, they’d be able to keep their plan! And when you tell people they get to keep their doctor if they like their doctor, they get to keep their doctor. Why in hell are people’s premiums and deductibles doubling and tripling, when all we really set out to do ostensibly was insure 15 to 20 or 30 million people that didn’t have it? Now, what does it take to present that as an alternative? I’m getting worn out here, folks. I’m sure you are, too.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, one more little piece of news here, folks. The reason that we did Obamacare was to cover whatever the number — 15, 30, 43 million — of uninsured. That was one of the selling points from the regime. “It’s a moral thing, don’t you know. It’s just immoral, unacceptable that in a country this wealthy the mean-spirited, the rich should see to it that there’s so many people without insurance!” Okay, fine. So a couple of weeks ago (you may remember this), the Associated Press in random act of journalism, found a memo.

It was a Health and Human Services department memo that predicted that, at best, only 3.3 million uninsured would sign up for Obamacare by the end of the enrollment period, and that memo was written before the glitches on the website. So even Sebelius and her staff, after doing all of this for 15, 20, whatever the number of uninsured was, said in their own internal memo that AP found that only 3.3 million uninsured would sign up at the end of the enrollment period, by the end of it, before the glitches. So it wasn’t even gonna succeed in that so-called moral component.


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