Liberals Try to Cover Up for Obamacare Architect
Rush Limbaugh.com ^ | November 11, 2014 | Rush Limbaugh
Posted on 11/11/2014 3:23:55 PM by Kaslin
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This is incredible. The liberals at the University of Pennsylvania tried to take down the video of Jonathan Gruber saying they had to dumb down the presentation of Obamacare because of the stupidity of the American voter. They thought they could take the video down and make the issue go away.
You remember Jonathan Gruber. By the way, he's the architect of Obamacare, and I should say that he's one of the primary architects of Romneycare as well. It was in October of last year at the University of Pennsylvania's 24th Annual Health Economics Conference, and he said that it was crucial that the American people never realize what was really in Obamacare because the stupidity of the American voter would have otherwise killed the law.
GRUBER: "Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage."
In other words, he admitted -- and he got applause, he was talking to fellow economists -- he admitted they had to lie. They had to mask and cover the transparency. They had to lie about what was in it, such as you get to keep your doctor, you get to keep your plan, your premium will come down $2,500. There are no tax increases. It's not gonna cost any more than the Iraq war. Every lie they told was purposeful because they thought the American public was so stupid they wouldn't understand the nuance and the liberal definition of need for this law, and that if they had been honest about it, people would never have supported it.
That covers pretty much everything in their agenda, by the way. If they're ever honest about their real agenda, they'd never get elected to anything outside of New York, San Francisco and Hollywood. And they wouldn't, folks. And maybe Chicago. They would not. It's not just Obamacare they lie about. It's not just Obamacare they think you are too stupid to understand.
So, anyway, the University of Pennsylvania, after the uproar of this getting out, tried to pull it down. They pulled the video of the event which took place in October of 2013. And for a time yesterday, if you went to the website at the University of Pennsylvania trying to see the video, you got a message that said: "This video has been removed by the user. Sorry about that." And so that begot a Twitter and Facebook storm.
"Why would Penn pull down a public video that has political implications?" Was one of the questions. Because they're a bunch of liberals is why, and because their truth was exposed. It was major. They tried to pull it down.
Anyway, they ended up having to put it back up because they began to look like fools, thinking that they could put back in the bottle the genie that had already been released. You can't do that. So they put it back up. But it was funny to watch 'em scramble around, folks, like turning on the lights and a bunch of rats in the barn going nuts at being exposed and discovered. They tried to turn the lights back off and it didn't work.
Speaking of Obamacare, the Washington Post is, on its best day, hapless. The Washington Post is an absolute sorry excuse for what it used to be. But even with that, they continue to set new standards for incompetence and bias and just being plain wrong. There's a story by Jose DelReal: "Obamacare Consultant Under Fire for 'Stupidity of the American Voter' Comment." Now, this reporter is obviously just a Democrat with a press pass, which is what most of them at the New York Times and the Washington Post are. They're Democrats disguised as journalists. Give them a little press pass, let 'em go there, pretend to be reporters and so forth.
He sells whatever is left of his journalistic soul in this piece. Let me give you just one pull quote from it, as they're still trying to put the genie back in the bottle. Now, remember, this is for their liberal readers, Washington Post, liberal reader base, New York Times, same thing. They're trying to calm their reader base. This is not a big deal, don't worry. Gruber didn't screw it up for everybody. It's okay, it's okay, trying to calm everybody down.
Listen to this quote from the story: "Gruber's remarks have been greeted by the law's critics as an admission of intentionally deceiving the American public about the law in 2010. But given the context of the remarks, Gruber seems to be speaking specifically about how and why the law's funding mechanisms were framed when the law was being written."
This guy thinks he's helping Gruber by saying that, and he is hammering another nail in the coffin. Jose, that is exactly the point! People were deceived about the funding mechanism. That was the key, key, key to getting it passed. How the thing was gonna be paid for was the key to it getting passed. Oh, and the lie to Bart Stupak about it not funding abortions.
But the way this thing was being funded, the way it was gonna be paid for, the way it wasn't gonna cost anybody anything, the way it was gonna allow people to keep their doctors and keep their plans and lower their premiums and their deductibles? That was key to this thing getting passed, and he writes (summarized), "Well, if you read the context, if you're given the context of Professor Gruber's remarks...
"He seems to be speaking specifically about how and why the law's funding mechanisms were framed," lied about. This guy's trying to get this guy out of a jam, and he digs a deeper hole! But remember, he's dealing with his own liberal-Democrat reader base, and they are looking for holes to be dragged out of. So they'll take anything that they can get. "Economist Jonathan Gruber, one of the Regime's consultants on the..."
He was not a consultant. He was the architect, Jose. He "is under attack from conservatives for comments he made last year in which he seemingly said," and then he quotes (laughing), "the stupidity of the American voter." Seemingly? Seemingly said? He didn't "seemingly" say it. He stated unambiguously that they had to lie about this thing because of "the stupidity of the American people."
Actually if you examine that, I think really what he means is, "We had to lie because of the intelligence of the American people. We had to lie to them, otherwise they would have seen what we intended to do." That means they're pretty smart, when you get right down to it, and that's what bothers them. Now, that's not to say that Gruber and his ilk on the left and in the Democrat Party do not consider you and American voters to be a bunch of stiffs and stupid.
It doesn't mean they don't still hold you in contempt.
But what he's really saying is, "We had to lie. We had to lie, because they're too stupid... No, they're too smart, actually. They would see what really is intended here unless we lie." So you relied on what you thought was their stupid gullibility to believe your lie, is what you were relying on. And it's 2010, so there's still some residual messianic attitudes about Obama in 2010. So that's what they were relying on.
Anyway, it's CYA time at the Washington Post. But it's not over for the bad news about Obamacare. From the Washington Times: "Obamacare May Not Have Enough Enrollees to Stay Solvent -- Fewer than 10 million projected; 13 million needed to stay solvent. The [Regime] on Monday said fewer than 10 million Americans will enroll in Obamacare's health exchanges this go-around, well short of the 13 million target congressional scorekeepers deemed critical to its economics..."
Meaning: They've gotta have 13 million people paying premiums through the nose in order to fund this thing. It suggests "another rocky rollout in the law's second year of full operation," and it's next week (chuckling) when the mandate hits. It's next week when the next wave of unforeseen expenses hit everybody.
"Policy advisers at the Health & Human Services Department estimated that 9 million to 9.9 million people would enroll through the exchanges -- or only a slight increase over the 8 million that the [Regime] says were active at the end of the first enrollment period this April. The Congressional Budget Office, which is the government's official scorekeeper, had predicted the law would need 13 million customers on the exchanges. ...
"'Under the president's health care law, Americans have experienced broken exchanges, canceled coverage, higher premiums and unaffordable deductibles,' said Rep. Darrell E. Issa, California Republican and chairman of the House oversight committee... 'Despite the administration’s habit of moving the goal posts, the fact is Obamacare is simply not delivering the results Americans were originally promised by the president.'"
Neither is anything else, and this the American people know, which explains the election results this past Tuesday. "The number of enrollees is key, because if too few take part in the exchanges, the pool of customers is too small, and it could skew the economics of Obamacare, forcing insurers to raise premiums and pushing even more people to forgo coverage, choosing to pay the tax penalty instead," the FINE.
Stop and think of something here. We have Obamacare. It was gonna save the day. It was gonna insure all the uninsured. It was gonna make sure that the previous existing condition people were covered. It was gonna be magic, right? Now, what are we talking about here? They're hoping to get 13 million people?
How many people are in this country, 250 million adults, 220? What is it? I don't care, 10 million, 13 million. It's chump change. It's nothing. They got 8.8 million the first go round? We're nowhere near mass adoption of this. You know, there's a new group of people elected in the House of Representatives that just been handed another golden opportunity here.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here's the truth of the matter, folks. If the American people were stupid, the Democrats would still run the Senate and maybe even the House of Representatives. If the American people were stupid. This, by the way, really grates on the Democrats, believe me, 'cause if the American people were stupid -- meaning falling for all the lies -- the Republicans wouldn't have been elected.
It is elitism that is ignorant because it's arrogant and conceited, and Jonathan Gruber is an elitist and therefore has no idea what life is really like for all the people he's out there writing legislation for. All he knows is that they're stupid, and they can't deal with the truth. They don't know what's best for 'em. So in order to give them what's best for them (Obamacare), we have to lie to them.
The American people are just a bunch of idiots.
So lies got Barack Obama elected, twice. Corrupt politics got Obamacare passed without a single Republican vote. But this brilliant economist, Jonathan Gruber, wasn't smart enough to make Obamacare popular. Imagine that! If the American people were so stupid, they could have been talked into how wonderfully great this legislation is and they'd been out there signing up.
They'd be going nuts, throwing parties, talking about how they've all got free health care, but the American people are not that stupid and didn't fall for this. Obamacare has never enjoyed majority public support. You really can't outsmart free markets for very long. Reality eventually sets in and the lies end up uncovered. Markets work. Be they intellectual markets or economic markets, they work.
But you know what's really tied up in all this? The people of this country trusted Barack Obama, and in 2010 they still did. They thought they had created a moment in world history: Electing the first African-American president in a country that had featured slavery in its distant past. They trusted Obama. He was gonna fix everything. He was a new kind of man, a new kind of politician.
But not to me.
Folks, what's happened here is exactly why we have to go after the credibility these Democrats -- this includes Hillary -- before they are elected and it demonstrates itself.
We have to go after their credibility.
We have to just because we know we're right!
We can't afford to elect 'em anymore.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: So here comes Dana Milbank at the fledgling Washington Post, same thing's happening to them: "Why Obamacare Risks Falling into a 'Death Spiral' -- So it turns out there is an Obamacare death panel after all." See, there is. There are death panels, but this guy continues to deny the truth. You're not smart enough to deal with the reality of what a death panel really is. Sarah Palin came along and blew the whole thing by correctly naming the advisory board that determines who gets treatment and who doesn't. That's a death panel. That was one of those truths that the Obamacare architects could not allow out there. So they had to attack her, destroy her, again, and anybody else that picked up the mantra.
So on the left they continue living in their fantasy world, that Obamacare is not what it is. And what they don't understand is the whole country is away ahead of 'em. This stupid bunch of Americans are way ahead of the Drive-By Media, which is caught twisting and turning in the past trying to save an already ruined presidency. Well, ruined in the popular way presidencies are judged, presidential approval, blah, blah, blah. In terms of actual accomplishments that are attached to Obama's real goal, it's a very successful administration, transforming the country. But I don't want to get too intricate for this purpose here.
Dana Milbank is worried about the Supreme Court. That's the death panel for Obamacare. Oh, yeah. "It has nine members and it operates out of a marble building directly across the street from the Capitol. When the Supreme Court on Friday announced that it would take up another challenge to the Affordable Care Act in March, it delivered the threat of two mortal blows to the signature achievement of the Obama presidency. First, it raised the possibility that the justices, who narrowly spared the law in 2012, will in June come out with a new ruling that would dismantle the law on different grounds."
You know what a real threat or fear that the left has about this? They know that Obamacare is unconstitutional. They've known it since it was written. Gruber lets the cat out of the bag by saying we had to lie and we had to cover the transparency because of the stupidity of the American people. In other words, we had to lie in order to get this thing passed, because if people knew what it really was, it wouldn't stand the light of day, it wouldn't stand a chance.
The unconstitutionality is the Commerce Clause and the fact that the federal government can't force to you buy anything. They can't force you to buy anything. So that begot the argument, is it a mandate, is it a tax? The federal government can tax. But, no, it's not a tax. It's a fine. If you don't buy insurance, we're gonna fine you. They can't! The Fourth Amendment. They can't. However -- and this is the fear the left has -- they know that the Supreme Court just didn't want to go there. I mean, it was the first black president. It was a major signature legislation and it was for health care for the poor, and, okay, we'll look the other way.
So John Roberts did some finagling and found a way to make this thing sound constitutional. But the left knows that a whole bunch of chicanery took place. They know they're hanging by a thread. They know they're on thin ice here, and they know that a lot of justices -- well, they don't know, but I suspect they fear a lot of justices have been chomping at the bit for a second go round at this thing, 'cause it isn't constitutional, folks. If we were in a totally objective, nonpartisan, sane world, this law would have been struck down inside of three hours of it arriving at the Supreme Court.
The federal government simply cannot demand that we buy things. It's right there in the Commerce Clause in the Fourth Amendment. They cannot do it. Ways were achieved to mask what is really happening by calling these things fines if you don't buy it, blah, blah. So they know they're hanging by a thread, and they know they may be even on borrowed time. And now the court, the Supreme Court, decided to hear the case again, this time over subsidies. This is an area that in an objective, black and white, sane world, the Regime doesn't have a prayer.
The point of this is real simple. The only subsidies for Obamacare are available at state exchanges. Well, as you recall, most states did not set one up, and therefore the people in those states, according to the law, had no way of getting subsidized Obamacare. And, believe me, subsidized is the only way the vast majority of Americans can afford it, because it's so damned expensive. Subsidies meaning taxpayers pay a greater portion of your policy than you do. So when this eventuated, when the states, Republican governors in these states refused to set up exchanges, that left a whole lot of people out of the subsidies, and that just wasn't -- oh, we can't allow that politically. I mean, that would be political disaster for Obama.
He's out there promising everything's gonna get cheaper. He's promising the uninsured are gonna get insured. He's promising don't worry about what it costs, gonna be subsidized, except most people don't live in a state with an exchange. Oh, no. So the federal government violated its own law and set up its own exchanges, which, whoever wrote this law, Gruber, stupidly left in that the federal government could not set up its own exchanges. They had to be set up in the states.
By the way, there was a purpose for that.
That was to shift as much of the cost off to the states as they could to keep the overall final number under that precious $3 trillion figure. So Obamacare was written in a way to dump as much cost off to the states as possible, and that's when the governors said, "Unh-uh! We're not just gonna sit here and accept these new costs. We can't print money like you can."
So they didn't set up the exchanges.
It's the unintended consequences. The liberals think the people are just a bunch of sheep and whatever legislation comes down they're gonna abide by it and not find ways around it. Well, when they figured out that a whole bunch of people were not gonna be qualified for subsidies, the federal government violated Obamacare and created their own exchanges...
That's what the Supreme Court's gonna hear. The Supreme Court's essentially gonna hear: Are those subsidies that are being provided by the federal government constitutional? Are they part of the law, or has this whole thing been turned upside down? As Milbank writes about it, "But even if the justices make no such ruling," meaning, striking it down, "the very act of taking up the challenge to the law will itself undermine the law."
So Milbank is in fatalistic, defeatist mode because all the court had to do was take the case and that undermines it. If they'd have just flat-out rejected it, fine and dandy. But the Supreme Court has taken the case. They're gonna hear it; they're gonna have an opinion. It doesn't matter what the opinion is. The very fact they're taking the case undermines it. Why? Because Milbank and these people know that this thing is a crock.
Gruber and everybody lied about it. They created a bunch of falsehoods in it. It's unsupportable economically. The American people don't want it! But that doesn't matter to them. They want it. They want you subjected to it, subordinated to it -- and the very idea that the court's gonna look at it again is just gonna create (in the minds of all these stupid Americans) the idea that something's wrong with the law, and we can't have that.
"We've gotta get people finally accepting this and ignoring this and moving on to other things! The more attention on Obamacare, the greater the opportunity everybody's gonna find out the fraud that is in it." That's why they're quaking today. Just the fact that the case is being accepted, taken up by the court, has got them scared to death. And it has them scared because they know what a house of cards this thing is, folks.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Peter in Reno, Nevada, heading back to the phones. Great to have you, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. How are you? First-time caller.
RUSH: Great to have you here, sir. Thank you.
CALLER: Great. Regarding the professor's comments, Gruber, the only people that had to be fooled were every Democrat in the House and every Democrat in the Senate. Every Republican voted against it. The only ones apparently dumb enough to fall for it was every single Democrat.
RUSH: Well, I..
CALLER: And Biden.
RUSH: I know the point that you're trying to make, that the Democrats in Congress are idiots, too, but I don't ascribe Gruber's comments to them. They are part of the group participating in the fraud, sir. The Democrats in the House and the Democrats in the Senate who voted for this thing, they're not victims of the administration lying to them. They knew exactly what this was! They were coconspirators in this.
They knew exactly what was on tap here. They were just as eager for this thing to pass as Obama and Gruber and Ezekiel Emanuel and anybody else involved in this at the top tiers. They were not victims. They were not stupid. They knew exactly what they were voting for. They knew exactly what they were voting on. They knew exactly how to tell the lies. They knew exactly what to lie about. They were in on it. What the election proves is they didn't get away with it.
The American people are much smarter than the Democrats give them credit for.
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