RUSH: You look at this health care bill and it's an absolute disaster. And now speaking of the health care bill, this is the Washington Post today, and they're not really happy about this. "Obama Eyes the Purse Strings for Medicare." Now, that may not be a big surprise to you, but here's why it is.
"At the same time President Obama is asking members of Congress to take one of the most politically difficult votes of their careers," i.e., for health care reform, "he is also pressing lawmakers to give up one of their most valued perks of office: boosting Medicare payments to benefit hometown providers. Setting reimbursement rates for local hospitals, doctors, home health-care centers and other providers is a legislative ritual that amounts to one of the most effective and lucrative forms of constituent service," i.e., pork. Obama is telling members of Congress he wants it. He wants total control of this. He wants total control of everything the government does. And this is the guy who is out there saying, (paraphrasing) "I'm too busy. I don't want any more power. I got Iraq on the table. I've got Afghanistan on the table. I don't want any more."
Rahm Emanuel says that the Medicare payment debate is the most important thing in the whole health care reform. And this is the first we're hearing of it in the Washington Post story today! The most important thing is who is in charge of Medicare payments at the local level. Obama wants to take it away from Congress. Now, look, we can debate here the whole point of these reimbursements and how they're rotten and bad. They're political no matter who is in charge of them, but the reason for mentioning this is this is something Congress is not gonna want to give up, and Emanuel is this is the most important aspect of health care reform? Medicare payment debate is the most important thing in the proposed health care reforms?
Why is that? Power. It's not about health care, folks, and in some cases not even about transfer of wealth. I saw Obama today. Was it today or yesterday? He said there's no free lunch on health care. There will be a free lunch for a lot of people. They're not going to pay a dime for it because it's going to be redistributed. They'll pay for it in other ways. There is no free lunch, but it'll be interesting to see how Congress reacts to this, and I guarantee you, Emanuel is already engaging in thug behavior, threatening up there. So the traditional family's obsolete. We gotta punish large families, and Obama wants to be in charge of Medicare rules and the reimbursement payment for all the local providers: doctors, hospitals. All of the local Medicare involvement, Obama wants total control of it -- or somebody in the White House does.
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Story #3: 40,000 Follow a Fraud: El Rushbo Does Not Twitter
RUSH: Speaking of Twitter, I was told yesterday that there are a bunch of people pretending to be me and that there are now 40,000 people out there thinking they are tweeting back and forth with me. I don't tweet, folks. I don't have a Twitter account, don't have it, so whoever is out there is a phony baloney, plastic banana, good-time rock 'n' roller, a fraud. I wanted to mention that.
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Story #4: Social Security Bureaucrats Party at Posh Resort
RUSH: Have you heard the story about 700 executives from the Social Security Administration on a party junket to Phoenix? While Obama is telling everybody else in the world don't travel, you can't fly your plane to Vegas, those days are over, federal bureaucrats are filling the vacuum. "Members of Congress are giving the Social Security Administration just two days to turn over all records about a $700,000 management conference at the Arizona Biltmore Resort and Spa." ABC did an investigation on this, and we've got some audio on it.
Claiming they need "to learn how to reduce stress because of a growing number of death threats made against them, nearly 700 executives from the Social Security Administration," 700 executives! It cost $700,000. That's a thousand dollars per attendee. "We received threats against our employees by people who are in the American public," said Social Security Administration Regional Commissioner for San Francisco, Peter Spencer, in defense of the conference. He said, "There is a tremendous amount of stress involved in the job that we do."
What stress? You don't have any competition from anybody. All you've got is a bunch of complaining people, which is never going to change as long as the government runs anything. Look at Congress being outraged. It's proper to be outraged by this. This, folks, is very simple. This is as understandable as the House bank scandal. When this kind of news gets out, ladies and gentlemen, with unemployment news what it is, unemployment continuing to rise, government executives going on retreats for a hundred grand a person for three days, to relieve stress over deaths threats. The American people can't do that right now, the American people are paying for it, but this is nothing. This 700 grand, this is nothing to the pillage that the government as a whole is doing in the trillions on this economy every day. But these little Social Security guys are going to go take the heat for 700 grand. I'm not saying they shouldn't. But don't let it divert from the real issue. There's no money in Social Security. It's bankrupt. We're all gonna get royally screwed.
"Social Security's head of West Coast operations said the conference was essential, that teleconferencing was not an option." Somebody needs to tell 'em it's called GoToMeeting.com. Folks, the interesting thing here about all of this, this is more and more like the Politburo each and every day. The politburo had its hierarchy of leaders from the premier, president on down to these clowns at the Kremlin, they all had their dachas, their houses out there, their girls, their liquor and so forth, people in the country couldn't find food in the stores. Now we've got these people in Washington who are treating the US Treasury as a personal piggy bank to go party. They're better than everybody else, and they're so stressed out 'cause they're getting death threats. Seven-hundred thousand for three days for 700 people. Social Security executives. Okay.
