Glenn Beck: Arguing with Idiots - The Baucus Plan

Audio Available:

October 15, 2009 - 13:36 ET

Arguing with Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government by Glenn Beck

GLENN: Arguing With Idiots. I am so happy to see all of the people that are tweeting after reading, you know, Arguing With Idiots, people are tweeting to me after the first couple of chapters, some of them finished, yada, yada, yada and they are all saying wow, wow. It is a great book to be able to ‑‑ I think that was Barack Obama's comment when he won the Nobel Prize, too, wasn't it? Wow. The idea behind this book is, it is a way for you to be able to argue with your idiot friends so when they say...

PAT: Finally we've got real health reform, in the Baucus plan. Soon everyone will have health insurance.

GLENN: Actually, no. The Baucus plan will only insure about 1/3 of those without insurance now. But luckily, though, it makes pretty much everybody pay more.

PAT: Oh, please. The plan doesn't cost us anything. It's deficit‑neutral.

GLENN: Okay. Deficit‑neutral doesn't mean it doesn't cost anything. I ‑‑ I mean, it just means that they're projecting that the tax hikes and the new fees will cover the new costs. For example, if I make $50,000 a year and I spend every dime of it on a new car, I'm deficit‑neutral. I also don't have a house, clothes or food, but I'm deficit‑neutral.

PAT: Well, I know you won't go without food. But you're lying. The CBO said deficit‑neutral. Deficit neutral!

GLENN: Okay, that's great. And it comes from a bunch of accounting tricks. For example, the period covered in the analysis is 2010 to 2019, but the plan's not going to be fully implemented until 2015. That's ten years of taxes to pay for five years of healthcare.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: You see, that's a little accounting ‑‑

PAT: Yeah, taxes on the rich. That's why you really care. You're just worried that you might have to downgrade your private jet.

GLENN: Well, yes, that is a concern, but that's not because I'll be shouldering the load on these fees. No, no. This one is target directed at the people that President Obama said he would never, ever, ever go after. Wall Street Journal has done an analysis on this from the numbers on the joint commission on taxation of which Max Baucus is a member, by the way. They found that 87% of the burden would fall on Americans making less than $200,000 and more than half on those earning under $100,000. I ‑‑

PAT: Okay. So we all have to pay a little bit more.

GLENN: Wait.

PAT: You still can't deny it's deficit‑neutral! Deficit‑neutral!

GLENN: Now you just wait. Because the plan rises at the rate of 8% per year, more than double the growth rate of the 1990s. All of this assumes huge cuts in Medicare reimbursement rates. To avoid winning this argument by boring you to death, I'll summarize. Your doctor makes half as much as they did in 2025. So do you think they're sticking around? Do you really think that congress won't step in later to change this policy and rack up the bill even higher? Because if they don't, you won't have any doctors left by 2025.

PAT: You know how we can cut costs in healthcare?

GLENN: See, here they go.

PAT: We could just stop treating conservative hate mongers like you.

GLENN: See, then you have to go to the insults.

PAT: Once we wipe out that half of the country, we'll cut the cost in half.

GLENN: Yeah.

PAT: And then when I walk into a 7‑11, maybe, just maybe the entire Hostess rack won't be completely empty! Maybe.

VOICE: Arguing With Idiots, available at bookstores everywhere or order now at GlennBeck.com/bookczar.