This is a rush transcript from “Hannity,” August 3, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: The mass exodus out of Washington for the August recess is under way. But as Democrats arrive back home there are angry constituents waiting to greet them.
Now Americans across the country are voicing their opposition to government-run health care. And that is our headline tonight, “Health Care Uprising.”
Now last week it was Senator Claire McCaskill’s staff who got an earful at a town hall in Missouri. And one of the most vocal critics at that event was a young soldier who had this message for the senator.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We both at one time took an oath to defend the Constitution. Her oath took her to Washington, my oath took me to overseas with a rifle.
(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
Claire McCaskill, I’m not so much looking for an explanation from her, as I’m looking for an apology –
(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: All right. Well, yesterday the city of brotherly love didn’t exactly live up to its namesake at a town hall event featuring Senator Arlen Specter and Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
Now take a look at this one.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I look at this health care plan, I see nothing that is about health or about care. What I see — what I see is a bureaucratic nightmare, Senator. Medicaid is broke. Medicare is broke. Social Security is broke and you want us to believe that a government that can’t even run a “cash for clunkers” program is going to run 1/7 of our U.S. economy? No, sir! No!
(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: Wow, that sounded more like a Philadelphia Eagles game or a Flyers game than a town hall.
And joining me now to discuss this and more is FOX News contributor, the author of the book “Catastrophe,” New York Times bestseller, “How Obama, Congress, and the Special Interests are Transforming a Slump into a Crash, Freedom into Socialism and a Disaster into a Catastrophe, and How You Can Fight Back.”
Dick Morris is here. That’s a pretty good way to fight back.
• Video: Watch Sean’s interview
DICK MORRIS, “CATASTROPHE” AUTHOR: It sure is. We got to sign that lady up. They wanted August.
The Blue Dogs bought us August. They did. And now we have got to let them have it because they are planning to pass this bill with 50 votes. They’re planning not to ask any Republican votes. They’re going to just do it with hard core Democrats.
HANNITY: Wait a minute. We got to bring people up to speed on what you’re saying here. Because the president said this on a phone call, a conference call with bloggers, Chuck Schumer confirmed this, that they use the reconciliation process which would bypass the need, you know, for the 60 votes, for a filibuster proof.
MORRIS: Let me explain reconciliation. Back in the days of the attempts to balance the budget during the first Bush administration, in the Graham-Rudman period, they decided that it was too complicated to have filibusters over budget bills so they said when you pass the federal budget, the most fundamental budget document with top line numbers, you can’t filibuster it, 51 votes is enough to pass it.
HANNITY: Right.
MORRIS: Then the Congress, both parties, tried to put all kinds of bills through with 51 votes and Byrd, the senator was still there from West Virginia said wait a minute, that’s a violation of Congress and the rules. This is only applicable for budget bills.
But the problem is that Biden will be the one that determines what’s a budget bill and what’s not.
HANNITY: True.
MORRIS: The chair is going to rule and he can be sustained with 51 votes.
HANNITY: Look, I’m — it’s Tim Bishop. You’ve got this Congressman Carnahan in Missouri. You see, Kathleen Sebelius, this is the second time she’s been shouted down. You got Arlen Specter. Now I’m hearing Democrats are afraid to show up at these town halls.
MORRIS: Look, this has got to be a time of unbelievable pressure. On my Web site, DickMorris.com I outline four steps you need to fight back. One is arm yourself with the facts and chapter four in “Catastrophe” is written for you.
Number two is we have — we’re going to be putting up an advertisement, American League of Voters, that asks people very flatly how can you cover 50 million new people without any extra doctors?
HANNITY: Right.
MORRIS: You can’t. This is the end of Medicare as we know it.
HANNITY: But.
MORRIS: Go to my Web site and learn how to promote that ad. Then write your senator, write your congressman, call them, and write your friends to do it. And my Web site explains how to do all this and who the targets are.
HANNITY: Yes.
MORRIS: But there are 15 moderate Democratic senators we can get over this bill and we’ve got them if we’re going to have a health care system.
HANNITY: I call them the lap dog Democrats because they seem to roll over whenever, you know, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid or the president brings them into the White House. Now I have a memorandum here and I can — this is list of talking points.
Now ladies and gentlemen, I should not have gotten a hold of this. This is two Democratic members of Congress, from the House Democratic leadership, accompanied with their simplistic platitudes, bumper stickers and talking points.
Now one of the main strategies they’re developing here is they’re basically saying go demonize insurance companies. Go tell people, for example, co-pays. No more co-pays. No more out-of expenses, no more coops. Yearly caps on what you pay.
They’re coming up with — even though the bill does not say these things nor will any of this happen, they are engaged in a propaganda campaign. My question, can these simplistic talking points work?
MORRIS: Well, they can if they don’t know the facts. The facts are that yes, they’ll do all that. You just won’t get to see a doctor. You won’t get any care. You don’t have a co-pay, you won’t have a deductible.
In fact, you won’t have a doctor or you won’t have a nurse and you won’t have any medicines.
HANNITY: Yes.
MORRIS: Look, there’s a fundamental fact here. A quarter of all Medicare money is spent in the last year of the patient’s life.
HANNITY: Right.
MORRIS: They can’t say we want those people to die but that’s what they mean. They are going to slice Medicare. My father is 99 years old. He spent a week in the hospital, has had two procedures for a bleeding ulcer. Survived. Visited him in five minutes ago. He’s in great shape.
He’d be dead today if Obama’s plan passed because they would never approve that treatment for a 99-year-old and I couldn’t pay for it, I wouldn’t be allowed to.
HANNITY: This is from the telegraph from the UK. And this is another article, and we’ll talk a little bit more about these in details. The program unfolds patients are forced to live in agony. They have a government rationing body, the National Health Service refusing to pay for cortisone shots for people that have chronic back pain.
This is on top of denying women with advanced breast cancer the drugs they need.
MORRIS: And in the meetings that they have with the insurance companies at the White House, targeting back pain spending.
HANNITY: Yes.
MORRIS: Was a big part of it. So what this means really is it means that the federal health board is going to make the decisions on who gets care. Because forget public option, forget private option, forget all of the taxation, there’s one fundamental question.
How do you cover 50 million new people with any new doctors?
HANNITY: I dispute the 50 million number for a lot of reasons that you and I have discussed in the past. First of all, we don’t have 50 million people. Many of them are short term. A lot of them included illegal immigrants. You chronicled a lot of this in your book.
MORRIS: But they’re going to cover illegal immigrants.
HANNITY: So that would add to the figure unnecessarily.
MORRIS: Yes, exactly.
HANNITY: All right. So the question now is for the Republican Party. You know, they’ve got to offer their alternatives. I would suggest that they have, you know, tax incentives for people that need help.
MORRIS: Right. Sure.
HANNITY: I think they should look at medical savings accounts.
MORRIS: Right.
HANNITY: How do they sell this?
MORRIS: Well, the key thing for the Republican Party to project is that this is the end of Medicare because if the senior citizens are united in their opposition to this, and they really go crazy on this issue.
HANNITY: Yes.
MORRIS: This is dead.
HANNITY: So it’s really the senior citizens.
MORRIS: It’s the senior citizens. And they’re the ones that are going to suffer. Rationing isn’t going to affect you. It isn’t even going to affect me. It’s going to kill our parents. Literally.
HANNITY: Yes. Yes. Scary. Scary. All right, Dick, good to see you. We’ve got a lot more to come tonight.
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