This is a rush transcript from “Hannity,” October 29, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. NANCY PELOSI, D-CALIF., SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: We have listened to the American people. We are putting forth a bill that reflects our best values and addresses our greatest challenges, and we are putting it online for all Americans to see.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: All right, that was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi earlier today, unveiling the Democrats’ 1,900-page health care bill, which does, in fact, include the government option.
Now oddly, after all the speaker’s talk about how great this bill is for the public, she and her office, they weren’t too eager to let the public in on the action. Now, let’s take a look at what happened to one person who tried to get access to the speaker’s press conference.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is this closed to the public?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You have to be on our RSVP list. Are you within our organization or did you RSVP? Are you a member of the press — in the press?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And you didn’t RSVP? No you can’t get in.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I didn’t — where was the RSVP?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It went out to the people we invited.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why — why was it only a select few?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Because that’s how we’re handling this event.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That’s too bad.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You could watch it on C-SPAN.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: Watch it on C-SPAN?
Now, I have a feeling that that is just an indicator of the sort of treatment we, the people, will be getting if the government, in fact, takes over our health care system.
I mean, just take a look at the provisions in this bill. Employers will be taxed eight percent of wages if they fail to meet the new government bureaucratic requirements.
Any individual who refuses to purchase health insurance will be subject to an additional 2.5 percent income tax.
Beyond that, the bill charges the Department of Health and Human Services with creating an enormous government-run health plan that will drive many private insurers into bankruptcy. And it imposes a 2.5 percent tax on all medical services.
And that just scratches the surface. But it’s clear that this health care bill is really just a tax bill and an effort to expand the power of government in your life.
Joining me with reaction, columnist S.E. Cupp and Fox News anchor/analyst Kimberly Guilfoyle.
S.E. CUPP, COLUMNIST: I’m relaxing on this. What a great armrest.
HANNITY: Did you guys find…
KIMBERLY GUILFOYLE, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: It’s like a little, yes.
HANNITY: I want to get a good shot of this. I was watching Neil Cavuto earlier today. He had this…
GUILFOYLE: Speed reader.
HANNITY: … he had the speed-reader guy. And the guy was going like this.
GUILFOYLE: And then he got all the paper cuts from flipping through all this.
HANNITY: Can you pass this over? How does…
CUPP: It’s really heavy.
GUILFOYLE: There you go.
HANNITY: I could work out with this.
GUILFOYLE: You could.
HANNITY: Folks, just imagine this.
CUPP: Sean, it’s longer…
HANNITY: I can’t imagine this. How does anybody read this thing?
CUPP: It’s longer than “War and Peace.” It’s longer than “Atlas Shrugged.” And it’s longer than “Les Mis.” I just want to say…
GUILFOYLE: By the way, it doesn’t matter if the pages are out of order or not, because it just doesn’t make any sense. Who’s going to pay for it?
HANNITY: Yes.
GUILFOYLE: The public doesn’t support it. It’s socializing medicine, and it’s more government encroachment. It’s a bad idea.
HANNITY: It’s a bad idea. But did I have the average person at home, just a little spare reading? Don’t watch the Super Bowl. I mean, it is nuts. Just forget it.
CUPP: There you go.
HANNITY: Who could ever read this garbage?
GUILFOYLE: We’re going to make you clean that up afterwards.
HANNITY: Nineteen hundred pages. That — if you can’t put this down in 30 pages or less, it proves that this is a complicated…
CUPP: Right.
HANNITY: … you know, bunch of bureaucratic garbage.
CUPP: Nonsense.
HANNITY: Nonsense.
CUPP: If it were actually a good bill, I could overlook the length. But it’s abominable. And frankly, Pelosi is a liar.
HANNITY: Does anybody have a lighter?
CUPP: Let’s light it on fire.
GUILFOYLE: A bonfire. Right.
• Great American Blog: Do you think lawmakers will read the entire bill?
CUPP: You know, the idea was to get this to be budget-neutral. It’s not. I refuse to buy their $800 billion something figure. It’s over $1 trillion. They took out a quarter — a quarter of a billion dollar package.
HANNITY: Well, what they tried to do is they tried to hide a quarter of a billion dollars.
CUPP: That’s a lot of money.
HANNITY: Folks, they did that because they don’t want you to know the real cost of this.
Medicare, when it was originally projected, ended up costing nine times what they projected. Why would we expect any different here?
GUILFOYLE: Well, don’t expect any different. Because this is about putting forward a political legacy and trying to put forward these liberal ideologies and socialism, basically, on the backs of American people. It will bankrupt this country. This is not well-thought-out. It’s ill- conceived and it’s, quite frankly, arrogant. This they know this will not work.
And let me tell you something. As offended as you are by these 1,900 pages…
HANNITY: Yes.
GUILFOYLE: … there’s more coming. Because stand by for the 800-page amendment. Do you understand that? This is just sort of this smoke and mirrors.
CUPP: It’s not smoke and mirrors. They’re lying.
HANNITY: This is a House bill, when they try to absorb this, then they have the Senate bill, then they go to conference. But the end result is going to be what? Because here we have 56 House Democrats saying they’re not going to support it. We’ve Lieberman. We’ve got Landrieu. We’ve got Blanch Lincoln. We’ve got Evan Bayh, Ben Nelson. They’re all saying in the Senate they’re not going to support it. So does it pass?
CUPP: Here’s the good news. I don’t think it’s going to pass. Even better news is the president simply cannot sign this bill. Because you know what? He made a promise that he wouldn’t sign a bill that isn’t budget-neutral and he wouldn’t sign a bill that had abortion funding. And it has abortion funding in it.
HANNITY: All right. I think they’re going to…
GUILFOYLE: They haven’t even finalized this with respect to immigration or abortion. I mean, they have not finalized this, and worked out the details at all.
HANNITY: Why do you think it’s not going to pass? Why?
GUILFOYLE: They’re trying to push it through. Because guess what? The middle doesn’t like it. The public doesn’t support it. The left is going to be offended and outraged with Obama, because they’re not going to get the government option.
HANNITY: Here’s the problem.
GUILFOYLE: And the right’s not going to support it to begin with. So this is a whole mess.
CUPP: They need to go back to the drawing board, open up the door, let a few Republicans in, and get this done right.
HANNITY: Here’s — here’s the problem. Barack Obama has basically staked his presidency on this.
GUILFOYLE: Right.
HANNITY: So here’s…
GUILFOYLE: And political capital and good will.
HANNITY: So here’s — here’s what we’ve got to overcome. Congressmen and senators are going to be brought into the majestic Oval Office, that intimidating place.
GUILFOYLE: Right.
HANNITY: They’re going to be sat down. Their arms are going to be twisted.
CUPP: Strong-armed. Right.
HANNITY: And they’re going to be offered all sorts of taxpayer perks, money, projects, pork barrel to get them to go along for the vote.
GUILFOYLE: Yes, and you have to understand. They tried to push this forward right away so they could show that they accomplished something, et cetera, because they were counting on the capital, the popularity of Barack Obama, to get this through.
Well, it’s not working. That’s the problem. But they cannot afford to concede defeat, because it is tied into his political legacy. They didn’t learn from the Clintons, who tried to do this before. This is nothing but a mess. It’s a bad idea, just like when Germany tried to invade Russia in World War II. Costly and ultimately will fail.
HANNITY: Hang on a second. But you’re saying on the one hand you’re saying it’s not going to pass, on the other hand you’re saying they’ve invested all their political capital. So why would they not push this to the ends of the earth?
GUILFOYLE: I’m sorry. In the winner column and the loser column…
HANNITY: Yes.
GUILFOYLE: … care to make a wager about how this is going to turn out?
HANNITY: Yes, I think they’re going to pass some bill. I think some bill, they’re going to ram it down our throat, and then I think they’re going to pay the biggest political price in 2010.
CUPP: If Obama had any — any kind of political courage, he would stand by his promises, not to sign a bill that wasn’t budget-neutral and that wasn’t funding abortions. And this bill fails on both counts.
HANNITY: See, I think he has all the courage in the world. The one thing that Barack Obama’s taught us, he’s consistent. Consistently radical. He has shown no signs that he’s a pragmatist. I haven’t seen it.
GUILFOYLE: I totally agree with that. And I’m disappointed, because I really did believe — maybe I was just being foolishly optimistic.
HANNITY: All right. I’ve got…
GUILFOYLE: I thought he would be a little bit more pragmatic and learn a few things once he was actually in the Oval Office about how things run.
HANNITY: A lot of people thought that.
GUILFOYLE: Put the interests of the country first.
CUPP: Popular. He wants to be popular, so he’s going to have to listen.
HANNITY: All right. I’ve got to ask you both about Alan Grayson. Alan Grayson, we’re enemies of America, Fox News. And you viewers out there, enemies of America.
GUILFOYLE: And enemies of peace.
HANNITY: You know, Republicans want people to get sick and die. And now he calls this woman, “this K-Street lobbyist whore.” Where are the women’s groups? Where are the women’s groups?
GUILFOYLE: Where are the feminists?
CUPP: Exactly.
HANNITY: Where’s Nancy Pelosi? Where’s Hillary Clinton? Where’s Barbara Boxer?
GUILFOYLE: Silent. You could hear a pin drop.
CUPP: What’s worse is that he initially defended this. He eventually apologized. But I can’t believe anyone would have initially defend this, and he did.
HANNITY: Yes, well, he said we’ve got to look at the secondary dictionary definition of “whore.”
CUPP: Yes. Well, just like rape isn’t rape. You know, there’s rape and rape rape. I guess there’s whore and whore whore.
GUILFOYLE: … It’s unconscionable, and it should not be tolerated. And I think women’s groups should have a voice in this area.
HANNITY: If Sean Hannity said it, would I be working today?
GUILFOYLE: Of course not.
HANNITY: My career would be over.
GUILFOYLE: No.
HANNITY: You wouldn’t defend me?
GUILFOYLE: Well, Sean, I’d say that I think you had an error in judgment.
HANNITY: You’d defend me?
CUPP: Of course, I would.
GUILFOYLE: Oh, sure, you can count on her.
HANNITY: All right, guys, thank you both.
There it is, take a look right there. Health care.
GUILFOYLE: Can you sign a copy of that?
HANNITY: There you go, garbage. We will be having a bonfire right after the program.
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