Billions Of Dollars Was Taken By States To Use On Obamacare, But That’s Not What They Spent It On

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – This is the way the game works.  If you think it’s just a game about ideology and politics, again, I say you’re wrong.  The game is all about the money, boatloads of federal money.  Follow the boatloads of federal money and you will always wind up where the pot of gold is at the end of the lib rainbow, always.  They’re all about the boatloads of federal money.  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  We have this story from FoxNews.com last night, “Another Obamacare Cost: Feds gave $4.4B to states for exchange websites.”  $4.4 billion, let me translate that.  That is $4,400 millions of dollars.  Where did it come from?  Did the State say: Wait a minute, we’re trying to protect our children.  Did you borrow this money, Mr. Federal Overlord?  Ms. Sebelius, did you borrow this money?  Did you put this on the old Obama charge card or did you guys actually go and mine some gold and mint some Krugerrands to pay for it?  You know the answer is the former.  They borrowed the money.  They had Bernyankme print it, meaning they spent it and the net result is the same.  Your and my children get to pay it back.  I told my daughters last night: Congratulations!  We failed to stop Obamacare, you get to live under it, and the added benefit is you won’t even be able to use it until you’re about 40 years old, but you get to pay for everyone using it today.  My daughter Maddie looked at me and said, “Why?  How’s that fair?”  I said, “Bingo, child, it’s not fair.”  Try explaining that to someone.

[reading]

The Obama administration gave states roughly $4.4 billion [Mike: Or 4,400 millions of dollars – that’s 4,400 piles of $1 million. Imagine that.] in taxpayer dollars to set up their own ObamaCare websites, according to a new analysis, in the latest revelation about the faucet of federal spending switched on by the 2010 passage of the health care law.

[end reading]

Mike:  There’s one more thing with this. Who appropriated that money?  Who appropriated that money?  All of you out there waving your “Don’t Tread On Me” flags and pledging your allegiance to Tea Party groups and thinking the GOP is on your side [mocking] “They’re our kids.  We just gotta give them the right amount of chili and hot dogs to get out there and get the job done for us,” who appropriated that money?  Who’s been doing the appropriating since 2010?  Who’s been in control of Congress?  Is it that guy Boehner?  No, it couldn’t be.

[reading]

Some of the states even took federal money, then decided to let the federal site handle enrollment.

[end reading]

Mike:  In other words they said, [mocking] “Give me the money.” – “Are you gonna build a website?” – “We’re, ah, nah.  We thought about it, but why go through the hassle?  We just took the money and built some sidewalks over there by a cemetery, employed a couple people to move some dirt from that side of the street to this side of the street.  Hey, but look, those people were employed.  Our unemployment picture is looking really good thanks to the Affordable Care Act.”

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[reading]

While the steep cost of HealthCare.gov — which is the federally run site — has come under fire, the money granted to the states has so far generated little attention. And while the 14 state-run sites have operated more smoothly than the problem-plagued federal site and have accounted for the lion’s share of signups, the federal money spent on tech support, advertising and other startup costs have hardly yielded the level of customer enthusiasm and participation the administration projected.

[end reading]

Mike:  Or did they project?  See yesterday’s program.  It is my theory that they never did project that there was going to be Heaven on Earth once the Affordable Care Act passed and went into effect.  Now we have the first inklings here to show that if we were going to rely on our state governments to bail us out of this, if we were going to rely on state legislators to rise to the occasion, they’ve already accepted the bribe.  They’ve already taken the payoff and they’re going to be looking for more.  It’s sad, folks, sad.

[reading]

Just 106,000 Americans have enrolled since the Oct. 1 rollout . . .

The study on state-site spending by the conservative-leaning Americans for Tax Reform group [Mike: I do not know how accurate this is. I did not read the entire report. I’m going to preface what I’m about to read to you by having said that.] shows the money was distributed through the Centers  for Medicare and Medicaid Services grants [Mike: Those are those block grants I was talking about a moment ago.] and argues “federal taxpayer funds were shoveled to states for a variety of vague purposes.” [Mike: This is great work if you can find it, isn’t it, folks?]

Among the stated purposes were to: “provide assistance to hire staff and consultants” and “secure staff consultants and expert resources and actively engage stakeholders.”

[end reading]

Mike:  This is the way the game works.  If you think it’s just a game about ideology and politics, again, I say you’re wrong.  The game is all about the money, boatloads of federal money.  Follow the boatloads of federal money and you will always wind up where the pot of gold is at the end of the lib rainbow, always.  They’re all about the boatloads of federal money.  If you’re wondering where the “boatloads of federal money” thing comes from:

[start audio clip]

Justice Elena Kagan: The federal government is saying: We’re giving you a boatload of money. There are no, is no matching funds requirement. There are no extraneous conditions attached to it. It’s just a boatload of federal money for you to take and spend on poor people’s healthcare. It doesn’t sound coercive to me, I have to tell you.

[end audio clip]

Mike:  It’s just a “boatload of federal money,” said Justice Kagan.  Of course, no one’s ever explained where the USS Federal Money loaded up on the boatload full of money that it shipped over to the states, do they?  When they do try and explain it, they ultimately can’t other than say: Uh, uh, over there, printing press.  It’s sad, folks, sad.

Again, we see Robert Higgs’ Crisis and Leviathan.  The government creates a crisis, it swoops in to deal with it, creates all manner and myriad of agencies and bureaucracies and bureaucrats, and then gets the states in on the entire grift, the entire theft, the entire redistribution of wealth.  Everyone is fat and happy, provided you’re not the person doing all the contributing, provided you’re not the person on the hook to pay it all back.  It is oh so predictable, yet oh so tragically sad, and it ought to be criminal.  This is nothing short of collusion here.  Yet again, and I’m going to keep hammering this, they send people like Martha Stewart to jail.

If there’s anyone left out there that’s a sentient being and can understand what is going on here, now you see just how difficult it’s going to be to remove the $3.9 trillion-headed hydra’s tentacles from inside the Affordable Care Act.  You see what they’re doing.  Get people drunk on the dough.  You stick it out there, send it out there, give them boatloads of free money and all of a sudden they start to rely on it.  Then they say, [mocking] “You can’t take it back.  What do you mean a sequester on healthcare?  We were used to getting this money.  What are we supposed to do?”

[reading]

A FoxNews.com analysis of the report shows 24 states received money, then decided to instead send residents to the federal HealthCare.gov site.

[end reading]

Mike:  I have to ask the question: Is there anyone that works for the Obama administration — they execute the laws.  That’s what the executive branch is actually supposed to be doing.  If they larded all these boatloads of federal money out there to the states to build these websites and the states instead took the money, put it in the general fund, and spent it on whatever it was they spent it on, isn’t that fraud in and of itself?  Isn’t that deceitful?  Didn’t you accept the money on the pretense that you were going to build something, and that you were going to manage it, and that you were going to operate it, and thus you needed the subsidy?  I think so.  Listen to this.  See if the states that received the federal money, let’s see if there’s anything that ties them together, shall we?

[reading]

Among the states receiving the biggest grants were California ($910 million) [Mike: I never would have guessed, the most broke of all broke states got the big money.] followed by New York ($401 million) and Kentucky ($253 million).

The spending is authorized in section 1311 of the 906-page Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The section states in part that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius “shall determine the total amount that [she] will make available to each state . . . for activities (including planning activities) related to establishing an American Health Benefit.”

The sweeping language helped authorize a wave of implementation spending.

[end reading]

Mike:  In other words, Congress went wink, wink, nod, nod, [mocking] “We’re giving this to you and we’re going to tell everyone it’s for you to build an Affordable Care Act website, but you can pretty much spend it on anything you want.  As a matter of fact, you can have a big party in Las Vegas and invite a bunch of your statewide employees to go there and yuck it up and say that was spending on health, their health.”

[reading]

Sebelius said last month in Capitol Hill testimony that the federal website has so far cost $174 million, including $56 million in technological support with more still owed to contractors.

Oregon received $245 million in state grant money, but its problematic site has yet to enroll customers. [Mike: Are you noticing a trend here, folks?]

State officials there riled fiscal conservatives with a trippy, 30-second ad promoting the Oregon site prior to its rocky launch last month. The ad was part of a multi-million-dollar advertising campaign.

Florida, Georgia, Montana, North Dakota and Texas were among a handful of states receiving the least amount of grant money — $1 million. Alaska did not apply.

[end reading]

Mike:  There you have it.  Yet again, more proof and more evidence of how all this works and how it is all tied to what Taylor of Caroline called the paper money or the paper system. There was probably actually no money changing hands.  In other words, no one drove a Brinks armored car from the Treasury Department with $245 million to Oregon.  No one hopped aboard a Loomis or Wells Fargo armored car that had $910 million and headed from Washington, DC to California to go deliver the dough.  These are all just digital transfers.  They don’t even have to go through the trouble of printing it anymore.  They just go [mocking] “We added a zero to the end of the balance you’ve got in one of your banks.  Go ahead and spend it.”

It is truly amazing and, at the same time, how does this happen?  Is it amazing or is it sad?  Is it fascinating or is it, what’s the word when you’re watching a crime take place?  It’s almost like we’re voyeurs.  [mocking] “I saw the crime happening, but there was nothing I could do about it.”  We have hit-and-run laws all across the amber waves of fuel.  If you see someone get hit by another automobile, it is usually requisite upon you to stop and render assistance, or to stop and call for assistance if you’re unable to render it.  Yet here we are bearing witness to major damage being done to future taxpayers, those that aren’t even on taxpayer rolls today.  We are watching this being done.  Again, this is why we’re in a constitutional crisis.  What is our recourse?  Where’s the check, Mr. Madison?  Where’s the balance?  If there’s a check or a balance out there on this, I don’t see it.  Do you?

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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