The Blaze: Dr. Benjamin Carson speaks during the National Prayer Breakfast at the Washington Hilton February 7, 2013 in Washington, DC. U.S. President Barack Obama reportedly used the occasion to call for unity and common ground Washington politics. Credit: Getty Images
With President Barack Obama sitting just feet away, Dr. Benjamin Carson stood up for conservative principles in his speech at Thursday’s National Prayer Breakfast, discussing the national debt, political correctness and even healthcare. Readers loved his speech so much that TheBlaze’s story on it went viral.
On Friday, Carson appeared on Fox News’ “Hannity” to explain why he felt compelled to speak out against the big government policies endorsed by Obama, in front of Obama.
Carson, a renown neurosurgeon, said the response to his speech has been “overwhelmingly” positive. However, he argued he didn’t make a conservative argument, but rather a “logical” and “common-sense” one.
“I don’t know where we left our brains,” he told host Sean Hannity.
Carson went on to talk about his life story, saying he grew up in a single parent home in a poverty-stricken area. He said his mother “refused to be a victim” and “never felt sorry for herself,” despite only having a third grade education.
Regarding his comments on political correctness, the neurosurgeon emphasized the importance of “freedom of speech and freedom of expression” in the United States.
“And yet, we have imposed upon people restrictions on what they say, on what they can think. The media, I think is the largest proponent of this,” he explained.
He lambasted the media’s outrage at Brent Musburger’s flattering comments about Alabama beauty queen Katherine Webb during the BCS National Championship.
In the second portion of his interview with Hannity, Carson argued he didn’t craft his message based on who was going to be in attendance. In other words, wasn’t trying to stick it to Obama in his speech.
“It really didn’t matter who I was sitting in front of, because I always pray before I give a speech and I ask God to give me the right things to say. And I think that it’s very rare these days for people to speak the truth,” he said. “Meanwhile, the fabric of our nation is being destroyed.
One of the “real dangers” facing America, according to Carson, is the fact that people don’t know “anything” about things like history or technology. “They don’t think for themselves,” he added.
Seizing upon what many of Carson’s supporters are probably wondering, Hannity asked him if he would ever consider running for president. The doctor did not it rule out, but said God would have to “grab him by the collar and make him do it.”
Watch the entire interview below or at Mediaite
Video: Prayer Breakfast: "We've Reached A Point Where People Are Actually Afraid To Say What They
If nothing else, the look on Obama's face as he SUFFERS through the brilliance of Dr. Ben Carson is priceless! Dr. Carson takes shot after shot at Obama while Obama is forced to sit and listen. Dr. Ben Carson is the REAL deal, he (unlike Obama) was raised by a single mother in the ghetto's of Detroit. Obama, on the other hand, lived a pretty comfortable lifestyle. Dr. Ben Carson doesn't use his color of skin to his advantage (which is not the Obama way) and he doesn't think we should "punish" those who have earned their successes by taking from them and giving to others who have not. After watching this video in it's entirety, I am quite sure President and Mrs. Obama would have preferred to be sitting in a dental chair having a ROOT CANAL!
Rush Limbaugh Show:
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: As for Obama, he went to the National Prayer Breakfast today. I was reading a blog, the White House Dossier, a guy who used to be part of the White House press corps. Keith Koffler is his name. I didn't see Obama at the prayer breakfast today, but he said Obama was barely awake. You know, Obama doesn't show until ten o'clock in the morning. He's a nighthawk. He's a night owl. Obama stays up late and he doesn't get up early. So this guy's describing Obama at the prayer breakfast as having heavy eyelids and chewing Nicorette to deal with his nicotine addiction. He was openly chewing gum and wiping his eyes as though trying to remove the morning crustiness.
You ever have that happen to you, the morning crustiness in your eye and have to wipe that out?
That's what he described Obama as doing. Koffler said Obama's remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast were perfunctory and listless, as though he really didn't want to be there but has to do this kind of thing. So we have some sound bites from this. Let's go to 'em right now. This is Obama in Washington at the National Prayer Breakfast. Now, it didn't start 'til something like ten or 10:30 but apparently he had to get up early. He had to be somewhere at 7:30, I guess, for the actual breakfast itself. In the White House Dossier piece, Keith Koffler makes the point that -- well, I inferred from his piece that -- Obama's not out of bed by then.
So he was not entirely cogent. He just wasn't there. Let's give a listen. We have two sound bites of Obama.
OBAMA: It is always just a wonderful event.
RUSH: (snoring)
OBAMA: But I do worry sometimes that as soon as we leave the prayer breakfast, everything we've been talkin' about --
RUSH: (snoring)
OBAMA: -- the whole time of the prayer breakfast --
RUSH: (snoring)
OBAMA: -- seems to be forgotten on the same day of the prayer breakfast.
AUDIENCE: (smattering of laughter)
OBAMA: I mean --
RUSH: (snoring)
OBAMA: -- you'd like to think that that the shelf life wasn't so short! I go back to the Oval Office (snickers), and I start watching the cable news networks, and it's like we didn't pray.
RUSH: This is unreal.
I love this. So prayer doesn't work, and this proves it.
Obama goes to the prayer breakfast, and everybody else goes to the prayer breakfast. It's a wonderful event. And it's all about him, you see. The National Prayer Breakfast... (interruption) Oh, don't believe that when he says he doesn't watch cable news. He watches it, and he has people assigned to watch it, just like I do. (Obama interpretation) "It's a wonderful event, the National Prayer Breakfast. It's always about me every year, and I enjoy coming for that reason, but I do worry sometimes that as soon as we leave the prayer breakfast, everything we've been talking about the whole prayer breakfast seems to be forgotten, on the same day of the prayer breakfast.
"I mean, you'd like to think that the shelf life of the prayer wasn't short. I go back to the Oval Office, and I start watching cable news, and it's like we didn't pray at all." So God's not listening. (interruption) Well, I think everybody else is praying to Obama, but gods don't pray. They sit there and listen to the prayers. But, anyway, can you imagine any other president ripping prayer, even in a joke way? (Obama impression) "Well, we all come up here and -- and we pray, and (chuckling) it doesn't even work! It doesn't even last the whole day. I go back to White House, turn on TV, and I'm being criticized. The National Prayer Breakfast is all about Obama. Here's the second sound bite...
OBAMA: That's what I thought of as I took the oath of office a few weeks ago and touched those Bibles: The comfort that Scripture gave Lincoln and King. Most of all I thought about their humility. Let us retain that humility not just during this hour, but for every hour, and let me suggest that those of us with the most power and influence need to be the most humble.
RUSH: Right. Like right before you decide to pick somebody off the Kill List and launch the drone. Right! Now, the next speaker is the Johns Hopkins Hospital Pediatric Neurosurgery director, Dr. Benjamin Carson, and this guy rips Obamaism. He ripped into Obamaism at the prayer breakfast with Obama sitting there.
CARSON: Well, some people say, they say, "Well, that's not fair because it doesn't hurt the guy who made $10 billion as much as the guy who made ten." Where does it say you have to hurt the guy? He just put a billion dollars in the pot!
AUDIENCE: (applause)
CARSON: You know, we don't need to hurt him. It's that kind of thinking...
AUDIENCE: (applause)
CARSON: It's that kind of thinking that has resulted in 602 banks in the Cayman Islands. That money needs to be back here, building our infrastructure and creating jobs.
RUSH: Whoa! Right on. Did you hear that? This guy is talking to Obama. Obama's sitting there, and Dr. Carson is saying, "People say... 'Well, that's not fair because it doesn't hurt the guy who made $10 billion as much as the guy who made ten.' Where does it say you have to hurt the guy? He just put a billion dollars in the pot!" So this neurosurgeon is speaking out in favor of the 1%, the 5%, the 10% who are actually paying the freight in this country via income taxes. They're the ones actually paying the freight. What do we gotta hurt 'em for? I mean, they're already putting money in the pot. Why do we gotta hurt 'em?
He's exactly right. And then he says: You want to know why we got 602 banks in the Caymans with American money? Because they're running away. They don't want to be hurt.
I love this guy. He wasn't finished, either.
CARSON: Here's my solution: When a person is born, give him a birth certificate, an electronic medical record, and a health savings account to which money can be contributed -- pretax -- from the time you're born 'til the time you die. When you die, you can pass it on to your family members, so that when you're 85 years old and you got six diseases, you're not trying to spend up everything. You're happy to pass it on and there's nobody talking about death panels.
AUDIENCE: (laughter and applause)
CARSON: Number one. And also, for the people who were indigent who don't have any money we can make contributions to their HSA each month because we already have this huge pot of money. Instead of sending it to some bureaucracy, let's put it in their HSAs. Now they have some control over their own health care.
RUSH: That is Dr. Benjamin Carson, who is the Johns Hopkins Hospital Pediatric Neurosurgery director, and he has given his recipe there for a health care system the exact opposite of Obamacare. This is at the National Prayer Breakfast today. So you see, these people are out there, and they're willing to speak up. They need to be encouraged.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Okay, my friends, I want to spend some time here, just a few minutes, on Dr. Benjamin Carson. You don't hear people speak this way. The Republicans don't speak this way to Obama. They don't speak this way about Obama's policies. Here you have the guy who's head of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital at the National Prayer Breakfast. He says, "People say... 'Well, that's not fair because it doesn't hurt the guy who made $10 billion as much as the guy who made ten.' Where does it say you have to hurt the guy? He just put a billion dollars in the pot!" The guy's paying the freight. What's he done?
His solution to health care: "When a person is born, give him a birth certificate, an electronic medical record, and a health savings account to which money can be contributed -- pretax -- from the time you're born 'til the time you die." We're already spending this money and more anyway. He's simply talking about reallocating resources. Put it in the hands of the people who are going to spend it. Put them in charge of their own health care. They build it up while they're young, while they're children. A nest egg gets built in their health savings accounts. It's pretax. It's put in this account from the time you're born 'til the time you die.
It's the equivalent of what would be spent on you in other forms -- and when you die, whatever you haven't used, you can pass on to your family members. Do with it what you want. You can pass it on. You can make it part of your estate. But you are in charge of your health care. You are in charge of how much you spend on it and how much you get and where you go. This reintroduces competition. This reintroduces market forces. This is what brings costs down. So in 43 seconds, the director of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins gave the answer to Obamacare.
In 43 seconds.
It's not 2700 pages, and it doesn't enlarge the government.
It doesn't hire 16,000 IRS agents, and it covers everybody -- and there would probably be money left over after all of this.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I'm gonna take advantage of the occasion of these comments by Dr. Benjamin Carson to explain what a health savings account is to people who may not know. Because, you know, we have constant audience expansion and audience growth here. Since the election -- well, even prior to that, but -- there are people listening here for the first time ever or they've been listening for a year or two. So, of course, they haven't heard everything that you have if you've been here for the whole 20, 25 years.
But this is really profound what this man said at the National Prayer Breakfast. Now, let's put Obamacare in Column A and just briefly review. It has 2700 pages. The federal government is empowered to eventually make every health care decision for every American. The older Americans get, the less likely the government will authorize spending money to treat them, particularly if they have terminal diseases.
That's because the government will determine that it's not worth the money. If somebody is near the life expectancy, and they have a debilitating disease, the government will decide it's not worth it. This is in Obamacare. The term "death panel" isn't, but that's how it works out. This is all in Obamacare. It's "as the secretary of Health and Human Services shall determine." There is a board. There is a panel of people.
We don't know who it's gonna be, but there is a panel of people who will make decisions on the allocation of health care money which is all gonna come from government. That's eventually, when this is fully implemented. If your parent or grandparent comes down with a very bad disease late in life, the government may decide it makes no sense to spend the money in treating that disease because the expected number of years left in that person's life is very few.
They might think we can spend that money elsewhere on other people or on young people who might be more productive. Now, in a free society, this shouldn't happen. You need to be in charge, just like when you go rent a hotel room. You buy hotel room where you want, where you can afford, where you want to stay. Same thing with food, same thing with a car, same thing with anything else you buy. You buy it based on what you can afford, based on what you want.
Of course the American dream is that you continue to work hard and try to improve your standard of living so that you can afford better and more things for you and your family as you go on through life. That's what's fundamentally changed, and is in the process of fundamentally changing in our country. Imagine if you had to go to the government for a hotel room. Imagine if you had to go to the government for your food or for your telephone service or anything else, be it a need or a desire.
The fact that governments, state and federal, are involved in so much of the health care system is he reason why the price has skyrocketed. There isn't any competition per se. You're not in charge, and the consumer needs to be in charge of what is spent by that consumer for that consumer. That causes and creates competition for that consumer's dollar, and that's how prices are kept affordable. That doesn't exist in health care today.
So the Obamacare plan is 2700 pages with a panel that will determine who gets treated and who doesn't. There are 16,000 new IRS agents to determine whether or not you're complying with the law by either having an insurance policy or paying a fine or a penalty if you don't. Virtually every aspect of your health care, the portion of your life dealing with health care is going to be administered by and monitored by government, with you having nothing to do with it -- and that just scratches the surface.
Remember the woman who appeared...? Well, you may not remember. ABC, about three years ago, did a primetime special with the president the East Room of the White House where the president sought to explain his health care plan. There were American citizens in the audience. A woman stood up (an American citizen, folks) and actually asked the president of the United States -- not her doctor, not a family member, but the president of the United States (summarized) -- "Sir, what about my 100-year-old mother?
"She has a huge will to live, she's got a great spirit, but she needs a pacemaker. Will you factor things like spirit and the will to live in determining whether people like my mother will get a pacemaker?" Why is a citizen asking the president of the United States if her mother can have a medical procedure? Sometimes I think I'm the only one who thought that obscene. Well, the president stood up and answered it. He put a smile on his face and said, "No, we can't take things into account like will to live and spirit.
"We just can't do that. There are just gonna be times," the president said to this woman, "where the best thing we can do is just give your mother a pill and let her try to enjoy her remaining days." The show ended and people discussed it as though nothing offensive had happened. This doesn't it happen in a free country. This doesn't happen in the United States of five years ago! This doesn't happen.
The president of the United States doesn't conduct a health care seminar in the White House with citizens asking if he will permit their family members to live, if he will permit their family members to be treated medically! This was before Obamacare was signed into law. Well, now it's been signed into law and it's in the process of implementing. Now we've been told the IRS that the cheapest -- the cheapest -- mandatory health care plan for a family of four starting in 2016 or 2018, whenever this is fully implemented, will be between $16,000 and $20,000 a year.
The cheapest mandatory plan! If you don't have one, you have to pay a penalty. Whether you have health insurance or not, it's gonna cost you. So that's, briefly, what we have at present. This is what has been passed by Congress and signed into law, and this is what's being implemented. This and many other horror stories. So then we have Dr. Benjamin Carson who, again, spoke today at the National Prayer Breakfast. He is the Johns Hopkins Hospital Pediatric Neurosurgery director. He's got an entirely different idea. Play sound bite nine again. Let's hear it in his words.
This is his alternative to Obamacare.
CARSON: Here's my solution: When a person is born, give him a birth certificate, an electronic medical record, and a health savings account to which money can be contributed -- pretax -- from the time you're born 'til the time you die. When you die, you can pass it on to your family members, so that when you're 85 years old and you got six diseases, you're not trying to spend up everything. You're happy to pass it on and there's nobody talking about death panels.
AUDIENCE: (laughter and applause)
CARSON: Number one. And also, for the people who were indigent who don't have any money, we can make contributions to their HSA each month because we already have this huge pot of money. Instead of sending it to some bureaucracy, let's put it in their HSAs. Now they have some control over their own health care.
RUSH: Now, here's the point. What is a health savings account? Many of you in the audience already know, and I'm gonna ask you to indulge me as I try to explain them to people in the audience who don't know. Pretty much what Dr. Carson said. When you're born, a bank account -- look at it that way. When you're born, a bank account is started in your name. You get a birth certificate, and you get a medical card and a health savings account. Money is contributed pretax, from the time you're born until you die. They say, "Where do we get the money?"
We simply shift from all of the money that's being spent on health care now by governments, and we shift it to the people, to you. We put it in a bank account for you. Everybody gets one. Health care spending is 53% of GDP, or it's heading in that direction. We're spending $3.5 trillion dollars every year in this country, $1.3 trillion of which we don't even have. So we take 40, 50% of that and we allocate it to the people. It's theirs in the first place. They earned it. Your parents earned it if you don't have enough to start the health savings account. You obviously don't when you're an infant. But it grows.
You then need to go to the doctor, you then need medical treatment, you've got a health savings, you have a savings accounts, you've got a bank account with money in it that otherwise would go to insurance companies or go to the government or wherever else. But it's yours. You spend it as you need it, when medical events come up. Now, we're talking in this case, it's about standard, ordinary operating procedure doctor visits.
We're not talking about catastrophic injuries. Those are handled by insurance and would continue to be. But every day commonplace doctor visits, hospital treatments, and so forth, are handled by your health savings accounts. And whatever you don't spend, you get to keep and use however you wish, thereby motivating you to do two things: Not spend it all on medicine, because people are spending a lot more on their health than they actually need to be. And the second thing is you'll help create competition among medical providers, among doctors, among hospitals, among MRI testing centers, to get your business. They'll have to have a price that's attractive to you, just like anybody else trying to sell you anything.
There might even be sales someday on health care, if this system were ever implemented. But the point is you're in charge of it. And until we reach the point where the consumer has a direct relationship with his health care in terms of cost and expense, we're never gonna get costs down. In 43 seconds, Dr. Carson here gave the opposite to Obamacare and a way that would work, by putting every person in charge of his or her health care.
Now, some people might not want that responsibility, and that's what people like Obama and the Democrats bank on. But a health savings account is just money that's already being spent on health care and health insurance being reallocated, transferred, if you will, back to you. It was yours in the first place anyway. You earned it. That's the only way the government ever got it. You or your parents earned it. They don't have a dime without taking it from somebody first or borrowing it or printing it. This plan just, you keep your money. It's in an account where you use it for medical care. What you don't use is yours to do with as you wish, include pass on to your kids when you die.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We got Jody from Madison, Wisconsin. Jody, great to have you here. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Oh, what a pleasure to talk to you. I've been listening to you since the eighties, and I never called you before, but I'm telling you, when you had that sound bite on with Dr. Carson, I almost dropped my jaw. And I did run in and I called Dr. Carson and told him he's my hero. It's amazing. I've been saying the same thing for years, ever since this health care junk coming out and explaining to people how HSAs would have solved all of the problems. Not only that, just think of how wages would increase, and employment, 'cause it's no longer on the backs of the employer. I just can't tell you how astounded I was today to hear some sanity out of a human being.
RUSH: Look, I realize this is extremely encouraging. It's uplifting to know that, A, there's somebody out there who understands and knows this, but even more than that, that's willing to say it --
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: -- to Obama's face. This man said it while Obama's sitting there. Now, this is easy for me to say, but I'm gonna tell you something. This is the kind of stuff the Republican Party needs to be saying. This is the kind of stuff the Republican Party should have been saying for the past four years. Now, I know they tried various times and places to talk about health savings accounts, but their plan was still the government at the center of everything. That's what I mean by the Democrats create an agenda item, the Republicans say, "Oh, okay, is that what we're talking about today? Okay, national health care? Well, we don't entirely believe in that, so we'll come up with an alternative," but it's still an agenda set by the Democrats.
What's remarkable about Dr. Carson. Here's my solution. A person's born. He gets a health savings account to which money can be contributed pretax. Think of it as a 401(k) for health care. You put as much money in it as you want and, by the way, we'll supplant that because there's money being spent on your behalf, theoretically, in health care by the government, just reallocate it. But in 43 seconds the man had a free market based solution to the problem that was understandable and inspiring. And it does make you say, it does make you ask, "Where's this been for the last four years? Where has been the leadership articulating this kind of thing?"
END TRANSCRIPT
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Last week, the House Natural Resources Committee held a hearing about the San Joaquin Valley Water Reliability Act. The bill, which is co-authored by valley Republicans Devin Nunes, Kevin McCarthy, and Jeff Denham, generated strong opposition from Democrat lawmakers but has the backing of a re-invigorated Republican Conference and its leadership.
“this little piece of genius” would end collaboration between state and federal water projects. The bill “makes it virtually impossible,” he said. Westlands representative Tom Birmingham took aim at Garamendi’s interpretation of the bill and corrected him on historic and current operation of the projects. Federal law already pre-empts state law concerning project operations on the Trinity, he reminded the committee, and there was no similar outrage when that pre-emption occurred.
