The Last Line of Defense: The My New Fight for American Liberty: Rush: CuCCinelli: Rush: COnVeRsAtiOn CuCCinelli: Rush: With CuCCinelli: Rush: Ken

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1 My CONVERSATION With Ken Cuccinelli I was delighted to speak with the courageous Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia Attorney General and candidate for Governor instrumental in the legal fight against Obamacare and author of the new book, The Last Line of Defense: The New Fight for American Liberty: Rush: Ken Cuccinelli. I appreciate your making the time, thanks for joining us here. Cuccinelli: I m glad to do it. Rush: Before we get to your book and it s not going to be long, because your book has the left in a tizzy, which I love. Cuccinelli: [Laughs] Yes, it does. Even before we released it. Rush: I don t know if you saw it or not, but there s a supposed conservative blogger for The Washington Post named Jennifer Rubin. Cuccinelli: Supposed is fair. Rush: She raked you over the coals for spelling out conservative principles. Amazing. It s an indication of where we are. Anyway, while I have you, what is the state of legal play with regard to Obamacare right now? What, if any, important cases are coming down the pike that might provide any kind of opposition to it? Cuccinelli: Well, there s no silver bullet. Those have been fired. The big ones that are coming now are the religious liberty cases and the state-exchange/employer fine cases. I m sure you already know about the religious liberty cases, so let me explain the state fine cases for those states that do not set up a state health insurance exchange. The federal health care law penalizes employers $2,000 or $3,000 per employee per year when employees of that company can t get affordable health insurance at the workplace and instead have to get subsidized health insurance from the state health insurance exchange. If there is no state health insurance exchange if Virginia, for example, doesn t set up that exchange and instead defaults to the feds doing it the statute says nothing about those businesses paying anything. So the irs is scrambling now. Rush: Is that an oversight when they wrote the law? Cuccinelli: I d say it s hubris. They assumed everybody would create their own state exchange, even when they had the choice not to. It never occurred to them when they passed the only entitlement in history on a uni-partisan basis, that maybe Republicans wouldn t cooperate in afflicting the populace with this grand scheme of theirs. So now we have a bunch of Republican states that aren t setting these up. We re creating this second line of cases that are going to happen when the feds fine businesses including state governments. Virginia s state government is essentially a corporation for federal law purposes. They re going to sue us, or the businesses, for these fines. There s going to be a fight over whether they re owed at all. Interestingly, the four dissenting justices in the health care case commented on this. It wasn t a central part of the case, but they said, Look, this means what it says. If states don t set up health insurance exchanges, these penalties can t be applied. Rush: So why haven t the Democrats in Washington amended the bill? Cuccinelli: They can t. The House would never agree to it. Rush: Thank God. Cuccinelli: Yes. And I am watching Maryland and Washington, D.C. contemplate, and presumably proceed with, not only setting up health insurance exchanges, but indeed passing legislation to apply 6

2 the requirements to all businesses. Not just to, as the federal law requires, companies with 50 or more employees. They re going to apply it to all of them. Right down to companies with one employee. So we in Virginia are going to peacefully cross the Potomac and steal more businesses faster than you can count. Rush: Since you mentioned the Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare: your first reaction was negative. You said, This is a dark day for American liberty. But you later said, One hundred years from now this will be looked on as a win. How are you looking at it today, and how could it be viewed as a win in 100 years? Cuccinelli: Because of what was done to get the bill passed. You remember they all said, Oh, it s not a tax, it s not a tax. That whole charade. And the President, with that noted right-winger, George Stephanopoulos, grilling him, saying: It s not a tax. He promised he wouldn t raise taxes on any family making less than $250,000. After this Supreme Court ruling, they re never again going to be able to hide anything that raises money as anything but a tax. Even Democrats, as you well know, don t like voting for tax increases. Granted, they love tax increases, but they hate to go before the electorate as tax hikers. So it gives us, in the electoral process, an enormous protection. It doesn t do anything to protect us from this health care law, but it creates some truth in the legislative process. Rush: The irs is reporting that the cheapest of the Obamacare plans will cost the average family $16,000 to $20,000, depending on how many kids they ve got, when this thing is fully implemented. Cuccinelli: Yes. Rush: There are some subsidies if you make less than 200 percent of the poverty rate, and you pay the fine for a while. But who can afford that? Cuccinelli: If they do anything with this law, they ve got to rename it, and take the word affordable out. It just doesn t fit. Rush: Now, your book. Your thesis is that the states are the last line of defense against not just Obamacare, but the encroaching federal destruction of freedom. Cuccinelli: That s right. Republicans have grown government, too, but we ve never seen so much disregard for the law in one Administration before, in your and my lifetime, that we re seeing with the Obama Administration. Rush: Right. But we just had Ohio Governor Kasich announce he s going to accept the Medicaid expansion, along with Governor Brewer. There have been a number of Republican governors who have rejected it, but Kasich is, I think, the fifth Republican governor to say yes to the provision. And the Supreme Court made it optional. They read the law. They said it says what it says. Cuccinelli: Yes. Making the Medicaid expansion optional was one of the wins at the Supreme Court, by the way. Rush: So what effect does that have on the states as the last line of defense? We ve got five Republicans who I hate the word caved, but it fits here. Cuccinelli: Well, they were successfully bribed. A problem they will face is, this is a roach motel; you can get in, but you can t get out. Once you add this new piece of Medicaid, the feds have to give you permission as a state to get out. In Virginia s case, under the most rosy scenario, we re revenue-positive because of the feds paying 100 percent for the first three years until the latter part of this decade when costs to the state just spike up $300, $400 million a year. Where is that money going to come from? Especially at a time when, in Virginia, we re underfunding transportation and we don t want to raise taxes. People who support this expansion are going to have to explain how they re going to pay for it. Not next year, but four or five years from now. And I doubt the federal government is going to keep its promise about what it s going to pay. What I tell people is, Look, this guy who s making you this promise, he makes $22,000 a year, he spends $38,000 a year, and he has $162,000 a year credit card bill. Do you believe that guy s going to pay for anything for you in four years? The federal government is that guy. Rush: But people do expect it. Cuccinelli: They can expect it, but you know very well and I know very well that at some point, that gravy train For the states, Obamacare is a roach motel; you can get in, but you can t get out. Ken Cuccinelli comes to an end. Rush: I ve been hearing that my whole life. And it hasn t. I m not trying to be argumentative. Cuccinelli: Oh, no, I don t take it that way. But I m not going to contribute to that. What do Virginia senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine do when the other states are getting these increased federal subsidies for Medicaid and a lot of the funds are coming from Virginia? We re paying into this, but we re getting none of the goodies back because we refuse to do the Medicaid expansion. So how will that affect their votes in the Senate? This question is as yet unresolved, but we ll get interesting crosscurrents like that here in Virginia, which is Republican at the state house level but with two Democrat senators. Will they be voting to shovel more federal money into the Medicaid expansion in other states, or are they going to find this a convenient place to cut, because Virginia s not getting any of it? Rush: That s all going to depend on how much loyalty they continue to have to Obama. Cuccinelli: I agree. Rush: Now, you write, No other President, no other Administration, has had such a willful disregard for the law. Under the Obama Administration the government shifted from deriving its authority from the people to seizing authority from the people. You are right on, by the way and this is very important to me, your answer here. As you look at the 2012 elections, did the people who elected Obama, in your opinion, knowingly vote for this man allowing him to seize their freedom, or did they have no idea, and do they still have no idea who they ve elected? Cuccinelli: First of all, they did not vote to give this guy the power to do whatever the heck he wanted to do, legal or not. A simple example. I grew up in Fairfax County outside D.C.; there 7

3 are a million people in Fairfax, the biggest county in Virginia. It went more than for Obama. Three-and-a-half months before Election Day, the Democrat Board of Supervisors voted to join me in a lawsuit against the epa because the epa was overstepping its legal bounds. We won that lawsuit last month. So in a county where their Board effectively represents numerically how those folks vote, they were fighting the overreach at the same time they were voting for this President. It s peculiar to say the least. Rush: Exactly. Cuccinelli: But I don t think voters, even those who voted to reelect the President, were validating violations of the law, like the epa trying to create new power for itself by regulating rainwater as a pollutant. Rush: So you don t believe that we ve reached the tipping point where we ve lost the country, even among just those that vote. Cuccinelli: I would agree with that. But we aren t going to know for ten or 20 years. Rush: You are fearless, and that s admirable. But for many conservative voters, Tea Party people, their experience is that confident, courageous elected conservatives all eventually cave at some point. They cave to the political, social pressures of Washington or what-have-you. Now we see that the Republican establishment is not happy with what the Tea Party has been doing in primaries, so they re going to be running ads opposing certain Tea Partyers. There s an internecine war within the Republican Party. They re aiming at each other. I just wish some of the establishment Republican types would aim at Obama. Cuccinelli: Yes, that s the kind of unity I d like to see, for sure. I m the nominee for Governor in Virginia because over the years we have created such a strong grassroots organization always being outspent in every race, but never being outworked. I ve always had a bunch of people who share my commitment to first principles to carry us along. Because when you are being outspent, people have to help you get your message out, and they don t come out because of Ken Cuccinelli, they come out to fight for those principles. Rush: Right. Cuccinelli: I have a buddy of mine who s helped me in all my races. He never worked in a state election until my first race. He used to do work with Jesse Helms, and he lives in Northern Virginia now. His name s Terry Wear. Terry has a lot of little sayings. One of them is, I d rather have ten people I ve got to keep on a choke chain than 50 I ve got to get behind with a pitchfork. We re all choke-chain types. It isn t because of me, it s because of the principles. All I do is stay true to them. Rush: You are the steward. Cuccinelli: That s how I view it. Rush: In a recent interview, you suggested, I think, that civil disobedience might be a response to the Obamacare requirement that would force religious businesses, faith-based institutions, to cover contraceptives. Your quote is: My local bishop said, I told a group I m ready to go to jail, and I told him, Bishop, don t take this personally you need to go to jail. Do you think it might come to that, and are people prepared to do that? Cuccinelli: I know there are people prepared for peaceful civil disobedience. I know that s the case. What I said isn t new. The bishops themselves said it a year before. They said in March 2012 that it may come to that. August is the deadline. The accommodation recently announced by the Administration doesn t strike me as solving much in this area. I think this Administration will do everything it possibly can to avoid having to actually be vigorous in their enforcement. They are expecting people to simply go along like sheep. I don t know that the Administration will do more than look the other way, at least initially. But when they start locking people up because they won t pay the fines and they won t obey the court orders, you will see a dramatic sea change. We ve seen the effectiveness of peaceful civil disobedience in this country when it comes to preserving civil rights for a long, long time. And the right to worship freely without imposition by the government is why a lot of people came here. So to see it under assault by our own government to say it s sad is a rather dramatic understatement. But when we get to this August, some things are going to start to hit the fan. Rush: I know that they hired 16,000 additional irs agents for the purposes of monitoring and implementing the fines and so forth. But does the federal government, does this massive bureaucracy, really have the wherewithal to police this, to find the people that aren t paying the fines or aren t buying insurance, actually administer the fines, put them in jail? Do they have the ability to do all that? Cuccinelli: I don t know whether they do or not. I think that implementation will be the only way we ll really find out. I will say this: as the lawyer for our own social services agencies and health agencies here in Virginia, I can tell you the federal government is not keeping to its own schedule. They haven t kept up with what they said they were going to do, so they have so far failed to meet an enormous number of deadlines and obligations that they ve imposed on themselves. Rush: The law is 2,700 pages. I wonder how many of the Democrats in Washington who voted for this and support it, even Photos on pages 8 & AP/Wide World Photos 8

4 today understand what s in it, and understand the full scope of what they voted for. I know they crave control over people s lives. I know they crave telling people how to live, and making decisions for people. I know they crave this, to me, unimaginable level of power. But when I listen to Nancy Pelosi talk about this, I wonder if she actually knows what s in it. When they passed it, she described it: Finally, we have affordable health care for all Americans. I wonder how many of them actually know what they ve done. I m being charitable. Cuccinelli: I think the truest thing Nancy Pelosi ever said in her public life was, We have to pass it so we can find out what s in it. As time rolls on, we discover more and more aspects of the law that do damage to our health care system, to our financial system, to our liberty. We re doing damage to our country, and we re reducing opportunity. We re reducing employment. We re reducing the quality of health care. They don t want to admit that. As doctors and nurses gradually leave the profession, other people will come in. But I suspect you re going to find that they re going to be lower quality. Not all of them, of course. But the best people will say, That s too much of a headache for me to spend my life that way. They ll go in other directions. You know, I was an engineer and I went to law school. But when I went to law school, the med students could all get into law school. All of the law students couldn t get into med school. [Laughs] Well, that s going to flip. Rush: That s a good point. Cuccinelli: It s so expensive to prepare and train a doctor, to get them all the way through medical school but now, for what? What do they get on the other end? They get delivered the joy of a life s worth of headaches under this new health care regime. Of Cuccinelli: Right. [Laughs] And that s from people who haven t even read the book. Rush: It doesn t matter. They got hold of some snippets, and they re creating a narrative now. Let me give you some examples. The Washington Post claims that you use language akin to Mitt Romney s famous 47 percent comment, which, quote, helped sink his campaign. National Journal claims: Pragmatic Republicans looking to hang onto the governorship in Virginia have been hoping that you would moderate your outspoken conservative views But based on excerpts of your new book, you are making no apologies and com[ing] out swinging hard against all government entitlement programs. Politico calls your book a 252-page Tea Party jeremiad of blistering attacks on government in general and President Barack Obama in particular that could make it difficult to broaden his appeal to the kinds of voters he needs to win in November. So you ve gotten under their skin already. You know they re coming after you. They already have been, obviously, with your position on health care. Cuccinelli: Yes. Rush: But are you geared up for this? Cuccinelli: Oh, absolutely. My best defense is that we re right. And there s no reason to be ashamed of being right. All we re doing is defending the first principles that have been guiding this country for almost 237 years now. We re doing it in the position I m in right now, Attorney General, on behalf of my commonwealth. In states, we re expected to play this role in pushing back on the federal government when it oversteps its boundaries. The Founders set our system up that way so that the states would be the last line of defense against a federal government that attacks the liberty it was instituted When we get to this August, some things are going to start to hit the fan. Ken Cuccinelli course they want to be successful, but by and large, people go into medicine because they also have a mindset of helping people. But those motives can only carry you so far. As a lawyer I worked on mental health commitment cases. I learned a lot about the mental health system that way. I got paid $50 a case, but I didn t do it for the $50. I did it to help people in need. In Virginia, we have doctors who see Medicaid patients. We don t pay them properly under Medicaid. We just don t. They do this, really, to benefit Virginia and their communities. They don t make a ton of money, if any, out of Medicaid. How many more headaches can the government saddle them with before they say it s just not worth it to try to help people? Rush: They re going to make less than they do now. Cuccinelli: We re having practices close because it s too much of a pain in the neck for them. Rush: Back to your book. This is important, because your effectiveness is directly proportional to the amount of criticism that you get. You know the media are an arm of the Democrat Party, and they exist to help the President wipe out any opposition. And I think a testament to the effectiveness of you and your book is already evidenced by their reaction. You re already being portrayed as a certifiable right-wing nutcase Tea Party wacko. to protect. A lot of people forgot about that after their tenth grade civics class, but we ve living it. Take my epa example with Fairfax County. I ve had two lawsuits against the epa; both of them have Democrat co-plaintiffs. So how crazy can I be? We saved the taxpayers of Fairfax County $250 million in the most recent case we won. Rush: You re not crazy. I wouldn t even accept the premise. Cuccinelli: Of course not. Anything that doesn t fit the left s ideological worldview, and I don t have to tell you this, is automatically labeled with super-adjective hyperbolic wordplay. I m just kind of used to that. It doesn t mean I like it. But the best way for me to handle that is to stay on offense. Rush: Exactly. One of the biggest problems ongoing with the Republicans is that they either don t really believe conservatism, or even if they do, they don t explain it very well. You are running with the thesis that all you need to do is explain it. Cuccinelli: Right. Rush: You ve won four times as an outspoken, unapologetic limited-government conservative. You even said, I won not just because I had lots of committed supporters who worked hard for me, but because I didn t compromise on first principles. Instead I explained them. There have been a lot of guys like 9

5 you who somehow end up having it all watered down. I hope you don t. Cuccinelli: I think they wanted to stay there too much. I like going home. And if the people of Virginia in November decide that that s where I ought to be, I ll say thank you very much, it s been an honor, and I will happily head home. Rush: Why do you want to be governor? I mean, the climate for a Republican today is certainly not optimum. Why do you want to do this? Cuccinelli: For one, if you decide to leave the field because it s unpleasant, you cede the field to all the wrong people. I wouldn t pursue running for governor if it weren t a family undertaking, because it s very disruptive of the family and of our time together. But my wife and I believe in our heart of hearts in the first principles that are the foundation of this country. What has made America exceptional is liberty. Life is mentioned first in the Declaration of Independence. But liberty is what has made us unique, and it is the preservation of individual liberty which has in turn created or protected the opportunity to succeed and to fail, as we pursue happiness. But it is that unique feature, the preservation of individual liberty, that has really made us stand out as a nation in history. And when you have a government like our federal government that in all its agencies is eating away at that, you re eating away at the essence of what America is and why it s great. A lot of people who have come before you and me have sacrificed an awful lot to deliver us the greatest country in the history of the world. I can t turn it all around in Virginia, but by golly I can fight. And we re going to do that. Rush: Given the success they had with the smear campaign against Romney, what would you do if there s an ad on tv the equivalent of which is that you stood idly by as Attorney General, while some guy s wife died of cancer? Or that you hate dogs? Or that you ve got money hidden in the Caymans? They don t care about the truth. Cuccinelli: What s interesting is, I m running against Terry McAuliffe. Rush: He s practically the architect of this kind of stuff. Cuccinelli: He is. My problem with the Romney campaign is they didn t go on offense. Mitt Romney is a good person who earned his money the right way: he respectably went out and made businesses better, helped them succeed. What s not to be proud of? Terry McAuliffe is a different story. If Democrats did what they did to Mitt Romney, who was a good person and had a great business track record, what are they going to think of their own guy, as they gradually learn his record? I ve got his book here, What a Party! My Life Among Democrats, Presidents, Candidates, Donors, Activists, Alligators, and Other Wild Animals. It s quite a tour de force. One of the things he writes is, Let me tell you, it s a lot easier to raise money for a governor. They have all kinds of business to hand out, road contracts, construction jobs, you name it. He read it in his own voice. That s the attitude he brings to this. This is all transactional to him. It isn t about a vision for Virginia or any commitment to Virginia. I ve grown up here, gone to school here. My wife has as well. And we re raising our seven kids here. Rush: Seven? Whoa! Cuccinelli: We ve been committed to Virginia for a long time. This race, I think, will just be carrying on those efforts that we ve both undertaken in our own lives. But it s all brand new to Terry McAuliffe. Rush: Good luck, and as I m sure your wife said to you long ago, don t change. Cuccinelli: [Laughs] Yes, she was the first one who suggested running for office; not me. Rush: Your voice is all too unique now. Your forcefulness, your confidence, your conviction, is infectious. I hope you re able to revive the adherence, the belief, the energy for conservatism throughout the Party. Cuccinelli: For four elections, people have said: Oh, this guy can t win. He s too fill in the blank too right-wing, too this, too that. But we keep winning. One of the things that s happened in Northern Virginia, where I started, is a whole cadre of new volunteers and candidates has grown up around this philosophy. By that I don t just mean conservative and foundational; I mean you carry it into campaigns and governance and you stick to it. What a concept. Rush: Well, keep doing it. I really wish you the best, and offer you any help we can. Cuccinelli: I believe if everybody who is going to vote in Virginia could read Terry McAuliffe s book and my book, this would be a slam-dunk. So, I appreciate you talking with me. You ve written several books; I ve never done this before. But I believe very much in what s in that book, and that s a big part of why we wrote it. Rush: We ll help move it. I really appreciate your time. My best defense is that we re right. And there s no reason to be ashamed of being right. Ken Cuccinelli Cuccinelli: It s good to talk to you, I ve enjoyed it. Rush: Same here. n 10