The Dan Bongino Show - Ep 476 Why You Should be Very Concerned About Govt Spying

Episode Date: June 7, 2017

In this episode I address a bombshell lawsuit filed against the FBI regarding spying on US citizens. http://circa.com/politics/accountability/james-comey-sued-by-intelligence-contractor-dennis-montgomery-over-spying-on-americans   I also discuss the real Obamacare fight the liberals are waging and why a loss would be a catastrophic blow to liberal ideology.  https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-senates-medicaid-moment-1496791141 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dan Bongino. I owe you. Who owes who? You owe me. I owe you. There's no money. The Dan Bongino Show. Anything run by liberals will be run into the ground, burned, stepped on, gasoline poured on it, and burned again. Get ready to hear the truth about America. They're arguing about things and debating how quickly they can deconstruct the greatest country in the history of mankind and all of the ideas and norms that have gotten us here. On a show that's not immune to the facts with your host Dan Bongino. All right welcome to the Renegade Republic with Dan Bongino. Producer Joe how are you today? Ready steady go babe. Hey listen

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There's a story at Circa, which is, I don't even know, what do you call it? A bombshell? I mean, with everything going on,'t even know, what do you call it, a bombshell? I mean, with everything going on, the term bombshell is becoming meaningless. It's like the bomb on top of the bombshell. Let me just give you a quote from this piece at Circa by Sarah Carter. Prepare for this one. More than 20 million American identities were illegally unmasked. Credit reports, emails, phone conversations conversations and internet traffic were some of

the items collected by the nsa and cia folks here's uh this story in a nutshell there is an intelligence contractor a man by the name of dennis montgomery who is who collected uh enormous amounts of information while he was there at the nsa and uh unlike snowden who then went over to russia this guy apparently did it the right way. He's now filed a lawsuit in federal court, which is going to be overseen by Judge Leon, who was the one who ruled against the NSA in the metadata case. And I'll be honest with you, folks, I'm a little disappointed in myself because I got a lot of pretty good sources in DC. Not great, but pretty good. And how I didn't know about this in advance, I don't I got a lot of pretty good sources in D.C. Not great, but pretty good.

And how I didn't know about this in advance, I'm a little disappointed. I just heard about it this morning. This thing is a bombshell on top of a bombshell. And combined with what's going on right now, the Senate intelligence hearing about the reauthorization of the NSA spying program. Folks, this is this is we, if this is true, if, and I have no reason to disbelieve Sarah Carter, she's broken some big stories before.

She's a more than credible person out there. If this is true, we are now living in a surveillance state. I mean, it's not hyperbolic. It's not exaggeration. You know, I'm honest when I exaggerate for effect. I'll tell you, if 20 million Americans, close to 10% of the population, close, were being illegally spied on emails, internet traffic, credit reports, and phone conversations, how are you not like, OMG, dude, this cannot be a constitutional republic anymore where individual

liberties including the right to privacy are protected that that's gone that's wiped out we have to re-establish what a new normal is folks this is dangerous stuff now one of the reasons i bring this up is because i've discussed many times in the past the difference between totalitarian states and democracies in our case a constitutional a constitutional republic, a representative democracy, the difference is there's a private self and a public self. I don't want to go into the whole thing again, but the gist of it is simply this. You have a private self. When you go in your home and you're emailing your friends and you're talking on the phone,

you say things you wouldn't say in public. You probably use off-color language. You probably say things about people you wouldn't want in public. We're all sinners. We all do dumb stuff, Joe. You know it. I mean, would you be comfortable with a camera in your home 24 hours a day? Hell no. Hell no. Me either. I wouldn't want in public. We're all sinners. We all do dumb stuff, Joe. You know it. I mean, would you be comfortable with a camera in your home 24 hours a day? Hell no. Hell no. Me either. I wouldn't either. Let's just all be honest with each other, okay? You know, whatever. You pick

your nose. You're like, oh my gosh, not on camera? Leave me alone. Now, yeah, leave me alone. As a guy who was illegally recorded, it's a particularly sensitive topic with me. You deserve that when you say something's private, it should be private, right? Now, in totalitarian states, they don't have that. You're being monitored all the time in North Korea. Now, is there a video camera in your house? No, probably not. But your neighbors are encouraged to rat on you to the communist regime. If you say anything bad about Kim Jong-un, Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, you will be killed or put in the gulag because there is no private self. There are no private conversations. this is the distinction that makes a constitutional republic like the united states a special place now if that disappears because 10 of the population's being monitored and unmasked

folks where this is this is a a brave new world like aldous huxley types i mean this is really really nasty stuff and i don't mean brave and qualitatively the good way. Liberals love that book. Now, I wanted to tie this in because here's the big problem we're having. So number one, point number one is, if this story is true, again, we are in a whole world of trouble. Point number two is the Susan Powers thing. Andy McCarthy wrote a piece at National Review,

and I've discussed it a little bit before, but he's always a little bit more eloquent than I am. Remember I talked about last week, Barack Obama's ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Powers, has been tied up now in this unmasking scandal. Unmasking being basically the spying on of American citizens, former national security advisor under Trump before he resigned, Mike Flynn, was a victim of this. Now, this leaking to the press of the identity of Mike Flynn was a federal crime. The reason I wanted to bring this up again, though, is folks, the reason Samantha Powers and Susan Rice potentially requesting the unmasking of people

is such a big deal. It's because in the federal government, you have to understand the distinction between consumers and producers of intelligence. When I was a Secret Service agent, we were forbidden from producing intelligence, just like political appointees are forbidden in many cases from doing that as well. Now, why? Think about it, folks. Let's stop the liberal stuff and get to second order and third order stuff. This is a thinking man's podcast. I hope we're trying here.

When you're a Secret Service agent, you're responsible for the security plan for, let's say, the president of Iran. When the president of Iran comes here, we secure him. Our attitude with the Secret Service and the United States in general is you're not going to die on our soil even if you are a tyrant thug. We don't have a beat button here, so I have to beat myself. But you don't die over here. But what we don't do is we don't ask the Secret Service to say, hey, guys, do me a favor. When you're in the room with the president of Iran, can you do us a favor? Can you plant a recording device? And the reason we don't do that is because it would interrupt the security relationship. They wouldn't want protection. Now, it's ironic, and I'll cover a little bit, this is my third

book, because a lot of that's collapsing now in a number of different ways. But not that they're producing intelligence, but I'll get into it more when the book comes out. But we don't produce intelligence for that reason. We don't produce intelligence for that reason. We don't produce intelligence for another reason. Let's say, Joe, again, we're protecting Mitt Romney during the last political campaign prior to the Trump one, right? What if the Obama administration says, hey, Agent Bongino, do me a favor. You were on Mitt Romney's presidential campaign detail, right? Yeah. And they say the campaign's still going on, Joe. Can you do me a favor? Next time he says something about criticizing our political strategy that you think is privy information, can you pass it on to a staffer?

We would be like, no, we don't do that. So there is a very, very bold, bright, not a fine line, a bold, bright line between consumers of intelligence and producers. Now, the Secret Service is a consumer of intelligence. Now, why? Because it's necessary. Now, if the president of Iran is coming over, we're not going to produce intelligence on him, but we will go to the agency or the DIA or whoever has the information and say, hey, do you have anything on a threat to the life of the president of Iran in the United States? Now, Joe, why would that be relevant?

It would be relevant because if, let's say, there was a terror cell in New York planning to hit the president of Iran when he visited the United Nations, it would probably be good that the Secret Service charge with protecting his life knows about that. Yeah. So we consume. We never produce. There's a difference. Now, how does that relate to Susan Rice or Samantha Powers? Do not be confused by Susan Rice's former title in the

Obama administration, National Security Advisor. The security thing throws everybody off. Folks, she is not an investigator and hat tip to Andy McCarthy for writing about this so eloquently. And hat tip to Andy McCarthy for writing about this so eloquently. She is not a producer. She is a political appointee. She is a consumer. She's not a producer of intelligence. So her law and Samantha Power, Joe, the United Nations ambassador under Obama, even worse.

She's even a more detached consumer rather than a producer. So what I'm getting at is if she's not a producer, meaning she's not the one charged with putting the investigation together. In other words, give me raw intelligence A, give me raw intelligence B on the Iranians, on Mitt Romney's campaign, and I'm going to put together a strategic puzzle. She doesn't do that. She consumes the end product like we did from the agencies and develops a threat picture for the president. Does that make sense, Joe? Yeah. Yeah. Just like we develop a threat picture for the Iranians when they come over here. Hey, guys, here's what we got from our intelligence agencies. Here's the threat. It's really high to your guy. And here's how we're going to mitigate it with security. That's what Susan Rice does for the president.

She doesn't send operatives into the field and conduct the investigation herself, producing the intelligence. I cannot emphasize this to you enough how this distinction, if it's allowed to collapse because Obama wanted to gather information on the Trump team. It's over, folks. It's totally over. The Secret Service. Now we'll start being consumers, producers of intelligence. You'll have political appointees sicking the FBI on people to get oppo research on their opponents. Folks, political appointees don't produce because we don't want to politicize intelligence and law enforcement.

Do you understand how devastating these two stories are? You know, I haven't heard this angle covered in an umbrella fashion, and it bothers me. I mean, to be fair, a lot of people are covering the dangers of where we are, but I don't know if they understand, other than Andy, really how devastating the collapse of the consumer-producer line is, Joe. Once we start empowering political operatives like Susan Rice and Samantha Power to be producers or investigators of intelligence information, how do you know they're not going to target you next? Folks, they are consumers. They consume a finished product

and they use that finished product to give the president an honest threat assessment. They don't produce the information. Combine that with this FBI lawsuit, if this is legit, and man, are we in a world of trouble. You know, you don't have to be a conservatarian like me. By the way, it's kind of funny. Just quickly, Paula hates when I talk about these Twitter wars, but there was some actor on this show, Burn Notice. Have you heard of it? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Some actor, some Seth guy. So he tweets me and it was something about the Patriot Act, but I had to laugh because he hadn't even done a modicum of homework. For those of you who've listened to the show, I have been against the Patriot Act and certain provisions of it, including the business records one and 702 and a lot of NSA metadata collection forever precisely because of this problem. So I found it kind of funny that he was like criticizing me and the Patriot Act. I was like, dude, do you even like Google? You know, just look it up before you tweet someone. But folks, this is a really big deal. All right. You know, I don't want to spend too much time on this,

but I remember consumers versus producers. If you don't understand the distinction, I'm really, I'm begging you liberals, because this is really important because it affects the civil liberties of my kids and my kids' kids. I'm begging you to keep quiet and stay out of the conversation because you don't know what you're talking about. You're polluting the conversation and you're confusing people as to the level of danger we're really in. Once you allow metadata collection on 20 million Americans, potentially, and we'll see what happens with this lawsuit and the fine line to collapse between the consumers and producers of intelligence you have basically a surveillance state that's just a fact that's not hyperbolic all right hey um thanks for all the

emails yesterday by the way on the um the linguist reality winner who was arrested for leaking documents uh from uh from a contract facility. She contracted with the government. I talked about it yesterday. And as always, I always correct myself when wrong. I took an educated guess yesterday. I was hesitant to do it. I hear what you're talking about. Yeah, but I did get some emails.

And thank you for the emails and texts from another friend of mine. We were right about one thing, Joe. She did carry over it appears her clearance from uh the air force her security clearance over into the contractor uh world which i've said to you yesterday and yesterday's show and i encourage you to listen to it if you missed it is a huge huge problem because you almost have no idea what she's been doing if she's not re-cleared how do you know like she was clearing the air force you know four and a half years ago and she hasn't turned into like a maniac Bernie Sanders supporter since. Oh, that actually

happened? That's what happened with this lady, reality winner who was just arrested. So we were right about that, the carrier. But we were wrong. As I said, I think she may be involved in geospatial intelligence. And no, apparently, from what I'm getting from really, really connected sources, she was a linguist and therefore had a clearance because she spoke multiple languages. So thank you. And again, sometimes I make an educated guess, but it's to advance the conversation. It's not to, you know, it wasn't meant to be some kind of character assassination. She assassinated her own character.

But apparently she looked like some kind of a linguist. And one more thing about the TS thing. But apparently she looked like some kind of a linguist. And one more thing about the TS thing. I covered yesterday the problems with TS clearance I failed to address is one of the other problems, in addition to carrying over clearances from the military and government work into private contracting, many times without a re-up, without a reinvestigation. And secondly, I addressed the failure to polygraph people repeatedly, which is unforgivable. It makes no sense at all.

I was polygraphed once in the Secret Service. Here's another problem I didn't mention, and shame on me, is, folks, we have 4 million people with a security clearance in the United States. Do you honestly think, I've done background investigations, do you honestly think these people are getting a thorough background? Folks, give me a break. We're giving people security clearances who have potentially, literally millions of them that have no business having them at all. Let me tell you quickly how this works because I've done them when I was doing them for the Secret Service.

Here's the way it works. When you put down a reference on your security clearance background, I think it's the SF-86. Again, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's the SF-86, right? When I put down, let's say I'm going to get a job for a special agent. I can put you down, Joe, producer Joe. I wouldn't put down producer Joe. I'd put Joe Armacost, maybe put nickname producer, right? They will go and interview Joe.

But the way it works is you have to develop unnamed references from the name references. So when you're doing backgrounds, I have to go out to Joe and I have to find people I didn't name for obvious reasons, Joe. So when you're doing backgrounds, I have to go out to Joe and I have to find people I didn't name for obvious reasons, Joe. If I'm giving you as a reference, it's probably pretty likely you're going to say nice things. Yeah. But you have to go out and develop unnamed references as well. With 4 million people being background check folks, people have to take shortcuts.

They do. I've seen it. I've heard about it. And what do they do? Instead of developing unnamed references the right way, what they'll just do is they'll go to Joe and say, hey, Joe, do you know anyone else who knows Dan? But here's the catch, Joe. If I gave you up as a character reference and you give up someone else that I didn't name in my report, the chances are it's still going to be a positive reference. In other words, if I'm a terrorist and I give up Joe as a reference, do you think Joe is

going to give up like Osama bin Laden as a reference? No, he's going to give up Joey Bag of Donuts next door. He's going to say nice things. Folks, these people are smarter than the background check system. The unnamed reference system is a joke. We don't have enough background investigators to appropriately conduct these background investigations. The unnamed reference thing is a total scam. Guys get lazy. And when women doing them, they go out there and they say, Joe, give me another reference. That's not how it's supposed to work. You're supposed to do an actual investigation. The old school LexisNexis search, auto track, whatever it's called now. And find people that may you, I may have come into contact with Joe that shockingly may not have nice things to say. Like you do a background search, you find out I posted on Twitter to a guy named UBL and I go look at UBL and UBL is a short for Osama bin Laden. You're like, oh my gosh, this guy was talking to bin Laden. That's how it's supposed to work, but it's not how it works in the real world.

I didn't bring that up yesterday, and I felt bad about it, because I got a bunch of emails. Yesterday's show won crazy, really good numbers for a Tuesday. So thank you for spreading it around. It's amazing how tightly people pay attention, isn't it? I mean, they really do. Yeah, no, I mean, I appreciate it. And the feedback on the show yesterday was very, I mean, we have do. Yeah, no, I mean, I appreciate it. And the feedback on the show yesterday was very, I mean, we have a really super smart audience.

That's why I'm always hesitant to put something out. I absolutely know, because I know I love my audience, man. They will correct you in a minute. I really appreciate that. Hey, also, by the way, I appreciate you all supporting our sponsors. I said yesterday,

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and silver, the real deal, folks. Go check them out. All right. I had a couple other things. Just again, they have Comey testifying tomorrow, and it looks like they've nominated a new FBI director, Christopher Wray, who I'm not really discussing that much because I don't really know much about the man. I'll check it out.

I'll get back to you. But it's not really a story I want to spend a bunch of time on. But it's just interesting because Comey's going to testify tomorrow. And I just wanted to give you a quick update on where we are now with the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory. So the allegations recently that came out yesterday was a story on Georgia. Trump pressured intelligence director to slow down the Comey investigation, except for the fact that Dan Coats, the guy they're actually talking about, said that that's not true. There was no pressure. So let's just do a quick rundown. Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, no pressure to stop

the investigation. Jim Clapper, who was the former DNI, we have no evidence for the Trump-Russia conspiracy. Andy McCabe, the deputy director of the FBI, now acting director. No pressure to stop the FBI investigation of the Trump. Jim Comey, former FBI director. No pressure to stop the investigation against Trump. John Brennan, former CIA director. We have no evidence of the Trump Russia conspiracy. Keep it up, though, Libs. Don't worry about it.

Keep up the Trump Russia conspiracy as they buzz our planes in disputed airspace. Go right ahead. Don't worry. Keep forfeiting away your worthless reputations as silly media outlets by continuing to advocate the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory and making a fool out of yourselves. Listen, I get it. There are fair criticisms of the president right now. I'm really, frankly, and to be candid with you all, I'm starting to worry about the tweets. I like that he's on social media. Please don't misinterpret my comments. I think it's a great idea. But it's what's in the tweets that's really starting to hurt the message, okay?

You can't step on DOJ with the travel restrictions case. You just can't do it. It was a bad move. We can't be golden calf worshipers like Obama. But, and this is a big caveat here, this Trump-Russia thing is a total, complete fairy tale. I can't say it enough. It's a conspiracy theory, and you should all, anybody proposing this thing should be humiliated and embarrassed. You have no journalistic integrity whatsoever. All right, moving on, because I beat that story to death. So Robert Reich, who was the Secretary of Labor, he was under the Clinton administration, recently put out a piece. And I've been having a tough time finding the actual link, but I got a summation of

it from a friend of mine in an email. And I thought the piece was fascinating. And in the piece, Robert Reich, who was a noted liberal, I did a video, matter of fact, a conservative review. Remember that? I was going to mention that yeah yeah that thing got something like a half a million views or so but reich is a noted redistributionist uh you know pseudo-socialist guy who really had in my has no credibility in my because he's he's he just doesn't know what he's talking about but he wrote an interesting piece talking about celebrating the federal bureaucracy. And I thought to myself, my gosh, this guy just exposed the entire liberal game plan and probably doesn't even realize it.

Here's the gist of the piece. He numbers the bullet points like one through eight. And he says, look at what's happening at the department of defense there's a renegade twitter handle called whatever renegade or rebel dod or whatever the hell it is and they're tweeting information they shouldn't be tweeting and this is great because it's hurting trump and the epa is tweeting things they were told not to tweet and the state department has set up a back channel to communicate itself and people are leaking information to the right. Right. Really writes that. And he's folks, I'm not making this up. He labels it out like one through eight.

All of these examples of the government bureaucracy doing things they swore they wouldn't do when they upheld their right hand and promised to defend the Constitution to take the government job. He celebrates it. So I thought to myself, this is it. What is a common theme running through this show from day one, Joe, has been why the left loves the federal bureaucracy, just like Reich does. He's celebrating the bureaucracy, the swamp. He's celebrating all the, quote, resistors in the government who are

doing not what the voters want. And I asked myself a couple of couple questions and i wrote this down what are they resisting they're not being asked to do anything unlawful they're being asked to do what the voters wanted which was elect an executive the president united states who was going to carry out the wishes of the voters nobody's disputing the legality of the trump win so when you say these people within the government are resisting, resisting what? They're resisting you. Ladies and gentlemen, they're resisting you. They're not resisting a political

ideology. They're resisting you. This was your will. This is what you wanted done. This was a fairly won and a hard fought election. You may not like the guy. You may not appreciate the guy. You may think the guy's a jerk. You may think even worse of him. Trump, I'm talking about. But he won. They're resisting you. You are paying them to resist you. So I thought of another thing. I took some notes on this piece.

I said to you once that left loves a bureaucracy because they love discretionary government. In other words, they love the idea that they can appoint people in beds, the deep state, which is very real, by the way. Remember, there are even conservatives. I'm not going to say who, because I respect some of these guys, but I'll say, oh, that deep state, you guys are just conspiracy theorists. What are you talking about? Rice just laid it out in his piece.

He talked, I think it's like one through eight bullet points of EPA people, DOD people, State Department people, people within the government in the deep state who are actively subverting the will of an elected president. I don't understand, folks. How is there not a... What would you call that? The shallow end of the pool state? Of course, it's the deep state.

That's what it is. I'm sorry it sounds conspiratorial. If you want to call it something different, I'm fine with that. But let's not pretend it doesn't exist. So the left loves the bureaucracy because they love discretionary government. They love the idea of empowering a bunch of people who can subvert the will of the voters. This is important, which they're doing, and never, ever be held accountable for it. They don't have to raise money.

They don't have to go out there and sell an idea. They don't have to get reelected. They don't have to do any of this. The left, this is why they love big government, love the bureaucracy. Folks, if you can remember a phrase from this, I encourage you to remember this one. The left threw a curveball at us a long time ago. They beat us on this. They were playing chess while we were playing checkers. They understood that in the bureaucracy, there's power in process, Joe. The government has gotten so big. It's such a Leviathan right now. It has grown so expansive that the process alone is so confusing that it empowers the bureaucracy. that it empowers the bureaucracy. Does that make sense? Joe, and here's the best way to explain it. Let's just say, Joe, you and I were both, let's say I won my election, right? Folks, I'll be very candid with you. I've never worked up on the hill. I have ideas about what things need to change up on the hill, but I never worked there. I don't understand the soup to nuts process of how things work. The process is now so complicated because of the federal Leviathan that when you go

over there, people who understand the process are almost more powerful than you because they understand where the machinery is and where to throw the monkey wrenches. And you don't know. You don't understand the machine. You're like, do you throw it there? Do you throw it there? What do you do? The left understood this a long time ago. There is power in process. This is why people like Rice constantly want to grow the bureaucracy because they understand that once

the bureaucracy masters the process, that they have all the power. It's not the president. You may say, oh my gosh, of course the president has power. Yeah, of course he does. But there's power in process. And Rice is celebrating the fact that the left is using the process, the bureaucratic, overly complicated, expansive Leviathan process to overrule both the will of the voters and the will of the president. He exposed the whole left plan. I saw this this morning on an email and I thought, gosh, I got to bring it up. Folks, be very, very, very concerned about this. All right, listen, one more piece I wanted to get to. There was, be very, very, very concerned about this. All right, listen, Rob. One more piece I wanted to get to.

There was a nice op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today about Medicaid. And Anthem is now exiting Ohio. The Obamacare exchange is in Ohio. So the Obamacare disaster continues. It doesn't even matter. The left will defend it. We'll all be dead. Seriously.

No one will have health care. We'll all be dying of horrible diseases. And the left will still defend Obamacare. Because as I said to you yesterday, liberalism is inherently not about principles. It's not about getting people better or getting them to feel better or getting them health care. It's about controlling the health care system, even if people die in the process. So Anthem left. So there's this interesting piece in the journal about Medicaid and the expansion of Medicaid. And I thought, again, in conjunction with this universal basic income topic that keeps coming up, because it's this idea that we should give every American a government allowance of like $30,000. This is

why this is such a bad idea. The Medicaid piece talks about how Medicaid was initially intended, Joe, for poor women and children, but it is now expanded into a healthcare quote safety net for people who can make up to, gosh, $80,000, $90,000 a year under Obamacare. This is what worries me about this universal basic income. It's going to start as a $30,000, say, salary from the government for potentially every American out there. And what's going to happen, Joe? It's going to turn into $40, and inflation-adjusted dollars and 60. And soon it'll be complete bankruptcy. We'll be asking, well, if Dan Bongino makes $100,000 a year, then why doesn't Joey Bag of Donuts get a $100,000 check from the government? I mean, that's not fair,

Joe. That's right. This is what worries me. But there was some interesting, just some facts about this Medicaid, just about the disaster that Medicaid has been. And we're in the piece that I thought I should pass on to you because it's absolutely epidemic of what happens with all government entitlements and will happen with this universal basic income if it happens. So 21 states have moved more than 75% of their beneficiaries to manage care in Medicaid,

Medicaid reform within the states. Meaning, Joe, places like Indiana have set up HSA. So instead of, Joe, instead of, say, Indiana paying your medical bills under Medicaid, so Joe, armor cost is poor, Joe gets Medicaid, Joe goes to the doctor, the state pays. I've told you from the beginning of the show and the beginning of our show starting, the third-party payer systems never work. Third-party payer being the government. You have Joe, you have the doctor, but you have a third-party paying, the government. When the third-party pays, Joe doesn't care about the price because he's not paying. And the doctor doesn't care what he charges because he knows Joe's not paying and he knows the government's paying, so he tries to get whatever he can get because he doesn't have to compete on price.

Now, states are moving away from that. Like I said, 21 states have moved more than 75% of their Medicaid beneficiaries to managed care. Basically, what Indiana does, they set up these health savings accounts where they basically give people money, Joe, and they allow them to control. So, they're kind of a de jure third-party payer, but de facto, not so much. In other words, they give the money to people, so the people are actually paying now. So, now all of a de jure third party payer, but de facto not so much. In other words, they give the money to people. So the people are actually paying now. So now all of a sudden, Joe, Joe Armacost gets cash instead of the government paying directly.

And now Joe's like, well, do I get to keep the change? Yeah. Okay. Now all of a sudden Joe's shopping around like, hey, Dr. Jones. Remember Dr. Jones, like Indiana Jones. He's not afraid of snakes. Hey, Dr. Jones, what do you charge for hip replacement? $5,000.

Hey, Dr. Bag of Donuts, what do you charge? I charge $7,000. Well, I'm going to Dr. Jones because I get to keep the change. All of a sudden, we have this crazy thing, Joe, called competition. Why do I bring this up? Joe, the left is going wild. They are losing their minds over this because they see the potential for this taking hold nationwide, and they are deathly afraid of free market forces and competition. Folks, mark my words, this is the real fight going on right now with Obamacare. The left doesn't care

about the exchanges. The left doesn't care about your healthcare. The left is afraid that if Obamacare's reform and these Medicaid changes take hold, Joe, and when they take hold, the competition starts to work and people see the power of choice. Wow, I'm getting cash and I can compete now for services and I get to keep the change. They're afraid that it will show the broken nature and economic model of government third party payers. Folks, I'm telling you this is true because the left is smarter than you give them credit for and they're afraid that it'll all be exposed as a sham because they're afraid when people start to see that, like, wait, I can get money and then compete on my own.

And well, why am I giving the money to the government in the first place? Ah, makes sense. Folks, this is why the government will never give up control of Social Security, ever. They will never allow you to set up a personal account because when they set up a personal account, people will start to realize, again, why am I sending the money to the government in the first place to set up a personal account for me when I could do it myself? That happened in Chile. They know people will see the faulty nature

of third-party payer models. It's critical you understand this. That's why Medicaid, they are fighting so brutally to keep, just so I'm clear on this, to keep the third-party payer model and fight this HSA thing. They don't want you to have the cash. And by the way, one more thing about this Medicaid.

I saw an interesting number in there. There are 600,000 people with brain disorders, mental disabilities, people who are seriously unable to care for themselves on waiting lists for Medicaid, waiting behind able-bodied people taking money from the government now for their health insurance. That's really a disgrace. Remember what I told you about the handicapped parking spots? Handicapped parking spots are for people who are legitimately handicapped. When we give them to everyone who suffers, people who are handicapped because they can

never get a space. That's what's happening with Medicaid and this grotesque expansion of government. All right. Don't miss tomorrow's show. There's a piece I wanted to get to on Cato about this tax scam, which is fantastic, by the way. There's some real zingers in this. There's a piece I read about the corporate tax hike and how the CBO is totally, completely,

forget what the CBO says ever, how a CBO report on tax hikes and tax cuts actually discredits itself. It's an awesome piece. You're not going to want to miss it. All right, folks. I'll see you all tomorrow. You just heard the Dan Bongino Show. Get more of Dan online anytime at conservativereview.com. All right, folks, I'll see you all tomorrow.