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Aug. 29, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:29
August 29, 2005, Monday, Hour #2
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I don't know.
We're just going to wait and see.
I I'm I'm watching some of this video coverage, and it's old now.
But we don't we know we're not really seeing a whole lot of the uh damage because they're just now in certain parts able to get in there uh with a camera crews and uh get satellite uplinks.
So we'll just have to wait and see.
But I'm seeing a lot of recycled video from even last night early this morning.
Greetings, welcome back, folks.
Great to have you with us.
The Rush Limbaugh program here off and running, kicking off a brand new week of broadcast excellence.
And I've turned on the ditto cam.
It's uh gonna be on for the remainder of the program.
If you want to be joined uh join us today, if you want to join us, telephone numbers 800-282-2882.
The uh email address is rush at EIB net.com.
Uh I move on to other items here in the news.
Lots of stuff is going out there, folks, and I would be remiss if I if I did not uh uh uh explore some of this with you.
If you want continued hurricane coverage uh nonstop 24-7, it's all that's gonna be on the cable networks, I think, for the next couple of days.
And uh we don't have anybody there, so I can't give you any reporting from on scene.
Again, I just I just want to stress uh my points in the previous hour.
Despite how bad it was, I refuse to believe that it's going to be as bad as all the doom and gloom reporting was yesterday afternoon or last night.
For example, they said New Orleans is going to be uninhabitable for six months, gonna be underwater for six months, so levees, everything else are gonna crash, they don't have a chance.
Mississippi River and Lake Ponchatran gonna flood the city and it's over.
A million people could end up homeless.
Tens of thousands could die.
I mean, it was a never-ending stream of doom and gloom.
And I just I uh it's bad.
There's no question it's bad.
I just was struck by the doom and gloom of the reporting.
Uh and this is America.
These things happen all the time.
The disasters constantly occurring in this country.
And we roll our sleeves up and we rebuild.
It's what we do.
We're Americans.
We do it not only here, we do it around the world.
I doubt that we're gonna get a whole lot of help from Iran here to rebuild, even though we rebuilt the city of Kum when it was destroyed by an earthquake, or we helped.
We're not gonna get any help from Bande Aceh or any of these other places at Sri Lanka that was destroyed by the tsunami, and we don't need it.
You know, we are we we we're we're happy to help out around the world, but we can certainly uh rebuild ourselves, and it's uh well, it's sad and it's depressing and it's devastating for the people directly affected by this.
Uh it will get better.
Uh we'll all band together, and this'll uh this will end up you you wait and see the amount of volunteers that'll show up.
Uh the number of people that'll go down there on their own just to help out join a construction crew or what have you.
Mark my words, what always happens after these circumstances, and it's one of the reasons that uh you can be proud that you are an American, one of the many multitudinal reasons uh that uh that you're should be proud you're an American.
I mentioned in the first hour, let me get this sound bite, Charles Wrangle.
Uh it was did an interview on uh New York One television uh and over the weekend.
When was it?
Friday night, and uh he he just he said really Rumsfeld's the guy running the country, not Cheney, and not uh and not Bush.
Uh and he really tore into Cheney, and we have a little montage.
This is internet quality of what uh Congressman Wrangle said.
Why do you think people are spending so much time praying for President Bush's health?
Yeah, if he ever leaves and Cheney's in charge, it's not very much to pull together for the rest of our nation.
He got heart disease, but the disease is not restricted just to that part of his body.
I mean, he grunts a lot, so you never really know what he's thinking.
Well, Wrangle can feel safe making these comments because they're being made in the Liberal Enclave of New York.
Uh but you know, I this is right, I just I laugh and I grow weary of hearing uh how mean-spirited and cruel the Republicans are.
This is just vile filth uh that uh is uttered there by Congressman Wrangle, and I doubt that you're gonna see this uh in in too many places, especially with the curr hurricane news.
I doubt you're gonna hear uh about it, and I wanted to share uh share it with you.
Now carrying on the same theme of doom and gloom, the doom and gloom reporting that happened all day yesterday and all night last night uh with the approaching hurricane.
I have here an AP story from yesterday that is One, two, three pages.
Three pages of doom and gloom.
It is three pages of defeatism.
Three pages of we are finished as a country.
We don't have a prayer.
And it's all your fault because you're borrowing too much and you're greedy and you're selfish and you want everything and you want it now where the people of the rest of the world don't have these same sort of capitalistic desires.
Let me share with you a portion of this.
You owe 145,000.
And the bill is rising every day.
That's how much it would cost every American man, woman, and child to pay the tab for the long-term promises the U.S. government has made to creditors, retirees, veterans, and the poor.
Folks, that's not even half the list.
Long-term promises the U.S. government has made to creditors, retirees, veterans, and the poor.
Okay, so if every American, man, woman, and child, has an accrued debt of $145,000 and it's rising.
What is the what what is the philosophy that is the foundation for this type of behavior?
Is it not socialism?
Is it not this notion the federal government can take care of everybody and should?
Isn't that what this and is are we now learning that even in the most prosperous nation in the history of the earth, it's hard to maintain?
That it is hard to provide these things.
And it's not even taking into account credit card bills and mortgages, all the debt that we've racked up personally.
Savings, the average American puts away barely one dollar of every $100 earned.
Well, what about 401ks?
What about Keel plans?
There are people who have enforced savings plans.
They may just not be a passbook savings accounts.
Uh, but our savings rate, yeah, it could be better.
A lot of things could be better, but to say it doesn't exist, it's not to the tune of a dollar every hundred earned, may be a bit of a stretch.
Our profligate ways at home are mirrored in Washington and in the global marketplace.
Whereas a society, America spends 1.9 billion dollars more a day on imported clothes and cars and gadgets than the entire rest of the world spends on its goods and services.
So you see, we are greedy, we are consuming vultures.
The rest of the world's very reasonable, the rest of the world's very responsible, but we are greedy.
We spend $1.9 billion more every day on imported clothes, cars, and gadgets.
We're just we're just greedy.
We're just selfish.
We just have to have it all right now.
And a new AP poll finds that barely a third of Americans would cut spending to reduce the federal deficit, and even fewer would raise taxes.
It's because they know you don't have to raise taxes to raise revenue.
We've just proven it in the last six months.
Well, last three years with the uh Bush tax cuts.
Now, if those figures seem out of whack to you, says the AP, they seem to cut against the way you learn to handle money.
If they seem like a recipe for a national economic nightmare, well, you're not alone.
So if the hurricane didn't get you, the economy's gonna get you.
If the hurricane didn't get you, if you don't live in New Orleans or Louisiana or Mississippi, and you think you're out of the woods, you aren't, because your own country is getting ready to screw you.
Your own country and its own system of capitalism has betrayed you.
It's given you a false sense of well-being and prosperity.
You actually are living on borrowed time and borrowed money, and you have nothing substantive underneath.
You're no different than a third-world beggar, and it's gonna come back to bite you, and the AP's happy about it.
A chorus of economists, government officials, and elected leaders read experts, both conservative and liberal, is warning that America's non-stop borrowing has put the nation on the road to a major fiscal disaster, one that could unleash plummeting home values, rocketing interest rates, lost jobs, stagnating wages, and threats to government services ranging from health care to law enforce.
We are all dead.
We are all gonna be living in the jungle.
It's only a matter of time.
A major fiscal disaster.
Can I tell you, folks, I am 54 years old.
My whole life, I have been hearing about the dreaded national debt.
I have been hearing for certain years of my whole life about the dreaded budget deficit.
When there's a Republican in Office, that budget deficit is a monster, and it's going to wipe us out.
And I've heard about the housing bubble.
And I've heard that there are all kinds of you people going out and buying properties and not living in them and trying to flip them and make big money, and you're going to get caught short because you're creating a bubble.
You're out there buying all these things that you don't even need, and you're just doing it to make money, and that's not what you should be doing.
And you're going to get punished for making money.
You're going to get punished for being greedy.
You're going to get you're taking a risk.
We all take risks.
This country's been about risk, and some people lose it all.
I know three people in my life who have lost fortunes of at least 40 million dollars twice and re-earned them.
They just start over.
Lots of people lose a lot.
It's called risk.
It's called capitalism.
And this has been going on my whole life.
I've been hearing about the debt load my whole life.
I've been hearing about how it's getting ready to crack.
It's getting ready to go over the edge.
We can't support it.
I'm 54 years old, and I've been hearing this doom and gloom every so often.
It's not so much predictable, but I have been here.
I'm not saying it's not a problem.
I'm not saying it's not something that has to be dealt with, but to say that it's going to destroy us.
I just get so sick and tired of being exposed to people who want us destroyed, either want us destroyed in Iraq, or they want us destroyed economically.
They want us destroyed as a superpower.
They don't want us to be the United States of America for whatever perverted reason they have, and it just sort of bums me out and pees me off, if you understand my French.
I mean, halfway through the first page of three pages of this stuff in this AP story.
Of course, Greenspan threw some gasoline on this fire when he echoed these worries just last week, warning the federal budget deficit hampered the nation's ability to absorb possible shocks from the trade deficit and the housing boom, and he criticized the nation's hesitancy to face up to the difficult choice that'll be required to resolve our looming fiscal problems.
The epidemic of American indebtedness runs from home to government to a global marketplace.
To examine it, let's start at home.
Americans used to save, but none anymore.
Back in the 50s, a generation of Americans who had survived the depression and second world war saved roughly 8% of their incomes.
The savings rate rose and fell slightly over the decades.
It went as high as 11% and as low as seven.
Let me tell you why this is.
There's two reasons for this.
And the illusion here to the Great Depression is crucial.
The whole time I was growing up, my parents and my grandparents lived through my grandparents' World War I and World War II and the Great Depression.
My parents lived through the depression of World War II.
And those were the formative experiences of their lives.
And they gave me advice every day about how to get a job, how to keep a job, take any job you can get, save everything you make because it had been affected.
They had been personally affected by it.
I said to them, as I'm growing up, you know, I appreciate all these horror stories, but I can't relate.
It hasn't happened to me.
These kinds of things, you have built mom and dad quite a prosperous world for your kids.
And you won World War II for your kids, and you're on the way to beating the Russians in a cold war for your kids.
I mean, you've set up a pretty prosperous world in the meeting at the same time.
With the end of World War II and the ascendancy of liberalism in this country came the entitlement mentality and the entitlement state.
What are people supposed to do when half the country's politicians, if not more, are running around promising to take care of them from cradle to grave?
Why should they save anything when they believe the government is going to bail them out of any crisis or problem that they've got?
There wasn't such a thing during the depression.
There wasn't such a thing during World War I or World War II.
Social Security had not really kicked in because the intended recipients hadn't yet passed away.
So there wasn't really this entitlement system that was in place.
It's really great here for all these people in the media and all these big-time experts to run around and whine and moan and wring their hands about the fact that nobody's saving any money.
Well, why in the why in the world should people save money when they're being told every day that savings don't count, making sure the right politicians are in office to protect you and bail you out is what counts.
Quick timeout.
I got more on this, but I have to take a break.
Stay with us.
Hi, welcome back.
Great to have you.
El Rush Ball, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
America's truth detector and the doctor of democracy.
You know, we're going to talk about debt.
And we're going to talk about how ruinous it is and how potentially devastating it is.
How let's talk about all the debt the rest of the world owes us, and why don't we collect it?
And let's talk about all the debt that others have created for themselves by investing in this country.
And let's talk about if we're if if if we're going to have economists and all these other experts out there who probably have theirs, they probably got their lives set, their retirements already.
So they sit around and talk about everybody else.
What idiot would open a pass book savings account today with the interest rate you're going to get at 2%.
What idiot would do that.
Most people aren't.
They're putting the money in their 401ks.
Some people are investing in real estate as a hedge from the fluctuations of the stock market.
Dirt is dirt, and there's only so much of it.
There may even be less of it in certain parts of the country as we've seen now because of the hurricane, which makes it even more valuable.
And the experts say, well, it's it's a mistake to put your your your investment portfolio in real estate, Mr. Lindball.
Why is that?
Well, because if the primary asset you have is your house, it's only worth anything if you sell it.
Yeah, well, you can if you have to.
I mean, you if you have to, you can sell it.
And then if you have to, you can buy something else somewhere that's not as expensive, so you can make some money on it.
Chances are you're gonna flip it and make some money anyway, because real estate values are going pretty well.
That's shouldn't be investing in real estate.
We're gonna cause a housing bubble.
Oh, there's all no matter what people do, you're gonna have the doom and bloomers risk.
You're doing the wrong thing, it's gonna crash and burn, it's wrong time to do this.
All saving is a risk.
If you invest in the stock market, that's a risk.
If you invest in real estate, that's a risk.
Put a savings account, passbook savings, it's absolute stupid.
It's not even a risk.
That's just stupid.
Who would do that with the interest rates as low as they've been?
And to sit here amidst all this and whine and moan about it to me is just is just over the top.
And then let me go to page two of this.
I see people younger than me with comparable jobs that drive new cars and have a boat and mortgage and things, says a person who responded to the AP poll.
And I just wonder about their debt.
Hey, worry about yourself, pal.
This business of comparing yourself to somebody else is a recipe for doom and gloom.
You're gonna drive through some neighborhood where the people have more than you do, and what do you tell yourself?
Well, I'd be there too if I were that in debt.
No, probably not.
You probably wouldn't be there if all you were is in debt.
If you worked a little harder, had a higher paying job, you know, the recipes are out there if you want to live in that neighborhood.
You're gonna go drive through the neighborhood and feel bad because you don't have what the other that neighborhood has, and you just sway yourself, well, they're all in debt.
They're just totally.
So we're we're preaching here, class envy.
We're talking about about class and we're actually promoting it in this story.
And then, and then this guy, Joe, it's actually a woman, uh name is Joe uh, I guess you pronounce this Canneline, it's C-A-N-O-L-N.
She it's a she.
She's social worker in Statenville, Georgia.
So it seems like with the younger generation, they just want to have it, have now what it took us years to get.
Uh guess what?
That happens.
It happens with every generation.
I was talking to a friend of mine whose daughter, uh starting her final year in high school this year.
And my friend was lamenting that she's having to drive an old Volvo to school.
Her car's an old Volvo.
And I said, Well, what what was the first car your parents gave you?
Well, my parents didn't give me a car.
I buy my first same thing with me.
I had to buy my first car.
So now we're gonna sit around and complain about the country because high school kids are being given cars by their parents.
It happens.
Everybody wants better for their kids than they had.
There's more prosperity today.
Uh the I I wanted it sooner than my parents had it.
I looked at my dad at 40 and it says as oh, he's set for life, and that's it.
I wanted before that, and I stra I strive to get it.
I didn't, but I strive to.
Everybody wants it as quickly as they can.
It's the expectation that you are that you are owed it that's the problem.
When you run around and think you deserve just because you get out of college, that house in a great neighborhood, that's the problem.
Not that you want it, not that you're willing to work for it, but that somehow it's owed to you.
That's where the problem arises.
But then this this Joe Cannon social worker even adds this.
She sees echoes in the rise of obesity, A pervasive I want it now attitude, no matter what the consequences.
To her, debt is a symptom of disease and one that's spreading.
So debt is no different than obesity.
Obesity is the expectation of having it now, wanting it now with no discipline whatsoever.
Getting fat and being obese is no different than getting in debt and being at risk that way.
I'm still only one and a half pages through the three pages of doom and gloom.
And I'm going to suspend this.
I've done enough.
You get the drift here.
This is our glorious AP yesterday amidst all the doom and gloom of the whole hurricane procasts and uh and so forth.
Enough is enough here, you know.
Uh, but there is a companion story to this in the Washington Post today that's just too delicious to ignore, and I will treat you to that when we come back.
I know.
Thanks and welcome back.
Great to have you with us.
Having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
Okay, so the hurricane, doom and gloom.
It's all over.
It's gonna be destroyed.
Uh uh New Orleans going to be underwater for six months, uninhabitable.
Toxis toxous fumes in the air.
Toxic fumes in the air, along with uh uh horrible water.
It was just it was just over the top.
And I just shared with you some similar over the top doom and gloom economic reporting.
Now, the PS that resistance can be found today in the uh Washington Post, a story by Jonathan Weisman.
Measuring the economy may not be as simple as one, two, three.
Here we are in the midst of a roaring economy, economy that is roaring back even with the high uh fuel prices.
And the Libs don't like it.
So all of a sudden now we've got to change the definition of a good economy.
That's what this story is.
The Census Bureau tomorrow released the latest statistics on poverty in the United States, the income level of an average household, and the number of Americans still lacking health insurance.
Don't believe the numbers.
Right there, the Washington Post says the Census Bureau is going to lie, or that the lumbers are misleading.
A growing chorus of experts and politicians is raising questions about the data that frame Americans' understanding of their nation's well-being, from poverty levels to health insurance, inflation to personal savings, widely accepted statistics are overstating some problems and understating others, miscounting people and sending policymakers down blind alleys.
And guess who the first quoted source is?
Noted Clintonista, Rom Emanuel, who is now a congressman from Illinois.
Rom Emanuel says we're getting at best an impressionistic sense of what's going on in the economy.
Major policy decisions are being made based on data that is inadequate to the task.
This seemingly technical problem has real world consequences, allocating federal assistance to some who don't need it while cutting off others who do, raising the costs of programs like Social Security or pushing policies for problems that may not exist.
For example, since poverty levels are not adjusted for regional cost of living, the working poor inexpensive urban centers like Washington are routinely excluded from federal programs because their income lifts them above the official poverty line.
In a study to be released Thursday, the Liberal Economic Policy Institute estimates that a family like uh uh Michelle Bills, 42, working full-time in the dining hall of the Washington charitable group, so others might eat.
She earns eight bucks an hour to support herself and her 17-year-old daughter.
This month, she was told she's no longer eligible for $225 in food stamps.
Because her annual income is $153 higher than the threshold for a family of two.
So the Liberal Economic Policy Institute estimates that a family like this, with one parent and one child, requires an ad an annual income of 47,460 to meet its basic needs in Washington.
The family in Fayetteville, Arkansas would need 24,096.
Um, and perhaps no statistic has been more uh critical and has more critics than the poverty rate, which in 2003 stood at twelve and a half percent, the latest census data available.
University of Chicago economist Robert Michael, who chaired a National Academy of Sciences panel tasked to update poverty stats a decade ago, uh, called the uh the figure wildly unrealistic.
So uh what we have here is the Libs hellbent on redefining poverty and a number of other things for the express purpose of making everybody think the economy and people in this country are very much worse off than they are.
And I will guarantee you this also a part of this is since we've got liberals being quoted from Rahm Emanuel to the uh uh uh you know the EPS, the uh economic pol EPI, economic policy institute, I will guarantee you that the thrust of this uh report is all about making sure we have higher taxes and more government.
And and the the point of this is to try to it all leading up to the 2006 and the 2008 elections and trying to nullify the advantage that a roaring economy will give incumbent Republicans.
You know, so and if this if this is such a hot idea, when was the last time the Liberals said the economy was roaring?
It was during the nineties with Clinton, right?
Well, why not do all this research then?
Why not why not why not do all this necessary work?
Why not elevate the poverty line?
Why not do all these things during the Clinton years?
Because they didn't want to make that economy look bad.
They didn't want to make that economy look like it was in any pain or suffering, nor the people in a country.
They didn't want other than the ones the liberals specifically targeted for specific programs.
So this is all part of a coordinated effort here to change the way you look at the economy by dragging it's it's it's the way the Democrats used to conduct hearings on any issue on Capitol Hill.
If they were doing an issue on the mating habits of the Australian rabbit bat, they'd bring in a bunch of rabid bats and they would point out how they're having all kinds of problems mating, and we got to do something about this.
Are they doing something on health care, they would drag in an endless parade of people that don't have any that look like they just came out of a war zone uh to try to gin up sympathy.
Same thing here.
Uh they are trying to create the notion with experts and politicians.
This economy really isn't that good.
We got to change the way we define poverty.
Anything under 45,000, poverty in America today, all for political advantage.
Just giving you a heads up on this, folks.
Keep a sharp eye.
Donald and Valley Stream, New York, you're next on the program.
Welcome, sir.
Get us, Russ.
How are you?
Fine, sir.
Never better.
Thank you.
Thank goodness that you're there.
I just want to know, I just want you to know I say that every day.
I appreciate that very much.
Thank you.
You're very welcome.
Uh, just want to bring up the fact that debt is really what drives our economy.
If if we didn't have debt in this country, we wouldn't have mortgage brokers and people giving car loans and uh anything else out there.
You know, credit cards being able to have people buy products that enable people to be employed selling those products.
Debt is actually what drives the economy.
It employs millions of people.
And if we have it where we had to just pay cash for everything, then things would not get bought.
Imagine if you had to buy a 400,000 dollar house and had to pay for it cash and not be able to get a mortgage.
Well, it wouldn't be happening, would it?
Uh our housing market wouldn't be what it is.
Hell, half the people that have televisions wouldn't have them if they had to pay cash.
That is exactly right.
And not only that, but that might be a better deal because then we'd be less negative in the country, fewer people watching the news.
That's probably true.
Uh my point also is that most of the people in this country are running a deficit, just like the federal government.
If you take a person's earnings and you subtract short-term and long-term debt from their annual earnings, you end up with a deficit, which is what the country has.
And the federal deficit that we have today is actually running at a much lower interest rate than it was years ago.
Oh, I know.
It's not nearly uh you can you if you look at it at a percentage of GDP or the way you just expressed it, it's not nearly the uh the slog on the economy that uh political opponents of the president want you to believe.
But you know, your your example about a home, this is a this is a good thing.
It goes back to something I said in the last half hour.
I mean, here we bellyache and moan that people don't save enough money, and at the same time, we have created this entitlement mentality among so many Americans that they don't think it matters that they have no savings because the government's gonna bail them out.
The government health care or whatever it might be, uh unemployment compensation, you name it.
Your example of a home.
Um, when people go in and and try to get a loan for a house, there's a formula, is there not, that says you can afford a Payment or a house that is what three times your income.
Or some such thing, whatever it is, right?
So if that's the case, the the the whole the whole concept of debt is being promoted at the consumer level.
Well, yeah, you can you you can you can absorb this.
I mean, you you can certainly buy that $400,000 house here on a hundred thousand dollar income because the way you're good, payment.
So people are out there buying monthly payments, not really houses and so forth and and and and products.
So, you know, your example is well is well is well stated.
But the thing that gets me is it's it's it's it's all good and well here to start whining and moaning about debt, but the same people doing it are the ones who've encouraged it all these years.
That's exactly true.
And the higher the income that you have, the higher the debt limit you can withstand, which is the same thing as the GDP raises in the country, the higher the debt limit the country can handle.
And a hundred million dollars at eight percent, you can handle two hundred million dollars at four percent in interest.
One big difference, though, between the average American household and the government, and that is the government can just print more money or go out and raise taxes and collect more money on a whim to handle whatever its needs are, but you and I can't do that.
No, but my kids will not pay off my debt.
My kids and my grandkids will not pay off my debt.
Well, explain that because uh a lot of experts I'm not gonna pass my debt on to my kids.
I'm paying my mortgage payment, but my kids aren't gonna end up paying my mortgage if I pass away.
Yes, I have insurance and things like that that will cover things, but my kids aren't gonna pay for it.
So you're saying your estate will pay for it.
Yeah, my estate will pay for it, exactly.
Yeah, it may come out of what maybe what they might end up getting from the insurance, but that's not their money.
They're not gonna have to work to pay off my debt.
Well, I see what you're saying.
Yeah.
Which is what the government tells everybody everybody's gonna be doing out there, working to pay off the debt.
Oh, look, I can remember back in the 80s.
Sam Donaldson bemoaning the huge party that we all ran up with Reagan's tax cuts, and our children and grandchildren are gonna have to pay the due bill as soon as Reagan left office.
This is a constant refrain.
That's why I said earlier, I am 54 years old.
I have heard all of this.
I have heard, I have heard these to one degree or another.
I've heard the warning bells, I've heard the panic signals.
I've read the doom and gloom, and I look around and I and I see the country magically surviving.
We serve the Japanese, we're buying America.
Remember that?
When they bought the Rockefeller Trust, and then there were everybody was buying Japanese cars, and Japanese were gonna take over the country.
It was horrible.
None of these things happened.
None of these, none of these financial crises uh actually have in the meantime, the real crises that we do face, immigration and national security and so forth, you don't hear the same degree of warning uh bells from the same experts.
Uh and I find the timing of all this and all of these stories, folks, all these doom and gloom stories on the economy and your future, you're supposed to read these stories.
Oh my god, I'm dead, I'm doomed, I don't have a prayer.
I mean, even if I keep my job, I don't have a chance.
Uh what are we here?
Just a little over a year from the 2006 elections.
I'm telling you, folks, the left and their willing accomplices in the media will politicize anything for political gain here.
And while there is an element of truth in all this, too much debt is bad.
There are limits, of course, that you can you can surpass and and put yourself at risk.
But but the the systemic failure of the country's financial structure that they are trying to create in your mind is a myth.
And I hope you don't fall prey to it.
It's because it's all about the upcoming election.
A quick timeout, we'll be back after this.
Stay with us.
Stay with us.
I don't believe this.
Listen to this.
This is from the uh the Daily Mail in the UK.
A secondary school is going to allow pupils, students, for those of you in uh Rio Linda, to swear at teachers, including the F-word, as long as they don't do so more than five times in a lesson.
A running tally of how many times the F-word has been used will be kept on the board.
If a class goes over the limit, they will be spoken to at the end of the lesson.
The astonishing Policy, which the school says will improve the behavior of pupils, was condemned by parents' groups and members of parliament yesterday.
They warned it would backfire.
Parents were advised of the plan, which comes into effect when the term starts next week, and a letter from the Weavers School in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire.
Should children be removed from parents who are loving but not clever enough to raise them.
They're doing all kinds of questions and polls on this story.
I don't believe this.
There's too much parody and satire going on out there.
So a class, a gl like 30 people, 30 kids, can use the F-word a maximum five times in each lesson.
After that, it becomes a problem.
Keith in Jackson, Jacksonville, Florida.
Welcome, sir.
Nice to have you on the EIB network.
Hi, Rush.
Warm tropical megadiddos from Jacksonville, Florida.
Thank you, sir.
Um, I had a question for you.
Yeah.
Uh, how do the liberals who run the AP and are saying that we are on the brink of financial collapse as a nation and finger point telling us we need to do something to fix it now?
How do they rectify that position with the congressional liberals who say that their pride and joy Social Security will remain solid for the next 20 years when it's on the brink of uh bankruptcy and won't let us do anything to fix it.
I've got an even better question and that.
That's a good question.
But of course I'm host, so I have a better question than even that.
What's the thrust of that whole AP story?
We're not saving enough.
Americans just don't save.
We spend it all.
We're too greedy.
We have to have it now.
And we're not planning for a rainy day.
Okay, here comes a social security reform plan that allows you to take four percent, a measly four percent of your payroll deduction and sock it away in a social security account that's gonna gain more money and produce more income than anything in the federal system, and we can't do that, it's too risky.
The same people who make their fortunes on Wall Street, who invest their fortunes on Wall Street, say 4% of your income on Wall Street's too risky, and it's only going to make the people that we employ, the people we've been rich.
So yet great question.
Don't hit me with this business the American people don't save enough.
Don't tell me the American people are not planning for the raining day when you won't even give them a chance to with the forced savings you take from them and let them put that money in an actual account that's gonna grow and be something by the time they retire.
That is a good question.
And it points out the fallacy of the whole thinking.
But I'd like to save.
How about let me save 4% of my Social Security and invest it in my own account?
And I can't touch it till I retire and bam, I'll have a lot more than with social security.
No, can't touch Social Security.
Why not?
Well, a legacy, FDR.
Yeah, it's the one federal program.
It's been around for 70 years, and we can't touch it, and we can't change it.
The space shuttle's been around for 30, and it's outdated.
We gotta change that.
And we gotta change, we gotta change AFDC, and we gotta change welfare.
We gotta we can't change Social Security.
And even though it would improve the savings situation.
And you know why?
Because the money would be taken away from government.
And that just isn't gonna be allowed to happen.
Michael Norfolk, Virginia, your next.
Welcome, sir.
Great to have you with us.
I already know what the first law in Rush Limbaugh's textbook on personal finance is going to be.
The law is gonna be this.
Thou shalt not seek to live at the level of your parents immediately.
You know, uh, Rush, uh most Americans graduate from high school having never had a course in personal finance.
They go to college where they are immediately presented with credit credit cards and enticed to go ahead and fill them up.
What do you do about that, Rush?
Well, I uh that's that to me is a parent's job.
If a parent sets a kid up to fail that way, that's the parents' problem.
It's not, it's not the rest of our responsibility to bail the kid out.
You know, if if uh college courses, if high school courses on personal finance, I don't know.
That's not what wouldn't be the first chapter of my book about raising a kid.
The first chapter in my book on raising a kid would be the value of spanking.
We'll be back right after this.
Stay with me.
you I'll tell you something else.
If the government, if the government wants to encourage savings, get rid of the tax on whatever you earn.
Get rid of the Get rid of the tax on gains.
Just get rid of it.
If you want to encourage people to save their money and have it pay off, there's a lot that government does to discourage saving is my point, including standing in the way of responsible reforms of antiquated programs like Social Security.
We will be back.
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