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July 3, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:10
July 3, 2006, Monday, Hour #3
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Thanks, Johnny Donovan.
The Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
There's never a final exam, but we are tested every day.
I am a fellow student, Paul W. Smith.
And Rush will be here, best of Rush, tomorrow for the 4th of July, and then in person, live in the chair the day after.
We have the United States Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez with us.
We were speaking in the last hour about a variety of issues.
Want to give a final thought here on immigration 230 years after the signing of our Declaration of Independence.
We look in the mirror.
What are we seeing as Americans?
Mr. Attorney General, what are you seeing when you look in the mirror as an American today?
Well, I'm seeing some very proud Americans with very different backgrounds, different cultures, but nonetheless still the same commitment and appreciation for the greatness of our wonderful country.
That is the history and tradition of our country.
We've always been a country with welcoming arms, open arms.
But we've also been a country that respects the rule of law, that laws are on the books.
Those laws should be respected.
We, of course, now live in a post-9-11 world where we have to know who's in our country and why.
And we believe that what the President has outlined in terms of the comprehensive immigration legislative package achieves, all of that is consistent with all of that.
And so we're optimistic, we remain optimistic that this year the Congress will pass comprehensive immigration legislation that the President can sign this year.
It's important for the next street of our country, Paul, and that's why the President continues to focus on it.
There's no question.
My grandparents came from another country.
They went through Ellis Island.
Your family came from another country.
But I think we share the fact that we both did this, our families did it legally.
And there's still a great deal of concern that what the President has suggested is though it may be a path to citizenship, it's also a path to amnesty and to lawbreakers and 11 million or more who are here illegally that nobody's come up with a really good answer on how to deal with that yet, or so it would seem.
Well, you know, we've got to be realistic here.
I mean, let's get real.
You have 11 or 12 million people that are here.
They're not just going to get up and move out of the country.
We're not going to be able to do that.
We don't have the capacity to do that.
Quite frankly, I'm not sure we would want to do that.
Well, there are a lot of companies that don't want that to happen.
Exactly.
And so we've got to have a way of dealing with them.
I think it is short-sighted to say, let's just deal with border security now, and then we'll worry about the 11 or 12 million people later.
Well, you know, the problem continues to get worse with each passing day.
And we need to deal with all of it at one time.
I think the American people expect us to deal with it at one time.
And again, dealing with the 11 or 12 million people is part of our efforts to secure our borders, to know who's in this country, to know where they're at.
And I think that's very, very important.
And again, I think it's short-sighted not to focus on these individuals that are here already in this country.
And that's what a lot of people are focusing on and are concerned about and want to be sure that however we deal with this fairly, that we also don't let people slide through who have broken the law.
It's a security issue.
It's what's right.
As you said, we're a country of laws and people who have slipped by or slipped under the law.
Well, no one is suggesting, certainly the President is not suggesting, that someone who's broken the law should be rewarded with citizenship.
I mean, like anyone who doesn't follow the rules, there are consequences that should flow from that.
And the President is suggesting that to the extent that someone has come into our country illegally, and if they do want to pursue a path to citizenship, there are consequences.
There are steps and measures that have to be taken in order to sort of repay their debt back to society for what they've done.
So this notion that somehow this is all about amnesty, I just fundamentally disagree with that.
All right, Mr. Attorney General, I'm glad we had more time with you this time around.
We do appreciate you getting back with us here on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Thanks, Paul.
U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, I'm Paul W. Smith in for Rush, and we did have to carry that over just a bit because last time he was on, actually it was seems like longer ago, but it was last Monday.
They were having their flooding and their power outages, and he was catching the plane to Egypt, and there was an awful lot going on.
We wanted to give him another chance to flesh out some of the answers that he had with some of the questions that we had regarding various issues of the day.
One of the stories that gets all this attention is what the New York Times has revealed, and we say these are secrets that should not be revealed.
There's actually a book called The 1% Doctrine, Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9-11.
And frankly, winner of the Piolitsha Prize, author of The Price of Loyalty, George W. Bush, The White House and the Education of Paul O'Neill, the author Ron Suskin is with us.
And frankly, Ron, it's nice to touch base with you again.
Whoops.
I'm sorry.
I thought Ron was here right there.
This is so we can take some calls right now at 1-800-282-2882, 1-800-282-2882.
I did not understand that in the headphones as we were breaking away from the Attorney General, so let's do it right now.
Bruce has been waiting a long time in Stanford, Wisconsin.
You're on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
I'm Paul W. Smith.
Hello, Bruce.
Hello, Paul.
Have a great Independence Day.
I appreciate the opportunity to get on a national program like this.
Mike.
You have your flag flying?
Yes, sir.
Good.
Both the American flag and the Marine Corps flag.
Good for you.
But what I would like to comment on is what I consider to be the propaganda aspects of our mass media, which fortunately you and Rush and others like you are the opposing force.
Up here, we get a lot of information.
In fact, I think countrywide we get information on the number of deaths, a day-by-day count of the number of bodies that are piling up in Iraq of our soldiers.
But at no time do they seem to ever begin to compare this to the 3,000 or your 3,000 people that were killed on September 11th in one fell swoop.
In addition to that, since it doesn't appear that the count is piling fast enough, they're continuing to add Afghanistan numbers to our numbers here.
I just wondered if you had any comment on that.
No, you know, I get email all the time from proud parents of our fighting men and women, and they always are asking the same thing.
Why don't we get the positive news out there?
What Rush calls the drive-by media, or I call the institutional media, I guess it just doesn't sell papers.
It just doesn't work.
But luckily, Rush does have that kind of information on his show on a regular basis because he talks with people who are just back from Iraq or are there in Iraq from time to time that can fill us in on the positive aspects and the good things that our men and women are doing.
Bruce, I'm glad you brought that up as we go to Dale in Warwick, Rhode Island.
Dale, you're on the Rush Limbaugh show with Paul W. Smith.
Hello, Dale.
Yes.
I just want to make it quick and short because you have to go to commercial, Brett.
I think the New York Times and any other newspaper in this country or any other media outlet should be prosecuted to the fullest because there's a lot of lies on the line, and this is the war that's going to go on for a little bit, not before Election Day or not after Election Day.
Just don't do that again.
And I'm asking attorney Gonzalez and whoever has prosecutor powers to protect our troops in our homeland.
Period.
Well, and you know, Dale, he was a little bit stronger on that than he was a week ago on the possibility of following up on what many people have suggested, that in fact they find out who's leaking these secrets.
And I still don't understand who the New York Times is helping by leaking this information.
They have this great big responsibility to help.
I don't know who they're helping other than the terrorists and harming, possibly, our soldiers on the ground.
We are at war.
It just doesn't appear that the institutional media knows that or accepts that.
Margaret, in Gun Barrel City, you're on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Margaret, hello.
Hello.
Mr. Smith, my question was, how would you respond to the New York Times, their first defense of publishing the financial thing that they're doing, that the government's doing, was to say that, oh, well, the terrorists already, they're smart.
They figured that out.
So, you know, it's no big deal for them to go about it, which means that the American public that they had to tell about it must be a lot stupider than the people over there who are trying to kill us.
You know, I really think anybody who takes the Times is probably in that category, but I don't feel like I belong there.
And I didn't know they were doing it.
I hoped they were doing something like that.
I want our president, I want this administration to do everything they possibly can do to protect us.
They would be derelict in their duty to us if they did not.
And I don't know where the New York Times is coming from in any of this other than trying to embarrass and make this administration look bad.
It appears to be what they live for now.
We continue here with your calls and with guests on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
I'm Paul W. Smith.
Celebrating 230 years of freedom.
Well, one day shy of that.
This is the Rush Limbaugh Show.
I'm Paul W. Smith in for Rush.
Best of Rush tomorrow, then the best.
Rush in person the day after.
The book is The 1% Doctrine Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9-11.
Since there's been so much discussion about what the New York Times has revealed and all of that, you have to point to this book and say, well, Ron has been on top of this sort of stuff for quite some time.
He's the author of the number one New York Times bestseller, The Price of Loyalty, George W. Bush, The White House and the Education of Paul O'Neill, author of a variety of other books.
You read his work in The Wall Street Journal and elsewhere.
And Ron Suskin is on the other end of our line right now.
Ron, happy holiday to you.
Happy holiday to you, Paul.
Last time we talked, you were kind of scratching your head saying, well, you know, this information that's being released is nothing compared to the information you're releasing in your book, but you're not putting yourself in the same position, are you, with the New York Times, where some people think it's a bit treasonous to release this kind of information.
No, no.
You know, the fact is every point of information, every disclosure in my book, we went through a very, very careful vetting process to make sure that this is something that would not advantage our enemies.
And that was the key to what I've got in my book.
Obviously, the Swiss stuff's not in there.
You know, many people have this idea that President Bush is disengaged from all of this and that information is just brought to him and he kind of goes, okay, or whatever.
But you point out in the book his incredible, intense day-to-day involvement.
You know, they say he has gone operational.
The president is deeply involved in the day-to-day.
I mean, he is on the case, and so is the vice president.
What you see in the book, you know, I think the Dallas Morning News had a review this morning.
They had a nice title, A Thriller Rooted in Reality.
You'll see the president and the vice president essentially guiding the ship of state in a daily mission to stop terrorists.
The way your book, The 1% Doctrine, Ron Suskin, got all the attention was the excerpt in Time magazine, which really revealed the untold story of al-Qaeda's plot to attack the subways.
This is the first instance, Paul, the first evidence we have of an actual operational WMD cell for al-Qaeda in the United States.
They came in the fall of 2002.
By early 2003, they were 45 days away from zero hour to conduct a hydrogen cyanide attack in the New York City subways.
And we found out through human intelligence, part of what the book shows is that a lot of the signal intelligence and the electronic stuff that's in the Times story and other areas, it's of increasingly lessened value.
Human intelligence is what's going to win this war.
And we had some here.
A source inside of al-Qaeda, it's a very heartening thing.
And he told us, he said, look, they were ready to go, and Zawahiri, bin Laden's number two, called them off.
Now, we don't know why they called them off, but he did call them off.
We don't, frankly, know where they are now.
They could be still in the country.
Is this your famous source, Ali?
Ali, indeed.
I dub him Ali.
I don't know his name.
Make that clear to everybody.
No one calling me up going to figure out where the devil he is.
But what I do know is that we used him from late 2002 to early 2005, and we decommissioned him essentially because his help might have revealed his identity.
And the fact is, is that what everybody in this counterterrorism world says is that human intelligence is what's going to win this war on terror.
And the way you get it is by making a reasonable case to our enemy.
You know, this guy, Ali, just like other guys we've worked with, frankly, inside of al-Qaeda, you know, they're not that happy.
Some of them are feeling bin Laden's move to attack America was a mistake.
You know, like any organization, time passes or second guessing and disgruntlement.
This is how you basically get someone to turn coat and turn in your direction.
That's how we win it.
Explain to our Rush Limbaugh listeners how this 1% doctrine came about, how it was created by the Vice President.
Yeah, it's really an extraordinary moment.
It's two months after 9-11, Paul.
And the Vice President is being briefed by CIA folks from NSC or there in the situation room in the White House with some harrowing intelligence.
Just a few weeks before 9-11, Pakistani nuclear scientists sat with bin Laden and Zawahiri in Kandahar around a campfire, and they talked about nuclear weapons, how to do it, what the feasibility was.
Vice President is sitting listening to this briefing, and he says two things.
He says, you know, we need to think about these low-probability, high-impact events in a different way.
And by the end of the briefing, he had the different way.
He said, if there's even a 1% chance that WMDs have been given to terrorists, we need to treat it as a certainty, not in our analysis or in the preponderance of evidence, but in our response.
And at that moment, the so-called 1% doctrine, the Cheney Doctrine, the 1% rule, they're different names for it inside of the government, was born.
And it ends up being the guiding principle, the core of the U.S. playbook for foreign policy since 9-11, Iraq, Afghanistan, the war and terror, all of it guided by the Vice President's innovation.
And that kind of sums it up and why we're where we are today.
If there's a 1% chance that al-Qaeda could get its hands on a weapon of mass destruction, and they had several, we need to treat it as a certainty.
Absolutely.
It's a stark look.
The fact is we are up against a historical change here when individual small groups can carry the firepower once reserved for nations.
The whole dance of state-to-state force and diplomacy that we know from diplomats and Talleyrand and Metternich and George Cannon, I mean, those days are ending.
We need to have a response, and they're trying to figure out how exactly to respond in a way that's going to be successful.
All right, a quick chance for a person to, I guess, disagree with the whole premise here.
I'm not exactly sure.
Is it Lena or Lana?
It's Lana.
Lana, you've got Ron Susskin here on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
I'm Paul W. Smith.
Are you upset with something here?
Hi, Paul.
Yes, I forced myself to watch Mr. Susskind on C-SPAN.
It was something at a bookstore in Washington on his book on 626.
And one of the statements he made at the end of his little presentation about the book was, your enemy is the Christian right.
No, I never said that.
Yes, you did.
No, no, no, no.
I said to the folks at Politics and Pros in Washington, D.C., I said, make no mistake, is that there are bookstores filled with true believing Christians across America.
You need to engage them.
Essentially, you need to know them and let them know you to have a real dialogue.
That's what I said to the group.
You said your enemy is the same writing.
You said that.
I'd never say that, Lana, because I don't believe it.
I'd never say that.
Well, it's tough because the rest of us aren't in on this, so I can't help you.
I'm glad you at least had a chance to have your say.
He denies ever saying it.
Thanks, Lana.
Appreciate the call.
Let's go real quick to Rapid City, where we find Don, who is on with Ron Susskin on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Go ahead, Don.
Yeah, Paul, this is Don.
And I feel that my military training clearly defined what treason was.
And I feel that several members of Congress as well as the news media have actively done treasonous acts.
And we should bring them up on charges and fully establish in the courts of law what treason is and what it is not.
Don, let's let him answer before we have to take a quick break here.
Go ahead, Ron.
Well, you know, I'm not sure how you're defining treason, Don.
It sounds like you've got a clear understanding or definition of it.
You know, I think that there are lots of folks in and around the government and the public who are trying to get the facts so they can make informed judgments and figure out, frankly, a way to fight and win this war.
It's going to be one that we're fighting to our grandchildren are around, and we've got to figure out how to fight it and win it.
That's what I find.
All right.
If you can stick around a little longer, we're moving everything along here a little bit, stretching out if we can keep you just a bit longer, Ron.
Ron Suskin.
As long as you want, Paul.
The 1% Doctrine Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies since 9-11, Simon and Schuster, the publisher.
And back to your calls at 1-800-282-2882.
1-800-282-2882.
Right here on your favorite radio station with the Rush Limbaugh Show.
I'm Paul W. Smith.
All right.
We'll wrap up here.
The 1% Doctrine Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies since 9-11.
Ron Suskin is here, and people calling in want to talk with you.
Quick question: What do you think of the latest bin Laden tape?
The latest bin Laden tape?
Yeah.
Well, you know, Bin Laden, I think, is increasingly reduced to a guy who basically sends tapes.
Yeah, we put it to rap music on my morning show in Detroit and actually made it the most interesting tape yet that's been released by Bin Laden.
I recommend that to everybody.
Mocking bin Laden, I think that's a patriotic move, frankly, Paul.
It gives you plenty of material.
No disclosures in the 1% doctrine that compromise our national security?
Not one.
Not one.
I mean, what people find when they read it is that they're actually meeting heroes of this struggle, folks who are often unheralded, but, you know, FBI, CIA, other parts of the government who are out there fighting this global game of cat and mouse.
And the fact is, I'm getting lots of calls from 16-year-olds who said, you know, I want to grow up to be one of those guys.
I think that's in a way what's going to be the key thing for us, is to have kids say that is the way you act heroically in this era.
You get involved and you actually get in the fight.
Let's see what our listeners to the Rush Limbaugh Show are feeling about that.
Linda is in New York City on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
I'm Paul W. Smith.
Linda, you're with Ron Susskin.
Hi, Paul.
Mr. Susskind, you are a liar and a political prostitute.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
What you said yesterday on C-SPAN was not the same thing you're telling the people today.
Is it because you're selling a book?
You shamelessly.
Linda, try to stay calm and just say what it is that you felt he said on C-SPAN.
He portrayed, first of all, President Bush as an idiot.
No, no, no.
Oh, yes, yes.
Yes, yes.
I sometimes poke fun at all kinds of people, and, you know, it's a bookstore, and people are crowded in, and they're getting laughs.
But the fact is that the president and the vice president, as anyone who reads the book knows, are fully engaged in the war on terror.
That's why lots of conservatives, frankly, have embraced the book.
I was on Sean Hannity.
He was saying, look, lots in this book I like, and let's talk about that.
And conservative columnists, too.
The fact is, the book has something kind of for everybody.
There's some stuff liberals like, some stuff conservatives like.
And that's the way it is when you have a book that is full of the facts we've been denied up to now.
All right, let's see what Rich has to say.
Is it Vandalia, Michigan?
Rich?
Vandalia, Michigan.
Hey, thanks.
This is the first time in my life I get the call.
I was infuriated yesterday when I was watching TV and I saw Ron on there and he made comments about Bush that my wife says, why are you listening to that guy?
I was really sickening, and now I'm listening to him today.
I'm even sick more.
He's got two different sides to him.
Ron, we got a number of people who are calling in and saying that.
I didn't see you on C-SPAN.
What happened there?
Well, you know, the fact is that I was on C-SPAN.
I was at a bookstore in Washington.
It's, you know, it's, let's say, say, a progressive crowd, and they were asking questions.
And, you know, it was generally a cheery time.
And the fact is, I said there pretty much what I'm saying now.
You know, this is a battle we need to fight and win.
The book is an essential how-to.
The things we've learned, the things we haven't, the things we need to do going forward.
Well, I never got the impression.
One of the things I did say at the bookstore yesterday is I said we need to think clearly about the dilemma of ends and means.
I'm sure you saw that.
That's my kicker.
That's why I ended that speech.
It happened a couple days ago.
To say we need to be mindful of the fact that sometimes our means are creating more problems than we're solving.
And we need to think clearly about how what we do creates echoes around the world and provides recruiting possibilities for our enemies.
That's one of the things that's really a dangerous thing.
You can understand how our audience on the Rush Limbaugh Show would start to think you're getting into some dangerous territory there, and me too.
How so?
Because you're starting to make it sound like we've brought this upon ourselves somewhere or another.
No, no.
Paul, the point is how do we fight this effectively?
Effectiveness means that you do what's ecessary, but you don't do things that hand weapons to your enemy.
That's the key.
To be effective, but not advantage them by certain things you do.
That's the way you get tactics to be fine-tuned and focused in a way that, frankly, brings victory.
And the whole point about the 1% doctrine is that inside of the government even now, they're thinking they need a better doctrine, one that embraces a broader strategy so that our actions are flowing to some goal in terms of a victory that we can see up ahead.
How do we do that?
We need to win this hearts and minds battle.
At the same time, we need to win the tactical battle, which is a minute-to-minute battle against people who, frankly, are violent, malevolent, heavily armed, and are enemies unlike any enemies we've seen.
Let's get a couple more calls in.
And Snerdley, oh, okay.
Very good.
We're going to take line two here and find out what you're because Mike, Jim, Jack, Ron, and Peter and all the rest are waiting to talk a little bit later.
But is it Peter you're saying, Jay?
All right.
Peter, you get the nod from Bo Snerdley in Kansas City and the final call here for Ron Suskin.
Peter.
Yes, good morning.
Peter, you're on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Are you there?
Fine.
How are you?
Good.
Go ahead, please.
Ron, how are you?
Hi, Peter.
How are you?
Happy 4th of July.
Happy 4th of July to you.
Now, I'm going to say a very unkind thing.
Blood a rip.
That's what America's all about.
You can throw the dart there.
Speak it.
Speak it.
And I'm not politically correct at all.
That's blood or rip.
First of all, you remember David Suskott?
Are you related to him?
Second cousin once removed.
Pardon me?
Second cousin once removed.
Never met the man here, but they tell me we're a distant cousin.
Yes.
I have a problem as a transplanted German who sees things in a different focus from most Americans who are not awake yet to the fact that this country is laden, actually, ensconced too heavily with a certain kind of person, if you know what I'm saying here.
I'm trying to be very politically correct here.
You just said, Peter, that you weren't going to be politically correct in Susan.
Well, maybe I'm cowardly.
Peter, just what kind of person?
If you could sum up your quick question here.
What kind of person are you thinking about?
I'm talking about the ones that run New York, Hollywood.
No, Peter, Peter, I can't press the buttons.
That's the bad thing about working out of another studio.
I would have killed that one a long time ago.
On that unhappy note, the 1% doctrine, deep inside America's pursuit of its enemies since 9-11.
Ron Susskin is the author.
Simon is Schuster, the publisher.
You can pick it up, make your own decisions.
You can either like him or you can dislike them.
And we hear from both sides here on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Paul W. Smith in for Rush.
Stay with us.
As we continue on the Rush Limbaugh Show, I'm Paul W. Smith, taking all pitches, curves, hardballs, fastballs, rather, slow pitches and bloopers, too.
We had a couple of bloopers.
We go from one Ron to another, Ron.
This is Congressman Ron Lewis, has represented Kentucky's 2nd District since first being sworn in Congress, May 26, 1994, home of Fort Knox, Mammoth Cave National Park, the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, and over 50,000 people who depend on agriculture for a living, so they're probably pretty excited about ethanol.
Congressman, nice to have you here with us.
Hey, listen, good to be with you.
Yeah, we've got it all down here.
Well, you know, I'm speaking to you from Detroit, and you know that the big two are trying to push those vehicles that are going to run on ethanol, just trying to get the President of the United States' attention on that one, I guess, on some of the other issues facing the auto industry.
Well, I tell you, we're excited about the opportunity for ethanol.
In fact, there's a new ethanol plant refinery being built not too far from where I live in the 2nd District, and then we have a biodiesel fuel refinery being built in Owensboro, Kentucky, at a soybean mill there.
So we're getting on top of this.
I think that is a real opportunity for us to reach energy independence sooner than later.
One of the big concerns that we have as Congress takes their break, and here we have a Republican-controlled Congress, and they said it was going to be energy week and all these things that were going to happen.
And I think all that has happened is That you were able to get rid of the 25-year ban on most new domestic offshore drilling, but there are a whole bunch of unanswered questions still, Congressman.
Well, and we're still working on that.
We have another energy bill coming down the pike.
But, you know, we just need to set a set a goal.
Just like John Kennedy set a goal to putting a man on the moon in 10 years, we need to set a goal of being energy independent at a date certain time.
And I think with ethanol refineries, we don't need new technology to build ethanol refineries or biodiesel refineries.
In fact, I kid and say here in the 2nd District of Kentucky, we've been making ethanol for a long time, but it's been for personal consumption with the bourbon industry.
But if we put our resources and our energy behind getting these ethanol refineries in place and the biodiesel refineries, the opportunities for renewable fuel, I mean, that's the key.
We can solve two problems here.
We can take care of our economic security by making sure that we can provide our own resources for our own fuel, whether it's drilling in NWAR, whether it's building these ethanol and biodiesel refineries, using coal for coal gasification, or the oil shell we have in this country, or the tar sands that Canada uses for oil.
We have all that here.
We just need to say, look, in five years, we're going to be two energy independents if it's just on ethanol.
We need to get the ethanol tanks in the ground at the retail outlets.
I was encouraged by Walmart saying they're going to start selling E85 ethanol.
I think that may get the momentum going.
But like I said, we can solve two problems, our economic security and our national security.
If we can tell the Middle East and Chavez down in Venezuela, we don't need you guys anymore.
We don't need your oil, then I think a lot of our problems that we're facing with terror and a lot of the problems coming out of Iran and other areas, we could solve a lot of that.
Well, and to avoid that gridlock Congress name, we're hoping that you can then solve that, get that comprehensive energy package that's been elusive, change the immigration policies, tighten the lobbying rules, overhaul the pension plans, and renew some of the key provisions of the Voting Rights Act.
There's a lot out there.
And in terms of our economic security, Congressman, if we don't get the out-of-control spending under control, we've got a real problem here.
Well, I agree with that, and we've done a lot.
Last year, we were able to address the entitlement spending, and we were able to cut $40 billion from the entitlement spending.
This year, we have reduced the discretionary spending, the earmark spending, by, I think, like 37 percent.
We've cut it by $7.5 billion below last year.
We are reforming the earmark process, but there's a lot of things.
Do you agree, Congressman?
Do you agree that with the earmark process right now, if it can't stay in the light of day, it shouldn't be there at all?
No, I agree.
I agree 100%.
It ought to be open for everyone to look at because we really are in a crisis in this country.
And it's basically, you know, earmarks are a problem.
The discretionary spending is a problem.
But when you look at the discretionary spending, the entitlement programs, I don't know if you've ever heard David Walker, the Comptroller General of the General Accountability Office, talk about our unfunded liabilities and debt.
Our children and grandchildren are going to pay an unbelievable price if If we don't get control of the entitlement spending, Social Security has to be fixed, and it has to be fixed right away.
We can't wait until the problem hits, and it's going to hit before we know it.
About 15 years, we're going to be, our kids are going to be hit with a debt that is something they can't handle.
It's just, it will be impossible for them to handle.
So it's not a matter whether benefits will be reduced with Social Security or whether the reality is that by the time my daughter or my son retires, there will be no Social Security.
There'll be no Medicare.
In fact, going as a federal treasurer be gone.
You certainly understand the frustration that we the people have hearing that from somebody who's in the body that's supposed to fix it.
Well, let me just give you an example.
We had a great plan to fix Social Security, and it would have fixed Social Security and saved the traditional Social Security, and it would have created surpluses as far as the eye could see in the Social Security Trust Fund in the years to come.
But the Democrats, the Liberal Democrats in Congress said no.
The only way it can be fixed is by increasing the payroll tax, by cutting benefits, and increasing the age limit for retirement.
In fact, Charlie Wrangel said just a few weeks ago or months ago in roll call that if he's the new chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, he's going to do just that.
He's going to increase payroll taxes, he's going to cut benefits, and he's going to increase the retirement age.
I mean, the American people need to know what the liberals like Charlie Wrangel are going to do if they gain control of the House.
And let me say this, too.
If the Democrats had been in power for the last four years, they would have been $106 billion more in spending than the Republican Congress.
And I'm not saying that as an excuse for our spending because we do need to cut spending.
Now, there's some of us who have been saying that Congress has been spending like drunken Democrats.
Well, and it would have been worse under them, but again, we need to look at everything and make sure we hold the line on spending because our kids and grandkids are going to pay for it if we don't.
All right.
Well, we'll hold you to that, Congressman, because that's all we can do.
That's exactly right.
All right.
Happy holiday to you.
Thank you for joining us.
Thank you, and you too.
Thanks, Paul.
All right, to Representative Ron Lewis from Kentucky here on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
I am Paul W. Smith.
Nice to be with you.
Some final words heading into this holiday tomorrow.
Again, a reminder, the best of Rush tomorrow on the program, and then the day after he'll be here live.
Again, right here on your favorite radio station for the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Stay with us.
You can't have the 4th of July without John Phillips Sousa.
You just can't.
If it isn't a law, and we have too many of them, it shouldn't be a law.
This is from Mike Mamone's personal collection at home, our engineer there in New York.
Bo Snerdley, our producer, thanks for all your help in guiding us through some of these Landmines today.
Mike Abbott helping here in the Golden Tower of the Fisher Building, and we appreciate you tuning in every Monday through Friday to this, your favorite radio station, for the Rush Limbaugh Show and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, where there's never a final exam, but we are tested every day.
And it's been my pleasure and privilege to be here with you as a fellow student.
My name is Paul W. Smith.
And before we go, I remind us all that it happened tomorrow, July 4th, 1776, the unanimous declaration of the 13 United States colonies of America, when in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station of which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them.
A decent respect of the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
Please fly your flag and remember at least the beginning of the Declaration of Independence of the 13 colonies.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
This would be a good time for you, Mimone, to bring back John Philip Souza as I say happy 230th birthday of our freedom, celebrating 230 years of freedom for Rush Limbaugh.
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