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Nov. 29, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:23
November 29, 2006, Wednesday, Hour #3
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Thank you, J.D. Johnny Donovan.
It's a pleasure and a privilege to be here with you this final hour, and then uh Rush is back, which is uh certainly good news.
We are going to be uh talking uh this hour with Newt Gingrich, catch up on a whole bunch of different issues, and Arthur Brooks is uh going to be here too in just a moment, in fact.
I think he's standing yes, he's standing by.
And uh I'll uh uh touch base with you on uh a couple of things.
That the the trip to China uh and because China's all over the news.
If you if you noticed every newspaper uh there's just so many stories about China and for good reason.
Uh also this whole idea, the alibi network, just incredible.
Uh another offshoot of problems with immigration uh that has to do with felons.
And the study, uh this comes by way of the Daily Mail.
Women talk three times as much as men.
I don't I guess they needed a study for that.
And uh oh, our friend Ben Stein.
Well, I say friend.
Yeah, he's our friend.
We listened to him and we had him on uh the show once when we were sitting in.
Ben Stein has a new pamphlet type book out called More of Ben, the collected wit and wisdom of Ben Stein culled from his monthly diary in the American Spectator.
And uh that's that's worth picking up, too.
So anyway, I was glad I got that mentioned and get some other things in here.
I am Paul W. Smith, fellow student of the Limbaugh Institute for advanced conservative studies, where there is never a final exam, but we are tested every day.
And uh coming to you today, as Johnny Donovan said, from the Midwest campus of the Limbaugh Institute in Detroit, Michigan, the motor city, home of Motown, growing life sciences corridor and so many more good things that you really ought to get to know about.
Uh and also the only place I'm aware of, at least uh right now, where you can get two or three seasons in one week.
About sixty six degrees, maybe a record breaker today, snow and thirties by Friday.
So we get all the seasons and we try to get them all in a very short period of time.
Arthur Brooks is here.
He wrote a book called Who Really Cares the Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism.
Arthur, uh I'm Paul W. Smith.
Welcome in to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Thanks for having me, Paul.
Great to be here.
Uh uh little did I know, I don't I don't even think uh the one and only uh HR knew that in fact on this very same day that we have you on the program, you will be uh one of the featured interviews on John Stasel's twenty twenty report tonight on ABC at ten o'clock, called Cheap in America.
John Stasel reports on charity.
Who gives, who doesn't?
That's right.
It's uh we're doing a whole hour on uh myths and realities about charity in America.
What is the myth and the reality, other than the fact that uh that we always by our own press, the institutional media are basically called cheapskates whenever something happens, and we give away billions of dollars, billions and billions of dollars, matter of fact.
Yeah, that's correct.
I mean that one of the biggest myths that we have going around today is that the United States is somehow a venal selfish nation.
Uh when there's some sort of world tragedy or uh uh like the tsunami or even Katrina closer to home, people tell us that we're not doing enough at the national level, and and the reason that they say that is because we give less at the governmental level.
Uh after the tsunami in South Asia, the United States government uh dedicated three hundred and fifty million dollars, and the government of Germany, for example, gave eight hundred million dollars, and that led people to say, Well, see, the United States doesn't care about other people in the world.
What the press didn't generally notice very much was that Americans privately gave two billion dollars away, which swamped the donations of any other country.
And people, people, heck, like my own uh cousin Tom Smith, who who went there and so many other Americans who donated their services to the various organizations around here that go and and give actual help, not just money.
And when you consider the index of global philanthropy, which keeps track of these things, says the U.S. government gave about twenty billion dollars in foreign aid, for example, in two thousand four.
We, as individual Americans, gave an additional twenty-four billion dollars.
Yes.
And if you take a look at uh immigrants in America, they send home about almost fifty billion dollars to family members and hometowns.
We are anything but stingy, Arthur Brooks.
And I'm so glad that you're pointing it out in Who Really Cares the Surprising Truth about compassionate conservatism.
And and in fact, we find that conservatives who believe the government shouldn't be too much involved in this business, actually do put their money where their hearts are and give more than liberals.
Why do you think this is?
Well, there are a couple of reasons for that.
Uh no, I that really surprised me incidentally.
When I came across that a couple of years ago, I said, Oh, I kind of suspected the opposite, because stereotypes tell us that there's one group in America that's particularly compassionate, and the other that selfish, just as Americans are supposed to be selfish, conservative Americans are supposed to be doubly selfish.
But when you look at the data, you find that the opposite is true.
As long as you're looking at private charitable contributions.
Uh conservative headed households give on average about thirty percent more than liberal headed households each year in charitable donated dollars.
And incidentally, conservative households earn on average six percent less than liberal households do.
So it's not just because they're richer that they're doing this.
Now that goes totally against the ingrained stereotype, particularly the one that we heard in the 2004 presidential election.
I mean it was if you walked around Syracuse, New York where I live, everybody had a sign in the yard that said Bush must go.
Human need, not corporate greed.
As if everybody in America is voting for George W. Bush just wants to give a handout to corporations and wants to hurt the poor, or at least wants to neglect the poor, and that that simply doesn't bear out.
It's false when you look at the when you look at the data.
Now, does it mean that conservatives and American conservatives give enough?
Well, no.
I think that we could probably all give more, particularly this time of year, but it does suggest that what we often hear simply doesn't stand up.
Well, w what does that mean no we can give more?
And I'm concerned about that because uh and I know you're a part of this, and uh and I wish we could talk to John Stasso I did earlier on my uh Detroit show, but the fact is uh i i his report says cheap in America, John Stasser reports on charity, who gives, who doesn't, and why we all should be more generous.
And i in part of what he says is it turns out that the working poor give away a higher percentage of their salary to charity than the rich.
And then he asks the question, so does that mean the richest Americans are cheap?
You can't believe or expect to say that the richest Americans are cheap with the the hundreds of millions.
No, the billions of dollars they give.
Aaron Powell Yeah, no, that's correct.
I mean, disproportionately the rich in America give away the approximately quarter trillion dollars that we give to charity each year.
Aaron Powell And all you have to do is go to uh Rush Limbaugh.com and see uh I hope it's still up there, the the the s the scale in how much the rich pay in taxes, for example.
Oh, correctly.
It's always up there.
I was Kit Carson just said booming in my headphones.
It's always up there.
So it's still there, and you can take a look at it and see that even though we're people try to make us believe the rich are not paying their fair share in taxes, that's just not true.
And you're telling us, Arthur Brooks, in who really cares, the surprising truth about compassionate conservatism, that the rich are also doing their part in terms of giving m giving money.
But you believe we need to give more.
Well, I think that I don't necessarily think that we need to give more for moral reasons or to pay for more services, although that would be good.
The reason I think that we can all use more gifts or more charity is because it's good for our country.
One of the the really interesting areas, emerging areas of research among economists and other people who study charity, is that countries and individuals and communities that give more are more prosperous.
They have better public health, they have greater life satisfaction, and they frankly are richer.
So one of the things that we find is as nations uh you know reach into their wallets, particularly around the holidays and they give more, communities, nations, individuals, they're all better off is one of the things that we find.
So it's actually uh if if I were to give a piece of advice to somebody on how to be more successful, one of the things that I would say is be more charitable.
And that incidentally is one of the reasons that Europe and many other developed nations have such low rates of economic growth compared to the United States, because they're so much stingier at the private charity level.
Well, and and that'll be pointed out again tonight, too, in John's uh report, he had mentioned it uh and and he the it came from Stephen Post, the author of a book coming out called Why Good Things Happen to Good People, the the new science saying that giving more can actually improve your health.
Giving is as good for the giver as it is for the receiver.
That's science now that's saying so.
And anybody who's been involved, anybody who's helped out at a soup kitchen or uh given uh like it's the Salvation Army uh bread and bed truck here in our area or the places where you go out and you help feed people, you know how that feels.
You know how good that work is and how how great it feels for you, obviously for the people getting food who are hungry and need it as well.
And so uh it's all right there.
It's all it's all right there.
Oh yeah, it is it's uh it's a in a very exciting emerging area of science is uh the benefits of charitable giving to the givers.
But you know, one of the the the sh the striking things, one of the things that we need to be concerned about at this point is the big population of people who don't give in America today.
That's about twenty-five percent of the American population.
Seventy-five million Americans or so don't give anything to charity.
And one of the things I talked a lot about in my book is who these folks are and how we can reach them.
And these are not easy answers.
Can you can you tell me why uh uh giving America behaves so differently from non giving America?
I'm assuming it's not just because quote unquote the haves and the have nots.
No, no, quite the contrary, because once again, is as uh as we talk about in the in the ABC special tonight, in fact, the working poor are unbelievably generous Americans uh compared with other people, and including the nonworking poor, even though they have the same income.
What what really stands out, I mean, if I can ask you just two questions that will predict whether or not you're a uh giver of any substance today in America.
The two questions I'm gonna ask you are about your religious behavior and about your attitudes about government.
These are the two big things that we can use as diagnostics to figure out whether people are going to be charitable or not.
The the difference between religious and non-religious people is is unbelievably large.
One of the things that we find, even if we just look at non-religious giving, you find that religious people eat everybody else's lunch in America today.
But it isn't just it isn't just religious people just giving to their churches.
Oh my goodness.
No.
No.
Quite the contrary.
For example, if you let's just look at 911 related charities in 2001.
You find that people who attend their house of worship uh more or less every week, about a third of the population were ten percentage points more likely to make gifts to 911 related causes than people who don't have a religion or don't attend a house of worship, and they were about twenty-five percent more likely in percentage points to volunteer for any causes.
Uh non-religious causes, that is, since the year two thousand.
And the bottom line is this if it weren't for religious people in your community, your PTA would shut down.
And that has big consequences for communities.
Well, it's all fascinating, it's all interesting.
Uh I note that you are uh professor at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Public Affairs.
I hope that doesn't mean that's why you were surprised that conservatives were so uh giving.
No.
Uh all right, okay.
I just wanted to double check that.
We have to check on this program.
We do have to check when there's a university professor on board, we have to be careful.
I understand.
No, I understand the wh why why you're I I I am uh I'm sympathetic to your concerns.
But one of the things that uh one of the reasons I was surprised about this is this is just something I would always I had always heard throughout my life.
And it's something that conservatives and liberals alike have a tendency to embrace.
I mean, there's kind of a uh manly self-reliance on the right that that does its charity entirely in private, and and I respect that and I admire that to a certain extent.
But we have to remember that the big givers in America are the people that are in the culture of giving.
Part of that is religion, and part of that is the very self-reliance and independence from government itself.
In fact, that's the second big characteristic of givers, is how they feel about how the government should be redistributing income among citizens to get greater or or equality or to not worry about equality.
You find the people who are less who are more reluctant for the government to tax and equalize incomes are far likelier to take matters of helping the needy into their own hands by giving charitably.
Professor Brooks, I thank you for putting this book together.
I hope folks will pick it up and read more about it.
Who really cares?
The surprising truth about compassionate conservatism, and uh you can see Arthur Brooks tonight with John Stossel on Cheap in America on 2020 on ABC at 10 o'clock, as they say, check local listings.
Nice talking with you, uh, Professor.
Thanks for your help.
Thanks.
Thanks for having me today.
It's our pleasure as our mailboxes uh fill with the appeals from uh fine organizations worthy causes competing for our holiday spirit and tax-deductible dollars.
Now you know why it feels especially good when you actually answer the call.
All right, uh, take care of a few odds and ends, maybe get a couple of calls in too at 1-800-282-2882.
I know we'll get calls in uh in this next half hour when we welcome Newt Gingrich.
Here on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Paul W. Smith.
Uh Newt uh Gingrich coming up here in this next half hour unfinished business here on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Paul W here, nice to be with you.
Uh you can reach us at Rush Limbaugh.com or 1-800-282-2882.
1-800-282-2882.
Let me get these uh unfinished uh things out of the way here.
Uh I do want to mention this uh whole China thing because it's all over the news.
It's everywhere, and it is going to have a major effect on our world.
Of course, it is already having a major effect.
We're concerned about that here in Detroit, in Michigan, and all of these United States.
Uh I had a quick trip to Beijing.
Of course, there's no such thing as a a quick trip to anywhere in China from anywhere in the USA.
I left on Friday, arrived early Sunday, broadcast my uh Detroit radio show, Monday and Tuesday, the occasion of the Beijing Auto Show, and then back home Wednesday.
Now, trust me, that's the the fastest track you ever want to be on for a 14-hour plus plane ride.
It was actually about twenty-eight hours plus door-to-door with flight delays and such on the way there.
A thirteen-hour ahead time difference.
Now, I was proud I didn't end up face down in the mashed potatoes at our Thanksgiving dinner.
Uh at least I don't think I did.
Now, the first thing you notice, and you can't help but notice, is the almost unbelievable fog smog haze.
Now they're they're a bit sensitive at the highest levels of government as to what you actually call it, but let me make it easy for you to understand.
It is the worst pollution you could ever imagine, breathing in day after day.
Coal-fired heating, coal-fired cooking, coal-fired factories, and they're building about another one a day.
It seemed worse than my last visit in 1997, and in fact uh it is in that about three hundred people a day are going to the hospital with respiratory problems.
Now, this is a problem that is finally not being ignored by the People's Republic of China's capital city there in Beijing because they're getting ready to host the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
That's uh 080808, August 8th of 2008.
And during the sixteen-day games, no passenger cars will be allowed in the city, if you can imagine that.
And if the winds are blowing in the wrong direction, factories hundreds of miles away will be shut down.
This Olympics has been called the the grandest event ever held in China.
Now that's kind of hard to imagine what with building the forbidden city with thousands and thousands and thousands of people, maybe millions of people that had to work to do that.
But it's big, that's for sure, and to help alleviate the age-old air quality problems and the newer car bike gridlock problems.
Beijing is planning to build the world's biggest subway rail system and bus network.
Now that's not good news for the Rickshaw industry, but welcomed by the more than fifteen million people who live there.
And the the hundreds of thousands of people who are expected to be there for the Olympics, and they will experience one of the safest cities in the world, the very very, very safe city, can you say collective surveillance?
Uh it's going to be a green high-tech People's Olympics with the motto, one world one dream, and we wish them well for that.
That should be an interesting experience if you're able to do that, the Olympics in Beijing.
Great uh pay King Duck at this one restaurant, Quinmen Kwan Jude Roast Duck Restaurant.
They actually have a sign that says over a hundred fifteen million served.
And pictures on the wall showing that they've had uh pretty good clientele.
There's uh President George H. W. Bush and wife Barbara, and there's Fidel Castro, uh not not seated at the same table.
But they've got their problems with some people, maybe if they're lucky, making two hundred fifty do hundred fifty dollars a year.
So they're living in uh abject poverty, sever suffering uh uh malnutrition, as you might guess, and then unfortunately and predictably that some people are doing better, and that's leading to worse food, more junk food and fat, with about sixty million of its citizens obese.
That's like the size of uh France.
And I I'm not uh I'm not saying anything bad about France.
I'm just giving you an idea of the size.
All right, uh quick note here.
Uh women uh i i if something one half of the population is long suspected, the other half always vocally denied, women really do talk more than men.
This from the Daily Mail.
Women talk almost three times as much as men, the average woman chalking up twenty thousand words in a day, thirteen thousand more than the average man.
Women speak more quickly, devote more brain power to chit chat, actually get a buzz out of hearing their own voices.
A book written by a female psychiatrist talks about these differences, uh, how women devote more brain cells talking to to talking than men.
And it uh it uh triggers a flood of brain chemicals.
I can guarantee you, because Russia's staff is so good.
This whole story from the Daily Mail will be on his uh website, Rush Limbaugh.com.
And finally, this drives me crazy.
Mary is married, Mary's having an affair.
The Chicago wife told her husband she was sightseeing in Los Angeles last August.
That was a lie.
She was having an affair.
She paid three hundred and fifty dollars to a company called the Alibi Network, an Illinois company that specializes in its namesake alibis.
They armed Mary with a fake airplane itinerary, fake hotel reservations, fake hotel answering service.
When her husband phoned Mary's fake room in Los Angeles, the call was routed to her real cell phone in Las Vegas, where she was having an affair.
And if you want to know, one of the signs or signals of how far we've fallen as a society, that's it.
The owner saying, Hey, don't blame the Alibi Network.
We didn't invent lying.
We didn't invent infidelity.
We just found a niche in an existing market.
We'll continue here on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Paul W. Smith.
Thanks, Johnny Donovan.
I think uh H.R. Kit Carson has uh made it possible uh in advance of our conversation here with Newt Gingrich to uh uh take a couple of quick calls standing by that have been holding in Spokane.
Margie, your uh lucky opportunity here on the Rush Limbaugh program, other than the fact that Rush isn't here, but will be tomorrow.
I'm Paul W. Smith, and it's nice to be with you, Margie.
I think I'm there with you, Margie.
Yes, you are.
I was putting my radio on mute.
All right, uh mute, yes.
But you're on the radio right now.
Okay.
So even if you put your radio on mute, that actually does not have an effect on your ability to speak.
Uh and I want you to I want that to be clear so that you can go ahead and speak.
All right, thank you.
What I wanted to point it out as far as charitable giving is there's an incalculable amount of hidden giving that benefits society by parents helping their adult children through crises and and helping to improve their families.
Such things as when there's a lost job or someone has a desperate need for a car, down payment on a house.
Are you feeling are you feeling uh Margie, are you feeling a little unappreciated in your own personal situation?
Absolutely not.
But I think when people are doing scientific studies that that would be well to take into consideration a lot of hidden giving.
I no, I don't care if I'm appreciated or not.
That doesn't happen that's not my point.
It's just that if you're doing a uh study on uh who's doing the giving, that's uh strong families, which often tend to be conservative, are passing on money.
I mean, we're not we're not wealthy by any means, but probably in the last year we've helped up our kids in various ways with about twenty thousand dollars.
That's a lot of money.
Yes, that's a lot of uh charity.
You're absolutely right.
No one uh we we hadn't even thought about internal family uh charity.
You're right.
And and Doug didn't society immensely what keeps money flowing in the economy for one thing, and another thing it keeps uh you know, the families out of some crisis that might throw them onto the government pay uh you know, government entitlements.
Well, Margie, uh leave it to the Rush Limbaugh audience to come up with uh other angles that uh none of the experts had in our uh conversation earlier.
Thank you, Margie.
Keep an eye on Spokane for us.
In Atlanta, it's Amber on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Paul W. Smith.
One-eight hundred two eight two two eight eight two, by the way.
One-eight hundred-two eight two two eight eight two.
I'm not sure how many calls we can get to.
We'll get to as many as we can.
Amber.
Hey, Mr. Smith, how are you?
I'm I'm great, Amber.
Ms. Amber.
Great.
Well, I just wanted to make the comment that it seems to me like um the reason why the left is less giving than the right, is it seems to me that more of the people that are on the political strike political spectrum to the left are the ones with their hands out waiting for the handout, if you get my drift.
I I I do.
I do, I do.
Um I I would I um I'm not surprised that conservatives are very generous.
I would be a bit surprised if liberals were not also quite generous.
So I'm I am surprised in the study, and it's it's worth uh picking up the book.
I'm going to pick up the uh book, Charity Gap.
I haven't seen it yet, frankly.
But I I think it's very interesting what uh Arthur Brooks has put together.
And you make uh an interesting observation, that's for sure.
To our other callers standing by, I apologize.
We do want to move on.
Uh we were uh connecting with our next guest, and uh since the last time we were together, and and frankly f since the last time I spoke with our guest, the Republicans outsourced their jobs to the Democrats.
Actually, uh they stopped doing their jobs and they outsourced them.
It was Newt Gingrich's contract with America spelling out those key issues, those promises to bring those issues to a vote in Congress back in 1994 that devolved into the Republicans' sounds of silence over the past few years.
Social security, tax reform, immigration reform, song titles with no lyrics, dancing to their own music, right up to the moment their dance floor was rolled up right beneath their feet and taken away.
The long forgotten contract with America is now the Democrats a new direction for America.
And I suspect Newt Gingrich that has uh that has caught your attention and bothered you as well.
Good morning or good afternoon and good evening too, wherever you might be listening right now, whatever time it might be.
How are you?
I'm fine.
It's uh Mr. Speaker, it's always a pleasure and a privilege to have you uh on the radio and to be heard when there's so much to talk about and there is so much to talk about today.
And I'm I'm real interested in some of your thoughts on on the news of the day.
Well, look, I I think that uh the Republicans failed to stick with the kind of reform orientation and solution orientation that was at the heart of the contract, and as a result, the voters decided they wanted to change.
Uh, I think people uh looked at Washington and decided that wasn't what they were comfortable with, and I think that they felt that at a performance level from Katrina to Baghdad that there were a series of things that weren't going right, and so they sent their legitimate signal that they wanted something better.
And I think Republicans had better take a deep breath and realize that this was a very important election and a very po powerful signal was being sent of unhappiness on the part of the American people.
Much more so than just the the sixth year rule or the even the term that you've used, Newt Gingrich, incumbentitis uh and the problems that they faced.
There there's much more at play here.
Uh they they really did outsource their jobs and uh to the Democrats, and it it's bothersome to many of us.
By the way, uh you get to see Newt Gingrich all kinds of places, but uh in fact, aren't you officially now on the Fox Network as a consultant?
I I am on Fox, and in fact, we're just now taping a uh terrific um special for the Christmas season on uh a book I just did called Rediscovering God in America, which carries you through the various uh monuments and memorials here in Washington and uh shows you the degree to which the founding fathers and our national leaders saw our rights and our strength coming from God.
So I have a great relationship with Fox and I enjoy very much opportunity to share ideas there.
And you can uh you can go to Newt.org and uh his uh winning the future program, if you will.
Uh the speaker has lots there to offer for you at uh Newt.org and uh as they say on Fox.
But what you can't do usually is speak with the speaker, and you can right now at 1-800-282-2882.
That's one-eight hundred-two eight two eight eight two to speak with Speaker uh former speaker, but speaker always, until the next big job, uh, Newt Gingrich.
Uh with the president under fire as he is and going through what he has been going through.
Now the latest leaked memo uh regarding uh the their uh lack of confidence in the prime minister of Iraq and uh even that meeting has now been delayed a day.
Uh, any reflections on that and this uh this situation that we face as a country in Iraq and how uh how a president Newt Gingrich might look at it and and respond and react.
Well, I'm I'm not gonna talk about what I would do, but I'll just say what I think the president should do.
I think that first of all, we ought to recognize you ought to be honest about the fact that this second campaign didn't work.
Uh we had a first campaign which was brilliant.
It took twenty-three days.
We defeated Saddam Hussein, drove him from power.
Uh we then set out three years ago to create an Iraqi government, uh, but we did it, I think, in a very destructive way by having an American administrator.
We did not invest Early on in training and and developing the Iraqi military and an Iraqi national police and frankly allowed the situation to get out of control.
And I think it's going to take tremendous effort to defeat the bad guys.
I think it's very important that we defeat them.
Uh, and I think that we can defeat them.
But I I think we've got to really take very serious steps to rethink what we've been doing and to approach it in a new spirit uh and with new drive and new energy uh in order to get it done.
I'm I'm very, very concerned, and I'm frankly as concerned that Washington will become sort of tired and pessimistic, and then people will start diluting themselves.
Uh I'm very worried that we're gonna and I I do a uh weekly newsletter, which you can sign up for at Newt.org and which is a free newsletter called Win in the Future.
Yeah, I spent all of my newsletter on Monday outlining my concerns about the Baker Hamilton Commission and a very real fear that they're gonna say, Oh, why don't we try to negotiate with Iran or why don't we try to negotiate with Syria?
And I think that would be very defeatist on our part and would almost certainly increase the risk to America.
Well, James Baker has been very upfront, has said it on my radio show in Detroit and elsewhere that he does believe they should talk.
He does believe that that's something that needs to happen.
But uh there are a lot of people who are very concerned about the idea of going to the people who are behind this war and feeding it, and then pretending that we want them to help us fix it.
It's like going to the terrorists in Iraq and saying, Okay, we've got this problem.
Can you guys help us with those terrorists?
Look, if all they're gonna do is produce a formula for surrender, uh, that's not hard to think through.
I mean, just have a public relations uh disguise, pretend everything is okay, cut and run, leave the Iranians and the Syrians of dominating the Middle East, but the consequences of that, in terms of American national security, in terms of the aggressiveness of the terrorists, in terms of what's going to happen to the world's oil supply, uh, the consequences of that I think are pretty frightening.
And I think people need to take very seriously that this is hard.
Let me give you just two quick examples.
You know, uh former Secretary Baker uh meets with the Syrian ambassador, they talk publicly about negotiating with Syria, and what happens?
The Syrians assassinate a Christian pro-democracy politician in Lebanon.
The first time in a year they've killed somebody in Lebanon, and I think it's a sign that the Syrians believe they're on offense and we're on defense, and they are emboldened to do vicious things because they think that we're now too weak, too timid, too tired, and therefore can be ignored.
Second example.
The State Department in April of 2006 issues its annual report on terrorism, and it says the leading supporter of state terrorism in the world is Iran.
The second leading supporter of state terrorism in the world is Syria.
So we're now going to negotiate with the two countries that we identify as the leading supporters of terrorism in the world.
I I don't understand, it doesn't make any sense to me.
Former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich with us here and talking with you too at 1-800-282-2882.
I'm Paul W. Smith, and this is the Rush Limbaugh program.
As we continue on this, your favorite radio station, keeping you on top of what's happening every hour of every day, including three hours a day of broadcast excellence with El Rushbow back in the chair uh tomorrow, right here.
And we've got Newt Gingrich with us, latest book, Rediscovering God in America.
You can also go to Newt.org and sign up for his free newsletter, Winning the Future.
And you can speak with him here right now at 1800-282-2882.
And that's what Ed's doing in Beloit.
Ed, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Paul W. Smith, and here's Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Ed.
Thank you, uh, Mr. Smith and uh Mr. Speaker.
I'm uh as Mr. Smith announced, I'm a Wisconsin resident, uh, home of the Republican Party.
I'm a registered Republican, but I have uh uh I have lost faith in the party, and I've lost faith in the president uh for the following reasons.
Number one, Mr. Bush is not a conservative.
Government has grown substantially under his administration.
If you look at the number of cabinet uh positions that have been added to the United States government since nineteen sixty, you can see that government is growing and continues to grow.
If you look at the if you go to the GAO website, GAO dot org And look at uh the General Accounting Office's uh charts on mandatory versus discretionary spending, you will find that today uh sixty cents out of every dollar of gross revenue for the United States government is mandatory spending.
That Congress today has control only over 40 cents out of every dollar, and that includes uh the cost for administration with government.
Out of the 40 cents comes Katrina, uh the cost of the health the health education, welfare, the military, everything.
We have a situation here today where I can't identify a single member of the United States legislature that I would call a conservative.
All right, Ed, you've made your point.
Well, let's let Newt Gingrich respond.
Well, let me start with, first of all, your point about mandatory spending, because the very word mandatory is a liberal fiction.
There is no mandatory spending except paying interest on the federal debt, which is required by the Constitution.
All other spending ultimately comes under the law.
And any time Congress wants to change a mandatory spending program, if they can get the president's signature or if they can override it with a veto override, they can change that program.
When I was Speaker of the House, we reformed the welfare system.
Welfare was a mandatory program.
By the time we were done reforming the welfare system to require able-bodied Americans to go to work or go to school.
Sixty-five percent of the people in welfare had left the welfare system and either gone to work or gone to school.
Yet that was a mandatory program before we changed it.
Uh we reformed Medicare, which is in danger of going bankrupt.
And when we were done reforming Medicare, we had saved about 200 billion dollars.
Those two mandatory changes, welfare and Medicare, were two of the keys to why we balance the budget for four consecutive years under a bill that I offered as speaker.
We paid off four hundred and five billion dollars in debt, and we moved the country in the direction that our caller wanted us to.
So let's start with the idea.
There is no mandatory spending beyond the control of Congress and the president if they have the will and the intelligence to find a way to cut it.
Steve is in Lakeport, Michigan on the Rush Schalimball program.
Go ahead, Steve.
Mr. Smith, Speaker Gingrich, how are you today?
Great.
Oh, good.
Uh Speaker, I I listened to Rush uh quite often uh a couple months ago is talking about a poll where they did uh poll the registered voters or the the voters in the country um without names and without party affiliations just based on qualifications.
And in that poll, you won hands down for president uh for two thousand and eight.
I'd like to know your take on that and uh what we need to do to to get you on the on the ballot in two thousand and eight, how we need to to get those qualifications to the forefront.
And I wish we had more time, but you know what, Steve, you've asked the uh multimillion dollar question, so we'll let you finish up with that, Mr. Speaker.
Well, let me just say that uh I'm very honored that people said that.
Uh I'm I am busy launching a project called American Solutions.
Anyone who wants to know more about it can go to Newt.org, my first name, and sign up for emails and we'll stay in touch with you.
Uh I'll look at it next September in terms of running.
I've already promised Paul that I'll I'll come on his show and uh in Detroit.
If uh whatever I decide, I'll be on a show sometime in September next year.
Uh but I think for right now, what I want to focus on is how do we solve the energy problem, how do we solve education, how do we solve health, how do we get back to a balanced budget?
And if we can come up with good enough real solutions that make a lot of sense and people think they're the right thing to do, then we'll be in a different place and we'll have a different conversation.
Uh, people should know and they will when they go to Newt.org and they get the winning the future free newsletter and they check in on American Solutions.
You've been working very hard on a lot of issues that affect each and every one of us.
Just our conversations in the past, Newt, on health care and uh computerizing records and all of that will that will not only save billions of dollars but save lives is fabulous.
There's lots of information like that that you're working on and that people will want to get to know about by going online there.
And uh, I do know that uh you will call us when you've made your decision.
You say sometime next September.
Right after right after Labor Day.
All right.
We'll look forward to it.
Uh we wish you best of luck, and uh and uh it's always nice to uh hear from you, to watch you on Fox News, to read you and your newsletters, and to keep an eye on what you're up to, Newt.
Thanks so much for being with us.
Great Christmas holiday, too, okay.
And a very uh happy and merry Christmas to you as well.
Former Speaker, Newt Gingrich on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Paul W. Smith.
Thank you, H.R. Mamon, Ken Tucker here in Detroit.
You stay tuned for more of what matters to you most on this, your favorite radio station.
Don't forget Rush is back tomorrow.
You go on out making a great rest of the day.
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