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Jan. 4, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:17
January 4, 2007, Thursday, Hour #2
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Time Text
It's hard to tell who's happier today, the uh Democrats or the drive-by media.
Drive-by media's going nuts.
You know, it's interesting to note, all of these protesters, the Cindy Sheehan protesters.
Other than interviewing Cindy Sheehan, I didn't see any of them talk to.
Certainly not for any length of time.
If Republicans get protested, the protesters are made heroes for the next two or three days.
She and they're gonna sweep her away.
If they get her into some asylum this afternoon, they do it.
Greetings, ladies and gentlemen.
Welcome.
Great to have you back.
Rush Limbaugh the EIB Network here at 800-282-2882.
And the email address is rush at EIBNet.com from the email, Dear Rush.
Now I got this email last night from Virginia Leiden.
Dear Rush, I'm a fan of both you and 24, but I think it's completely unfair that you get to watch the upcoming season of 24 before I do.
And then you talk about it on your show and you rub salt in the wound of those of us who have to wait.
And then we have to watch with commercials, and we have to wait a week between episodes.
Because of this, I have concluded that you are just mean.
So there, feel better now.
And you, well, you're a great American too, and happy new year.
Now this email symbolizes and represents uh quite a few that I received uh yesterday afternoon or last night after I mentioned look at folks.
I just you always I can't win.
If I don't tell you what I did on vacation, you get mad.
If I do tell you what I did on vacation, you either say stick to the issues or we don't care or shut up about it, blah, blah, blah.
I can't win.
All I did was say that I watched the first eight episodes of the new season on Twenty Had a Party last Friday night to do so.
Didn't describe I didn't get into plot, didn't tell you a thing about it, nothing I said can possibly ruin it for anybody.
So what you people are feeling is just base jealousy.
Just base envy.
Well, my friends, if you were a powerful influential media figure as I am, you too might have a chance to see these things in advance, but you're not, and I am.
I used to be able to say this stuff with a straight face, but I got so many people on the other side of the window just rolling their eyes.
I can't do it anymore.
I need to close the shades when I do this.
No, seriously.
Uh, folks, I d all I want to tell you about it is don't miss it.
If I start getting into any specifics, I won't be able to stop, and I'm not going to do that.
No, I'm not being paid.
This came up too yesterday.
We had a caller.
You know, you've been giving a lot of movie and TV reviews.
Are you getting paid for this?
Yeah, like they could pay me enough that it would matter.
Come on, folks, could we get real?
You people, you know, I have I do not accept anything uh uh uh uh freebies.
You know, I uh because I don't want to be obligated.
I I certainly am not going to accept payment for something like that's absurd.
I can't believe the question was even rolling around in somebody's mind.
But I'll tell you uh the as I all I said yesterday was I'm amazed because after five or six seasons of a show like this, usually it starts its decline.
They run out of ideas.
These guys just it gets better and better and better, and it's it's as infectious and addictive as ever.
I'm just don't miss it.
You see, you it all evens off.
You've got to look at it this way, folks.
You're out there upset because I've seen the first eight episodes.
The first eight episodes take us through February 12th.
Well, you get to start watching on January 14th and 15th.
I have to wait till February 19th to find out what happens next.
You know, all these things even out.
I'm in I'm in 24 limbo from not all the 19th of February.
You people in less than a week and a half are gonna get started on your on your new season six.
I'm just I'm just telling you.
Uh uh don't don't know I'll tell you one thing.
I can't help myself.
One thing, a bunch of questions that I had after last season's finale, start to be explained.
Some of the tie-ins begin to happen within these first eight episodes.
And they are mind blowers.
But that's all I'm going to say.
Now let's move on to something really exciting, shall we?
Like the minimum wage.
George Will has a column today, and this is Democrats' agenda.
This is utopia, folks.
There's no poverty anymore today.
We're going to cure all these diseases with embryonic stem cell research.
We're going to bring big oil to its knees.
We're going to kick out all the lobbyists, and we're going to get everybody to college by lowering uh the tuition tax deduction and lower interest rates for college loans.
The minimum wage, I'm going to go through this anyway, even though it's pointless.
We have lost the argument.
When the President of the United States wants it, and when Republicans in the House want it, it means we have lost the argument.
It's a bad idea.
Any minimum wage above zero is a bad idea.
As George Will points out here in this piece, which I will shortly excerpt for you, labor is a commodity.
And when the government starts setting prices on commodity, commodities, rather than letting the market do its uh its natural work, then you end up with all kinds of problems.
But the pro the reason we've lost the argument is because we've become a nation of wimps and passive people that just it you know, we we we just can't deal with the thought that there might be pain, suffering anywhere in this country.
And so we've we've enough people have bought the lies about the minimum wage, that most people earning it are trying to support a family of four.
Uh the it's it's it's inhumane and it's it's all these things.
None of the none of the suppositions about it are true, but since it's much easier to um uh if you're pro-minimum wage and raising it, it's much easier to convince people by tugging at their heartstrings than it is the way the conservatives have done it with these dry intellectual economic arguments.
Because they're never going to stand a chance, especially when economic education in this country is so woefully inept.
And if your main way to defeat an idea is to argue it intellectually and economically when the libs and the Democrats are out there just, can you believe we're letting these people starve?
How in the world can anybody be so high?
Oh, I don't want to do that.
I don't want anybody to starve.
Let me give you some statistics.
Statistics I know are tough to keep track of on the radio.
That's why we will link today to the George Will column from which I now quote most of the working poor in this country earn more than the minimum wage.
Most of the 0.6% of America's wage workers earning the minimum wage are not poor.
That 0.6% is 479,000 people in 2005.
Most of the, get this, 0.6% of the workforce is earning minimum wage, and they are not poor.
Only one in five minimum wage earners live in families with household earnings below the poverty line.
Meaning 80% of people who live uh who earn the minimum wage live in families who earn more than the poverty line.
This just all of these statistics just put the lie to the myth that has been used because the Democrats and the Liberals' version of America soup line America.
They believe that there are two groups of people, the super ridiculously filthy rich and the poor.
And those that are just one paycheck away from losing everything and becoming homeless and so forth.
And so they've created well, three groups, the middle class and then these uh the minimum wage earners.
And they want people to believe that there are these millions and millions and millions of minimum wage earners.
Here's another thing.
Forty percent of American workers are salaried.
Of the 75.6 million Americans paid by the hour, 1.9 million earn the federal minimum or less.
And of these, more than half are under 25, and more than quarter of them are between 16 and 19.
Many of them are students or other part-time workers, something I have always pointed out with statistics to back it up.
Most of the people earning minimum wage are in their first jobs, their students, their teenagers, early twenties, they're not supporting a family of four.
It falls on deaf ears.
The federal minimum wage has not been raised since 1997.
Twenty-nine states with 70% of the nation's workforce have set their own minimum wages higher than the federal limit because aging liberals clinging to the moral clarities of their youth, the New Deal and so forth, also have sixties nostalgia.
They are suspicious of states' rights.
But regarding minimum wages, many have become Brandisians, invoking Justice Lewis Brandeis's thought about states being laboratories of democracy.
Anyway, the thing goes on to uh describe how pointless raising the minimum wage is in terms of actually affecting anybody's life other than raising prices and affecting small businesses who have to come up with new ways to pay these new required uh minimum wages, and not stated in this uh column by George Will is the real dirty little secret.
The purpose of the minimum wage is to raise the threshold of union negotiations.
If you raise the minimum wage significantly, federal minimum wage, union thugs in their next contract negotiations can say, look at you just you just raise the wages of a bunch of unqualified schlubs to 5707, whatever it is.
We are qualified, we are the backbone of America, we are American labor, and if you're gonna raise their wages, we need a compensatory raise in our next and that's the dirty little secret.
It's not being done out of compassion for the little guy, because there frankly aren't that many little guys earning minimum wage and using it to fully and totally support their lifestyle as the left and the drive-by media would have you believe.
Quick time out, back with more in a second.
Okay, back to the phones we go at 800 282-2882 to Elmont Park, New York.
This is Melvin.
Melvin, welcome, sir.
Yes, good uh good afternoon, Rush.
Yeah, I I I have to make it make uh well, I've made an observation that uh conservative party in the revolving party.
I I think with the with uh who we have occupying the House and the Senate this uh last election.
Uh is part due to part of uh oh bashing, you know, of uh these these people right in office.
Like the Democrats can't they don't do this, they can't do that.
Uh you know, people more or less get I mean I I I've gotten to the point where I just get tired of hearing it, and uh it's like the Rod Wolf all the time.
That's a good point.
I want to respond to a question.
With a question.
First, let me make sure I understand what you're saying.
I think you're saying that uh me and whoever else bashing all the Democrats just made people so mad that they didn't want to hear it that they went out and voted for Democrats.
Is that essentially what you're saying?
That's what I'm saying.
You bash them right into office, basically is what you've done.
Yeah, bashed them right into office.
All right.
If now uh it's an interesting that's an interesting phrase.
Melvin bashed them right into office.
I'm gonna have to remember that.
But the questi the uh the that's yeah, it's almost like I endorsed them by bashing them in the office.
But here's the question.
You know, they were bashing my gosh, they set the record for bashing.
I wasn't I mean, the Democrats were bashing Bush, and they've done it for six years, and they've been bashing Republicans and they have been saying I mean, whatever it was that I said in criticism of Democrats, it was not personal like they have turned it into uh on the Democrats.
Why didn't all the Democrat bashing drive Republicans into office, Melvin?
Well, sir, I'd have to say you look at this bill that all he has to do is sign now to give uh uh illegal uh il legal immigrants, as they want to call it uh politically correct phrase.
They're they're lawbreakers, give them social security.
I th that that doesn't make sense to me whatsoever.
Who the heck could uh even could conceive uh a stupid idea like that?
And then just have it waiting for his signatures?
Come on.
I mean, if that's not enough to bash somebody for.
I mean, I'm I'm born and raised in this country, and I I just see it being.
Well, see, I let me tell you something.
I did my share of bashing on that.
Uh uh, and you were in favor of that bashing.
Well, I well, it's only it's only right.
I mean, come on.
Why should I uh have to uh give up part of what I've earned just because some guy took a stole uh a series of numbers who doesn't even belong in this country, totally agree, but get used to it, Melvin.
I mean, it's a re just like minimum wage is a reality.
I'm not gonna be able to do that.
there is going to be amnesty.
It isn't gonna take long.
There is going to be amnesty for the illegals here.
Uh there are gonna be a pretensed border security, and that's it.
Get used to it.
No, no, I won't.
I'm not going to be able to do that.
We lost the argument.
We lost the argument.
It's gonna get done because you've got Democrats in the House and Senate.
Well, anyway, you know, we I I just hope that you uh uh you know ride this rail for quite a while on that.
Well I mean according to your theory, I better shut up about it because now you want me bashing.
I bashed the Democrats right into power.
Now you want me to bash illegal immigration so to get something done about it.
But if I were to follow your theory, I should shut up about it, because when I bash something, it guarantees it to pass or become reality.
Appreciate the call.
I'm fascinated.
Uh at at the um various thought processes that occurred out there.
Chris in uh Jasper, Indiana, your next on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Hi.
Rush.
Yeah.
Uh Megadeth.
Thank you, sir.
And uh I appreciate your being on the air.
And I appreciate your being on the air so much.
Well, everybody has to be somewhere.
Well, yes.
Uh you're not exactly sitting in my living room.
Um, but I've listened to you for eighteen years, which is about as long as my son has been born.
Wow.
He's in college now.
And Rush baby then.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, rush baby.
Yes.
Uh well, I wish he was, but uh he's going to uh university, and apparently everything I've told him has become unwound.
Um but that's neither here nor there.
What I uh That's life.
That's life.
Uh yes.
Uh as I told you a call screener.
Um I I have appreciated you for for eighteen years.
I'm sorry?
Eighteen years.
Eighteen years.
He's actually going to be nineteen at the end of this month.
Nineteen follows eighteen.
Very good.
Yeah.
And uh um what I told you call screener is I I appreciate first of all your wisdom.
Yes.
Uh I appreciate the sound of your voice, and I I appreciate the fact that God has allowed you, God has allowed you to express through your brain, to your mouth, to us, uh, what you believe.
And I've always appreciated your honesty.
I haven't always agreed with you, but I I have always appreciated your honesty.
And I've always always appreciated your humor.
Yes.
And what I told you call screener was um it would be nice as opposed to having substitute guests to host your shows, if you would go back into the archives of uh what you have done in the past and replayed those uh on a right, but I well, you've got a point.
Uh, you're uh I have I have uh we've attempted that in the past.
Uh the problem is nobody on the staff's willing to spend that much time to go.
Do you realize how many hours of broadcast excellence that people would have to go through?
How many transcripts they'd have to read to find out when what happened.
I I do it for free.
Yeah, you would do it for free.
I would do it for free.
Well, that set me up for a lawsuit.
And uh no, you had a lawsuit.
I mean, you know, I I have no I'm just kidding.
He said you like my Oh, look at Pelosi's got one of her grandkids sitting there with her.
She's about to become uh the first uh Isn't that a lovely isn't that it's for the children.
In fact, let's go to the audio soundbite.
So comment on the caller's question.
Let's go uh let's see.
Uh number seven.
Number seven, this works with what I'm seeing on TV with Pelosi right now.
Is it ready to go?
Is it this Congress is going to be about children.
What is it?
When I receive that gavel tomorrow, I will be receiving it on behalf of the children of America.
You've heard me say that over and over again.
And that everything we do, and we call that house to order, will be With the eye to what the impact is on our children on America's future, which is our children's future.
Can't keep bashing her.
America's working women or women working at home, whatever women choose to do, that they have friends in the capital of the United States.
Manny's nannies.
And that they have a friend.
And they have a mom in the speaker's office.
That is j it's beautiful, ladies and gentlemen, and I think this represents a sensitivity in this office that has never before been there.
A woman with uh uh the very real and sincere and unchallengeable thought that every bit of legislation that comes out of the House of Representatives from now on will be about the children.
That, ladies and gentlemen, we should not take for granted.
We don't know how fortunate we are this day.
Well, I've been thinking about it, and if Nancy Pelosi is going to help the children, she's gonna have to go through the teachers' union to do it.
The road to helping the children travels through the teachers' union.
It doesn't who who runs a teacher's union?
Some guy?
It's okay if it were another woman, that'd be big problem.
But um anyway, Nancy Pelosi, every bit of legislation will take place for the children.
And she's seated now, awaiting the final vote to be uh sworn in, seated as speaker, got her uh just cutest little kids uh sitting out there on her lap.
Cute, cute little crumb crunchers.
Um they're Pelosi's.
Well, uh, who's in that Rich in Wildwood, New Jersey?
Welcome to the uh EIB network.
Hello.
Hey, Rush.
Happy New Year.
Thank you, sir.
I got a couple uh couple of things I just want to get them out.
Um and the one thing about the children, a little side thing, it reminds me of a George Carlin bit, but I can't say it right now on the air.
Well, that's that's that's really cool.
I mean, tease everybody with something that you can't say.
Now everybody wants to hear it.
It's got bad words in it, very, very bad words.
But the thing I'm talking about is lobbyists and and this the bridge to nowhere, so it's two points.
Like lobbyists to me, they're assumptions I make, and I want you to tell me if I'm crazy.
Lobbyists to me is the voice of the people.
It started out small, so it's the voice of the people, and it evolved over the decades to be bigger and more organized.
So obviously, when something gets too big, a lot of people start to to hate it.
You know, people probably liked Walmart in the beginning, and now they don't like them.
As um like that's that's about the the lobbyists.
Well now about the um the another point is the the Alaska bridge.
When I heard it on the news, what I assumed The bridge to nowhere.
You're talking about the bridge to nowhere.
Exactly.
But what I assumed was all right, they're building a bridge to an area that's undeveloped.
So they want to develop it.
Tourism, residential, whatever.
So I just don't understand where the spins get a grip that they are real.
I I don't understand how the people can actually believe this.
Believe that what is real?
That it's a bridge to nowhere.
Or that lobbies are bad.
Lobbyist is bad.
Well, lobbyists are like anything else.
I mean, there's there's no single group of people that are all clean and pure as the wind driven snob.
Of course, a percentage of population is bad.
Right.
But as in the military's easy, you know, a bad one bad military action, so the whole military's bad, but they're not.
There's a percentage of humanity that is bad.
But look, here's here's the thing about we're talking about practically everything in politics today is imagery.
Practically everything is spin.
So lobbyists.
People what what what what they really are and what they really represent and who they really represent is never discussed.
Lobbyists is simply become a code word for powerful forces that close out the voice of the real people.
The word lobbyist has, and I've I've heard the the negative connotation to the the invective associated with lobbyists.
All my life.
It's nothing new.
And it it really has At its roots, class envy.
Lobbyists are perceived to be in touch and wealthy and able to manipulate the system for their own good, for their own personal interest, at the expense of what's good for the people.
And the people, because they're dirt poor and no influence whatsoever.
Get the shaft, mine and all, routinely, because the lobbyists are the only ones who have access.
This is how it's so much in politics is presented this way.
And we become such a nation of pacifists living in fear, wanting to feel good about things, and will it take any language and any terminology, any lexicon that makes us feel good, such as tax cuts on the rich or tax uh tax uh increases on the rich.
It doesn't improve anybody's life, but they feel better, because they feel the lucky, and the winners of life's lottery are getting even with finally getting a taste of their own medicine, which of course is Balder Dash.
Lobbyists is the same sort of thing.
When the Democrats come along and we're gonna have lobbying reform and no more, are we gonna allow any corrupt activities to take place here with lobbyists because we are going to listen to the voice of the people.
And of course, the Doomkovs out there who believe this, go, yay, I'm gonna have power again.
I a single humility of laden America power.
The lobbyists are getting screwed.
Meanwhile, the lobbyists are moving in in droves this week.
Uh opening up shop on Lobby Avenue, which is K Street, Republican lobbyists moving out, Democrat lobbyists moving in, nothing is going to change, nothing ever does.
But the Democrats say it is, and of course, some people say, and the ones that that believe it, oh good, we're gonna clean this up.
Uh and it's so much of politics has become this image and spin, appeals to emotion.
Minimum wage.
Uh, another classic example.
Uh the attempt by those who are in favor of amnesty for these 12 to 14 million illegal aliens.
They're human beings, Mr. Limbaugh, and they're coming to our country to improve their way of life.
And they're doing jobs Americans won't do, Mr. Limbaugh.
They're human beings like the rest of it.
How can you deny them an opportunity that we all have in this country to improve their lives, huh?
The same kind of people.
And of course, people, when they're accused of being cold-hearted, cruel, mean-spirited SOBs, don't want to be thought of that way.
No, no, no, no, that's not my yes, it is.
You know that you are being you're being unkind.
Oh, okay, I'll shut up.
I don't want people to think that of me.
So uh lobbying, as you stated at the beginning of your phone call, is all these lobbying groups, the NRA is a lobbying group.
And I'll tell you what, they are representing a bunch and bunch and bunch millions and millions and millions of Americans.
The AARP.
They're a lobbying group.
They represent gobs and millions of seasoned citizens.
And they're liberals.
And they're using their lobbying organization to try to advance their agenda.
Hey, it's called politics.
And where do they get their money?
They get it from their seasoned citizen members who pay it to them.
I'll tell you a little story.
I think the AARP is something that needs to be fought constantly.
They're a bunch of libs, like the National Education Association.
And my mother used to think that until she started getting literature from the AARP.
And she thought, this is pretty nice what these people are trying to do for me.
I said, Mom, I'm doing far more for you than that bunches, but they care, son.
And uh, you know, it worked on my mother.
My mother was not an ideologue.
She was a Republican, and uh, you know, she but she was not she was not ideological to the extent that, of course, uh her husband, my father, and uh myself and my brother are.
But these are she started giving them money.
She made little donations.
She thought she was buying things.
She's buying insurance, this sort of thing, that what they offer.
So all these lobbying groups, ladies and gentlemen, get their money from you.
And that's how you end up being represented.
You may not be able to call Senator Foghorn and get into his office, although you might, if you actually go to Washington, you never know.
Call him up.
You might get a tour of his office and be lucky if he's not there when you go.
They can get you a private tour of the White House and do all kinds of things.
Uh you have, but but in terms of, you know, trying to influence policy, you can call Senator Foghorn or you can email him and he'll do what he wants to do.
He may make you think that your input matters.
Uh town hall or whatever.
But the lobbyists uh, you know, they they they have more direct access, because there are things that are, you know, a little uncouth about it.
I mean, when these guys are going to dinner, Rostinkowski was the king of this.
Rostinkowski, Democrat, when he was ways and means committee chairman.
I mean, my gosh, these guys are having you you look at the the travel and entertainment budget of these lobbying groups, and uh they're just they're spreading money around all over the place, taking these guys to dinner on all these little uh vacations and uh junkets and and so forth.
And if anybody thinks that's gonna change, in fact, the story on lobbying I have in the stack, that's not gonna change, but being honest about it is.
So you're gonna have to have longer forms and and reports to fill out after you take the trip.
That uh it's it doesn't it it doesn't stop people from well, look at Pelosi.
After this delay thing came up about all the uh trips and it was discovered she hadn't filed accurate reports or any reports for how many years and she was allowed to go in and redo it, back date it.
It was just an oversight.
For delay, they had to throw him out of office over far less actually than what Pelosi and some other Democrats had done.
Uh but look at my my I'm not I'm not trying to sound pessimistic here about this.
I'm just saying when you hear there's gonna be lobby reform, don't buy it.
Lobbying is uh it's it's as much a part of the political fabric as money is, and you're never gonna get the money out of it.
The only thing that they might succeed in getting out of politics if they keep up is free speech on the part of the part of us.
McCain Feingold and that kind of thing.
Quick timeout, ladies and gentlemen.
Back with more in a second.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen.
I'm I have to explain something.
Um getting a bunch of emails.
Rush, why are you so snied when it comes to Pelosi saying that everything is going to be done for the children?
Well, uh the two reasons, folks.
The first one is everything always is done for the children by by by human nature.
Those of you who have kids, I mean you work to support them, you educate everything you're doing is that say that she's trying to stake out territory here as though the children have been ignored for the last 12 years or 14 away.
But poppycock.
It's more of the political imagery.
It's out of the Clinton for the children.
Who can oppose the children?
It's like it's like the environmentalists in clean water and clean air.
I mean, who's who's for dirty water?
The way they set themselves up, you oppose them, you must be for dirty air and dirty water.
Must be for pollution.
If it could cure Alzheimer's, I'd be favor of pollution, by the way, and it may well be proven to do that.
You never know.
Madcap scientific discoveries happen each and every day.
But I mean, this this business of the children, it's nothing more than a and it works.
This is what this is what bothers me.
It works, people they just mel Oh, for the child.
Even when when uh Hugo Chavez came to United Nations and did his uh smell the sulfur in the room, the devil is in this place, Bush speech.
The next day shows up at some church in Harlem somewhere, and he's surrounded by a bunch of kids sitting on his lap.
Oh, he can't be a bad man.
Why look at him?
Children gravitate to this man.
He loves the children, and the children love him.
I mean, they're just political props.
The idea that people don't care about kids somewhere is and it's a political notion that we have to have people that care about kids because we had a bunch of people that don't, is it's just it's sophistry.
The second thing is I don't have kids.
Uh and I got to wondering how many other childless people there are in this country when they hear that Pelosi and the Democrats say that every bit of legislation is gonna come out of this new Congress is gonna be for the children.
What about those of us that don't have any?
Are we not being left behind?
Are we not being left out?
So I did some quick research here during the break in 2002 is the most recent year I could find in my quick search.
Uh Census Bureau said that there were 26.7 million women of childbearing age who had no kids in 2002, which is a uh 10% increase over what it was in 1990.
So 26.7 million women in 2002 who are childless.
You got to figure there's a lot of men in that number, too.
So the 26.7 million women means that certain number of men are also childless.
So let's let's double it just for the sake of I mean forgetting artificial wounds and insemination and so forth.
Listen, let's just say 50 million childless people in the country out of a population of what close to 300 million.
That is not an insignificant percentage of the population that are childless.
And yet the childless pay taxes, the childless support schools, the childless donate to PACs, the childless vote.
Um, I think it may be time for an uh actually a new lobbying group, the childless lobby.
Because clearly we have just been told today, those of us who are childish, we've just been told basically you don't count here.
You don't figure.
And so in in uh no, we'll call it the childless lobby.
What do you mean pay for your own kids' lobby?
Oh, the pay for your own kids' lobby?
I see what you're saying.
Now that would be unnecessarily confrontational.
We're we're this is not about jealousy or envy.
This is we want to be noticed too.
We are the childless people.
We are the child, and we we're Americans too.
And and we want legislation aimed at us.
Not just kids.
We don't want to be forgotten.
We pay taxes, we help build the roads, we help build the schools, we do all kinds of things.
And we've just basically been told that we're irrelevant.
So the childless lobby.
That's how lobbying groups get started when people think they're being left out and ignored in the system.
Tom in Miami, you're next on the EIB network, sir.
Hello.
Hey, Russ, how are you doing?
I like to argue for doubling the minimum wage and how to be beneficial to the Republicans.
You can try, but you'll lose because it makes no sense.
Okay, the first the first thing is uh cheap food.
It would make food not so cheap and cure our national obesity problem with the case.
It would do no such thing.
Oh, sure it would.
It would drive up the price of food.
Oh, oh, I missed it.
Okay, make food not so cheap.
Yes, you're right about that.
Correct.
Correct.
Eliminate obesity, okay?
And another thing was uh uh if you can hire an American and for the same price you'd have to pay an illegal alien uh that would solve the immigration problem.
Well, not necessarily.
They're Americans that may not do work even for that low wage.
Well, triple it then.
Well, that you're getting now you're getting warm.
Well, it's the same thing for federal judges.
They just released an article that they're paying way too much, like around 200,000 and they're not getting quality federal judges.
Well, the same thing should apply to low-level labor as well.
Well, but that's a different thing.
Federal judges are appointed uh, and and uh that's that's up to the dingbats that uh name them and confirm them or not.
Uh not so much the uh the judges.
But look, I want to take the argument seriously here first.
I understand you were trying to be humorous, and nice try.
I've always said, though, don't try this at home.
Those of us who do it make it look easy.
But you have to understand something.
It's supply and demand.
Let's say that take, let's say double the minimum wage.
Doesn't make it $15.
When the price of something goes up, what happens to demand?
Demand goes down.
When you so it and and labor is a commodity, so if you double the minimum wage, there's going to be less demand for workers at that wage.
That's the market speaking.
It's what happens.
And as such, people there would there will that would be you double the minimum wage and you would lose employment.
You would create unemployment out the wazoo if you doubled it.
That's why they do it in these little trickle up increments.
Because they know the economics of it.
Quick timeout, folks.
Stay with us.
As Pelosi walking down the center aisle of the House Chamber, led by those cute little kids, uh, grandkids of hers.
Looks like a State of the Union address.
Nancy Pelosi, Queen B, she thinks.
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