All Episodes
May 29, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:36
May 29, 2007, Tuesday, Hour #2
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hi, welcome back, folks.
Great to have you with us, Rush Limbaugh, serving humanity simply by showing up, simply by being here.
I'm conflicted.
I just changed a channel up there on the top monitor to PMS NBC.
It says channel not available, which is fine, actually.
But if it means the whole DirecTV thingy, let me try a different channel here, Brian, see what happens up there.
Let's see, channel not available.
It was working fine.
You know what happened?
I switched off and watched the view this morning.
I wanted to see what was going to happen on there.
And I went back here.
That's channel 25.1 down there.
I went back to the not there.
Nothing's coming.
But the bottom monitor is working fine.
No big deal.
I just saw a story here on Breitbart.com, which is disturbing.
Glencode, Georgia is the date line.
President Bush attacked opponents of an immigration deal today, saying they, quote, don't want to do what's right for America, unquote.
He said, the fundamental question is, will elected officials have the courage necessary to put a comprehensive immigration plan in place?
And he spoke against a backdrop of a huge American flag.
So the President of the United States now is marginalizing the opponents of the immigration bill as people who don't want to do what's right for America.
And the sad thing is that it's the exact opposite.
It is the exact opposite.
I don't know what is right about proclaiming that 12 or 20 or whatever the number of illegals is all of a sudden legal.
I don't want to rehash all that.
I made a comment earlier in the previous hour that we all know what the Democrats are trying to do here, and that is destroy as many of the traditions and institutions that have made the country what it is and remake the country in their own image.
They want to expand the welfare state.
They want more entitlements.
They want more people who need entitlements.
They love to redistribute wealth.
And they want the government to grow, become even more powerful over more and more dependent people.
Republicans, on the other hand, are acting out of fear.
And the fear that the Republicans have is of losing these particular votes and voters, these potential future voters, the newly arriving Mexicans, Hispanics, Latinos, whatever.
We have nothing against those people here, by the way.
What we are opposed to is the fact that there's no assimilation, that they are illegal, and that the attitude that is being conveyed to them is that somehow we're the ones guilty for their actions and that we must apologize to them.
I just want to tell you something.
Something I've learned, I learned it later in my life than I wish I had learned it.
When you make decisions, I don't care whether they're a political party or a political body or you as an individual, when you make decisions out of fear, I guarantee you you are going to screw up.
And that's what the Republicans are doing here.
They're looking at fear, and the fear is defeat.
They are looking at this as if they oppose this as equaling certain defeat.
Now, the option for the Republicans here, as I see it, is defeat versus opportunity.
But it's this problem of looking through everything via fear, looking at everything via fear that skews your judgment.
It's almost inarguable.
There are exceptions to this.
I mean, sometimes fear is a good motivator, but not in this case.
If fear motivates you to go right, to be right, straighten up and fly right, then it's one thing.
This fear is not productive and not healthy at all because this fear to them equals defeat.
The other side of this equation is opportunity.
They are, the Republicans are looking at this defeat and fear solely within the confines of these particular citizens, whatever the number is, 12 to 20.
And their fear is that if they oppose this legislation, that they're never going to get any of the votes of those 12 to 20 million down the road, nor a majority of votes of Hispanics that are already here legally.
And the opportunity that they're missing because they are so dominated by their fear is the opportunity to shore up a faltering base that they have ignored and basically shunned prior to last November's elections.
There is an opportunity here to educate.
There's an opportunity here to inform.
There's an opportunity here to be conservative, an opportunity to do things that will guarantee them victory.
And victory to them is winning the next elections.
But they are so self-absorbed or so clouded in the fear that they have of losing.
You know full well, be it a sports event, football team that plays not to lose is going to lose.
You play a game or engage in an activity not to lose as opposed to trying to win, and that's what's going to happen to you.
You are going to lose.
The opportunity here is profound.
The opportunity to stand up for the traditions and institutions that have defined and made this country great, the same traditions and institutions that previous Republicans have campaigned on maintaining and have ridden to huge victories.
And they don't see that.
Obviously, they don't see it.
Maybe some, well, I'm talking about the Republicans who are, in our view, on the wrong side of the legislation.
Plenty of Republicans that are seeing this the right way.
There's a side of story here in the stack.
Let me find it.
Rather than paraphrase this, and I don't think I put it near the top.
Yeah, I did.
Thank goodness I did.
This is a story from thepolitico.com, and it's by David Bauman.
GOP moderates freer with a Democrat majority.
In public, House Republican conservatives and moderates are trying to play nice with each other, but in private, conservatives are getting sick of those they consider rhinos, Republicans in name only.
And once again, the debate is centering on whether the rhinos are simply doing what they need to do to avoid becoming an endangered species.
Having lost several of their key members either at the polls last November or because of retirement, the moderates, why are they losing?
It isn't retirement.
The moderates who prefer their Tuesday group moniker to the rhinos acronym are searching for their role in the new Democrat-controlled House.
But here's the rub.
They want to return the GOP to the majority, but the Democrats have pushed several bills they favor, and more importantly, that their constituents, mostly from the upper Midwest and the Northeast, want them to support.
Moderate Republicans have insisted for years that they've had to cast votes that might run contrary to their traditional Republican districts if they want to get reelected.
And they can point to the losses of senior members like Nancy Johnson from Connecticut last year to back up their arguments.
Rayla Hood, Illinois, a member of the Tuesday group, said, it was pointed out that we could have beaten back that bill.
This is a gasoline price gouging bill.
It was pointed out we could have beaten back that bill if we had voted a different way.
But Lehoud said it would have been tough to go back home to Illinois where gas can be more than $3.50 a gallon if he had voted the way conservatives wanted.
And he's wrong about it.
It wouldn't have been.
If he had run as a conservative and governed as one, he wouldn't have to explain anything but the facts to your voters.
But when you're out there trying to make sure your voters don't anyway, this is precisely my point.
They don't get it.
And there are a lot of Republicans that don't get it.
The Republicans didn't lose the last election because they weren't liberal or moderate enough.
It was because they abandoned conservative principles.
And that's precisely what's happening in the immigration debate.
They are abandoning.
They've got a golden opportunity.
I've marveled at this since the end of the Reagan presidency, the two terms.
How in the world any Republican can look at those eight years and not want to replicate them?
And they actually, when they campaign, they do.
They know what wins elections.
But it's bothered them.
And I've always told you there are two wings of the Republican Party.
You've got the country club blueblooders, and they never did like Reagan.
And then you've got the conservatives.
And the country club blueblooders, the moderates, the rhinos, these are the ones that they want to be seen as above the rabble, that is the Republican Party.
And by rabble, I mean, examples would be the 24 million evangelicals, the so-called Christian right.
They're embarrassed that those people are in their party.
There's no big move towards liberal policies in this country.
Why do you think the Democrats had to run a bunch of conservative Democrats last November to win the House, to give Nancy Pelosi all of her power?
If liberal policies were ruling the roost in this country, they would have ran or would have run the most liberal candidates they could have, but they didn't.
They went out there and they got conservative Democrats in these southern states, and they rode to victory on conservatism, not party ideology.
Heath Schuler, North Carolina, out-conservative the GOP incumbent.
Now, the drive-bys don't understand the difference between the two parties' voters.
The Democrats will always show up at the polls because they want more money for government or from government on a personal basis.
Rank-and-file conservatives want to be left alone by the government.
They vote based on vision, principles, and solutions, not self-interest or selfishness.
Self-interest is good.
Selfishness is bad.
We don't expect our guys to grow the government like the Medicare drug bill to buy votes.
We don't expect them to go out and support a stupid asinine immigration bill with the with all, by the way, the misguided notion that it's going to get votes from the Hispanics.
Simpson Mazzoli didn't deliver a bunch of Republican votes from Hispanics in 1986.
You know, Republicans would do wise to vote against any Democrat legislation.
But they're not.
They're looking at things through fear, folks.
Fear equals defeat, and they refuse to see the opportunity that's staring them in the face here.
And look at one of the calculations that's equally perplexing.
Whatever number of illegals they are, or there are out there, the Republicans have to know they're not even going to get half of them.
But let's say they did.
Let's say they got half of the, let's say it's 20 million, just to use a nice round number that people think is accurate.
So let's say they're going to get 10 million votes down the road.
How many votes are they in the process of losing here by flipping off the people that have elected them and supported them and campaigned for them and donated to them in the past?
I better get this in now while I have a chance to get it in because the way things are going here, when I head back to the phones out there, it's going to be all immigration all the time.
Nancy Pelosi went over to Greenland, as you know, to hold global warming talks.
And while she's doing this, of course, late May snowfalls are occurring in the United States and Canada and England.
Horrible weather in England.
Snow, rain, ice over the Memorial Day weekend.
I have to tell you something, this has been one of the strangest weekends that I can recall in late May down here.
And this is all anecdotal.
But I played golf a bunch this weekend, and it wasn't hot at all.
A temperature 82.
There's a high pressure area out there that's circulating winds at 30 miles an hour gust, and it's cool.
The breezes are cool.
I don't know about where you people are inland, but out on the beach where these golf courses, I mean, it was not uncomfortable.
I'm just saying by this time, usually, it's 82 by 11 a.m.
And in the mid to upper 80s, by 3 or 4 in the afternoon, it hasn't gotten anywhere near that.
And we haven't had any rain.
We're in the drought and so forth.
But it's been cold.
It's been unseasonably cold in a lot of places.
Snow in Colorado.
Snow in Great Britain.
Snow in Canada.
It's not unheard of.
This has all happened before.
There's no weather event that is unique.
It's all happened before, long before, so you can't tie it to anything.
It's just, well, you can't tie it to man-made global warming and stuff.
Before I get to the Nancy Pelosi story, though, there's a great piece here from the Toronto Sun by Tom Harris and Dr. Tim Ball.
And their headline is, prove it.
Prove it.
That's how we must respond whenever governments ban established products to quote unquote save the planet.
If politicians can't validate their schemes with comprehensive and unbiased scientific studies, then they should stop telling us how to live our lives.
Take the recent ban on incandescent light bulbs.
The federal government's action on climate change and air pollution boasts that the ban will give Canadian consumers real opportunity both to save money on energy and to help clean up the environment.
And these guys say, well, prove it.
Run around, make these claims, prove it.
Show us the results of comprehensive life cycle analyses that demonstrate the energy savings accrued when operating a compact fluorescent lamp more than compensates for the increased manufacturing and mercury disposal impacts associated with these bulbs.
Prove to us that the loss of convenience and light quality of the incandescent is offset by a significant net environmental benefit.
Or many Canadians will conclude the move was purely political, designed to look good in the press and trump the NDP who had a private member's bill banning incandescence in the works.
Looking green is no longer good enough.
Governments must demonstrate their decisions really are green if they expect to be seen as anything other than political opportunists.
I like that.
And it's one of these things that we can attach to virtually any of these claims that are made.
It's Memorial Day weekend.
This is Noel Shepard at newsbusters.com.
Memorial Day weekend, snow's falling in parts of America, England, and Canada.
And our House Speaker is traveling abroad to discuss the global warming crisis.
What's potentially more comical is that Nancy Pelosi probably doesn't get the joke, and the press will likely hide the delicious irony so as not to allow the citizenry to get distracted from all the climate change hysteria.
AP reported this.
Pelosi and seven other House members left Saturday for meetings with scientists and politicians in Greenland, Germany, and Belgium on ways to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Meanwhile, in North Dakota, it's May 26, Memorial Day weekend.
Normally, there'd be kids playing in the playground right about now, but instead it's windy, cold, and there's snow on the ground.
A bit to the north, the Calgary Sun reported, homes were left without power, downed trees damaged dozens of cars, schools were canceled for thousands of kids as a blast of record snow slammed many parts of southern Alberta yesterday.
The wintry blast topped the previous snowfall mark of 5.1 centimeters for May 24th, set in 1911, by the way, with communities on the city's northwestern edge among the hardest hit.
And Britain looks set to be hit by bank holiday snow today.
They call Memorial Day a bank holiday.
Heavy rain forecast for almost everywhere, but areas as far apart as northern Scotland and East Anglia could turn white.
Never mind.
Nancy Pelosi says she saw it after an exhausting weekend looking at the weather in Greenland.
Pelosi says it's our fault, by the way, Bush's fault.
She saw first-hand evidence that climate change is a reality, and she hoped the Bush administration would consider a new path on the issue.
By the way, speaking of that, the Bush administration environmental advisor says the USA rejects the European Union emissions targets ahead of the G8 summit.
So we're thumbing our nose at them on this.
The California Democrat Pelosi pointed to her delegation's weekend trip to Greenland, where we saw first-hand evidence that climate change is a reality.
There's just no denying it.
It wasn't caused by the people of Greenland.
It was caused by the behavior of the rest of the world.
And therein lies what this is all about.
It's warming up in Greenland, she says, but it's not Greenland's fault.
No, no, no, it's ours.
It's Bush's fault.
And of course, the response to this is, prove it.
Prove it.
Don't just sit there and be considered big-hearted and have a lot of concern and care.
Prove it.
But nobody is demanding that they prove it.
See, she went to Greenland herself.
Why?
She went to all this trouble.
It must be fact.
This is no different than if they start asking you to send in home videos of local evidence for global warming and reporting it as fact.
And that's going to happen someday.
America's funniest home videos is going to be America's funniest home videos that prove global warming.
Sunday night, 7.30 ABC.
Make sure to set your TiVo.
Caused by the behavior of the rest of the world, meaning the free world, the advanced world.
Western democracies led by the United States.
Quick timeout.
Your phone calls are next when we get back.
Yes, I know.
Ladies and gentlemen, somebody has to be amazing.
Why not me?
We are here at the EIB Southern Command, telephone number 800-282-2882.
The formulaic nature of the drive-by media is now firmly established.
Way back when we had the soccer moms in the 90s.
And that was a phenomenon created by Time magazine, the cover story, some woman in St. Louis.
And basically, the manifestation of the soccer mom was this.
This is a woman who is doing everything.
She's getting the kids ready for school in the morning, and then she's picking them up after school and taking them to soccer practice, driving around in a minivan or an SUV.
And she was not being thanked, taken for granted of, or taken for granted, taken advantage of, disrespected.
And the phenomenon was said to be such that the soccer moms are big Democrats because the moms had the impression that Bill Clinton cared more about their hardships and their lives than their own rotten husbands.
Then the soccer mom phenomenon at the next election cycle gave way to the NASCAR dad.
And the Democrats are going out there trying to catch up with the NASCAR dads.
And we had some other iterations of the soccer mom.
We had this security moms after 9-11 and so forth in this never-ending quest to, by the drive-by media, to promote the importance of women as a voting block.
Because women, of course, do not act individually when it comes to politics.
They all think alike.
They all do the same.
They all vote alike.
Of course, the impression that's left.
Now, on the Times Online, Sunday Times in the UK, we've got a new categorization of women now.
And Hillary Clinton is seeking them out like a guided missile.
The single anxious female.
The SAF, the SAF, single, anxious female has taken over from the soccer mom of the 90s and the NASCAR dad of the Bush era as the influential new voting bloc that could deliver victory to Hillary Clinton in the 2008 presidential election.
Do we ever get any stories on any voting block that could be beneficial to the Republicans?
No, we don't.
Many of the 18 to 44-year-old single women who watch sex in the city now want a woman in the White House.
It says here, they're concerned about terrorism, angry about the Iraq war, worried about affordable health care and education, according to the Clinton camp.
Ann Lewis, sister of Barney Frank, senior advisor to Clinton, said, I think the better way to define them is single anxious female.
Single anxious, they're worried about terrorism and they're going to vote for Hillary.
And they want a woman in the White House.
Now, this is all made up.
This is, I'm sure this is all made up.
This is something that Ann Lewis feeds at a drive-by meeting.
The drive-by media picks it up, establishes the category and the existence of all of these women between 18 and 44, and then gives Mrs. Clinton an opportunity to go out and zero in on them.
Samantha Waterman, a Clinton supporter and a single anxious female from Los Angeles, believes the glamorous girlfriends in sex in the city would be for Hillary.
I think they might be Hillary women.
They're waiting to start their lives because they haven't met Mr. Wright yet or had a baby.
Well, so much for that old feminism thing.
We had a TV series about a bunch of perpetually unhappy women couldn't find Mr. Wright.
Their lives were focused.
I don't know if you ever watched this show.
I did as a cultural survey project.
They watched this show because these women are just perpetually trying to find Mr. Wright.
That's their whole quest in life.
And they're New York women.
You would think that'd be the last thing on their minds because if they were true feminists, that'd be what they were trying to de-emphasize in their lives.
So they're waiting to start their lives because they haven't met Mr. Wright yet and they haven't had a baby.
What they're searching for is security.
They would admire Hillary because she's so strong and steady.
Now keep in mind that Samantha Waterman is talking about fictional characters in an HBO TV series and assuming they would all vote for Hillary, which gives her comfort in voting for Hillary.
Most single anxious females can't afford the high-heeled Malolo blonic shoes that Carrie Bradshaw, the narrator of the series, loved to wear.
They tend to be relatively poorly educated.
They move home frequently, and they earn less than $30,000 a year, according to New York magazine.
But they are increasingly visible and politically active, which Clinton has high hopes of attracting.
Single women represented 22.4% of the U.S. electorate in the last election, up from 19% in 2000.
Seems to me that the last I read about this group is they don't register to vote in large numbers.
And that's going to be ever noticed that Democrats are always out there publicly registering people to vote, be it the MTV generation, young people, or whatever, and they never seem to show up after they get them registered.
Barack Obama, the handsome Democrat senator from Illinois, is causing a flutter among the single anxious females.
Jennifer Anniston, the Hollywood single white female, the archetypical, turned up at a celebrity fundraiser for Obama in L.A. earlier this year.
But Clinton is to hit back this Wednesday with a gathering to be attended by the film star Penelope Cruz and Eva Longoria from Desperate Helpwood.
Anyway, here it is.
2004, only 59% of unmarried women voted, compared to 71% of married women.
And, of course, who they have, so we have the obligatory quotes from Naomi Wolf, who dressed Al Gore for his 2000 presidential run.
It sounds like this group of women is getting more and more engaged.
Hillary's machine is top-notch, but if they will not automatically flock to Clinton, she cautioned, I really admire her, but unfortunately, her demeanor is very upscale.
There's a class difference she needs to bridge.
So once again, women being marginalized, and I wouldn't say marginalized, demeaned, grouped into various sects here of mind-numbed robotism.
And then they're being told what's going to happen is women between 18 and 44 who are single are going to read stories like, yeah, I'm single.
Yes, I'm anxious.
Yes, I do want security.
Yes, I do.
And if they read all these other women in this age group are voting for Hillary, I think I will too.
If that's the smart thing to do, that's what I will do.
Put down very demeaning, if you ask me.
David in Concord, North Carolina, you're next on the EIB network, sir.
Hello.
Hey, NASCAR, Dad Dittos, right?
Hey, Kim.
Great to have you out there, Dad.
Hey, listen.
The illegal immigrant penalty fine will be paid by me and you, and it's already built into the system.
Three letters, EIC.
Earned income credit.
Illegal immigrants, at least I've noticed, happen to have occasionally large families.
And you start tacking on the earned income credit because they're a low-income urge waiter.
Urge waiters, yeah.
Yeah, you know what I'm saying.
Wage earners.
Thank you, sir.
And, you know, so I haven't heard a cost estimate on that yet.
You don't need a cost estimate.
Just grab your wallet.
It's going to be three times.
Every government cost estimates worthless.
What'd they tell us that Medicare was going to cost?
What'd they tell us that any program in the Great Society was going to cost?
It's through the roof.
You're right.
That $5,000 is not going to be paid by them.
If it's paid by anybody at all, it will be paid by us.
But I mentioned at the top of the program of the New York Times today, lead editorial make a bad bill better.
I knew this $5,000 fine wasn't going to work.
Oh, it's too cruel.
It's taking food out of the mouths of starving babies.
Here's the New York Times.
The problems with the restrictionist provisions of the Senate bill are serious and many.
It includes a path to citizenship for 12 million illegals, which is a rare triumph for common sense.
But that path is strewn with cruel conditions, including a fine, $5,000.
This is a caricature.
The New York Times has become Mad Magazine.
The New York Times is literally a cliché.
It's a satire.
To say that path to citizenship for 12 million illegals is a rare triumph for common sense.
And the path is strewn with cruel conditions, including a $5,000 fine too steep, hurdles that are needlessly high, including a touchback requirement for immigrants to make pilgrimages to their home.
None of this is ever going to happen.
And then they get in the obligatory hit, obligatory hit at talk radio for ginning up all this uninformed and ignorant opposition to this.
Will in Batavia, Illinois, it's great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Rush, earlier you said that the Republicans are operating out of a fear of losing this Hispanic vote or immigrant vote.
I think that stops short of the point.
Either they're fearful of losing this vote.
Conversely, they're not fearful of losing the vote of their base.
You know, how can they operate like that?
I suspect they feel that they're not going to be able to do that.
Well, one of the things they're doing.
That's a good question.
One of the things they're doing is looking at fundraising.
And they see right now that the Republican National Committee is far outpacing the Democrat National Committee on Fundraising.
But they also have a little bit of hubris about this.
They tell themselves when it comes down to the actual election in November and they go in the voting booth and it's Hillary Clinton versus whoever our nominee is, that there's no way their base is going to turn against them.
They really do not believe the base will vote.
Even looking at the results of 2006, because they've got themselves believing that was about Iraq and not about themselves and their lack of conservative performance.
So the one thing that they misjudge, go through this every cycle.
And I've been talking on the phone about it to Republicans since I've been hosting a show in Sacramento in 1984.
They will not show up.
They may not show up and vote for Democrats, but they will stay home if they are that agitated.
And the Republicans risk that happening again in 2008 with all of this.
Look, folks, I don't want to get too hung up here on the problems in the Republican Party.
They are real.
But the Democrats are not smooth and sailing on smooth glass out there.
They have their own problems.
They've got big problems with their base.
The anti-war base, very, very upset the Democrats have let them down and surrendered to surrender, retreated from retreat, not putting a definite date certain for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq.
And not only that, the Democrats are pelosi and these people, everything they do and say, is alienating more and more mainstream Americans at the same time.
The media just doesn't do stories on this.
It's like this thing we had last week from this guy, David Border at the Associated Press, talking about how the drive-by media had indeed focused far more attention on Democrat presidential candidates than Republican presidential candidates.
But there was no bias involved.
No, because Rush Limbaugh was talking about Democrats more too.
Well, big difference, Mr. Border.
The drive-bys, when they report to the Democrats, do it in a fawning, supportive, let's give them some help in an advice sort of way.
When I focus on the Democrats, it is to hold them accountable.
And the same thing when we talk about the Republicans out here.
I found it fascinating.
Decided to compare me to the drive-by media and essentially proclaim that I am equal time, that I am balance.
Now, people have said to me, it happened over the weekend on the golf course.
There's a golf, this weekend.
Somebody said, you really think 80% chance Mrs. Clinton's the next president?
I said, I'm sorry.
I have to say so.
Republicans aren't on the field right now.
More than that, though.
This, of course, assuming she gets nomination.
But do you realize that parties, political parties holding the White House for three terms is really, really, really, really rare?
When George H.W. Bush extended Bush's Reagan's two terms, that was, I mean, you can count them on one hand in the last 50 years where these kinds of things happen.
They throw out FDR, of course.
But it's, I mean, if you look at the historical perspective on these kinds of things, you have to factor that in as well, too.
Regardless, if the Democrats win in 08, they're still digging their grave, folks, for later on down the road.
And the more the win, the more confident they get that they can be honest about their agenda.
And their agenda, if they get the power to implement it, it's going to really screw things up.
So that will help to hasten their demise.
But it's going to be tough sledding in the process in the interim.
Whitestone, New York, this is Matthew.
You're next.
I appreciate your waiting.
Yes.
Hi, Rush.
Hi.
What I wanted to say, Rush, this immigration bill, I think the burden is going to be carried by our children, our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
No kidding.
Absolutely right.
They're the ones who are going to have to pay a 70% tax rate in order to support the Social Security payments of these uneducated boobs who we're letting in.
Well, it's not just the tax payments and the tax rates they're going to face.
They're going to face a country that potentially, in terms of the traditions and institutions that their parents and grandparents lived in, is disintegrating and being changed.
Absolutely.
But they're not going to put up with a 70% tax break.
They will not put up.
At some point, people end up saying, enough, I'm not paying this.
Why go to work if my tax rate's going to be 70%?
Not my top marginal rate, but if my tax rate's 70%, why in the world go to work?
They're going to want to get on the end of the wagon.
They're going to get in the wagon that's being pulled by those who will work.
And I would also say to you, Rush, if I may.
The tax rates have been high.
The top marginal rate when Kennedy was around was 90%, but that was on the last dollars.
You had to be earning.
Nobody ever reported that kind of income.
So nobody ever paid 90% of the last dollars.
It was a slightest.
You had 90%, I think, and then it had 70, and then it went on a whole bunch of tax brackets back then.
And when Reagan took office, it was 70%.
And when he left office, the top marginal rate was 28%.
And of course, look what's happened to revenue generation since all that happened.
But it's academic because people aren't going to pay young workers.
Somebody, if you're right, if your children and grandchildren are going to be profoundly impacted by this, they're going to be the ones that'll fix it, demand change, or what have you.
Just hope it's not too late.
What's your going to say?
I'm bidden me to interrupt you.
Oh, no, I would also submit that if this bill does go through, as written, I don't see what impact the 2008 elections are going to have.
What difference does it make who runs or who wins?
If this bill goes through, our children's future, for the most part, is gone.
What difference do this 2008 elections make?
Well, That's not the way to look at it.
I understand your point, but that's really why all the politicals want to hustle this through and get it done so that by the 08 election, it's not something being debated.
And it would be really great if this ended up being part of the presidential debate.
If somebody could just put the brakes on this long enough that it was part of the presidential debate, Republicans and Democrats have to explain to the American people how they think about this thing.
And it doesn't get signed into law before 2008, then that would be ideal.
That's how things are supposed to happen here, rather than be railroaded through under cover of darkness as a result of negotiations in a back room.
But you're right, if it gets signed into law, the only way it's going to affect things in 08 is Republican voters probably will just sit it out.
To the hell with it.
What do we got to lose now?
Well, we're kicking butt here and taking names.
We do it daily on the EIB network.
We have one hour to go on the fastest three hours of media.
We're going to play the new national anthem in the next hour by Jose and the illegals.
It is an a cappella version.
It's Memorial Day.
Export Selection