Jason Lewis here in for Rush Limbaugh as he is doing the rush to excellence tour in Philly.
Probably as we speak, if folks are getting a real thrill up there and I've got a thrill sitting in the till of the hun chair behind the golden EIB mic at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies having more fun than a human being should be allowed.
I think I got them all in there.
1-800-282-2882.
That's 1-800-282-2882.
The contact line here.
We've been talking a little bit about a lot of things, the S-CHIP nonsense.
By the way, the more I think about this, this S-CHIP program, the more I think this is the perfect litmus test for Republican presidential candidates.
If you can't muster up enough courage, say in a nationally televised debate on MSNBC, even though four people saw it, I know both of them enjoyed it, as they say.
But if you can't just muster up enough courage to say, I would veto this Hillary Care installment, no questions asked.
I would veto it.
That's a pretty good indication that you're not going to govern from the right or even the center right, that you are going to go along to get along.
How do you say no to Hillary Care?
You know, if covering 4 million more adults and children with the S-CHIP program, $100 billion, $35 billion expansion, well, it's not going to be quite $100 billion, but a $35 billion expansion.
If you can't say no to that, how are you going to say no when Hillary comes along, if and when she does, and says, I want to cover $40 million more?
Why is it we can't seem to get the enthusiasm to fight health care on our terms?
We keep fighting it on their terms.
We keep letting them propose.
And then you get the rhinos, you know, a few in the House, but mostly in the Senate, that go along with the Democrats.
And that just adds more fuel to their fire.
Health care is a winning issue for conservatives.
How many of you would be better off if instead, let's assume that I believe this is the average, that your health care bill at your place of employment, 100 million of you out there, is $8,000 a year.
Now instead of getting $8,000 worth of health care, you get $8,000 in salary.
And then you take that money.
And that's what would happen, by the way.
The only reason you get health care at work is because of World War II wage and price controls.
So that's exactly what would happen.
Now, wouldn't you be better off with a deduction and buying it yourself?
Wouldn't that be better off?
You would take a deduction of $15,000 and then get your own plan.
It would be entirely portable.
Wouldn't that be much, much better off?
You'd get the cash instead.
The company wouldn't get to deduct health care any longer, so they would pay you the difference in cash.
They're not going to sit on the profits anymore than they decided not to give you health care back in the 40s.
You know what happened there?
We had wage and price controls, as I said, and because they couldn't give you a raise, they decided to give people health care coverage.
Well, if they can no longer deduct health care because you reform the tax code, they're going to be out that expense and they're going to sit on the cash.
No, they're going to bid up the price for good employees, and pretty soon everybody's cash compensation will go up.
So you'll swap your health care benefits for cash.
You'll get the cash.
You'll buy it on the open market nationwide pool.
And it won't matter whether you lose your job.
You'll own your health care just like you own your automobile insurance.
And no matter what your health care costs, say $8,000, you'll get to deduct $15,000 under the president's plan for health care.
You'll come out ahead.
You'll own your own plan.
It won't matter whether you keep your job or not.
You'll get to choose the kind of plan you want.
You throw in an HSA account, which are now growing in popularity.
And all of a sudden, we have liberated the health care market from the most regulated situation the world has ever known.
Now, you ought to be able to sell that.
Most people don't want to be dependent upon their employer for health care.
That would affect 100 million people versus adding four more people making $60,000, $70,000, $80,000 a year to the S-CHIP program.
That's why I do believe, as I said earlier in the program, that this is the litmus test.
This is a litmus test for Hillary Care.
It's a litmus test on whether Republicans are serious about getting back their grassroots conservative base.
Because if you can't say no to this, good heavens, Ronald Reagan would be spinning in his grave.
Hillary Clinton, as I mentioned, in Iowa, saying, vote for me because I'm a woman.
I suppose, you know, this gender baiting is going to work out.
Women do, you know, are a very, very important special interest anymore.
That's really what they are.
It's become a special interest.
Frankly, I think it's kind of demeaning.
But I know what it's like.
I know the influence of women.
I live in a household of women, and I can tell you they have profound influence.
Why, this morning in the shower while I was exfoliating, I was thinking to myself, Hillary's down in Iowa and she's saying, look, I'm not running because I'm a woman.
I'm running because I'm the most qualified and experienced person for the job.
But wouldn't it be nice to have a woman in the White House?
Now, again, you've got a bunch of people running away from this saying, oh, how are we ever going to get women to vote for us?
He's going to get the feminist vote.
Women are going to vote for Hillary because she's a woman.
There is a huge opportunity for women or for the GOP to attract the female vote if they are just willing to go after it.
Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal had a great column back in late August.
Women make up 60% of the left's primary electorate and getting them back to the GOP or to the GOP is going to be hard.
Or is it?
Think about this.
Think about this.
And I don't mean to be stereotypical here, but most women, by most of the statistics, still work on top of their husband's income.
Say a guy earns $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 a year.
A woman earns $40,000, $50,000.
I'm not being demeaning.
It's just the way the statistics work out so far.
I mean, haven't you read Pat Schroeder?
So their income is piled as second earners.
And even if they make more, but it doesn't matter who makes more in the House.
The second income is piled on top of the first.
And because we are so wedded to these progressive, graduated income taxes, which is absolute insanity, where is it written, friends, in the United States of America that the more you make automatically qualifies you to pay more, even though the more you make, the less government you use?
Can you imagine if we priced our goods and services that way, the way we do taxes?
Walk into the auto shop or walk into the auto dealership.
I like this car.
Well, how much do you make, sir?
Oh, you make $200,000 a year.
Well, for you, the price is $4,000 more than this guy over here only makes $50,000 a year.
Why?
Well, because it's ability to pay.
That's only fair.
That's absurd.
We don't price anything that way in a market economy.
And yet, that's exactly the way we assess user fees known as government taxes.
I digress.
The point is, all of those taxes of the secondary earner in a household are piled on top of the primary earner.
And in many cases, that affects whom?
Women.
You want to give women a tax cut, go to a flat tax rate or go to a fair tax and eliminate.
Either one would be better than this outrageous antiquated tax code that is a disaster.
That would be a tax cut for women.
You ought to be able to sell that.
Family leave.
What about family leave, Jason?
Don't women want family leave?
Well, some do, some don't.
I bet as many want family leave as about as many want flex pay.
But the unions won't let them have it.
You know, instead of getting the automatic overtime pay, you work a little extra Monday through Thursday so you can get Friday off.
Instead of getting overtime, you get time off.
It's called flex time.
Women would love that issue.
I'd even throw in another one, Title IX.
People think Title IX is a loser for the male-dominated Republican Party.
Title IX is part of the Education Amendment Act or the Education Amendments to the Education Act of 1972.
And Title IX is one of those amendments that says in interscholastic or intercollegiate sports, when it comes to women's athletics, you've got to have a quota system.
And by God, if there are 50% women at this university, why the locker room space is going to be divvied up 50%.
The budget's going to be 50%.
Everything's going right down.
We're going to have a pure quota.
Now, what the bureaucrats at the civil rights office of the education department don't allow in any meaningful way is interest.
Here's a novel idea.
Notwithstanding the rise of female athleticism, most, I shouldn't say most, many women aren't interested in athletics.
So what's happened?
Because they adhere to this quota system, you've had a number of university programs like the swimming program at UCLA, baseball programs, wrestling programs, golf programs for men being eliminated in order to make up the quota.
Now, the liberal left says, isn't this wonderful for women?
Here's a novel idea.
There are a lot of moms out there who have sons, and their opportunities are being diminished by this ridiculous Title IX quota.
In fact, many of the leaders to try to re-reform this quota system in collegiate athletics are women because their sons are being hurt.
You ought to at least be able to take into account the interest.
So if you have, and you might use intermurals that way, but if you have, you know, 50% women, 50% men, and you do a survey or you measure it somehow, and only 40% of the women are interested, you ought to be able to take that into account.
There are lots of issues.
The point here is, whether it's flex time, cutting the top income tax rate so that the second earner, female, gets a tax cut, or addressing Title IX in a gender-neutral way where the GOP or conservative candidates could get women.
There's only one drawback.
You can't do it if you're not willing.
You have got to be willing to face these issues, whether it's S-CHIP or whether it's Title IX or whether it's the women's vote or whether it's national security.
We've been talking about that.
I mean, think about what the Democrats are saying on national security.
Some say the administration is on defense on this torture argument on wiretapping and all of this.
Well, let me see.
The liberal left's idea of defending America is no spying on international communications, no wiretapping of terrorists, no coercive methodology when it comes to interrogating detainees, certainly no foray into Iraq.
We're going to redeploy there.
What would you do?
There's a difference between a crime and a war.
9-11 was not a crime.
It was an attack.
And in war, we do not read the Miranda rights.
In war, we wiretap and we spy.
I think FDR opened every piece of international mail he could when he was president.
And frankly, up until the misguided FISA law of 1978, if the Attorney General thought for national security reasons that he needed to authorize a wiretap even between two states in the union, he did it.
He did it.
Can you say Robert F. Kennedy?
17 now after the hour.
I am Jason Lewis in for Rush Limbo on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Your call is coming up right after this.
All right, 1-800-282-2882, Jason Lewis in for El Rushbo.
He will be back tomorrow.
Fear not in the Attila the Hun chair.
In the meantime, let's go to Brooklyn.
And Jimmy, you're on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
High.
Hello.
During the years when Carter was president and then Reagan, there was a communist terrorist movement attacking El Salvador, trying to topple the government and make a communist government in El Salvador.
The leader, the brother of the leader of that communist group and people from the Cuban mission set up a support network in America called CISPIS for tax and fundraising purposes.
They set it up legally, CISPIS.
Now, the FBI, rightly, was infiltrating and spying on CISPIS, being that they had contact with foreign terrorist groups and terrorists, and they know what the goals were.
The Democrats and the leftists, and eventually a judge ruled that the FBI could not spy on CISPIS because that puts a chilling effect on political activity and free speech.
So the liberals were concerned about political activity and free speech rights for the communist terrorists.
These are the same liberals who are trying to close down free speech for conservatives on talk radio.
And this could be documented.
No, I don't doubt that a moment.
I mean, these are the same liberals running off to see Hugo Chavez on a daily basis who shut down the free press there.
They have very little reticence in shutting down a free press for the opposition.
They want to make certain the lines are flowing for their guys.
I mean, you bring up a very good point here, and this gets to the wiretapping debate.
I mean, the president said yesterday that Congress needs to extend the terrorist surveillance law that allows us under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, this misguided Carter-era law, allows us to spy on the bad guys.
But that puts a chilling effect on terrorism, and the liberals can't stand that.
You know, with the communism...
In fact, well, let me just finish.
The Democratic bill that the President was referring to and didn't like would allow the government to eavesdrop on a foreign target or a foreign terrorist.
However, if there was a possibility the targets might be communicating with an American, then we'd have to get a warrant from FISA.
Well, the communists in their own writing say the best way to help the cause of communism is through the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.
There really isn't any other wing in a Democrat Party.
The useful idiots, huh?
Exactly.
Well, some of them are useful idiots, and some of them are Marxist revolutionaries.
Some of them have long histories of working.
Ted Kennedy wanted a pal up with Andrew Poff to stop the Reagan defense buildup.
If that's not treason, it's hard to define treason then.
There is this odd coalition in the Democrat Party these days that doesn't care much for all of the tenets of Americanism, whether it be free markets and capitalism and private property and the ability to lead your life the way you want, even if you want to smoke and drink.
All of this is under assault by the intelligentsia of the Democrat Party that wants to put us on sort of a Soviet five-year plan.
We're going to live in a Soviet-style condo next to a mass transit station while we don't build roads, prohibit smoking in the condo, of course, and all go get our daily exercise routine from the commissar.
It is getting a little bit out of hand.
On the FISA law, let me get back to that for a second, though.
The electronic monitoring of international communications in a congressionally approved time of war should be a no-brainer.
Jimmy Carton and Bill Clinton both signed executive orders authorizing similar surveillance measures without any imprimatur from Congress.
In fact, Jamie Gorlick, the righteous 9-11 commissioner, testified in 1994, quote, the case law supports that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes, close quote.
What the American people have to understand, the Soviets set up a lot of front groups in America and throughout the world.
They're transmission belts for Marxist revolution, Marxist ideology.
Most of the Americans who are helping probably don't know.
They're like a molecule of water in a Marxist tidal wave where they don't even realize what they're a part of, but that the total and net effect of it is the whole political spectrum has been moved to the left.
The communists say.
And you know what the danger for the GOP is in that regard?
They don't understand it.
Well, they don't understand it, but it allows the GOP to move leftward to and still say this lesser of two evil games.
I am getting so sick and tired of some Republican and name-only rhino demanding that we vote for this liberal Republican, you know, Olympia Snow or anybody else.
Apparently Charles Grassley is trying to vie for that, I guess, as well.
And say, you got to vote for me because, gee, the alternative is much, much worse.
So they're dragging the GOP leftward.
Yesterday's left is today's center.
Today's left is tomorrow's center.
That's what the communist press says.
They're talking about the whole spectrum being move left just the way you described.
And it's done through popular front groups, all people's fronts, typical Marxist strategy.
Anybody could look it up.
Well, it's a very good point.
Jimmy, thanks for checking in.
Let me give you a perfect example of what I'm talking about.
And I hate to pick on my Republican brother.
I'm a lifelong Republican.
It's still the better alternative, especially looking at the presidential race.
But the reason the Republicans lost in November 06 had nothing to do with drifting too far right, for heaven's sakes.
We were under a compassionate conservative philosophy that set records for spending.
McCain Feingold, the immigration story, the No Child Left Behind education bill.
The Democrats should have been happy with Republican control.
Spending went up by 50% in five years.
The Ted Kennedy Orrin Hatch education bill.
You can go right down the list.
The borders weren't handled.
And all of that leaded to a blurring of the distinction between what is a Republican and what is a Democrat.
And naturally, when the lines are blurred, the voters are going to vote for the real thing if they want spending.
You cannot get into a bidding war with the Democratic Party.
They will win every time.
And that's what's happened.
I'll give you a perfect example.
There's a guy up here in Minnesota, Representative Jim Ramstead, in a quote-unquote moderate district.
Heck, it's a Republican district.
The Democrats have made a few gains lately, but it's a Republican district.
He announced his retirement a month ago.
Now his source says, gee, the folks in Washington, D.C. and other big shot Republicans are asking me to reconsider this.
Now, let me tell you about my friend Jim Ramstead.
Nice man, nice fella.
He's no conservative by any stretch of the imagination.
You want proof?
He's been teaming up with the late Paul Wellstone and now Representative Patrick Kennedy on a mental health parity bill, which would force your insurance company to cover somebody who's going to a psychiatrist every day for an eating disorder.
That's not conservatism.
He supports the S-CHIP bill.
He voted for Nancy Pelosi's big six issues in the first 100 hours.
He voted for all of them.
Why is the GOP asking him to stay in office?
It was a joke.
All right.
I'm not Johnny Carson.
This is not Karnack.
I cannot believe this email I got.
I was talking about how women influence our lives, and I live in a household full of women.
And I said in a nonchalant, casual, flippant way, why, this morning, to show you how influential my girls are, I'm in the shower while I'm exfoliating.
I'm thinking to myself, see, guys don't exfoliate.
Well, leave it to somebody.
I get an email.
Lewis, guys in the shower scrub.
Girls in a shower exfoliate.
You must have some gender identification issues.
I barely even think it was a joke.
You ready for this?
I believe his last name was Proctor.
I'm not even going to talk about a shower and somebody named Proctor.
I'm just not going there.
Not going to do it.
1-800-282-2882-Joel and Kansas City Mo.
You are on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Hi, Jason.
Mega soothing cucumber and mint dittos.
Exactly, sir.
Yeah.
I don't know about you, but I need to light some candles and take a bath.
I don't know.
I'm very comfortable with my masculinity.
Not a boy.
Listen, I want to piggyback on the Egyptian fellow that called in last hour regarding the American foreign policy in the Middle East.
You know, for the past 30 years or so, the American foreign policy has been to essentially do whatever works, whatever is in the American self-interest.
And with Reagan somewhat with communism and now Bush in the Middle East, the approach has begun to take a shift to where the approach is to establish democracy in the Middle East.
The problem with this is that the American leaders, you know, here we are seven years into the national dialogue about Islam.
And the American leadership, the American public, still does not understand that you cannot spread freedom in a place where Islam has already been previously established.
The only way that freedom will ever truly be able to take root is if Islam is first defeated.
Well, one might surmise that Iraq was the best bet because it wasn't a purist Islamic state under Saddam.
Well, to a degree, but let me just give you my reasoning.
Now, I'm as conservative as I get.
Sure, square right.
I've wanted to hash this up with Rush for a while, but from a conservative perspective, we pick on liberals constantly for believing that they can reform every child molester and every criminal out there.
Well, George Bush ran against Gore on the issue of nationbuilding, so you have a point.
Yeah, so then we come along and we think we can actually reform societies.
We can reform cultures.
And this has nothing to do with race, but the bottom line is when you have a political and religious ideology that is so acidic, that is so contrary to freedom and human nature as Islam, then you're going to be banging your head up against the wall.
What are you going to do with a billion Muslims worldwide?
I think you have got to reach out to moderate Muslims and the moderate Arab community and say, here's an alternative view, and recruit people into.
Now, you're saying that's impossible.
I'm saying that might not be impossible.
Listen, I spend a lot of time reading about Islam.
If there's one book out there that the American public needs to read, it's called Antichrist, Islam's Awaited Messiah.
And the title is a bit inflammatory, but it is the one book that people need to read to understand the root of what we're dealing with in the Middle East.
And what do you say to those who argue that when we reject all Muslims and we reject the entire Islamic world, that you drive people into radicalism?
That you encourage al-Qaeda and encourage the fanatics.
Well, I would say the same thing to the people that would say when you try to drive all Nazis away, that you're just causing Nazis to become more radical.
It's not a matter of trying to appease an evil ideology.
You have to defeat it.
And how do you propose defeating Islam in Indonesia?
Well, in a general sense, the first thing we need to do is focus not on spreading democracy.
We need to focus on containment.
We need to focus on education.
We need to focus on the intellectual battle.
Islam is in war against democracy.
Democracy needs to be at war against Islam.
And I'm not just talking radical Islam.
I'm talking Orthodox Islam.
The Islam that Muhammad founded needs to be defeated.
And I know that sounds radical.
But, well, it's not a problem.
I think you're going to get disagreements from people who are literally executing this war and the administration on that.
Not to mention the State Department.
I agree.
I agree.
Look at Turkey.
Look at Turkey.
Turkey was the Middle East's longest-lasting democratic state.
It just fell to the Islamists.
So we think we're going to make it work in Iraq?
Nobody's disputing that there is a strain and a very large one in the Islamic community that must be defeated.
That's quite different than saying, look, there's a billion Muslims worldwide.
If they adhere to something Muhammad declared, we've got to defeat all of them.
What we have to defeat is they just did a poll, and I forget who conducted it.
They did it in several countries.
There were several thousand people interviewed.
This is not just a large strain.
Two-thirds of those interviewed said that they want the establishment of a pan-Islamic caliphate.
The bottom line is if there's a caliphate established, well, you can kiss America goodbye.
So, you know, it's restricted to the.
No one's disputing that we've got to defend that, but there's an argument of moral suasion here, too.
Then that was what the Iraq venture was about, trying to turn the tide on that and trying to reach out.
I mean, some would argue that the Dubai ports deal was a huge mistake.
And the United States' rejection of that, what we told people that we were interested in perhaps having a relationship with the United States that's peaceful and based on trade and property to go to hell.
Now, that is not going to help the cause if you think you can recruit some moderates.
And that's the difference of opinion between your view and many, many others.
But I do appreciate the call, Joe, or I should say I appreciate the call.
I do think, however, that you're going to get some disagreement from a number of quarters on that, which is not to say there isn't an ideology out there that we're all fighting.
Well, most of us.
And that needs to be defeated, of course.
1-800-282-2882.
I'm Jason Lewis in for Rush Limbaugh as he is engaged in the Rush to Excellence tour in Philadelphia today.
He'll be back tomorrow in Winterhaven, Florida.
Let's get to Perry next on Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
Hi, Perry.
Hey, Jason.
I was telling him about the Waxman deal on monitoring talk show hosts.
Oh, they are?
Why didn't you tell me that before?
Well, he did not know anything about it.
He was thrown under the bus by one of his comrades in the House last, I believe it was Friday.
It could have been Thursday, during the minute speeches.
His comrade, and I believe she's out of Fort Lauderdale, recommended that he take that task upon himself.
But I think that's the only thing that was said about it.
And then Monday or Tuesday this week, then I hear that he's denying all of this and so forth.
But that's why he's denying it.
He didn't say it.
It was one of his comrades down in Fort Lauderdale that said he should do it.
Are you suggesting something akin to plausible deniability here?
On him, on his part?
Yeah.
Well, I heard it from one of the Congress representatives out of Fort Lauderdale.
It was out of her mouth, not his mouth.
So he could deny it and be truthful.
He didn't say it initially.
Well, as R. Emmett Terrell said earlier in the program today, they are not retracting the story that led to all of this in the American Spectator.
I understand that.
That's because one of the representatives brought it up in the House, and it was not him that brought it up.
It was, I believe it was the Congress lady out of Fort Lauderdale that she was going to refer this matter to him so he could undertake that task.
On this issue, believe it or not, I've got a little more faith in the American electorate maybe than some others.
And I certainly have more faith in this Supreme Court, thanks to a few nominations as of late.
And that is, I think we have gone past the era of the nonsense in the Red Lion case in 1969 that said, well, sure, the FCC can regulate content.
Why, it's the public airwaves.
Really?
I didn't know the public paid for my salary, paid for this equipment, paid for that.
I mean, if you can make that argument, you can regulate newspaper editorials.
I don't think even if this thing got out, obviously it would hit a presidential veto.
But I don't think the court would uphold it.
I agree with you, and I wouldn't be afraid either.
I just don't want us to go down the same road on the pony soldier deal as those Democrats do.
And we should aim our arrows to the person that said it originally.
And I think it was that congresswoman out of Fort Lauderdale.
We'll look into that.
Thanks for the update, Perry.
Do appreciate the call.
Onward and upward to Alabama, Anniston, Alabama.
And Michael, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with me, Jason Lewis.
How are you, sir?
I'm pretty good.
Good.
My question, sir, is on this government health care.
What happens to a person who's no longer economically viable to the system?
And who really gets to decide that?
Well, I mean, once the government has the reins of power vis-a-vis health care, and you've got someone who's 85 consuming all sorts of health care resources, what shall we do with that person?
No, what about somebody who's 28 and might have a broken leg and a prior history of a drug problem?
Yeah.
You know, would they be considered economically viable?
What do you mean by economically?
Maybe even somebody who might have the wrong views.
Are they economically viable?
Well, I mean, you never know.
As I told you earlier, once the government can pay for health care, once they can regulate that, which they subsidize in a famous Supreme Court case, and they will regulate it.
And I don't know if it would end up that far that we don't like you and you're not economically viable, therefore you're not going to get health care.
But they're certainly going to use it to shape behavior as they are in England with the smoking nonsense, where they say you're not going to get advanced medical treatment if you continue to smoke.
That's exactly what would happen here.
Let's just say that Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reed gets in charge of the system.
He's, you know, oversight on the system and Rush Limbaugh gets sick.
Does Rush Limbaugh get better health care than he would if maybe he served on their campaign?
Well, I don't think, look, I don't think it's going to be that transparent.
I think, though, they wouldn't be shy about showing their glee in that someone with the means could not buy the best health care available.
You know, that's really what they want.
They don't want the majority of Americans to get the best health care in the world and have a few left behind.
They want everybody to get the crummy health care, but it will be equal.
And that's really what we're talking about here.
I mean, this is really what we're up against.
If you want everybody to have crummy health care, but it's all equal, why, just go for that government-run system of which S-CHIP is a part.
I'm Jason Lewis in for Rush Limbaugh on the Excellence and Broadcasting Network.
Hey, how do you like this?
Homeless people will be allowed to sleep on sidewalks at night in L.A. as long as they don't block doors and driveways under a settlement between the city and the civil liberties advocates at the ACLU who sued on behalf of six homeless people who apparently wanted to sleep someplace.
I'm loving this out in L.A. Homeless people will be allowed to sleep on the sidewalks at night as long as they don't block doors and driveways.
Well, you've got to get tough and draw the line someplace.
Yeah.
Yeah, what are they going to do during the day?
Exactly.
Exactly.
Don't we have any compassion anymore?
My goodness gracious.
1-800-282-2882.
Let's go to Dawn, or is it Donna in Wheeling, West Virginia?
You're up next on the Rush Limbaugh program with Jason Lewis.
Hi.
Hey, Jason, high-five from formerly Hennepin County.
Oh, you escaped.
Yeah, I did.
Hennepin County.
And I live in the land of Senator Bird and Senator Rockefeller.
I guess you didn't escape.
Well, here's what I want to tell you right before I just tell you the two sentences I want to read.
Robert Byrd was a lot of fun before electricity, you know.
Yeah, well, yeah, I think in the cabin.
Yeah, pretty much.
But anyway, I had several friends from Minnesota send me Minnesota, you know, send me email that said, you've got to listen to Jason.
He is so great, and he's going to sub for a rush.
So I had to pay attention to you today, and I'm really excited because you're talking about the S-CHIP program.
And the thing that is really ironic, well, not ironic, the thing that's really good, I had read Heritage Organization, Heritage.
Heritage Foundation, right?
Okay.
There's two sentences I want to read you that actually kind of encompass what you're talking about all day long.
It says, ironically, the very children that many in Congress want to ensure through the S-CHIP expansion will also be the ones footing the bill for federal entitlement programs.
The total value of unfunded debts and entitlement obligations that must be paid down the road is equivalent to giving $170,000 mortgage to every child in America, but without the house.
Yeah, that's the same article, but that was just, I mean, that hit.
No, the Heritage Foundation does great work, of course, and you couldn't be more correct.
I mean, this is the classic camel's nose under the tent.
The program started, I believe it was at $25 billion.
The president says, I'll increase it 20%, throw out another $5 billion.
That's not good enough.
They want $35 billion.
And when this authorization is up, in fact, the way they wrote the bill, it will automatically kick in more money.
Otherwise, you'll see all the kids on the street starving.
So it'll be a greater expansion and a greater expansion.
That's exactly right.
Go on and on and on.
Not children.
That's a good article.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
I was overtalking you.
I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
I'm sorry.
There's another really good article that's also on the heritage thing, and I think it was last week I read it.
It's the best explanation to people who did not major in economics, people like, you know, laypersons.
Don't narrow it down quite so much.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it was the greatest explanation about what Congress just did to expand the national debt.
And they've got the really coolest thing on the website if anybody wants to go there.
And right in the center is a cup of coffee.
And the cup of coffee is the picture, and it's $3.85 per day for 21 years for every single human who drinks coffee or lives.
Thanks for the wonderful comments.
I've got to move on.
But let me just add something to that.
And it's great to hear your voice again.
The fact of the matter is, let us not get sidetracked by the quote-unquote debt.
The debt is about 37% of GDP.
Coming out of World War II, it was over 100% of GDP.
It's roughly the same as it's been.
You can go back a couple of decades.
The deficit is nothing more than a talking point.
It's about 1.2% of GDP, far lower than it's been.
It's a percent of the economy for the last 40 years.
Liberals love to focus on the debt.
Why?
Because they say they can eliminate the debt by raising taxes.
Friends, the issue, the focus has got to be government spending.
The opportunity cost is the same, whether government taxes, borrows, or inflates.
It all comes out of the private economy.
I would much rather have a temporary deficit due to tax cuts than a balanced budget with a huge tax increase.
It's the spending stupid, as The famed Carville used to say, except he never said that.
They used to love to spend.
Anyway, got to move Dawn.
Thanks for the call.
Back with more to wrap things up as well, right here on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Don't go away.
Well, what a treat.
My thanks to everybody here at EIB, to Snerdley, of course, HR Mike handling the board, engineering flawlessly, perform duties, as Rush likes to say.
It's always wonderful to be in the Till of the Hun chair behind the golden EIB Mike in for the big guy.
So, most of all, I'd like to thank Rush Limbaugh for all he does in addition for this opportunity.