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Oct. 26, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:23
October 26, 2007, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Well, thank you once again, Johnny Donovan.
You read that introduction just the way I wrote it.
I always like that.
I am Jason Lewis, Minnesota's Mr. Wright.
Glad to be in here for El Rushbo today in the Attila the Hun chair behind the golden EIB mic.
Hayatop, the EIB Tower in Midtown Manhattan, another excursion into broadcast.
Excellent.
Speaking of Minnesota, did you hear about this?
Garrison Keillor gets a restraining order against a stalker, a fan.
Now, if you don't know who Garrison Keillor is, he has the most popular show in America that no one has ever listened to.
That's why he gets all the awards, as HR points out.
But he's got this fan from Georgia, came up to Minnesota to stalk the Prairie Home Companion.
And she wrote him letters that were disturbing.
One, according to Keillor, graphically described making love to me.
Close quote.
Now, folks, I don't know what to say about this.
The end of the world is near if you've got a stalker for Garrison Keillor.
Wants to make love to him?
This 65-year-old liberal is the poster child for better forceps training in med school.
I mean, this guy, what, the hunchback of Notre Dame wasn't available?
Now, I don't want to say anything bad about Garrison.
Never mind.
Sure, I do.
This guy rips on Bush every chance he gets in the great Midwest.
So I want you to know that even though I'm being harsh, he deserves it.
Hey, it is Friday here on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Jason Lewis.
And if it's Friday, that can only mean one thing.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's Open Line Friday.
That means you get to determine what you want to talk about.
As Rush says, always dangerous to let rank amateurs take over the program, but what the heck, it is Open Line Friday.
1-800-282-2882.
That's 1-800-282-2882.
The contact line is always for El Rushbo.
Me sitting in today, and what an honor, what a privilege to work with the gang again to fill the shoes of El Rushbo is not easy, let me tell you.
Hey, let's talk about the tax bill.
You got to talk about that.
I want to talk about the S-CHIP redux.
The Democrats came back with that S-CHIP vote again.
You know, if the Gipper were here, first thing I thought of, they want to reinstate this S-CHIP bill, which is the first installment of Hillary Care, ensuring middle-class adults before the poor children are always insured.
And it was vetoed by the president.
The veto wasn't overridden.
So naturally, what did the Democrats do?
They passed a similar version yesterday.
And the Gipper, don't we miss the Gipper?
I can just see the Gipper when this happens.
Well, there you go again.
I mean, what is it going to take for these people to understand we don't need another big tax increase, huge tax increases for this S-CHIP bill that the president will not sign off on.
You're not going to insure the indigent children.
The president's first point was, I want 95% of those children under 200% of the poverty line insured under S-CHIP before I authorize an expansion into the middle class.
The Democrats deliberately said, no, we want to go into the middle class, this time up to $60,000 a year.
And by the way, in New Jersey, it could be even higher than that, contrary to what some believe.
They're going to get their waiver for three more years, maybe longer.
So it could be back up to that $80,000, $82,000 figure.
Now, if the Democrats are saying we want to ensure middle-class families making $60,000 a year with government, with taxpayer dollars, maybe $80,000 in New Jersey, depends on what state get waivers, before they insure the indigent.
Can there be any doubt at all, my friends, that this is an attempt to ensnarl the middle class in a government-run program?
Not to mention, this is the famous $10 cigar tax bill that was mercifully reduced to just $3 per cigar, 61 cents on the nasty cigarette smokers out there.
I'm confused about this.
We're going to spend money taxing cigarettes and then spend more money talking about how people should quit smoking.
How does that work?
That's Democratic math, I guess.
You know what?
One thing that needs to happen on this, once the facts get out and people realize that this was an attempt to ensnar the middle class into a government-run health care plan, we win.
We win with the facts if you're willing to sell it.
But something else needs to be done.
You need to keep going, especially the presidential candidates and say, look, we can fix health care with two simple steps.
We're going to reform the tax code.
So when you buy insurance individually, you deduct it, not the corporation you work for.
Take away that deduction and they'll pay you the difference in salaries.
And then you deduct your insurance premiums and your copays and the like.
And then you open up insurance, the insurance market, to a nationwide pool to get out from under these 1,000 state mandates that cover fertility treatment for 90-year-olds, substance abuse treatment, AIDS treatment, acupuncture.
In Minnesota, they've got a mandate, a health insurance mandate.
If you want to come into this state and write a traditional insurance policy, traditional indemnity insurance policy, you have to cover port wine stain removal.
The only port wine stain removal I have is when I drink too much on a Friday night.
Maybe my insurance company could cover that.
I don't need that.
All I need is catastrophic coverage.
And if you had a nationwide pool, you could get out from under your onerous mandates in your particular state and buy the cheapest insurance available.
Maybe it's just catastrophic for an accident, for a heart attack, for cancer.
You don't need all the other things that drive up the cost of insurance.
And of course, Democrats and a few rhinos, Republicans in name only, are now trying to add mental health parity to those ERISA-covered insurance plans at the federal level.
So that's all you have to do.
You do that.
Insurance becomes affordable overnight.
You do that.
The tax code now ensures that insurance is always portable regardless of a job because you would buy your own insurance with a $15,000 to tax deduction the president proposes.
Even if your plan only costs $8,000 or $10,000, you get the $15,000 tax deduction.
And whether you keep your job or not, just like your automobile insurance, it goes with you.
That is a classic free market approach to health care.
And the Republicans, the president, the House Republicans, the Senate Republicans, well, forget about them.
They're kind of lost.
But nevertheless, they need to sell this.
And the presidential candidates need to sell this.
Now, a number of them have come out with similar plans, but they need to trumpet this thing in addition to saying no to the S-CHIP plan.
Because you wouldn't need a government-run Hillary care installment S-CHIP plan if you freed up the health care market.
We have not had a free market in healthcare since the 1940s, coming out of wage and price controls when you told businesses they couldn't give people a raise, so they gave them health care.
Then they got a tax deduction for that.
That is called a market distortion.
And if you remove that, everybody's going to have health care insurance.
And remember, insurance is not health care.
Everybody does have health care, but everybody could have accessible insurance.
So that's one big issue that the Democrats came back with, and they think it's a winner.
I don't think it's a winner.
I think Republicans can win on health care reform if they start to sell the alternatives in addition to pointing out the dangers of Hillary care.
When the government, let me tell you something, friends.
When the government gives you something for free or subsidized, there is unlimited demand.
There is unlimited demand.
And when there's unlimited demand, there's only one way the government can get a hold of the budget, the global budget.
Rationing.
First, they'll reduce payments to the health care providers.
They're already doing that.
You've got a number of doctors opting out of Medicare patients, Medicaid patients.
Here in Minnesota, we just had a physician survey that said 60% of the physicians surveyed will take fewer Medicare patients now because the government is cutting doctor reimbursements.
That's called rationing.
And when it gets to the extreme, the government will simply say, like they're doing in the U.K., oh, you've been a smoker.
We're going to deny you advanced treatment because it's your own fault.
And that's what we do in order to make certain health care is available for everybody else.
When you offer something for free, when the government offers it for free, there's only one result: rationing.
And that is, that is the outcome.
And if you sell that point and if you sell the alternative, you win, my friends, on healthcare.
And of course, you also win on tax increases.
The mother of all tax hikes, this is called liberal math.
The Charlie Wrangell bill to get rid of the AMT.
I'm confused about this.
I thought Democrats love the alternative minimum tax.
The alternative minimum tax is a parallel tax that when you file your 1040, you file your tax and you take all the legal deductions, you do all the things the right way, your state tax deduction, your property tax deduction, your mortgage interest deduction.
You do all of that.
Somebody from the IRS, somebody in Washington looks at your return and says, I still don't think you're paying enough.
So you file an alternative minimum tax.
And the first thing it does is take away those deductions, especially state taxes.
And all of a sudden, if you live in a high-tax state, you're really getting a double whammy.
You're getting high tax, like in New York or California or Minnesota, and you can't deduct it on your federal return, and your tax bill goes way up.
That's the alternative minimum tax.
It is government greed.
It is nonsense.
And it ought to be repealed.
Ah, but Charlie Wrangell and the Dems are not going to repeal it without raising taxes on guess who?
The rich.
Yes, the rich.
One thing we do not want in this country, remember this, friends.
We do not want more work, more savings, more initiative, more business.
We don't want that.
We want to punish the rich.
So the more you work and the more money you make for yourself, your family, your community, why the more the government says you need to pay.
Why, it's ability to pay.
Can you imagine this neo-Marx Marxist ability to pay being applied anyplace else across the economy?
Can you imagine if you walked into your car dealership and said, I want this car, it's going to be $30,000 for you.
Oh, Mr. Lewis, how much do you make?
Oh, you make more.
It'll be $40,000 for you.
Why?
You have the ability to pay.
Well, guess what, friends?
That's exactly how we raise taxes at the federal level with this outdated progressive income tax.
And Charlie Wrangell's plan wants to add to it with a 4% income tax surcharge on anybody making over $200,000 a year and almost 5% if you dare to make $250,000 for a single and $500 for a couple.
Now, before you say, oh, $200,000 a year, they can afford it.
These are about the top 3% of income earners in the country.
About 3 million returns.
They already pay 47% of the total federal income tax collected.
So here we go, the same old mantra from the liberal left.
Let's add another tax on the people that are already, well, you know, paying the tax.
And Wrangell expands the deductions and the credits for the bottom rung.
The bottom 35% of income earners in the United States of America pay no federal income tax.
They get a break.
And the people that pay the most tax, now it's anybody over $200,000 a year, the top 3% or 4%, why, they get soaked again.
And many of those people are businesses.
In fact, right now, friends, about 30% of all of the income reported in the top 1% of income earners is business income.
Subchapter S corporations, LLCs, and the like.
So when you're taxing people making $200,000 a year, you're taxing small business.
Now, that's a good idea when the economy needs a boost, isn't it?
So here we go again.
I guess you can take the Democrats out of the majority once in a while, but you can't take the liberal out of the Democrat.
I mean, this is the same old redistributionist nonsense, whether it's healthcare or whether it's fiscal policy.
And this, you know, this overreaching by the Dems is going to come back.
They're going to get their comeuppance.
Trust me on this one.
Let's go to the phones when we come back.
1-800-282-2882.
I am Jason Lewis in for Rush on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Oh, yeah.
You know, I like baseball.
I love golf.
But I was born to break dance.
And it's just something wrong about a middle-aged white guy talking about breakdancing, but nevertheless, we are back on Open Line Friday.
I am Jason Lewis sitting in for El Rushbo.
Glad to be here behind the golden EIB Mike.
What an honor.
What a privilege once again.
Rush, don't fear.
We'll be back on Monday.
1-800-282-2882.
A couple of quick afterthoughts here on that monologue.
Garrison Keiller are getting a stalker.
I still can't get over that.
I just, sorry, Hunchback of Notre Dame wasn't available.
What was the deal here?
I don't get it.
The AMT, though, before we get to the calls, the alternative minimum tax.
Remember, if we want to repeal this, by all means, let's repeal it.
But what's happening, as you know, since it wasn't indexed, this alternative minimum tax for inflation, it is now creeping into the Democrat and middle class.
And they only want to tax Republicans.
This is, folks, this is the danger when everybody doesn't pay a tax that's levied.
I like to call this Lewis's law, if I may.
Any tax that the government wants to levy has got to be borne by all.
If you don't do it, you get social divisions, you get class warfare, because the people who are exempt from paying taxes, like the bottom 35% right now in the federal income tax, are more than willing to vote for more benefits and raise taxes on the quote-unquote rich guy.
By the way, if you make $105,000 a year, you're in the top 10% of income earners in the country.
So you would be rich.
I don't think so, but that's the way the IRS looks at it.
That's the way the Democrats look at it.
And what's happening with the AMT is it's now creeping down into the middle class.
It's going to ensnare 20, 25 million people.
So they've got to come out with another liberal bromide that says, well, we've got to fix the AMT.
I know we'll repeal it for our people and we'll sock those businesses, those LLCs, those subchapter S corporations, those sole proprietors who are taking $200,000 in business income and reporting it on their 1040.
So here we go again.
So folks, you can't hate employers and love jobs.
And I don't know what it's going to take for the liberal left to get this.
The fact of the matter is, I hate to be so harsh here, but poor people don't open businesses.
And if you punish that sort of activity, you're going to get less of it.
Not to mention the essence of fairness here.
You've got the top 1%.
By the way, the new figures are out today from the IRS.
The latest release of the Internal Revenue Service data on individual income taxes is now out.
This came out actually a couple of days ago.
The top 1% of income earners in the country, you're making $360,000 a year.
You've got 21% of the income in the top 1%.
Why?
We've got to do something about that.
It's the income inequality gap.
21% of the income goes to the top 1%.
Yes, but they now pay 39% of the tax load.
The top 1% of tax returns paid 39.4% of all federal income taxes, according to the IRS data for the year 2005, the latest released.
Now, just a matter of economic justice and fairness saying, well, gosh, if you're making 20% of the income, maybe you ought to pay 20% of the taxes.
But they're not.
They're paying 40% of the taxes.
If you think people who pay the taxes ought to get a tax cut, I hate to break it to you.
You're in favor of tax cuts for the wealthy.
The flip side of that is give more breaks, give more earned income tax credits to the people that don't have any income tax liability.
By the way, a number of people get a check from the government.
Not only do they have no income tax liability, they get a check.
And in a number of states, for instance, my home state, Minnesota, the bottom 20% of income earners in Minnesota get a check from state government.
We have so top-loaded the income tax code.
It is so progressive, even with the Bush cuts.
And by the way, the Wrangell int surcharges are above and beyond expiring the Bush tax cuts or letting them expire.
So you're going to have a top rate that is going to go from could be 35% to 44%.
Have we learned anything about the luxury tax?
Have we learned anything about the capital gains tax cuts?
And Wrangell raises those two.
Every time you do this, you get less revenue than you did before.
Now, I'm not one of those supply-siders that thinks, gee, the purpose of cutting taxes is to raise revenue for the government.
I like Milton Friedman's approach.
If you cut taxes and the government gets more money, you just haven't cut them enough.
But nevertheless, it is a byproduct.
Certainly when you raise taxes on the wealthy who can adjust their lifestyles because they don't need the money, so they simply don't work when the tax rates get too high or they find other areas to go into where the tax rates lower.
So we cut capital gains taxes, as you recall, under the president's plan, which has been a remarkable success.
The greatest story never told, as John Funn likes to say.
By the way, you ought to read John Funn's column in the Wall Street Journal today on the presidential candidate or a candidate.
Very, very intriguing.
Nevertheless, I digress there.
The point is that the capital gains revenues have skyrocketed since we cut them.
How is that possible?
How is it possible that, again, once again, according to the Treasury Department and the CBO, that since the 2003 tax cut of capital gains, we have doubled tax receipts to $97 billion in 2005 from $47 billion in 2002 at lower rates, at lower rates.
This is tautological.
This is volume discounting.
You want to move products?
You lower the price.
You want to have more work savings and investment?
You lower the price of work savings and investment, which is the tax rate.
You want to make certain interest rates stay low?
Don't worry about the deficit.
Cut the tax rates.
The pool of savings will increase and swap any deficit that tries to detract from it.
So I could go on and on on this.
I don't know when they will learn, but I don't think they're interested in growing the economy.
There are two ways to look at the tax code, friends.
One, you look at the tax code as a way to grow the economy, to foster production in the most revenue-neutral way possible, to make certain everybody chips in for their obligation to society, as the liberal left likes to say.
That's one way.
The other way, as Charlie Wrangell and the rest of the Democrats in control now in Washington in the legislative branch, the other way is to use the tax code merely to redistribute wealth.
If the economy goes into a recession, who cares?
The top 1% will make less money then.
Isn't that wonderful?
That's a pretty cynical way, pretty cynical way to look at a tax code and a really rotten way to grow the economy.
And that's what we're up against.
And that's why this issue is always a winner for the right.
We are back now.
Let's go to the phones.
Without further ado, as they say, Jason Lewis in here for the Great One Rush.
We'll be back on Monday on EIB 1-800-282-2882.
First up today in beautiful Ford Collins on the front range.
Here's Dave.
Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hey, great to talk to you today and go Rockies.
Well, you know, Fenway Park is a privately owned park, I believe.
Maybe that's the problem.
Oh, no.
Did the taxpayers not have to chip in for those poor souls trying to struggle on a Major League Baseball salary in Denver?
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised there was a lot of help to build a park.
Yeah.
Well, it's a whole nother topic I could go off on, but I'm not going to.
Yeah, well, let's let the Rockies and the Sox work that one out.
In the meantime, I'd like to help you stop the Democrats from expanding government-managed health care.
Please do.
Right now, you know, they look good by helping people get what people think is free health care.
But the biggest universal health care program in America right now is Medicare, and Medicare is bankrupt.
Let's force them to fix it before we let them do anything else.
Well, they'll fix it all right with a big tax increase.
Medicare is all if you want to know what Social Security is going to look like after the surplus is gone at 2017 and we have to go to that little filing cabinet in Virginia and turn in all those IOUs.
Look at Medicare right now.
Medicare is already costing far more than the payroll tax, the 2.9% payroll tax funds.
So they're dipping into general revenues each and every day to fund Medicare.
So naturally, what did we do?
We added a new benefit to it.
Yeah.
Shrewd.
And people don't realize that that little file cabinet out in Virginia with all that money in it is actually part of the national debt.
And $3 trillion of the national debt is money the government's borrowed out of the Medicare Trust Fund and borrowed out of the Social Security Trust Fund.
And they're never going to be able to pay that back.
Why do we let them get away with this stuff?
Well, look, I mean, if you really believe Social Security was pay-as-you go, our payroll taxes for Social Security over the last few decades should have been much lower.
I mean, it was supposed to be you're going to assess this generation enough to fund the retirees, not more, and accumulate a surplus.
That's why you can never allow governments to run surpluses.
Never, ever, whether it's at state level or whether it's the federal level.
I'm a big fan of deficits.
That keeps the lit on spending.
The fact of the matter is they talk about, oh, gosh, if we repeal the alternative minimum tax for those Democratic families, why we're going to lose $800 billion.
As you point out, you reform Medicare and you can go to some sort of voucher system on Medicare to get a handle on the expenses.
And if you seriously reform Social Security, you would have more than enough money to repeal the AMT outright without any offsetting tax increases.
How is it possible, Dave, that Hillary Clinton can run around and say, what is her latest scheme?
I'm going to give everybody $1,000 in their 401k.
And wasn't there a $5,000 baby?
I'm going to get a bucks when you're born.
When you're born as well.
Isn't she the same one who said we can't afford private Social Security accounts?
Hey, when a child is born in America, they inherit $30,000 of the national debt.
How is she going to give away money and fix that?
Is there $35,000 of national debt?
I'm not worried about, I'll be honest with you.
I don't worry about the debt as much as my conservative brethren do, because if you take a look at what the debt was coming out of World War II, it was 105% of GDP.
Today it's about a third of GDP.
35, 36% of the deficit is minuscule.
It's 1% of GDP.
I worry about government spending, whether they incur a debt or not.
I mean, if you want to solve the debt, all we have to do is raise taxes.
And then we don't have debt.
We don't have a deficit.
That would be much more deleterious to the economy than trying to get a handle on spending while keeping taxes low.
And that's what I worry about.
And you couldn't be more right about Medicare.
It is out of control.
We keep adding benefits.
We keep, you know, the payroll tax is not funding it.
We've got to reform Medicare and we've got to reform Social Security.
Otherwise, you're going to see not a trillion-dollar tax increase.
When you add them all up, in the out-years, this Wrangle Bill could amount to a $3.5 trillion tax increase.
So, you know, it's got to get under control, but that requires people to quit looking in the mirror and saying, I want.
I don't know when that's going to come.
In Cleveland, here's Ron.
You're up next, and I'm not going to mention anything about the playoffs to Ron in Cleveland.
Go ahead.
You're on with Jason Lewis on the Russian Limbaugh program.
I appreciate that.
Thank you.
Good luck to our brothers in Colorado, by the way.
My comment is I'm a CEO of a company, a small business here in Cleveland.
Our gross revenues exceed $10 million a year, so we're not, I guess, all that small.
I have about 75 employees.
Our hobby, our hobby, our habit is to give them $1,000 bonuses during the year as a thank you.
And I would wonder what your audience is thinking that we small business owners are going to do when we're all of a sudden strapped with yet another 4% on top of what we're already paying.
I can tell you what we're going to do in case it's going to be clear to them.
We are going to take the money that we're going to give out for bonuses and we're going to pay our taxes.
Or you're going to lay somebody off.
Or I'm going to lay somebody off.
But at the end of the day, what I'm not going to do is continue to bear the burden of all of this because for some reason I'm the big bad person.
I employ 75 people.
I'm doing the best I can to keep employment in Cleveland and expand the economy and give people a good income.
But if they're thinking that at the end of the day, all we're going to do is accept some sort of responsibility that we need to continue to pay more and more and more, I hate to tell them, but where it's going to come out of is their own pockets.
It's going to come out of their ⁇ I don't know why they don't appreciate that that's where it's going to be coming from.
It's certainly not going to come from mine.
The greatest social program the world has ever known is a private sector job.
It is not a zero-sum game.
It is a win-win for everybody involved.
The economy grows.
Wages grow.
The employer, his income grows.
Now, the left in this country thinks, well, we don't care because we want you to take less.
But here's the dirty little secret.
People will not risk their mortgage.
They'll not take out a second or third mortgage.
They'll not risk everything to start a business if they don't make a profit.
And if they don't make a good profit.
So when the Democrats say, well, we're just, it's not going to come out of the employees.
You're not going to lay anybody off.
You're not going to raise prices.
You're not going to retract that bonus.
You'll just take a lower profit.
No, you won't.
You'll go home, put your money you've got in a bank, take the interest, which is going to be higher than the profits.
I mean, economists like to talk about normal profits, and what a normal profit usually is, is the going rate of interest.
If your profit is lower than the going rate of interest, you're not going to stay in that business.
You might as well just buy a CD, buy a Treasury bill, whatever.
So you couldn't be more correct.
This is exactly what happens every time you raise taxes and every time you cut taxes.
Whether it's Treasury Secretary Mellon in the 20s, whether it was Kennedy in the early 60s, Reagan in the 80s, and now Bush, what do you see?
You see the economic pie and large.
You see everybody benefit.
You know, the dirty little secret.
The dirty little secret is that everybody, every quintile in America has benefited from the Bush tax cuts.
Everybody.
By adjusTedros income.
So good luck out there.
Stay strong.
You just got to take this fight to the left.
You take the fight vigorously to the left on this and healthcare, and all of a sudden you start to win the debate, but you've got to believe in it.
You've got to have conviction, and you've got to be willing to sell it.
Mike in Cleveland, another Clevelander, he joins us once again on the program, or I should say for the first time on the program.
Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Hi there, Jason.
We have Mike here in Cleveland.
Hey, listen, this is the end result that we're looking at with managed healthcare.
If this happens to be the rule of law for this nation, let's look at what happens when doctors fold up, when insurance companies change policy, when the government says what you're going to get and what you don't get.
What's going to happen is this baby boom crush that we're expecting 80 million people to accept in the next few years, they're going to have fewer doctors.
They're going to have less care.
And they're going to find themselves dying far sooner than they would have had they had the best health care in the world.
And what's going to happen to Social Security?
It's going to be gaining because Social Security is going to have fewer people to pay out to.
And that, I think, is an issue that's going to have to be addressed.
No, you couldn't be more correct.
And what's really scary about this issue, obviously the socialist left wants this because they would rather the socialist left believes in equality over freedom.
They would rather have the equal distribution of poverty and rotten health care than the unequal distribution of great health care and income.
And that's a fundamental problem if you believe in economic liberty.
But look at New York City, where in many cases the clinics that offer mammograms, it costs them about $125, but they're getting reimbursed by government in New York City at $83.
That is not sustainable, is it?
That's right.
And that's exactly what happens when government offers something for free.
We're going to have health care for everybody.
Well, everybody's going to queue up.
Everybody's going to consume more health care than they otherwise would.
When something is free, they always consume more.
If McDonald's were offering free milkshakes and hamburgers today, there would be a line outside McDonald's.
So everybody will bust the system.
The government will say, well, gosh, we're going to have to start rationing because we can't afford this.
And it happened.
Guess what?
Look North Canada.
Look at U.K.
It happens everywhere it's tried.
You know, when we look at it right now today, how can we expect better later when the government takes over when doctors right now are already complaining about the workload, they're complaining about the reimbursements, they're complaining about everything that has to do with it and all the changes and how the insurance companies have changed all the rules.
How can we expect more when we're going to get less?
Well, you've got to reinstate the consumer in health care.
You've got to disabuse ourselves or we've got to disabuse ourselves that third parties should pay our bill.
Now, I mean, going back to a real insurance market, catastrophic coverage.
You don't have your automobile insurance pay for oil changes.
You pay for something.
You have a deductible, a high deductible, and you pay for a catastrophe.
Healthcare needs to be the same way.
And all of a sudden, people are going to call your office or any place else and say, Jay, how much is that physical for my son to play football this fall?
And you're going to get consumerism.
You're going to get the market working.
You're going to have real insurance, but you've got to free up the system first.
And right now, over 50% of the 50% of the healthcare in this country is already controlled by government.
And we're going down the road even further with things like S-CHIP, which is why it's so dangerous.
I'm glad you called.
I'm glad you see the light, my friend.
I'm Jason Lewis, in for Rush Limbaugh on EIB.
Talents on loan from Rush.
I am Jason Lewis sitting in for the big guy today.
He'll be back on Monday and honor a treat, as always, to be here at the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, 1-800-282-2882.
Let's go back to the phones.
And John in Santa Barbara, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Jason Lewis.
Hi.
Yeah, hi.
Since we're on the topic of the left and their characterization or understanding of equality, I think ultimately the problem is that they equate equality with uniformity.
And unfortunately, in a political context, to get that uniformity, you need conformity.
And of course, if you don't conform, you know, we all know what happens under leftist regimes when you don't conform.
Well, you're right.
I mean, fundamentally, liberalism is at war with human nature.
We all know that.
And that's why it always ends at the butt of a gun.
Liberalism is about getting people to do what they otherwise would never do.
Give up more of their earnings, more of their labor to the government, not drive a car, not smoke their cigar in their garage or anyplace else for that matter, not have a beer.
The nanny state, the busybodies, the people that have an itch to control somebody, as George Will said the other day, are ubiquitous right now.
It's getting watering bans, you name it.
I mean, the global warming is the mother of all this, but it's all about a crisis to get you under control.
And that's the danger in all of this.
Newt Gingrich calls it coercive utopianism.
Yeah, you know, what's so frustrating about this is, let's take income inequality for a second.
It is a non-problem.
It exists because people are unequal.
There is a huge difference, as everybody knows, between starting the race in the same line and finishing the race.
People have different levels of income because people have different levels of talent, work, and production and energy.
The income inequality is the flip side of a capitalist coin.
They make more money because they produce more.
Where's the injustice in that, John?
Yeah, again.
And that's why equality, they don't want equality.
They want uniformity.
They want everybody to be the same, and that's not the same as equal.
Well, you're right.
And what's ironic about it is if you really want equal outcomes, the first thing that has to be sacrificed is equality under the law.
You've got to start treating different people in a different way.
Yeah, absolutely.
Oh, gosh, Sultan Neatson had a great, he said something along the lines of, and I'll leave you with this one, and thank you so much for having me on.
But he said that the left engages in magical thinking, and because they think that they have the answers to everything, they succumb to what he refers to as the totalitarian temptation.
And unfortunately, here it's, you know, we see it creeping slowly.
They take a little bit here, a little bit more control there.
And, you know, by the time, you know, at the end of the day, we're all under the thumb.
So thank you very much.
Hey, thanks, buddy.
I appreciate it.
You know, look, if you take a look at the economic manifestation of this or the economic example, you realize that there's not a problem with income inequality.
If you had a society with, let's say, 10 actors in it, and you had 10 people, and they all make a certain amount of money, and one year, everybody's income goes up, but the top two, number nine and number ten, why their income skyrockets, they invent something new or their business takes off.
So everybody's income goes up, but the top two really goes up.
My goodness, you've expanded the income inequality gap.
The top 2% or the top 20% now make so much more than the bottom 20%, even though everybody's income went up.
Liberals decry that.
That's called a growing economy.
It happens every time.
Now, take the inverse of that.
In a recession or a depression, everybody's income goes down, but the top two, their income goes down much, much more.
Has happened during the Great Depression.
They have more to lose.
Well, guess what?
Everybody lost.
Everybody's income went down.
But the income inequality gap actually shrunk because the top 20%'s income went down faster than the bottom 20%.
You tell me which economy you want to live in.
That's why it's a non-problem.
It is a ruse to raise taxes, and that's it.
Joseph in Springfield, Mass, you're up next on the program.
How about that Fenway Park?
How about that Fenway buzz?
Absolutely.
How are you doing, Ted?
I'm doing wonderful.
How are you?
Great, great.
I just wanted to go over, hopefully I can open maybe some of your listeners' eyes to a former self-employed individual.
I hear how to business, and my wife and I both work, but definitely put us into the maximum tax bracket.
Now, being self-employed, I'm also assessed a self-employment tax.
Also, my business was a corporation.
Your self-employment tax is about 15.3, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
So now, 47 plus 15.3.
And then look at now my corporation.
Now, when I have my taxes done, now whatever I have in the bank, even though that money is used for business expenses or whatnot, that is also taxed on my personal income.
So I'm taxed on whatever's in there.
Plus, my business is also taxed on that as well.
And then now with this.
Don't forget the double taxation of dividends.
Absolutely.
Now, with this mass health care, where I'm from, now all the employers had to pay into a pool for the people who couldn't afford it.
So needless to say that not even to go into interstate taxes being a national company.
It just got to a point where it seemed like, you know, every time I made a dollar, 75 cents went out to taxes.
And eventually, you know, we lost 20 people and the company went down.
And now I can at least pay a little bit less in taxes without the headache.
I'll tell you that.
Yeah, but look at it this way.
Your income's lower, a little bit lower, so we've narrowed the income gap.
Of course, people are out of work and jobs are being evaporating.
But hey, the income inequality gap has shrunk.
Robert Reich ought to be happy.
Joseph, thanks for the call.
Great story.
I'm Jason Lewis.
Well, not so great story, but that's a great example of what we're talking about right here in the Excellence and Broadcasting Network back after this.
All right, more on this the next hour.
Remember, friends, taxes are a moral issue, not just an economic issue.
They're what we produce.
They are the fruit of our labor.
If you start to take that away from individuals, you're taking a lot more than money.
You're taking freedom.
That's why this is a great issue for those of us that believe in liberty.
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