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Nov. 10, 2008 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:25
November 10, 2008, Monday, Hour #2
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Having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
Rush Limbaugh serving humanity simply by showing up behind a golden EIB microphone every day right here at the distinguished and the prestigious Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
A thrill and delight to be with you.
And here's the telephone number.
If you would like to call and appear on the program today, it is 800-282-2882, the email address, lrushbo at eibnet.com.
Remember last Friday, we shared with you all of the things that we found at Obama's website, the office of the president-elect called change.gov.
They're gone.
They changed, you know, this thing that was going to mandatory community service for various age groups and students and so forth.
That's now been replaced with voluntary.
We hope to inspire people to do this.
But over the weekend, Obama scrubbed change.gov, which is his transition website.
He deleted most of what had been a massive agenda copied directly from his campaign website.
Gone are the promises on how an Obama administration would handle 25 different agenda items, everything from Iraq and immigration to taxes and urban policy, all items laid out on his campaign website, BarackObama.com.
Change.gov now has been boiled down to one vague paragraph.
Oh, yes.
One vague paragraph proclaiming a plan to revive the economy, to fix our health care, fix our education and social security systems, to define a clear path to energy independence, to end the war in Iraq responsibly, and finish the mission in Afghanistan, and also to work with our allies to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, among many other domestic and foreign policy objectives.
Obama spokesman Nick Shapiro said we are currently retooling the website.
So change.gov has been scrubbed, ladies and gentlemen.
And so it didn't take much attention focused on change.gov for them to scrub it.
Now, why would they scrub it?
What are they embarrassed about?
What do they not want people to know?
They put it up there.
If you put it up there, you assume that we want people to see it, do you not?
So we told people about it, and people obviously went to look at it, and all of a sudden it gets scrubbed.
I don't understand.
I really don't understand.
Openness and transparent and transformational and honesty and unity and all this.
So the slightest bit of attention is called to it.
A little bit larger than slightest, obviously, but they scrub it.
It's all gone out there, ladies and gentlemen.
By the way, haven't talked about this.
We've got the audio soundbites from it, but so many people have weighed in on the Obama press conference, the Wadel Rush Signs Off press conference on Friday.
It was scheduled to start at 2.30 Friday afternoon.
It started at 2.52.
But we might also call it the fierce urgency of four months from now press conference.
Because when I read the story here from the Washington Times about the change.gov website being scrubbed, the one vague paragraph remaining proclaiming a plan to revive the economy to fix our health care.
And I, folks, look, you have to forgive me here for being a nitpicker, but as I've always said, words mean things.
Barack Obama spent two years telling us about his economic plan.
Did he not?
We thought he'd going to be hitting the ground running, ready to implement his economic plan.
Years telling us about spread the wealth around, raise taxes on the rich, cut taxes for 95% of Americans, whatever it was.
Now he announces he's going to develop an economic plan.
At the Wadel Rush Signs-Off press conference on Friday, he announced a plan, a plan to develop an economic plan on a crisis that is so urgent he will not introduce it until after he's inaugurated.
He also had 20 white guys.
He had 20 white people standing behind him, some of them failures economically in their own states and in their own rights.
The height ranged from 4'0 to Robert B. Rice, all the way up to 6'8 Paul Volcker.
But there was all white people standing behind Barack Obama.
All white people there.
So anyway, a big press conference, big plan, scrub the website and tell us that he's going to develop an economic plan, but he's going to wait.
There's only one president at a time, and he's going to wait to implement that till he's inaugurated.
Have you noticed how gracious George W. Bush has become?
No, I mean the media.
I mean, the way the media is portraying, but they love George W. Bush because this afternoon, in about 50 minutes, Bush is going to give Obama a tour of the West Wing.
He's been to the cabinet room, but I guess this is the first time he will visit the Oval Orifice.
And also, Michelle Obama and the two first daughters will receive a tour of the residence.
I thought the daughters were going.
I read this morning and the daughters were going.
I thought the daughters are going to go see the place, too.
It doesn't matter.
They'll see it at some point.
But Michelle Obama is going to be given a tour of the residence quarters of the White House, a place I have been, by the way, a few times, by Mrs. Bush.
Laura Bush toured the place for them, showed them around.
And the drive-bys are just, see, if he would have just governed this way, look how gracious George W. Bush is.
Look at how wonderful he is.
If this, and McCain, he gave his concession speech, which is just a replay of the whole campaign.
I think McCain's campaign was a concession speech.
Oh, what a great speech that was.
That was just a fabulous, one of the greatest speeches.
Oh, why couldn't he have campaigned like that?
The left just loves it when our side lays down and dies.
The left just loves it.
That's how they define victory is their thuggish behavior, forcing us to cave in and give way.
Now, if I may have the attention of people of you and live in Los Angeles and the nearby surrounding environs, you have a newspaper.
You may have forgotten that you have a newspaper out there.
So few of you are reading the Los Angeles Times anymore.
They laid off lots of people.
Their advertising revenues are down.
Their news pages are down.
The circulation is way down.
And they did a hit piece on me specifically yesterday in the Los Angeles Times.
You may not have seen it because so many people in Los Angeles have given up reading the Los Angeles Times.
But I want to go through this to give you an illustration of just, well, it's a hit piece, but of just being so factually wrong about things that could have easily have been checked.
Now, you need to know the name of the writer of this piece.
His name is James Rainey, R-A-I-N-E-Y.
He is noted here as the media writer.
And the headline of the piece, right-wing media feeds its post-election anger.
Have we sounded angry here?
We have been almost giddy.
I've had to try to actually suppress some of my laughter because I think some people find it strange that I find things to laugh at during these circumstances.
Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity dive shamelessly in talking about the Obama recession and other partisan lines.
Mr. Rainey begins this way.
He says, you have to give Rush Limbaugh a perverse kind of credit.
At least when he's demonizing Obama, fabricating Obama policies, blaming Obama for single-handedly causing the recession and the stock market crash, he doesn't pretend to be fair.
Opening his first post-election rant, Limbaugh launched with a certain relish the game, he told his radio listeners, has begun.
A healthy skepticism is not only the media's right, but its obligation, which, Mr. Rainey, is a fact that you have forgotten in the last two years.
The performance by you, Mr. Rainey, and your colleagues in the drive-by media has destroyed the credibility of journalism, and it's going to be a long time before you people get yours back.
And I'm talking about with your audience.
You have embarrassed yourselves in the media, and you say that a healthy skepticism is not only the media's right, but its obligation.
You abandoned your obligation a long time ago.
You've even got members of your profession, Mr. Rainey, who are on television saying they don't know anything about Obama except his two books.
They don't know what his policy on China is.
They don't know anything.
They're a little bit worried.
At John Meekum and Evan Thomas at Newsweek, who ran around with him, say he's a creature.
He's creepy.
Not quite a thug, I admit, but they still say that he's creepy and a creature and that he doesn't even believe the creature that he has created.
And you tell me that I have lost my healthy skepticism?
I'm the only one, me and my brethren, the only ones that were skeptical about Obama during this campaign, Mr. Rainey, because you and your colleagues certainly had given up any skepticism whatsoever.
Let me give you his whole sentence.
A healthy skepticism is not only the media's right, but its obligation, including the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal have already argued that Obama's best bet to succeed will be if he hews to a centrist path.
Okay, so the media, the media says if he hews to a centrist path, that'd be the best thing to do.
And that's the final word.
And you, Mr. Rainey, think just because all these newspapers say, including your own, that nobody reads anymore, that he should hew to a centrist line means he's going to.
Look at him, Mr. Rainey, and tell me if you find anything centrist in his life, in his voting record in the Senate, as a community organizer.
Find anything centrist.
Don't cite for me his campaign rhetoric.
Don't cite for me the speeches.
Don't cite for me what he says.
Tell me what he's done.
I've looked at it.
You obviously haven't.
If you're expecting centrism out of this guy, you're missing what they're already talking about.
You're missing what Emmanuel says, and I've got the audio coming up about what they're going to do.
Windfall profits tax on oil.
They're going to raise taxes on the rich.
They're going to implement as much of their left-wing agenda as they can.
They may call it centrist, but it isn't centrist.
And then he goes into the area where he says that I lied to you.
Mr. Rainey of the L.A. Times writes, maybe shouldn't be so surprising because radio's biggest big man also assures us that the Democrats welcome economic chaos because it gives them greater opportunity for expanded government.
Mr. Rainey, You should go back and read your own paper and the papers of the drive-by media that you admire, the New York Times, the Washington, and read the transcripts of cable networks.
And you tell me if they haven't been trying to create chaos in the minds of the American people over economic matters for the last six years.
You people in the media have tried to create chaos and misery.
You have wanted the American people in a state of crisis and fear for the longest time, be it Iraq, be it the economy.
You were talking recession before there was a recession.
You were trying to create a recession in people's minds.
Why do people want chaos?
Why did the Democrat Party and the media want this chaos?
Because they thought it would help them win the election.
Because that would go along with Obama's mantra of change.
And if you think the left in this country, Mr. Rainey, is not interested in a greater opportunity for expanded government, then you need to go back to school and learn what socialists are and what liberals are.
A big government is their God.
It is their religion.
And then he writes this: In a time when the nation calls out for cool leadership and rational discussion, Limbaugh stirs the cauldron, a tendency he proved in a particularly grotesque way last week when he accused Obama's party of plotting a government takeover of 401k retirement plans.
They're going to take your 401k, they're going to put it in Social Security Trust Fund, whatever the hell that is.
Limbaugh woofed.
Trust fund my rear end.
A slight problem with Limbaugh's report.
Obama and the Democrats have proposed no such thing.
The proposal, in fact, emanated from a single economist, one of many experts testifying to a congressional committee.
Now, I have to take a break here, Mr. Rainey, because we have lots of sponsors, unlike the Los Angeles Times is losing advertising.
I have to take a break here, but I'm going to come back here because the Democrats have indeed talked about changing the whole structure of 401ks.
A California congressman, Mr. Rainey, Mr. George Miller, from up in the Northern Bay Area.
And I said they have talked about it.
I have said they want to.
I have specifically said, Mr. Rainey, this is not Obama's idea.
This is a Democrat in Congress idea.
And I have openly wondered and speculated whether or not Obama would find this appealing.
But I did not tie this to Obama, and I did not say it's a definite.
I simply reported exactly what happened before Miller's committee and what Miller said.
Didn't lie to anybody, and you accuse me of engendering fear.
You guys own that one.
We'll be back after this.
Stay with us.
Okay, back to wrap this up here with James Rainey of the Los Angeles Times.
Again, he says, A slight problem with Limbaugh's report on the government and your 401k, Obama and the Democrats, it proposed no such thing.
The proposal, in fact, emanated from a single economist, one of many experts testifying to a congressional committee to broadcast.
And then he writes: the president-elect has thus far shown as much interest in taking over your 401k as he has in moving the capital to Nairobi.
Mr. Rainey, I never said that this was Obama's idea.
In fact, I said specifically this is not Obama's idea.
This is George Miller's idea.
And it's not just a loan economist.
George Miller, Mr. Rainey, and his own congressional committee said the $80 billion that we are losing with the tax deductibility of contributions to people's 401ks hasn't worked out the way we wanted.
It hasn't worked out the way the government suggests.
I'm paraphrasing, but he said it's that we need to turn it, maybe eliminating the deduction here because the government's losing too much money.
It's not working.
Then they brought in Teresa Girardelli, whatever her name is, and she proposed exactly what I said.
She proposed it.
I said the Democrats are talking about it.
They bring her in.
And it is her idea coming off George Miller saying that the 401k plan is currently structured is not working well for the government.
She has an idea to take everybody's 401k plans back to the month of August before the crash, have the government then fund those 401ks, and the 401ks would then be taken over by the government.
The government would put them in the Social Security account, quote unquote, of each owner of a 401k.
They would grow at the rate of 3% plus inflation with the purchase of government bonds, and people could donate to contribute 5% a year to them.
Now, Mr. Rainey, all I said was that this is what's being pondered.
This is what's being discussed.
This is what's being talked about.
Specifically said that Mr. Obama had not signed on to this, had not said a word about it, that it was not his idea.
You know, you people in the media have lost your credibility so profoundly that it might serve you well to start actually doing your jobs again and actually research things and call people when you're going to report what they say.
Actually, call them up and find out, is this what you really said?
Because, you know, Mr. Rainey, you can't trust your own Nexus database.
The stuff in there on a lot of people is BS.
And some of these other sources that you might have also have a little bit of a bias as well.
Now, you might be at Rush, why are you spending so much time on this?
Because, folks, this is what it's going to be.
The drive-bys are in the process now of doing as much as they can to discredit anybody who does not get on board and rapidly sew the huge train that is the Obama Express.
And if you don't do that, then you're against my partisanship and that you are for anger and rage and hatred.
You know, this thug business, I just did a Google search.
Bush and thug, hundreds of thousands of English pages.
Cheney and thug, hundreds of thousands of English pages are returned if you just Google Bush and thug and Cheney and thug.
And yet you would think I'm the only one that ever called anybody a thug.
So this kind of stuff's got to get stopped dead in its tracks because people who read this story, who don't listen to me, are going to get an entirely incorrect idea about this.
And this 401k plan that they're toying with and thinking about in the Congress is an indication and nothing bipartisan about this.
There's nothing centrist about this.
With the government nationalizing as much of everything else as it can right now, bailing this out, taking that over, claiming it's not working.
See, the thing is, Mr. Rainey, that my experience, guided by intelligence, has told me that this plan that this economist and George Miller outlined over 401ks is entirely within the scope of the behavior of liberal Democrat politicians.
I think people need to be warned about it.
Here is Mike in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Great to have you, sir, on the program.
Nice to have you with us.
Rush, what a privilege.
Thank you.
Long time, long time listener today.
Thank you, sir.
Well, just a quick question to you.
Why don't we push the Democrats into a, I don't know if it'll push them into a corner, but they claim to be such lovers of the people.
Why are they able to get away with selecting this or that section of the population as their own privileged cronies to bail out, usually, so that they can assure themselves perpetual power?
Which cronies are you talking about here?
Well, I don't mean to say, sir, that I mean to say that they're coming back to cover their own back.
No, no, no, no, but I'm thinking, well, I'm thinking of Mr. Frank, for instance, and his friend who was with Fannie Mae.
And I'm thinking of that small, select few who seem to benefit perpetually.
But are you talking about bankers?
Are you talking about Wall Street banks and this kind of thing?
Well, I'm not thinking in general.
I'm speaking that they're thinking that they're not.
Okay, hang on.
There's an answer.
Hang on, hang on, take a break.
There's an answer to this in just a second.
And we're back.
It'll rush on the cutting edge of societal evolution.
Back here to Mike in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Sorry.
Go ahead, Mike.
Thanks, Rush.
Well, let me come to what I was thinking.
Why don't we push them, if they're really so down-to-earth populists, to do an alpha bail?
The alpha bail would be the mother of all bails, and it would possibly shorten the work they've got to do and tax their great brains on this problem.
Let's make them be really egalitarian since they want to bail out this and that other sector, which would then put somebody into their indemnitude servitude.
Let's make them give, let's let them at least think we're going to make them if we could, but we're already in the hole so far.
Why not push them and say, why don't you cut a check for a million bucks to every man, woman, and child in the country?
Then we can have everybody virtually pay off all their bills, pay off their mortgages, put some money in savings, or into the stock market.
That should pump up the economy, and it would be a mere, what, one-third of a trillion?
Now, answer your own question for me.
Why don't they suggest this?
Because we would have to be with no strings attached, and it would be totally egalitarian, and it would really give power to the people.
Well, the last one is certainly true.
That's the last.
And it goes to the point they like the chaos.
But besides that, you do that one time, and you have destroyed anybody's incentive to go work.
Yes, but they are going to work.
Or a lot of people's incentive to go work.
Oh, yes, yes, but they're eroding that.
They're eroding that constantly.
Well, they've eroded it with a significant portion of the voting population.
That's absolutely right.
Indeed.
No question about it.
But I just meant to say, it seems that this would be the logic of what they advocate, and there's a contradiction in what they advocate.
I know it cannot be done, although we've been dug into a hole with $10 trillion.
Yeah, but see, this is how they're getting away with all this compassion stuff.
I know.
But if you buy into your premise that they're really trying to do this for the American people, and Obama and all these people want to get a plan in action here real fast to get this economy chugging again to help the American people, we need a stimulus package, $1,000 a person, not a million.
We need this, we need that.
None of that is going to lead to a rapid fire rebirth of the economy.
None of that is going to do much, if anything, to help average Americans.
The only thing that's going to help them is when this recession plays itself out and rebuilds if it has enough strength to do it.
I'm just taking what you used to, where every time they pull up the minimum wage issue, and you say, well, why stop at $50 for it?
Right, exactly.
Even they will, at some point, say, well, you can't pay somebody $100 an hour.
Why not?
Well, because there's always a limit to what they'll do.
I know.
There's always a limit to their compassion.
And this is why, I mean, let's just take this in a hypothetical theoretical sense.
And let's look at it in the context of the way liberals and elected Democrats talk about compassion and love and all that for average, downtrodden people.
And that's who they really want to help.
Clearly, in a strict financial sense, if you took all of the money that is being used to bail out the auto industry, if that happens, the banks, the credit industry, the mortgage industry, any number of industries, if you just take all that money and in equal shares to the American people, take your $1 million figure, for example,
then you would have people in a state of circumstance where they don't need government anymore, at least for a while.
But you watch how fast you've seen lottery winners go through their winnings, lickety-split, and end up in worse shape than they were.
It'd be a nightmare if that were to happen.
But of course, your point is beyond $1,000 and a stimulus or beyond $8 or $9, $10 an hour minimum wage is no, you can't go any higher than that.
There's always a point where they will stop, which then defeats their own argument on all of this.
But it really goes to the nub of the fact that they're living in a phony baloney, plastic banana, good time rocking roller world, getting away with all this notion that they have compassion and concern.
They're the only ones that care about the little guy because your theory, your prescription, would certainly help the little guy.
It would certainly take care of him.
And they don't do it.
And not only do they do it because they know it wouldn't work economically, they don't want that kind of independence among people.
Liberals, Democrats thrive on as many voters being dependent on government as possible, and they thrive on having those voters think that Republicans are responsible and conservatives are responsible for their woeful economic plight.
Here's John in Chicago.
John, glad you called.
You're next on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hey, Rush.
Love your show.
Thank you very much.
I just wanted to comment on the bomb Obama dropped during his press conference that nobody seems to be commenting on when he was asked about his tax plan and people making over $250,000 a year are going to expect tax raises in 09.
He mentioned that the tax plan that he had is tied strictly to the job growth situation, which he does not honestly have figured out yet because he's got to figure that out in the next few months.
So let me ask you: if he were to figure out this job growth problem and create more jobs, which would create more money, which create more spending, which would stimulate the economy, don't you think that possibly he's going to look back and say, okay, well, now the middle class doesn't need the 95% tax break we're talking about.
Let me resort back to what I voted 94 times for and raise taxes on everybody $42,000 or more.
Well, the odds are pretty good.
Well, I know for a fact that 95% of the American people are not going to get a tax cut.
Exactly.
I know for a fact that in 2010, everybody pays taxes.
It's going to be a huge tax increase.
Right.
Exactly.
In 2010, the Reagan tax cuts expire, and everybody who pays income taxes is going to get a huge tax increase.
Correct.
Now, I don't think that he's going to be able to do this middle-class tax cut.
He'll only raise taxes on the rich.
Right, right.
Yeah, exactly.
And that's the thing that most of the middle class are the people that voted for him because of this big 95% tax break on the 95% of American people.
But when he looks at it in retrospect, he's not going to feel that we need this relief once we have jobs and once we're spending money and the economy's back where it should be.
Well, but the economy is not going to be back where it should be by January.
It's not going to be back where it should be by February.
None of the stuff that anybody's doing right now is going to guarantee that.
None of the stuff that anybody can even paper it over and create the illusion the economy is coming back, not that quickly.
Right.
And he admits that too.
I mean, he said that on his podium speech the 91 of the election.
Yeah, may not even be able to finish it now in one term.
He was going to have the whole campaign for two years, we heard he had a plan.
And then at that press conference, he said, well, I got to formulate a plan, and I'm not going to implement it until January.
There's only one president at a time.
It's all smoke and mirrors.
Like what campaigns are.
The difference is that the people that fell for the messianism in this game, you have to wonder how many of them are actually going to expect tangible results pretty soon on all of the nefarious things they believe this guy about.
And that's the great unknown.
We're just going to have to wait and see all this stuff play out.
It could well be that the power of his personality and the cult-like, the demagogic-like appeal he has to people.
He could say in his inimitable fashion, I worked hard.
I really wanted to give everybody this tax cut, but the Bush administration did not come clean with me until after we had assumed office.
I had no idea how bad it really is.
You're just going to have to trust me.
We're working on this.
I'll get it done as quickly as I can.
And we'll just have to see how many people saw.
He tried.
He really tried.
He really wants to help us, but he just can't because Bush did not be honest with him, was not honest with him.
I think Democrats are going to be able to get a lot of mileage out of blaming Bush for all kinds of things for the next foreseeable future.
Henderson, Kentucky, this is Michelle.
And you're next.
Hello.
Hey, Rush, this is Michelle.
I just want to thank you for being a voice for conservatives all across the land.
Thank you.
Listen, I was calling because I was at my local library and ran across a book by Rah Emanuel and Bruce Reed.
The title of the book is The Plan, Big Ideas for America.
And inside this book, it has the plan, which he refers to as a new social contract, or what you can do for your country and what your country can do for you.
And in that, it's a 2006 book.
He itemizes universal citizen service, which is, I think, Obama's volunteer army, the universal college access, and universal retirement savings.
Those are just three of the plan that was written in this book that clearly laid out by Ron Emmanuel.
And it really is scary because it's basically the talking points for the Democratic Party and what we're seeing in comments coming both out of Obama and stuff on his website, his transition website called changegot.gov.
They put it all up there.
And we happen to notice it on Friday.
We happen to tell people about it.
They've scrubbed it.
That stuff's all gone from the website, which must mean they don't really want people to know it, which must mean that Rah Emmanuel didn't expect that many people to read his book, or those that did read it would be friendly and so forth.
You see, when you come to, you look at something like that, you're horrified by it, and you're frightened, and how can people think this way?
There's a percentage of this country that does not think of liberalism as an ideology at all.
They look at the country, Michelle, as an aberration.
We have gone off track from our original, in their view, purpose, which is to ensure and guarantee the welfare of every citizen with these people in charge of it.
In their minds, they're just trying to set it right.
And, you know, a bunch of kook freaks like Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich and a bunch of others took it off track, and they've got to get it back on track.
What you're reading from Rah Emanuel is what he thinks is normal.
That's what he thinks the proper role of government and citizenship is.
They don't think there's anything strange about that at all.
And they really believe that they've arrived at a point now where most American citizens want that kind of government involved in their lives.
And the scary thing is that there are quite a few who do.
However, once again, as Scott Rassmusson points out, Reaganism is not dead.
Conservatism on tax policy won this election.
It's sickening to realize, but Obama was able to steal the tax policy from Republicans and McCain because most people in election polls, or the exit polls, believe that Obama's the big tax cutter.
And McCain wasn't.
They thought McCain would...
When I saw that, in fact, I saw that at a pre-election poll.
And I just stared at that.
I said, how the hell does this happen?
How does the Republican Party lose on the tax cut issue?
How the hell does that happen?
And it's easily explainable when you don't have nominees out carrying the banner, when you don't have people articulating a tax cut using understandable numbers.
I mean, hell, if we're up against some guy, I don't care whether he's perceived as a liberal, socialist, whatever you want to call him.
If you've got a guy out there promising to cut taxes for 95% of the American people, and if he has a communication style that makes him believable, if people buy into it, you can't just rely on the past for people to think, well, the Republican Party, Reagan, that's the party of tax cuts.
We've had a whole generation born and grow up since Reagan who were too young to know what happened during Reagan.
These people have to be constantly educated and informed, and the Republican Party, among many other things, has failed to do that as well.
I've got to take a brief time out.
We'll be back before you know it.
Stay with us, folks.
Since we're talking about all this kind of stuff, I want to get into something a little bit esoteric here, but these numbers are not going to be hard to follow.
This is from the House of Representatives website, house.gov, and it is a release from the Joint Committee on Taxation.
It's an explanation of the federal tax expenditures, and it's just the top seven here, but there are hundreds of tax expenditures in the federal budget, including a lot of major tax benefits.
The subject of this release is who saves the most on taxes.
Now, the numbers are interesting, but the editor's note at the end of this release is what is fascinating.
The number, and I love these terms, the benefit, meaning to us, the citizen, the tax benefit on excluding health benefits as taxable income.
That is the top cost to the government.
The way the government looks at these things is how much does this tax cut cost us?
See, the government starts at a baseline.
If everything you earned, they got.
And they start backwards from there as to what taxes cost them.
What does the capital gains tax cost them?
What does the income tax cost them?
What does the payroll tax cost them?
All of these other taxes, state, federal deductions, charitable, what does it cost them?
This is how George Miller, Barney Frank, Sander Levin, I think he passed away, Carl Levin, any number, Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel.
This is how they look at it.
All money is Washington's.
And then these gifts that they give, taxes, tax cuts, deductions, they look at that as cost.
And by the way, that's where this 401k plan of George Miller started.
So the number one tax benefit that costs the government is you not having to call your health care benefits income.
That is $116 billion a year.
Now, the government looks at that as them losing $116 billion a year.
The next, retirement and benefits.
That's your 401k, your kep CO, whatever, $90 billion a year.
And that's the number that George Miller used.
When you know this is costing us too much in this 401k stuff, it's not working out for people.
And we're thinking of eliminating the tax deductibility of the contributions that people make.
We're thinking of doing this.
So that's number two is your 401k.
They put together a list of the things that cost them money.
Health benefits not being taxed as income is number one.
Your 401k is number two.
The home mortgage deduction is the number three thing that costs the government money, $67 billion.
The earned income tax credit is number four.
It costs them $49 billion.
State and local tax deduction, that's $48 billion.
Charitable deductions, the government looks at that as costing them $44.3 billion.
And Medicare benefits is number seven.
That costs them $41 billion.
So these top seven items, the government looks at as being cheated out of $508 billion a year.
They look at themselves being cheated out of $508 billion a year.
The health exclusion cost is the tax-free benefit to the employee, but it is deductible to the employer, so it costs them even more money.
The employer gets to deduct his health care expenses.
You don't pay income on your health care expenses, so the government thinks they're really getting ripped off with this.
Now, here's the editor's note that I referred to mere moments ago.
While the incoming Congress and President have not yet drafted plans to make major changes in these areas, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat Montana, sent a letter this week to President-elect Obama.
Senator Baucus is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and he plans to introduce major health care reform legislation early next year.
The legislation will follow several key principles, quote unquote, identified by Senator Baucus as universal coverage, sharing the burden, controlling costs, prevention, and shared responsibility.
So we have now George Miller, who is going to propose at some point the elimination of tax deductibility of 401ks, at the very least, and Max Baucus, who's going to promote major health care reform legislation.
It will be called the Ted Kennedy Bill.
And we'll do it for Ted!
Do it for Ted.
So this is what's headed your way in the centrist government of Barack Obama.
We'll be back after this.
From the Washington Post, Hillary Clinton has been denied a bid to take charge of health care.
And Obama did it again, folks.
As the Newsweek people described when he got to Washington, it was creepy.
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