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Jan. 26, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:40
January 26, 2009, Monday, Hour #2
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Greetings, my friends.
A thrill and a delight to have you back with us here at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
I am your highly trained broadcast specialist, Rush Limbaugh, the man Barack Obama has instructed you not to listen to.
Look at how far we have come.
Back in the early 70s, when Richard Nixon was president, he had a list of names on a piece of paper.
They were members of the media in large part, and he called this list of names his enemies list.
That list of names was part of the documentation that the House was preparing to use to impeach Richard Nixon.
He had a list of media people he said were his enemies.
We have now gotten to 2009, where the President of the United States, Barack Obama, in a meeting with Republican and Democrat leaders in the House of Representatives in a meeting over his stimulus package, can say to the Republicans, stop listening to Rush Limbaugh.
Don't listen to him.
That's not how things get done in this town.
And there's no outrage that a private citizen has been singled out by the President of the United States.
There is tacit agreement in some quarters, curiosity in others.
I spent the first hour of the program responding to the president, talking about some of the things in the news today, but now, ladies and gentlemen, as I said, I have a serious proposal to make, the Obama-Limbaugh Stimulus Plan 2009.
There is a serious debate in this country as to how best end the recession.
Recessions will end on their own if they're left alone.
The average recession will last five months to 11 months.
The average recovery from each recession will last six years.
What can make the recession worse is the wrong kind of government intervention.
The wrong kind of government intervention is precisely what President Obama has proposed.
I don't believe that his stimulus plan is a stimulus plan at all.
I don't think it's designed to stimulate anything but the Democrat Party.
It's designed to repair the power losses from the 90s forward of the Democrat Party and to entrench this party for quote-unquote eternal power like Franklin Delano Roosevelt did with his New Deal.
Now, we have Keynesian economists that believe government spending on shovel-ready projects of all kinds, infrastructure, schools, roads, bridges.
That's the best way they think to stimulate our staggering economy.
There are just as many supply-side economists who make an equally persuasive case that tax cuts are the surest and quickest way to create permanent jobs and cause an economy to rebound and recover.
The Heritage Foundation can provide those figures from the administrations of JFK, who cut taxes major, from Ronald Reagan, who cut taxes, and George Bush, the 43, who also cut taxes.
The blueprint is there.
We can consult it.
We know what happens when tax rates are cut in a recession.
We know that it brings an economy back.
There is recent polling that proves the American people are in favor of both of these approaches.
Kinesian, stimulus spending by the government on infrastructure, roads and bridges and the like, and supply-side proposals.
And it's important to remember this because it is the people's money in either case that's going to be spent here.
It's our money.
It is not Washington's.
Now, the Rasmussen people have a new poll out.
And notwithstanding the media blitz in support of the Obama stimulus plan, most Americans, Rasmussen finds, are skeptical.
Rasmussen finds that 59% fear that Congress and the president will increase government spending too much in the next year or two.
Only 17% worry that they will cut taxes too much.
The American people, in polling, are not certain that the Obama stimulus plan is the way to go despite what you're hearing from the drive-by media.
So it seems to me that there may be an opportunity here and now for genuine compromise and to establish at the same time as this genuine compromise evidence for how to deal with future recessions so that this no longer becomes a matter of partisan debate each time it happens because recessions are going to happen.
My proposal is designed to illustrate once and for all how to deal with them.
Congress is currently haggling over how to spend $1 trillion.
$1 trillion generated by American taxpayers in the private sector.
Congress wants to spend, think of this now, $1 trillion that they don't have until you and I go to work and pay taxes.
They want to spend this on a stimulus plan.
They want to take it out of our pockets and redistribute this money in their way to their constituents and to their make-work projects like schools, roads, bridges, blah, blah, blah.
This does not have to be a divisive issue.
Does not have to be in any way, shape, manner, or form a divisive issue.
So I have a proposal.
As has been noted, elections have consequences.
President Obama, in the meeting on Friday with House and Senate Republican leaders, Eric Cantor from Virginia and the House proposed a moderate tax cut plan.
Obama said, well, you know what?
I won.
I'm going to trump you on that.
We're not going to do it.
Where's the bipartisanship, President Obama?
There is no bipartisanship in President Obama's plan.
President Obama's definition of bipartisanship is when Republicans cave and agree with his plan so he can then claim it's bipartisan.
But he's not compromising on anything here.
Mine is a genuine compromise.
So let's look at how the vote came out, shall we?
53% of voters in this country will say, for the sake of this proposal, 53% of Americans voted for Obama.
46% voted for Senator McCain, and 1% voted for Wackos.
Let's give the remaining 1% to President Obama.
So let's say that 54% voted for President Obama and 46% voted for Senator McCain.
As a way to bring the country together and at the same time determine the most effective way to deal with recessions under the Obama-Limbaugh Stimulus Plan of 2009, $530 billion of the $1 trillion will be spent on infrastructure as defined by President Obama and the Democrats.
The remaining, or 54%, 540 billion, the remaining 460 billion, or 46% that voted for Senator McCain, will be directed towards tax cuts as determined by me.
These tax cuts will consist primarily of capital gains tax cuts and corporate tax rate cuts.
So Obama gets $540 billion to spend his way.
The other people of this country who did not vote for his way get $460 billion spent the way they would like it spent.
This is bipartisanship.
This is how bipartisanship really works.
Okay, Obama wins by a 54-46 majority, so he gets 54% of the trillion bucks.
Spend it his way.
We get 46% of the trillion bucks to spend our way.
And then we compare.
Then we see which stimulus actually works and works the fastest.
And I will guarantee you that if this plan is adopted, just the announcement that $460 billion will go toward paying for tax cuts, capital gains and corporate tax rates, we could throw in some personal income tax rate reduction in order to make sure that the voters don't think it's all about helping the big guys.
But we need jobs, do we not?
Who hires people?
Businesses.
Businesses need tax cuts.
The U.S. corporate tax rate is obscene.
It is the highest of all industrialized nations.
It's 35%.
Cut it.
Cut it in half.
Make the capital gains rate go away for three months and then get out of the way to see what happens on Wall Street.
And once Wall Street starts ticking up 500 points a day, you watch what happens to the rest of the private sector.
It will follow right along.
This would ensure a bipartisan compromise bill, as Democrats have said that they are always about.
It would satisfy the American people's wishes, as polls currently note.
And it would also serve as a test going forward as to which approach best stimulates the growth of jobs.
And it can be measured side by side.
It can be determined where the new jobs are coming from.
And if President Obama would merely say, if he would merely say that he will take this proposal under serious consideration, we would then see the reaction from the financial markets, which tend to be a barometer of the economy going forward.
That is, if President Obama said that he thought this compromise proposal was worth his time to look at, the markets could react to that, just the way they did when President Clinton announced that he had reached agreement in principle with Republicans to balance the budget in the 90s.
The market reacted positively to that news.
Not to a formal bill signing, but to the news.
If we've learned anything in recent months, the financial markets more than ever look to Washington for direction.
That's bad.
The markets should be looking at the market, but they're not.
The markets are looking to Washington.
That's where we are.
That's what is is.
So let's float a trial balloon on this compromise.
This satisfies every claim and demand of bipartisanship.
This satisfies the people who lost the election.
Those people are also people for which the president is the president.
He's not just the president of the people who elected him.
His job, he says, is to get the economy going.
This would do it.
This would not disenfranchise the people who did not vote for him.
And as I say, not only would it work, but it would provide a side-by-side test where we could see which part of this stimulus plan does best are the better so that the next recession, we will know what to do.
The problems Americans face are great, but they are not insurmountable.
They never have been insurmountable.
There is no reason to get up every day and tell the American people that their future is bleak.
There is no reason, as the administration is doing, to depress their hopes.
There is no reason to suppress the notion that recovery can happen quickly, because it can if we work together.
In this new era of responsibility, let's use elements of both the Keynesians and the supply-siders to responsibly determine which theory best stimulates our economy.
And if elements of both work, so much the better.
We will know.
The economy doesn't have to be liberal versus conservative or Democrat versus Republican, and it certainly shouldn't be focused on whether or not one party gets reelected.
The reason it has is because there is such a division in how the economy is viewed by the two parties.
I got a question from a friend just a moment ago when I was talking about the Obama's redecorating the White House using the same decorator that redecorated the executive suite at Merrill Lynch.
Question.
How come taxpayers get so mad at businesses who misspend their money but can't make that connection when Congress misspends their money?
It's a great question.
How is it that people who misspend a trillion dollars, who know how to waste money and lose money faster than anybody, are thought of as saviors, whereas the people in the private sector whose job is to generate income for people are so despised.
And here's the answer.
The people, unfortunately, in this country today see themselves benefiting when government overspends.
They see the rich getting richer when private sector executives overspend.
So the Democrats have foisted successfully class envy.
The economy need not be right versus left, Republican versus Democrat, but it is because one group wants the economy to be hands-off, government hands-off, let the people who make this country work make it work.
The other believe that that leads to too much inequity, unfairness.
Government must choose winners and losers so that nobody's feelings are hurt, blah, Well, that's old hat.
The American people are made up of Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Moderates, whatever they want to call themselves, but our economy doesn't know the difference.
Our economy should not be focused on whether or not one party gets re-elected.
This is about jobs now.
This is about jobs.
It's about families.
It's about solving a real and significant problem.
So let us come together as one.
The economic crisis is an opportunity to unify all of the people in this country if we just set aside the politics.
The leader of the Democrats and the leader of the Republicans, me, according to Obama, can get this done.
This will have the overwhelming support of the American people because it brings both sides together.
The Obama limbo, let him call it his, the Obama Stimulus Plan of 2009.
Let's stop the acrimony.
Let's start solving our problems together.
Why wait one more day?
Welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, on the cutting edge of societal evolution.
Here are the details here.
A speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.
In fact, I think we've got the audio soundbites of this.
Let's see.
Nance Pelosi.
I got a lot of sheets here to go through, folks, and I should have done this.
Numbers 11 and 12.
Let me find them there so that here we go.
All right, let's do audio soundbites 11 and 12.
Contraception.
Nancy Pelosi, contraception is stimulus funds for family planning, which is abortion all over the world.
This is an executive order of Obama's that he is reversing from the Bush.
We refuse to fund all these abortion groups worldwide.
Obama is now doing it in his mad dash to get as far to the left as quickly as possible with executive orders.
Stephanopoulos said to her yesterday, we also heard from Congressman Boehner coming out of the meeting today that, again, a lot of that spending doesn't even meet the same test that you just talked about right now, hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services.
How is that stimulus?
Well, the family planning services reduced cost.
It reduced cost.
The states are in terrible fiscal budget crisis now.
And part of it, what we do for children's health or education, and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs.
One of those, one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce cost to the state and to the federal government.
So no apologies for that.
No apologies.
No.
We have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy.
Do you understand what you just heard here?
Contraception does what?
Contraception produces fewer human beings.
Nancy Pelosi is suggesting that fewer human beings is an economic stimulus.
Now, this is different.
This is different than saying what Paul Ehrlich said, that we've got a population problem.
He was dead wrong about it, by the way.
But all the left-wing environmentalist wackos are suggesting that we've got an overpopulation problem, too many people.
It can't be fed.
That's not the problem.
The problem is the unequal distribution of capitalism around the world.
It is a majority distribution of communism and socialism that starves people in more ways than just food.
But This is even more sinister because it's related to the stimulus plan.
Nancy Pelosi, family planning is now economic stimulus.
Family planning equals abortion, folks.
Abortion is economic stimulus.
Abortion reduces costs to the states, which are in terrible budget crises now.
We will have fewer children to worry about their health, their education.
We just have more abortion.
And this reinstitution, this worldwide funding of abortion groups that Obama has made is being promoted and sold by Nancy Pelosi as good for the economic stimulus bill.
Many of us tried to point out the extreme abortion views of Barack Obama during the campaign.
And of course, we cited the facts of his support for an extreme piece of legislation in Illinois and the federal legislation, by the way, which would not save the life of a baby that survived an abortion.
Because the original intent of the mother was to abort the baby, we wouldn't embarrass the doctor, so no resuscitation for babies which survived abortion.
And Obama voted for it purposely twice.
They tried to cover for him on it.
Now, Nancy Pelosi is suggesting that abortion can help our nation's economic recovery, not by creating jobs, but by creating fewer people that the government has to pay benefits to.
The strange thing about this is that it really makes no sense from the Democrat perspective.
We've got too many unsold cars on the lots.
We've got too many unsold houses on the market.
We have aborted a million potential customers for these houses and cars per year since 1973.
Average number is 1.2 million abortions a year.
Most of those are Democrats that are having these abortions.
What we need right now is customers.
What the Democrats would love more than anything right now is more voters.
Nancy Pelosi had just said that human beings harm the economy.
Human beings harm the environment.
This is more than just liberal ignorance, folks.
We need to abort and contracept in Nancy's view because too many of the poor are totally dependent on the state and federal governments.
Isn't she admitting in the process?
Yeah, you'd say, why not expand the programs then?
We're out of money.
We're running a trillion-dollar deficit.
She's admitting we cannot expand any more federal programs.
We don't have the money.
We need fewer people.
This is astounding, folks.
It's astounding.
This is outrageous.
I do not mean to overdo this.
Here's the second sum, if you need to hear it.
Stephanopoulos, he didn't get it.
He said, well, now there were no Republican votes in the Appropriations Committee, no Republican votes in the Ways and Means Committee.
Is the bipartisan effort that President Obama has called for, is it there?
Well, because the Republicans don't vote for it doesn't mean they didn't have an opportunity to.
President-elect Obama at the time on January 5th had our first bipartisan meeting House and Senate for Democrats and Republicans.
And some ideas that were put on the table by the Republicans at that time were contained in the bill that we wrote.
And now this morning they had some more suggestions, which we will review and see if they create jobs, turn the economy around, and do so in a cost-effective way.
This woman is, I just, I can't, there's just no brain there.
There just is not a brain there.
And here again, you hear how she defines bipartisan.
Well, the Republicans were in the meeting.
Republicans were in the meeting.
And if they have any ideas, well, they're not going to listen to any Republican ideas.
Bipartisanship is when Republicans cave to Democrat ideas.
I have proposed mere moments ago the only genuine bipartisan proposal, stimulus proposal that would solve this recession.
I alone.
It's very simple.
You take a look at a trillion dollars, which is what Obama wants to spend.
What is bipartisanship?
Well, 54% of the American people voted for him, so he gets 54% of the trillion to spend his way on infrastructure, abortion, whatever he wants to spend it on.
46% voted against Obama.
So those 46 get $460 billion of the $1 trillion on tax cuts.
Now, we can break down what kind of tax cuts later, but primarily capital gains in corporate, maybe some real estate tax cuts.
The point is, we'd have a side-by-side way of measuring which plan actually revives the economy the sooner.
And we know which plan that would be.
You could do tax cuts with a stroke of a pen.
These guys still can't figure out how to spend the money they want to spend because it's a porculus bill.
But I don't want to get off track on that right now.
Her definition of bipartisan is Republicans in the meeting.
My definition of bipartisan, okay, we got 46% of the vote.
That means 46% of the people disagree what the president wants to do.
He's president of all the people.
Let us have $460 billion of the stimulus to do it our way.
You do it your way.
We do them at the same time.
Bipartisan.
He gets the majority, and he gets his name on the bill.
He's the president.
Richard in Henderson, Kentucky.
I'm glad you called, sir.
This is the EIB Network, and it's great to have you with us.
Yes, yes, Rush, how you doing?
Fine, sir.
Thank you.
Good, good.
Rush, that is just absolutely brilliant.
Well, thank you.
Thank you, sir.
I appreciate that.
I've been listening to you since about 1988, and that is one of the most brilliant ideas you've ever had.
What do you like about it?
Well, I think, just like you said, it would prove which one of the stimuluses would work better.
And, of course, I agree with the conservative side versus the government spending the money.
I mean, it just makes perfect sense, but I don't think they'll do it, though.
Of course not.
They won't do it, but I want the proposal to get out there because this is genuinely bipartisan.
And this proposal contains something that every American voter supports.
Yes.
One way or the other.
It also contains some things that every American voter opposes.
But that's bipartisan compromise, right?
They want us to compromise, to get along, to put aside the acrimony.
Well, this is it.
That's right.
Rush, there's another aspect of it, and I know you've talked about it before, is some kind of a national sales tax or something to tap the underground economy.
What about these millionaire drug dealers when they go to buy their fancy yachts or their $200,000 cars or whatever?
Why can't the government have some of that money that's underground?
Well, I don't know.
Oh, drug dealers when they buy their fit.
Well, that's criminal money.
And of course, if that money is discovered, then the feds go in and try to take it all plus the yacht that was purchased and so forth.
I don't want to get bogged down on specific kinds of tax cuts.
This is not the point.
We would put those together.
This is a blueprint.
This is a, you know, this is sort of like a white paper ready to go.
But tax cuts, primarily corporate and capital gains, we're talking about creating jobs in a recession.
And the real estate market is in some trouble, so we'll have some real estate taxes relief as well there.
But I don't want to get bogged down in what kind of taxes because I don't want to get argument flat tax and this sort of thing.
Not right now.
This is a stimulus plan to deal with a recession and not only deal with this one, but for once and for all, with every American watching, a way to demonstrate the best way to deal with the next recession that happens because there is going to be one.
There always will be.
As usual, half my brain tied behind my back, just to make it fair.
Los Angeles.
Brian, you're next.
I'm glad you waited, sir.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Thank you, Rush.
How are you?
I'm a first-time caller, and I am deeply honored to speak.
Thank you, sir, very much.
In addressing Obama's comments about you, what I have to say is that attacking Rush Limbaugh doesn't create one job.
Attacking Rush Limbaugh doesn't fix the banking crisis, and attacking Rush Limbaugh doesn't pay a working man's mortgage and credit card.
Nor does it feed a starving child.
No, but these are serious problems.
And to me, what this is all about is this is about Obama's lack of leadership experience and how he is making a mistake here.
I think this is where someone like Boeing should claim the mantle of leadership.
Boehner could say, like, Obama's lack of leadership experience was a large concern in the election, and we think Obama shows a lot of difference when he tries to get in a negative war of words with Rush Limbaugh.
He should say, like, Mr. Obama, you have a broad and positive support.
Let's not goodwill being negative about Rush Limbaugh.
Let's be positive and not lash out at Rush one week into office.
Attacking Rush Limbaugh doesn't create one job.
Rush is a fine citizen, and if you want to address Rush, then address his 5446 plan.
But otherwise, Obama, you need to focus on working with elected officials to solve this.
See, to me, it is about his lack of leadership experience.
And it's already.
You know, I don't think that's what this is about at all.
Remember now, Barack Obama comes from the Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals school.
The Obama way is to get rid of opposition.
Not a fair playing field.
You clear it.
You get rid of your opponents as quickly and as rapidly as you can.
And that's, I think, this is what he's trying to do, as I said in the last hour, is marginalize me to the point that Republicans are afraid to mention my name, that they wouldn't dare do this, primarily because he wants conservatism to be thought of the same way you and I think of communism.
Wants conservatism to thought of as the most extreme, kooky, wacky thing, and that anybody who publicly espouses it is insane or what have you.
There is a method here, and this is not a mistake.
Guy did this on purpose.
Other drive-bys are running around talking about whether this was wise to focus on me and build me up and so forth.
Believe me, he's got a compliant GOP already.
The GOP, they're all out there saying, well, we hope he succeeds.
He's trying to make sure that they stay right where they are.
He doesn't have any conservative leadership in Washington that opposes him.
He doesn't have any elected conservative leadership.
So believe me, this is about trying to get as many people as possible to think that Reagan conservatism is finished, that it's nothing more than an extreme, anti-American, mean-spirited way of looking at things.
That's what he's trying to do: eliminate the playing field.
Let's go to the audio soundbites.
I'll give you an example here of how the press is talking about.
This was Sunday on CNN's show called State of the Union.
The co-host, Howard Kurtz, is talking with David Korn of The Nation magazine.
Was it a tactical error for Obama in a meeting with congressional leaders to say, you know, you can't listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done?
In other words, he's appealing to a bipartisan spirit, and he's saying he's painting Limbaugh as being kind of the leader of the hardcore, hard-edged conservatives.
Well, I think Limbaugh took that crown and showed it.
It's great for us.
Yeah, it's good for ratings, probably.
He has to attack something.
When he comes out and says, I hope he's going to fail, you've got to believe that about 70% of the public now wants to see Obama succeed, if not more than that.
Rush Limbaugh wants to attack that and attack other media for supporting that notion or covering that notion.
He's free to do so.
Now, this takes me to something else interesting, by the way.
You heard Mr. Korn here say that, quoting an I hope he's going to fail.
You got to believe 70% of the public now want Obama to succeed.
I don't necessarily doubt that, but what do they mean?
I think they want the recession to end.
That's what they associate with Obama succeeding.
The argument here is whether or not his way will accomplish this, and it won't.
Folks, those of you who are out there thinking Obama's way is going to solve this and you want him to succeed because you think it's patriotic to support the president.
I support the president too.
I just don't support his policies here.
His team went out there today and again told every one of us it's going to be a long time.
It's a recovery.
This recession is going to go deep.
It's going to be around a long time.
They're out there lowering expectations as much as they can.
Now, one reason is because when it doesn't get as bad as they're trying to make you think, then you will automatically credit them with brilliance and success.
But there was a letter to the editor of some newspaper over the weekend that somebody sent me, and I read something like this, and it really saddens me for the country.
And this letter to the editor is entitled, It's Time for Rush Limbaugh to Go.
And the guy who wrote the letter is J. Elmer Brunk.
J. Elmer Brunk from Leclerc somewhere.
On a recent program, Rush Limbaugh said, I hope he fails, referring to Obama.
This is not the first time Limbaugh has so blatantly made comments of dissension and hatred.
He has been critical of the soldiers who have served our country well in Afghanistan, Iraq, and in all previous military conflicts.
It is time that some radio station remove all Limbaugh programs.
Hoping that Obama fails suggests he doesn't care if Americans suffer.
He's made millions sowing dissension, so he doesn't care if we suffer.
Mr. Brunk, you, sir, are a sad, glittering jewel of colossal ignorance.
You couldn't be more wrong about your assertion about me and the military that Phony Soldiers thing.
I want everybody to prosper in this country.
I want everybody to have success.
I want everybody that wants one to have the job they want, not the job they can only get.
And that's a 20-year history of this program.
And your blatant ignorance represents the real problem in this country.
Ignorance is our most expensive commodity.
My hope for Obama's policy failures is based solely on the fact that they won't work.
They won't create permanent, good jobs, J. Elmer Brunk.
My way will.
I love you.
I want you to be as prosperous as you can.
I wish you'd get rid of all this hate that you're carrying around.
You got one.
Be happy, Elmer.
Well, if I had a printer that printed things faster than one page every 30 seconds, just remember, folks, rule number 13: Alinsky's rules for radicals.
This explains what Obama was doing, mentioning name.
Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it.
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