I'm just waiting for something to exit the printer.
Rush Limbaugh back in action on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Great to have you here.
Our telephone number is 800-282-2882.
The email address lrushbaugh at EIBnet.com.
By the way, I just learned, ladies and gentlemen, that the $75 billion package today to rescue primarily people who never were going to be able to repay their loans is on top of $200 billion already authorized.
So the figure we are working with, $75 billion, is not accurate.
We've got 9 million families here theoretically that we're talking about.
So, Brian, what you need to do is divide $275 billion by $9 million just to give us an average number per family.
$30,000 is, if these numbers are accurate, would be what every troubled mortgage holder will essentially receive, $30,000 with this.
I'm getting overwhelmed with what is happening here.
I'm totally overwhelmed.
And I have to make an observation.
On Tuesday, when the $30,555, when I guess it's Tuesday that the stimulus bill was passed, for the first time, for the first time in my memory, I do not recall a president signing a piece of legislation alone.
Normally, members of Congress that had a major role in writing it and getting it passed are allowed to come up and be part of the signing ceremony.
It's usually somewhere on the White House grounds, like the Rose Garden, or somewhere in the White House, like the East Room.
But no, it was Obama and Obama alone in Denver.
Then we had this thing today in Mesa, Arizona.
And again, it's all Obama.
There's no other administration there.
He doesn't talk about your government.
He doesn't talk about his party.
It's all him.
It's III.
I am doing this for you.
He is taking all the credit for every one of these initiatives.
Just something I observed out there.
The automobile companies are next in line with their hands out.
General Motors and Chrysler are asking for, what is it?
The number being banned about is $16 billion from General Motors, but I've seen a total of 30 mentioned elsewhere.
Let me find it here in the stack.
Yes, and by the way, we've got official news.
Ladies, yeah, GM needs up to 30 billion.
Here it is.
We have it officially now that both Obama and the Congress are calling for a second stimulus package.
I'll have the details in just a second.
First, I want to tell you about the automobile dealers.
General Motors said yesterday it could need a total of up to $30 billion in more government aid.
That's more than double its original aid, and it would run out of cash as soon as March without new federal funding.
Now, GM and Chrysler back in the fall said they would run out of cash when if they didn't get the first bailout, January or something like that?
My point is, regardless how much money they're given, at some point they're going to run out.
The focal point here is that people need to buy cars.
If General Motors Ford Chrysler, if they're going to rebound, people need to buy their cars.
The request for additional aid from General Motors came in a restructuring plan that they submitted to government officials on Tuesday.
The GM plan of more than 100 pages was posted on the U.S. Treasury website.
Now, here's the dilemma about this.
The first thing you have to understand, these automobile dealers are located in Michigan.
There are no jobs in Michigan.
So here's the question.
Do we, the taxpayers, bail out the auto companies, which is essentially bailing out the unions?
I mean, when you strip it down to bare facts, we are talking about bailing out employees or not bailing out employees.
If we bail out the car companies, the theory is that at least their people will be employed in the state of Michigan where there are no jobs.
And then General Motors and Chrysler can go about continuing to try to make cars that people want to buy, theoretically.
Or we don't bail them out and they run out of money and they have to file Chapter 11 or just plain go out of business, at which case all the auto workers are unemployed and you know what will happen then?
We will subsidize their unemployment with unemployment benefits.
Now we will not subsidize their unemployment at their current salaries, their annual salaries and benefits and all that.
But that's a dilemma.
And there's a third option here, but filing Chapter 11, which the automobile companies say they don't want to do because people then aren't going to buy anything made by a company in bankruptcy.
Well, the question has to be asked, are they buying anything now?
Are they buying enough product from Ford, General Motor, and Chrysler to stave off any crisis that they're facing?
It doesn't appear so because they keep coming back and asking for more money.
So if we let them go Chapter 11, they can reorganize and at least start to run the company, reorganize in a way that it can run responsibly.
And that would put the unions out, and this is all about saving the unions.
And I just, I want to prepare you for the argument.
Well, we've got to protect these jobs.
There are no jobs in Michigan.
So if the auto companies go belly up, if they go out of business, all these union workers, the United Auto Workers employees, the subsidiaries, where are they going to go to get work?
They won't.
And that's bad for all of us.
It's bad for the economy.
So the pressure to continue to provide bailout money for the auto workers is going to be to keep people employed because that helps all of us.
Now, I want to make one last comment on all of this because now I'm going to get off of this because it really, it really bothers me.
A business plan that focuses on cuts and reductions only, which is what we're dealing with.
I mean, they're going to cut Saturn.
They're going to eliminate Saturn.
They're going to basically four brands with Pontiac as a special order.
They're going to do Buick, GMC, Cadillac, and Chevrolet.
Get rid of Saturn and so forth.
They're going to keep the Hummer.
They're going to get rid of the small cars that Saturn makes.
A business plan that focuses on cuts and reductions is only is, I mean, it must be done, obviously, but it still, it frightens me a little bit.
Bankers and creditors are an important part of any budget going forward, but so are customers.
A business has to be relentless in how it markets itself.
It's always talking to its customers, its future customers.
It's always building confidence in the future and not just by promising cutbacks.
Right now, the auto companies are not even concerned about talking primarily to customers.
They are concerned with persuading Washington.
The automobile companies are forced into a situation here where they have to sell whatever they have to sell, and it isn't cars in this case, to Washington.
Governments are better by being smaller.
Private companies are at their best when they're expanding.
Efficient spending is supposed to be a given.
A business plan does not exist in a vacuum, is my point.
Customers are going to watch how this is marketed as closely as how the cars are marketed.
See, the thing is, we all want General Motors to succeed.
General Motors is a legacy in this country.
It's a tradition.
We want Ford to succeed.
Chrysler, we want these companies to succeed.
And they say they can't take bankruptcy because some studies indicate people won't buy cars from a bankrupt company.
Now, I think that if a company can tell the world why they have never been more excited about the future post-bankruptcy, they can inspire confidence.
Trump understands this.
Trump, regardless of what's going on, is always confident.
He's always positive.
He is enthusiastic.
And you have to be.
That's part of the job.
Selling is always part of the job.
The car companies have lost their swagger.
I wish they could get it back.
The American people want to support General Motors and Ford and Chrysler.
The American people are rooting for those companies.
But we want to feel like we're rooting for people who refuse to fail.
We want people to lead, who are fearless, promise to make products we'll absolutely fall in love with.
And that's not going to happen as long as these companies are cowering in the corner in fear of Congress.
American people want to see courage.
They want to see leadership, independence.
We want to see out of those executives exactly what we want out of the cars that they are selling.
So I don't see that, right?
I see a totally defensive, negative posture.
And who could blame them?
I mean, they're total prisoners now to Washington.
What's happening to the automobile companies is a microcosm of what's going to happen to anybody who becomes totally dependent on Washington.
You live in constant fear.
You can't make a move without their approval.
They don't know what to approve or what not to approve because they're not experts, and their motivation for approving things is going to be based on satisfying constituencies that have nothing to do with selling cars.
This is a vicious cycle.
Cessna, on the other hand, set the standard.
Here's an industry that's under assault by the federal government.
A Cessna CEO runs a full-page ad telling CEOs to buck up to grow a pair, in essence, and remember what it was like to dream big things.
That's how you market yourself.
Boldness, strength, independence.
Be your products.
You got a car that goes zero to 60 in 4.5 seconds.
Be an executive that can do it too.
Quick timeout.
Stimulus package number two coming soon, as I predicted yesterday.
Stand by.
Okay, I have a couple stories here on the second stimulus package.
The first is from the Fox Business Channel.
It occurred with Obama doing an interview with Alexis Glick to address the housing market woes, rising energy and food prices, and eroding consumer confidence.
The U.S. needs a second stimulus package, said Barack Obama.
Wait a minute.
Folks, I'm sorry.
This is from June 26th of 2008.
Fire the researcher who sent me this.
Let's see, when's this from?
Now, this is okay.
This one is from February 10th.
House Democrat leaders are putting together a second economic stimulus package that could cost as much as that's from February 2008.
Of course, I have to take the hit for this.
Not the stupid researcher who sent me year-old garbage thinking it was from today.
Rush, why didn't you read it?
Folks, those of you watching on the DittoCam have seen me losing my temper here the last five minutes trying to format this stuff so it'll print.
I'm being sent, look at this, look at this.
You were right, Obama, one second.
And send me, here's the link to open the links to print it out.
And I couldn't get it formatted.
I should have taken the hint that it wouldn't print right.
Somebody was trying to tell me don't use it.
So there has been no official mention of a second stimulus package other than I predicting one that will, well, wait a minute.
We do have an audio soundbite on this.
Bail me out a little.
Find Gibbs.
Here we go.
Cut nine.
Let's do eight and nine.
This is from Monday.
And this is what I said on my program.
It ain't going to be long before we go back to amnesty, and it isn't going to be long before we start doing a number of – I'll bet you by this summer Obama comes back for another stimulus package after they do TARP 2 sometime in March.
Mark my words.
That's the way this is going to happen.
Remember, FDR didn't spend enough soon enough.
That's what they, if FDR would have just spent more soon, sooner, then we wouldn't have had the Great Depression last as long.
Here is, and there's airplane noises aboard Air Force One.
Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on Tuesday, yesterday.
The president's going to do what's necessary to grow this economy.
But there are no particular plans at this point for a second stimulus package at the moment.
I wouldn't foreclose it, but I wouldn't say at the same time there's readily making plans to do so.
Okay, so I predicted there's going to be one.
He says there's not one being planned, but I wouldn't foreclose the idea.
Also, there's this from just now.
Grab soundbite 28.
This is Trace Gallagher at the Fox News Channel just a moment ago.
We've just heard from a White House spokesman saying that Barack Obama, the president, in fact, does not support bringing back the fairness doctrine.
If you're not up on this, the fairness doctrine is basically where a lot of Democrats have said, you know, if Rush Limbaugh gets three hours of radio every day, then a Democrat should also get three hours of radio on that station to make it fair and balanced to have both sides of the story.
President says he does not support bringing back the fairness doctrine.
I wouldn't read anything into this.
Of course, they're not going to bring back the fairness doctrine.
They're going to call it something else.
They're going to use a series of contrivances.
They will use ownership restriction, ownership rules.
They will use local content rules.
The Wall Street Journal two days ago asked me for an op-ed on this.
I submitted the op-ed this morning.
It is an open letter to President Obama asking for clarity, a definitive answer on censorship of the media.
Now, I'm wondering, I am just wondering if somebody along the line did not leak my op-ed and the White House heard of it coming and they want to preempt its publication.
I'm going to, at the next break, I'm going to fire off a note to the people at the journal because there is an expiration date on every Obama statement.
He can say today he doesn't believe in it, but then something of an emergency will come up in another day or two or a week and force him to change his mind.
Now, the FCC, he's got a lot of people working on this.
Acorn is gearing up to enforce the same type of restrictions on broadcasting that the fairness doctrine would require.
They're not going to call it that, but they are going to go for it.
I am, as I've told you, I'm reluctant to talk about this because I don't want to sound like a victim.
I don't want to sound like they're coming after me, they're coming after me.
But they're going after any area there is dissent.
They're even going after the internet.
Obama administration people are talking about the unfairness and the imbalance and the lack of a filter on the internet.
It's not just talk radio.
They're not going after cable TV.
They're not going after NPR.
They're not going after broadcast TV.
They're not going after newspapers or magazines.
They are focusing on talk radio.
Now, the very idea that he says he opposes the fairness doctrine, but he doesn't oppose the results of the fairness doctrine.
He is in full-fledged support of what would happen if the fairness doctrine were ever re-implemented.
But I just have to ask myself, and I spent a lot of time on this op-ed and the publication date scheduled for tomorrow.
And out of nowhere, out of nowhere on Fox, some spokesman says Obama's not even considering it.
Why now?
I mean, that didn't come up at the housing meeting today.
It didn't come up in Denver yesterday.
It hasn't come up on Air Force One.
Where did it come up from?
And I didn't tell, I mean, I told a couple friends that I was going to write this thing.
Fascinating stuff going out there, the intrigue, ladies and gentlemen.
All right, we're coming up now.
We have taken a bottom-of-the-hour break.
Again, a reminder, Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, has suggested his state may not be interested in all of the roughly $4 billion allotted to his state in the economic stimulus package.
Yeah, we're going to have to review every program, each new dollar, but want to see what the strings are, whether it's even beneficial to us.
Back in a second.
I'm sorry, I'm trying to do 15 things here at once.
I apologize for the distraction, ladies and gentlemen.
All right.
The Federal Reserve today has sharply downgraded its projections for the country's economic performance this year, predicting the economy will actually shrink and unemployment will rise higher.
Under the new projections from the Fed, the unemployment rate will rise to between 8.5% and 8.8% this year.
The old forecast said 7.1 and 7.6%.
The Fed also thinks the economy will contract.
For those of you who voted for Obama, that means shrink between a half and 1.3%.
The old forecast said the economy would shrink by 0.2% or expand by 1.1%.
The bleaker outlook represents The growing toll of the worst housing, credit, and financial crises since the 1930s.
It's not since the 1930s.
Anyway, how can this be?
We have just had a trillion-dollar stimulus bill passed.
That's what they called it.
We have just had a $275 billion housing rescue plan passed.
This is impossible.
Obama just got these things passed to make things better.
How can there be a downgrade?
This bill was written in three weeks.
The urgency was so profound, we didn't have time to let the people who voted on it read it.
It was passed.
It was passed to stop this, and now they've downgraded the economy even more this year.
I look at Wall Street.
What's Wall Street?
Not much.
It's down 1.83.
It was up about 15 points earlier.
This doesn't, that was also down 40.
It's all over the place.
People don't know what to make of this.
This is inexplicable.
We've had $700 billion TARP, $1 trillion stimulus.
That's $1.7.
We had 200 stimulus last year.
We had 150 stimulus.
We're up to over $2 trillion.
We're up to over $2 trillion in stimulus or rescue spending.
And it isn't helping.
The Fed is saying the economy is going to contract more than they thought.
This is not possible.
This is not possible because this stuff was guaranteed to work.
This is new and bold and smarter and wiser, right?
I'm really depressed.
Colleen in Youngstown, Ohio.
Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Program.
Hi.
Hi, we're actually so excited to talk to you.
My dad loves you, so I hope he's listening.
He's going to be jealous.
Anyways, I was just calling and, you know, not to beat a dead horse because all the callers seem to have the same problem.
But my issue was in 2005, I purchased a home in Dayton, Ohio, and my husband got a job offer.
It was bigger and better.
So, you know, I don't know why we would do that in America.
I want more for ourselves.
So we moved and we bought a condo in Tucson, Arizona, and we still had the other house.
Well, we had to take $25,000 to the loan closing for that house.
And then we have this other one, which my husband, in the meantime, had been laid off.
And so we moved here to Youngstown, Ohio because he got another job.
And now we have that house just sitting out there.
I'm making payments.
I'm renting it out.
And then this weekend when we had our taxes done, we could not claim any of the rental loss because they said we make too much money.
Yep.
You are a person of means.
Just like Janine from Florida, you're a person of means.
You can't, you know, how does it feel, Colleen?
I really want, how does it feel to be rich?
I wish I knew.
I can't keep any of the money.
No, no, no, because you're being treated as though you are rich.
People above, I forget what it is.
It's either half a million or a million.
Maybe it's as low as 250.
They also cannot deduct any of their losses.
They cannot, they get 50% of their charity.
Whatever you give to charity, you can only deduct 50% of it.
There's no mortgage interest deduction for you.
No, not anymore.
Except the first million.
But, you know, you might say, well, I don't deserve it.
See, that's where we get to this problem.
If you're going to sit there and say, I'm not talking to you, Colleen, but Snerdley gave me this little frown.
See how easy it is to get tramped?
I just said that people, some people do have a $10 million mortgage.
Some people have a $5 million mortgage.
But only the first million can you deduct.
Okay?
Now, now.
Now, when people say, well, why should they get a deduction?
They've got all that money.
That's how this all starts.
When people want achievers punished, that's how demagogues like Obama rise to power, ready to ride that horse, a punishment of the achievers, right down Main Street.
So you now, you've got all this property that you've had losses on that you can't deduct because you make too much money.
How much do you make?
Well, not that much.
This year we earned a little bit more because, you know, my husband was in a job where we happened to earn a little extra income, but once you get to, it's like $150,000, you cannot claim any sort of loss like that.
And it's like, are these idiots in Washington, do they ever think if they help people like us by letting us maybe deduct that, that we would in turn help the economy, which then might produce more jobs?
No, the view today is just the opposite.
I know it sounds hard to believe, but we're talking about you're being punished.
You are an achiever and you're being punished.
There is means testing being employed on you, Colleen, and the people in Washington assume you have enough.
You have more than you need.
You don't need any breaks.
There are other people who need the money that you would get more than you need it.
And those people actually are more likely to vote Democrat.
This is redistribution.
It is hideous.
Everybody is.
When I get emails from people, I'm getting flooded with email.
And I'm telling you, I have never seen anything like it.
And I wonder just how soon the peasants are going to pick up the pitchforks and start making trips.
I'm not kidding here.
I have never seen this level of anger and outrage.
Now, you sound, you know, you're reasonable, but I know that this whole thing has you puzzled.
This is not the America you knew.
Right.
No, I actually, I feel like I need economic therapy.
I watch the news every day, and it's just spiraling downward.
And I feel like in four years I'm sort of happy because he won't be re-elected for president because there's too many people like me who I certainly didn't vote for him and never would.
But I know a lot of people that did vote for him because the change is coming.
Well, it's here.
And people are not going to be happy that they voted the way that they did.
So I hope it changes.
I can only say, I hope you're right.
I don't get that sense yet.
I'm not going to sit here and rely on anecdotal data.
And it's still only 30 days in, not even 30 days in.
That's the scary part in one way or we're only 30 days in here and look at what's happening.
And of course, there's no analysis from the drive-by media.
There's no investigation of this.
There's no curiosity about what it is.
I mean, their template is Obama wins.
Obama wins.
Obama wins.
It doesn't matter what he wins with and what it is that he's winning.
It just Obama wins, Obama wins, Obama wins.
So there's she did.
She said, I've seen a couple of obscure blog posts from liberals who are worried that all of this elitism from Congress, the tax cheats being put in the government, whereas you and I go to jail, they get to run the government.
All of these things that we've chronicled since the transition and the inauguration, some liberals are terribly concerned of the silent majority, that there's just an effervescence out there that is going to roll over the Democrats in 2010 if they don't get it together and understand the rage.
The liberal columnists I've read, you have not heard of them.
They're just terribly upset, and they're not from cook blogs.
I don't want to give the blog credit.
It doesn't matter.
Just trust me on this.
That's why I'm your host.
You trust me.
They are very much concerned that the rage and anger is not understood, is not felt by the people in Washington who are doing all this.
They don't think that it looks good for the CEOs to be called up there and ripped across the room one way and the other.
They don't understand that not every American hates CEOs, that not every American hates business, that not every American wants these people in jail and frog-marched out of the building, that this is not what the role of government is.
They don't understand that the liberal elites in Washington and Obama do not understand that most Americans do not run around with hatred in their hearts about the institutions of America.
And yet they're acting out of hatred and deep resentment and loading up legislation with their own personal pet projects, a bunch of bridges to nowhere and so forth, and calling it stimulus.
They're underestimating the intelligence of the average American.
It's just a trickle right now.
It's just a couple of people that are starting to worry.
They're not big names, but they do seem to have a sense of the effervescing anger and unsettledness that exists in quote-unquote average America, the people who make the country work.
And they're right about that.
There is a tremendous amount of anger and rage over what's happening.
And people, a lot of people just understand it instinctively.
This is not what they voted for.
This is not what they heard in the campaign trail.
This is not how they envisioned hope and change.
And they didn't hate George W. Bush.
Obama's voters did.
But the people in the Senate didn't hate Bush, who's unpopular for a lot of reasons, but they didn't hate him.
So we'll see.
They're at least sensing.
I asked the other day if, you know, my eyes were itching.
And I didn't know what that means because it doesn't happen to me.
So I asked people, what does it mean when your eyes itch?
It means you're catching a cold.
Now, I had never heard this.
It means you're catching, are they watery?
I said, no, they just itch in the corners inside.
Sometimes they just itch.
So I took some Zycam on the possibility that it was a cold coming on.
Now, if, and that was Monday.
Now, if, and I say if because I've not heard it before, but if itchy eyes can indicate that a cold's coming on, I started Zycam within 10 minutes of hearing that during a commercial break.
I don't have a cold.
I didn't feel like I was on the verge of one other than the itchy, watery eyes, but that usually to me signalizes flu, if anything.
But I think it's another instance if these people are right, and who am I to doubt them?
This is itchy eyes are a precursor for a cold.
I took the Zycam and no cold.
I do not have a cold.
If you want, if you catch a cold, if you know you're coming down with one, you've got to use it fast.
And by the way, for those of you, this is an important thing, is we have been recommending Zycam here for years, and they've gone through various iterations in packaging.
And there have been times where it's been a pain in the rear to open the q-tip package.
You've had to get some scissors.
You've had to fold it and so forth.
They have fixed it.
They've got the stuff in tubes now, little small tubes.
The q-tip's going to just snap the top off.
It's easy as it can be.
It's one of the greatest marketing creations or changes that a company has made.
And if you're coming down with a cold, catch it early.
You can stop it or you can severely limit its duration with Zycam.
It's available everywhere, folks.
I just got a nice note from Mo Thacker, who is the union leader for the United Screeners of America, Call Screeners of America.
He says he said he appreciates my show today.
He's got two mortgage payments due in March.
He's not going to make them.
He's just not going to make them.
And he would not have known that that was an option had he not listened to my program today.
So even a union thug leader has acknowledged to me today the value of the content of this program, Ken in Corona, California.
Hi, nice to have you on the program.
Did it, Rush?
By the way, one of the things I intended to get to today, the Republicans in the California Senate are holding firm, and they got rid of their Republican leader out there.
And the Republican leader is on television last night in Sacramento, blaming calls from all over the country from this show.
It's one of the many sound bites I have, and I have not had a chance to get to today.
I apologize for that.
We'll try to save them for tomorrow.
Yes, Ken, what's up?
I just say ditto from Southern California and comrades for Snugger.
Rush, the problem is, well, I don't have a problem.
I'm 63 years old.
I'm JetFit.
I worked all my life.
And my wife and I would make nowhere close to $100,000 a year.
We bought her a home not as an investment, it's some retirement.
We've lost about 35% of it, the value.
I'm unemployed now.
I'm still looking for a job.
And I don't want the government to do anything for me.
Don't worry, you're not my wife.
You bought the house?
We bought the house.
Is it paid for?
No, sir.
We were not in under.
The house is worth more than what we paid for it, but we didn't buy it for investment or something to dump it real quick.
This is going to be our kids' home.
It's a good thing you don't want help because you're not qualified for help.
You've been too responsible.
I realize that.
You know, Rush, when I was eight years old, my dad died.
He left my mother with six kids.
And she never worked a day in her life.
I'm originally from a little town in Virginia.
She never worked a day in her life, but she went to work for 50 passes an hour in a laundry.
She turned down welfare.
They kept trying to send us welfare.
She turned it down.
And she taught us the value of work.
No one would give you nothing.
You have to work for what you get because you're the landlord free.
And I don't understand what's going on.
I know.
I have to interrupt you.
I know right where you're going.
I have to interrupt you because of the constraints of time.