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Feb. 26, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:24
February 26, 2009, Thursday, Hour #3
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Time Text
Nancy Pelosi is not happy, ladies and gentlemen.
She doesn't like the fact that the tax increases on the rich aren't going to happen for two years.
Greetings and welcome back.
It's Rush Limbaugh, the last man standing, the man President Obama has told you not to listen to.
800-282-2882, as I am America's real anchorman, truth detector, and doctor of democracy, all combined in one harmless, lovable little fuzzball.
Nancy Pelosi today attacked House Republicans who have criticized Obama's proposal to raise taxes on the wealthy to fund his health care plan.
Now, wait a second, that's true.
That's right.
I thought the tax increases on the wealthy were to reduce the deficit.
No, that's been said.
The tax increases on the wealthy, we're going to reduce the deficit.
He said it.
That statement expired.
Okay, so now the tax increases are to pay for national healthcare.
C.C. Connolly, writing in the Washington Post, which had a what did I read?
The profit is down 42%.
Hang on just a second here, folks.
Let me find this.
Well, maybe it's been taken down.
I think I saw somewhere the Washington Post profits down 40-some-odd percent or whatever.
Regardless, CeCe Connolly has a piece here.
President Obama is proposing to begin a vast expansion of the U.S. healthcare system by creating a $634 billion reserve fund over the next decade, launching an overhaul that most experts project will ultimately cost at least $1 trillion.
Who cares?
They don't.
Again, folks, I say if they cared about paying for this, they wouldn't spend any of it because none of it is going to be paid for in ways you or I understand.
We don't have the money for this.
Just like you, not you, like your neighbors are being told that they can continue to live in houses they can't afford because you're going to pay for it.
So the federal government's going to be able to buy and do all these things.
You're going to pay exorbitantly, but it's not going to come anywhere near covering the cost.
This is stunning.
A $634 billion reserve fund.
It's actually going to cost a trillion.
It's in the budget proposal being released today.
Obama aims to make a very substantial down payment toward universal coverage by trimming tax breaks for the wealthy.
And now get this.
Squeezing payments to insurers, hospitals, doctors, and drug manufacturers.
What does squeezing payments mean?
If you work at the Acme Widget Company and your boss comes in and says, we got some tough economic times.
You've got to squeeze your payments.
He says, squeeze your earnings.
It's a cram down is exactly what it is.
So doctors, insurers, hospitals, an evil big drug are going to get their payments squeezed, meaning, well, who's going to be doing the payment under a universal health care system?
The government's going to be doing the paying.
And so doctors are going to get squeezed.
Hospitals, that means they're going to get less.
It's a cut.
Doctors' payments are going to be cut.
So, ladies and gentlemen, What kind of idiot is going to go to med school from now on?
The only people going to go to med school are idiots, and they're going to be working on us.
This is like teachers, and they're going to have their payments squeezed and a couple of other body parts.
So Pelosi's upset.
Pelosi's upset at Republicans who are criticizing Obama's proposal to raise taxes on the wealthy to fund this health care plan.
If anything, Pelosi said, Obama's being generous.
Obama is being munificent.
She said, quite frankly, jumping up and down in her chair, quite frankly, I would have done it faster, noting that the phase, the phase-out of top-tier tax breaks is going to take years to complete.
It's not about raising taxes.
It's about ending a tax cut.
Well, tax rates are going to go up, Nancy, 42%.
It's very clear that this priority of this Congress and this president as we move forward is healthcare, and we're not going to slow walk that.
I would say to those who criticize this investment that this is a priority of the health care of our people, hello, everyone.
Get ready.
Dick Durbin on the floor of the Senate this afternoon.
Section 307B of Communications Act requires that the FCC ensure license ownership be spread among diverse communities.
It's there already.
I don't think this is socialistic, communistic, or unconstitutional.
It's in the law.
So to say we're going to promote what the law already says is hardly a denial of basic constitutional freedoms.
Second, the Communications Act requires the FCC eliminate market entry barriers for small businesses to increase the diversity of media voices.
That's Section 257.
So to argue that what I'm putting in here is a dramatic change in the law, is going to somehow muzzle Rush Limbaugh, it's not the case.
What we're suggesting is that it is best that we follow the guidelines already in the law to promote and encourage diversity in media ownership.
All right, folks, I've been in this business all my life.
I understand the Communications Act of 1934, 1944, 1995, 2034.
I know it all.
Let me explain to you, let me first ask you a question.
Senator Durbin, if it isn't about changing things, why do this?
If the law is already the law, why do this?
And why throw my name in here?
And why talk about it being communistic or socialistic or whatever is communistic, socialistic, unconstitutional?
It must be sensitive to the charge here if you start defending it that way.
Let me tell you about diversity of minority ownership.
This has happened not just in broadcasting.
It has happened in automobile dealerships.
And let me tell you how it works, or how it did work, and how it has worked.
FCC did come out with diversity in ownership rules.
The only problem was that the people who are the targets of being new owners had no way of buying broadcast properties.
So what happened was that a consortium of white business people would hire a black or minority to lead the group and go purchase properties.
And the black guy would be given equity, the African American would be given equity in this company, and that's how minority ownership came about.
I've seen it.
It's I mean, this is one of the auto dealerships.
I remember in Los Angeles, in parts of Northern California, all of a sudden a rule came down that certain dealerships, a number of dealerships had to be owned by minorities.
And what would happen is a bunch of traditional auto dealers would go down to the barrios of Los Angeles and they would pick somebody out.
Hey, you, Hector, over here.
And they put Hector in charge of the company and Hector's at the dealership every day.
No beans about what he's doing.
But they teach him along the way.
And, you know, Hector gets his self-esteem up.
He's running a Lexus dealership.
He's out there test driving with Acuras with people.
So this is, it's been like this for a number.
What Durbin wants to do here is ramp this up and expand it.
And just as people who can't afford homes are being lent money they can never pay back and then be allowed to live in the homes.
What Durbin wants to do is to allow diversity, he means racial and ethnic diversity of ownership.
He wants to break up companies that own significant numbers of radio stations, and none of them are violating the law at the moment in the number of stations they own.
There are laws about cross-ownership of newspapers, television stations, radio stations, the same market.
And some companies have expanded their radio holdings.
They've had to divest of a TV station in a market or a newspaper or what have you.
There isn't a company in violation of the law right now in terms of diversity and ownership.
What Durbin wants to do is force additional minority ownership.
And then the local ownership, the new diversity ownership, will then say, you know, I just, I don't care whether the Limboscho is making a lot of money.
I don't want it on my station.
I'm going to put on whatever I'm going to put on.
And that's the objective.
And the words fairness and the words doctrine, never used.
And this is just one of the three branches.
Then after they get diversity in ownership, minority diversity ownership, then will come the local content rules, which I'm sure Durbin will then say, well, those rules are already on the books, too.
We've got to start enforcing nothing constitutional, communistic, or socialistic about this.
I mean, Paul Pott never even did this.
So we and the gulags and our people at Club Gitmo, they never even, this is perfectly within the grounds of the Constitution.
So we're just going to enforce the local content rules, which are going to say that 90% of a station's programming must be local.
And the fairness doctrine will never be used.
And they're voting on this today in the Senate.
The very idea, he says this, that something is in the law that's going to muzzle Rush Limbaugh is not the case.
Then why do it?
Obviously, I'm not being muzzled by the current law, which you say is already the current law, Senator Turbin.
So there's something different here.
When somebody goes to the floor of the Senate and says, I'm not trying to muzzle Rush Limbaugh, yes, you are.
It's like when somebody says, look, it's not the money.
It's always the money.
So they're trying it.
Well, Obama's out there saying he has no interest in it.
Well, and he can say, truthfully, if this thing ever gets past the House into the Senate, let's say it gets to his desk.
You sign it and say, you know, I don't see fairness doctrine in here.
And I said I was only opposed to that.
I have no fairness, but I'm all for.
I'm all for diversity and ownership.
I'm all for more minorities and poor people being able to own radios.
That's only fair.
Sign it off.
That's how this stuff is going to work.
This is why I wrote the op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal.
I said, Mr. Obama, okay, you've told us about fairness doctrine.
How about some of these other contrivances?
How do you feel about it?
Never got an answer.
Yes, that's right.
I did get an answer.
It's happening on the floor of the Senate right now.
Sometimes you just have to laugh.
I just saw a video accompanying a story.
Busloads of ChiCom people getting off the bus after arriving at LAX.
And they're running around Southern California and they are snapping up foreclosed homes.
The Chinese snapping up foreclosed homes.
They see a deal when it stares them in the face.
They probably figured their T-bills are worthless for a while.
Why not get into American real estate?
Just thinking, 20 years ago, we were all worried about the Japanese buying up everything.
Now the Chikoms are getting off the planes and buying up foreclosed homes.
Al Sharpton and the National Action Network leading protests at as many Fox television stations across the country as possible.
He might end up protesting as many as 50 Fox-owned television stations.
They're upset over that editorial cartoon in the New York Post for which Rupert Murdoch has apologized.
Now, look, I understand it's probably a little insensitive to caricature Nancy Pelosi as a monkey, as a chimpanzee being shot by cops, but this is a little over the top, Sharpton and his protests.
So I thought there was going to be love and adoration.
By the way, three grocery stores have been torched.
They think it's arson in Sweden.
These grocery stores are not American-owned, but they sell a lot of American products.
And the theory is that the Swedes are, they're livid, by the way, over this bank business and us intruding and changing the law.
The Swedes have always looked at themselves as the Swiss have always looked at themselves as allies of a sort.
They've been willing to take Club Gitmo prisoners, for example, and put them to work in the banks, in the vaults.
And now they're threatening they're not going to do that.
They're not going to mess around with that anymore.
They're really mad and people fear that Swiss are starting fires where American goods are sold.
I read this and I was literally stunned because I was really expecting the international community to have new respect and love for the United States and that our image around the world had finally been restored.
But hell, they're still wiping us out.
In fact, what did I see?
Some Taliban terrorist wiped out somebody, killed somebody, and left a note on the body.
It was over in Pakistan or Afghanistan on the border.
Left a note of the body essentially saying this is a gift to President Obama for ramping up the Afghanistan war.
Well, that's a sign of sheer disrespect.
You know, a gift, a thank you note on a dead body of an American from the Taliban.
Here, President, it's a present to you, President Obama.
All right, to the phones we go.
Kathy, Williamsville, New York.
Glad you waited.
Welcome to the program.
Hi, Rush.
How you doing?
Fine.
Thanks much.
My husband was having a bowl of cereal this morning, and he commented to me that, you know, we had to start stocking away more for our retirement.
And I said, no, we're not going to do that.
And he stopped eating, and he looked up and he said, what do you mean?
I said, if we do that, by the time we are ready to retire, they will take it because we will be people that have enough, and they will confiscate that retirement.
I said, we're going to enjoy it today because I am not hopeful.
And he said, well, then maybe it's time I cut back a little and earn less because Rush, he has worked so many hours a day providing for his family that he's missed 95% of all the kids' basketball games and soccer games, everything.
I'm there alone.
He's working.
And I said, you know, maybe it is time.
Maybe it's time that you stop working so hard and spend more time with your family.
So that's what we've decided to do because we're in New York State.
Governor Patterson is coming after his income.
And now the feds are coming after his income.
He is not going to work so hard because it's a lot of sacrifice.
Within an hour of that conversation, the Republican National Committee called me and looking for a donation.
I said, don't ever call this House again.
I said, when we had power, you all acted like Democrats.
The only time we act like Republicans is when we have no power.
So don't ever call me again.
So we are going to earn less.
I am not contributing anymore because they say one thing and they do another.
And I really feel it's too late for our country.
May I ask a personal question?
Yes.
No?
Yes, go ahead.
Oh, does your husband, your family income, is it exceeding right now $250,000?
Yes, it does.
It's not going to.
We're going to fix that.
We are going to fix it.
I hate to tell you.
Your day is already bad enough.
You're in a state of shock.
I mean, you live in the United States of America, and you had this conversation with your husband this morning.
Yes.
Over cereal.
Look at it.
I know how you feel.
You live in the United States of America and you have decided that in order to be secure, you've got to work less and earn less so that you can hide from the revenues, right?
Well, there's so, I mean, he works 12 and 14 and 16-hour days, and it's because he wants to provide nice things for his family.
And if working all of those hours and missing all of that stuff is not going to allow him to do it.
There's no reason to do that.
I understand it.
I know exactly how you feel.
I know what you're saying.
You are engaging in Atlas shrugged kind of activity.
But let me just tell you that it is a misnomer if you think your taxes are not going to go up if he earns less than $250,000.
I know.
And we are the people that pay for everything.
We get no breaks.
We don't get tuition assistance.
You ought to be able to thank anything.
The people who are paying, they ought to be thanked.
They ought to be whined and dined.
Instead, people like you are impugned.
You are attacked.
You are targeted.
It makes me livid.
I understand exactly how you feel.
Let me just tell you a little story.
I told this on the air the other day.
I met with my financial advisor, and he's running through all the numbers.
He got this over here, he got this over here.
I said, No, no, no, you're looking at this the wrong way.
Why, what do you mean?
I don't have any of it.
I want you to understand that my attitude now is that if I ever do retire, that money isn't going to be there.
I'm counting on the fact that this administration is going to find a way to come get it, just like you think.
Well, they will.
They absolutely will because the country will be in such a bad shape that it will be totally reasonable in everybody's mind.
Well, we need that money, and it's just sitting there.
And we've got to get out of the crisis.
That's the way New York State is talking right now.
We need to have the baseline be the tax rate right now, but it has to be progressive.
Those who can give more should give more just till we're out of the crisis.
And it's, it's, I don't think we're going to.
The last week has made me so, so upset because they keep pulling hundreds of billions of dollars figures out of the air, and they're just spending, spending, spending.
How are we going to get out of that?
I don't get it.
They don't intend to, and they don't intend to actually pay for it.
But I'll tell you, I really do feel for you.
You are like millions of other Americans.
On top of it all, after all of this over cereal at breakfast, the RNC calls you begging for money.
That would drive me over the edge, too.
I'm sorry.
Hi, and welcome back.
Rush Limbaugh here on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network and the distinguished, prestigious Limboy Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies to the audio soundbites.
On Morning Joe on Scarborough Show, MSNBC this morning, Stenny Hoyer, Lieutenant to Nancy Pelosi, is the guest.
Joe Scarborough said, somebody said that the House, this $410 billion omnibus spending bill has 9,000 earmarks.
That's insane.
What's wrong with these people?
There are really 9,000 earmarks in that bill.
No, that's not true.
I think that's two and a half times what there's about 4,000 earmarks for all the members and for 435 districts around the country.
That's kind of a lot, isn't it?
It is a lot, but it's just what it's been very substantially reduced, cut in half over the last two years.
Well, but wait, President Obama said no earmarks.
So we got 4,000 earmarks.
It's been significantly reduced.
It was 9,000, but we've really, really cut it back.
We've really cut it back.
4,000 earmarks.
He's out there defending it.
David Rodham Gergen on CNN last night asked the following question by Anderson Cooper.
The amount of money we're talking about, just staggering.
If confidence is an important thing to have in this system, does this help build confidence?
Or does it make people just more worried talking about the earmarks?
8,500 earmarks in this bill that Congress just passed?
You know, that just leaves him wide open if the president signs on to that to hypocrisy.
I don't believe Barack Obama believes in those 8,500 earmarks.
The question is going to be, is he going to stand up to it in some way?
And I think that's going to be a test for him.
Come on, David doesn't believe in it.
This is Mr. Gergen.
They're in there.
It's the way Congress does business.
Obama loves them being in there.
It's additional spending.
You think he, you people, you can listen to him say, I don't want any earmarks, while there's a 9,000 earmark bill that he knows coming his way.
He's not going to get the earmarks taken out of there.
He loves them being in there, Mr. Gergen.
It's more spending.
And it's not even the way to look at it.
How can you spend it when you don't even have the money?
It's just more control.
Anyway, here's what's his name, John Podesta.
He's from that some liberal think tank, former chief of staff for Slick Willie, and headed up Obama's transition.
He's on Charlie Rose last night.
Charlie said, tell me if you believe sort of the relationship of government to the economy.
It's going through a sea change that'll not be temporary, that we're really looking at the evolution of a new model in America.
I think we're going to see more activism to create a fair market and a fair playing field that is really now global in nature, to align their own regulatory scheme so that there can be global growth and fair growth across the globe so that middle classes can rise across the planet.
There you have it.
He admits it.
I don't even have to speculate anymore.
We're not talking about just a reordering of American society and culture and economics.
No, the world, we are going to spread fairness across the world.
Fairness, which he is defining here as a rising middle class.
Marilyn, in the parts of the West Coast, great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Thank you, Rush.
I'll get right to the point.
You know, you asked the question, who's going to medical school these days?
And I can tell you, not very many Americans are going, and it's going to be a big problem for all of us.
But my husband and I, we've just discovered that we are now the new rich, just like Bernard Goldberg described doctors in his book, Bias, which is so ironic because every time he refers to a doctor, he calls them rich doctors.
But I have to give you a perspective from a medical family.
My husband is a heart surgeon.
He's one of the top surgeons in our nation.
He was in the top 10% title ranking within our whole country, and he serves an underserved community.
He trained for 19 years, has an Ivy League education.
And during that time of training, he made at the most $35,000.
He had his medical degree, and he was doing open heart surgery on 32-ounce babies that you could hold in the palm of your hand.
We took on a $200,000 debt for the privilege of working a minimum of 80 hours a week.
This year, he made $420,000.
That's not fair.
Okay, now these are facts.
I want to give you facts.
We paid over $140,000 in taxes.
And we don't have investment because, well, our income is, of course, taxed at a higher rate because we invested all of our money in education.
We gave $35,000 to charity, you know, Church, Salvation Army, our hospital foundation, the local schools, and local theater.
We have a special needs child who, thank God, we actually have the money to send him to the private school that helps him.
We do have other children, but can't afford private schools for them.
And, you know, for us, medicine has already been socialized.
And when my husband, I was up at 4 o'clock with him this morning.
Usually don't give up with him when he goes to work, but he was so distraught because he read the Obama plan.
And I think what's happening is that, you know, physicians just don't have any more teeth left to get kicked in.
They're not only talking about cutting Medicare payments, but, you know, we will also be taxed even more.
And you have to understand, I know everybody thinks, oh, a heart surgeon, they make a million dollars.
He's one of the top heart surgeons in our country.
And he gets paid his reimbursement from Medicare has been cut every year.
This year, one of his highest reimbursements for one of his procedures, and please understand, this is not for his surgery.
This is for 90 days of care.
That means this reimbursement number covers all of your preoperative visits, the actual surgery, in which the heart surgeon holds 100% accountability, all post-op care, which is in the ICU, and depending on the patient and the level of care that is needed, up to 90 days of care, and all post-op patients.
Okay, I want to move this along.
I get the picture.
$2,500.
That's just reimbursement, Rush.
$2,500.
And we just had the discussion.
We're cutting our charity giving.
And we realized once charities go under, if we are, we're not the only ones.
Everyone else will.
Once charities go under, everyone will be dependent.
And that's the plan.
The plan is for everyone to be dependent.
And it's so frightening that people don't even see it.
What's going to happen?
Well, here's what I think.
I just want to share with you my interpretation of, let's say we had an audience full of liberals listening to your call just now.
And what they heard made them happy.
Here you are making 400 grand and your husband is a heart doctor.
And you're whining and you're complaining.
They're happy that Obama's finally getting even with you.
They're happy your taxes are going up.
And they think that you're really mean and selfish for cutting back on your charity.
That's where the liberal block of voters in this country is.
There is no sympathy for people in your circumstance who make $400,000 a year among people who make 50 or 60 or 70, whatever it is.
Even those that aspire to it, there is such a rabid get-even with them-ism out there in our society and culture today on the part of the left, that if you're looking for sympathy and understanding so that others might understand what's headed their way if they succeed as you and your husband have, they don't look at it that way.
They're happy that you're miserable or happy that this is happening to you, even though it doesn't mean one more dime to them.
The Democrat Party has built up such a resentment for success, a resentment for achievement among people who don't.
You just heard Podesta.
We want to reorder.
We want to make things fair.
We want a new playing field where the middle class drives, where everything's fair.
Those people are the ones that are going to sit around and wait for this magic to happen.
And they think the way it's going to happen is for money to be taken away from you.
And when they hear you call here and describe how money's being taken away, they're happy.
And then they think you're selfish.
You say you're going to cut back your charity.
That's what we're all up against here.
It used to be that people in that circumstance would aspire to be you and would have sympathy for what's happening because they wouldn't want it to happen to them when they got to where you are.
But we've had a number of years here where the Democrat Party has taken these poor people out there in the middle class, and they've gotten to enough of them where all they do is have envy and jealousy and resentment.
So they hear your story and they and these are the people, by the way, they're the ones think they have all the compassion, concern, and caring in our culture.
And they're happy to hear you're unhappy.
It's not sustainable.
Pardon me?
It's not sustainable.
I mean, what would happen if physicians said, okay, we believe in equality for equal effort.
So we'll cut back to 40-hour work week.
What would happen?
No, you're absolutely right.
I'm not arguing with you.
I'm telling you what we're up against.
When you say, but it's not sustainable, they're not going to know that till it happens.
It is happening.
And let me ask you this.
How many Democrat Party constituencies already live barely above the poverty line, have lived there all their lives, and are still, after 20 or 30 years, waiting for the Democrats to make things better?
And their lives are not better.
And they still vote Democrat.
So some of them are never going to get the whole notion it's not sustainable.
So what's going to ultimately make them happy is when you and your husband live a life that is closer to their existence.
There's no desire on the part of Obama or anybody in his party to lift those people up and lift up the whole economy, to lift up our culture, to lift up as many families as possible in the game of prosperity.
They want to slice people at the top down to size.
And so you've called here and explained how it's happening to you.
And it really, and it's a sad thing.
I don't know how many it is, but a lot of people hearing you, if they're Obama voters, are happy about it.
But hang in.
I understand you're not paying attention.
Look at you don't have investments.
The investment was your education.
It's, I know, it's tough to be in the midst of this after working as hard as you have to see right in front of your eyes the restructuring and the reordering of the culture that's coming.
I appreciate the phone call, Marilyn.
Thank you very much.
There's a little infighting going on today.
The Democrat Party, a dispute among House Democrats, has stalled legislation today.
The cramdown legislation, legislation will let judges reduce the principal and interest rate on mortgages.
Obama really wants this one, but it's hit a snag after a group of moderates expressed concerns in a closed-door meeting of House Democrats about how the bill would affect homeowners who are still struggling to make their mortgage payments.
But trust me, they'll get it resolved.
And this, I saw earlier today, I didn't comment on it, that Obama wants to reimpose the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004.
But Nancy Pelosi threw cold water on that.
Now, we don't want it.
We don't want to go after guns right now.
We don't have anything to do with it.
They do eventually want to do this.
But they still, see, go back to the first story we had today.
59% of the American people still think government's problem.
The Democrats know that they still do not win on the gun control issue.
Pelosi wants no part of it right now.
They'll come back for it later, but she's throwing cold water on this.
She's telling Obama, look, bud, you're going for enough here.
You got enough on a plate there.
And so a little infighting being reported.
It's not a big deal.
Ted in Las Vegas, great to have you here.
Hello.
Thank you, sir.
Longtime listener, first-time caller.
My dad and my brother are so envious right now.
Listen, you said earlier something about the rich not being able to, or they can only deduct 28% of their charity giving.
Isn't that an attack on conservatives since conservatives give like four times as much in charity as liberals?
Yeah, that's a good point.
You could look at it as an attack on conservatives and Republicans because they do give far more, make far more charitable donations than liberal Democrats do.
But actually, it's much more than that.
I mean, this is, our previous caller had it right.
You know, if you, if you, 28%, 28 cents of every dollar is all you can deduct.
Some people will make donations because they care about the cause.
Others will cut back.
Hey, they're not going to have as much disposable income to donate.
And donating is not that big a tax deduction.
So a lot of charities are going to end up with a lot less.
And the more charities that are having less and therefore do less, the more the role the government will have to be in picking up the slack of the falling assistance from charities.
So it's a hidden way of expanding the scope of government into everybody's lives again.
That's what it's about.
I realize, ladies and gentlemen, the stories that you are hearing on this program today from real Americans are depressing.
I hate to say this, but get used to it.
This is what's ahead of us.
It's happening.
We'll be back tomorrow.
So openline Friday tomorrow.
I can't believe it already.
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