All Episodes
Previous Next
March 17, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:38
March 17, 2009, Tuesday, Hour #2
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
I keep trying to move on now from the bonus business, but for crying out loud, folks.
I can't.
I want to ask all of you in this audience and those of you who are new to this program a question.
Way back last fall, when all this bailout stuff started, I warned you.
This isn't gonna work.
This is not the way to do it.
This is the government asserting control.
We see now what a total mess all of this has become.
Guess where we are now?
We've got the administration led by President Obama and his teleprompter.
His teleprompter told him to say yesterday that these AIG executives are greedy and selfish.
And now what?
We've got death threats being phoned in to the AIG headquarters in New York.
And all this time, we've been told that it's talk radio that incites this kind of hatred.
It's limbo and the little limbo that creates all of this animosity and anger and cause people to behave in ways that are uncivil.
And the president's own teleprompter is telling him to say that these executives are greedy and selfish, and this is inciting people to behavior that could lead to violence if their threats are acted out.
This whole thing's a boondoggle.
It is a mess brought to you by the United States government led by Democrats.
Greetings and welcome back.
Rush Limbaugh here on the EIB network from the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Charles Chuck U Schumer.
This afternoon on the Senate floor.
My colleagues and I are sending a letter to Mr. Liddy informing him that he can go right ahead and tell these employees that are scheduled to get bonuses that they should voluntarily return them.
Because if they don't, we plan to virtually tax all of it.
He should tell these employees if they don't give the money back, we'll put in place a new law that will allow us to tack these bonuses at a very high rate so that it's returned to its rightful owners, the taxpayers.
So for those of you who are getting these bonuses, be forewarned.
You will not be getting to keep them.
The hand, the soothing words of a compassionate understanding government.
Charles Chuck U. Schumer from the state of New York, sending a letter to the government-installed CEO of AIG, demanding that the recipients of these bonuses give the money back, or it's going to be taxed at 100%.
Again, I must remind you, ladies and gentlemen, there are a law, the stimulus bill, and the stimulus bill has a limit on executive pay.
But Christopher Dodd put an amendment that is now the law of the land that exempted bonuses from any limits on executive pay.
So here you have Senator Schumer targeting individuals, threatening individuals.
The United States government, this is just this is this is on the heels of Dingy Harry Reid targeting me.
Now these people who are getting the bonuses are being singled out and personally targeted by the United States Senate.
No equal treatment under the law here.
This is just a Stalinist type intimidating power grab.
And the whole thing is a game.
It is designed to distract you from the mess that the Democrat Party has created with these bailouts, that they have created with the stimulus bill that they have created with the omnibus budget.
It's a mess.
It is a cacophonic mess, and they have to do something to distract from it, so they're going after 165 million dollars when uh bailouts are totaling over a trillion now, and they are utter failures.
Every one of these bailouts has been a failure.
It hasn't accomplished anything.
So You have to be distracted.
I asked earlier what is a oh, one more thing about Chris Dodd before before we get to what a retention bonus is.
Senator Dodd, in addition to everything else that you know about him with Fannie Mae Freddie Mac the subprime mortgage business, Senator Chris Dodd was AIG's largest single recipient of campaign donations during the 2008 election cycle.
AIG donated 103,100, according to OpenSecrets.org to Senator Dodd.
One of AIG's financial products largest offices is based in Connecticut.
What this proves is that you can lease Chris Dodd, but you can't buy him.
He'll work for you as long as you do what he wants, but then when you turn around and embarrass him, why, he's going to come after you.
I want you to listen to Chuck Schumer again.
Here is a compassionate, understanding traditional liberal Democrat.
My colleagues and I are sending a letter to Mr. Liddy informing him that he can go right ahead and tell these employees that are scheduled to get bonuses that they should voluntarily return them, because if they don't, we plan to virtually tax all of it.
He should tell these employees if they don't give the money back, we'll put in place a new law that will allow us to tack these bonuses at a very high rate so that it's returned to its rightful owners, the taxpayers.
So for those of you who are getting these bonuses, be forewarned, you will not be getting to keep them.
By the way, if this ever did come to pass, you would not see your pocket swell at all with cash.
You're not going to ever see this money if it ever does come back, and it's chump change compared to the ninety-three billion dollars that AIG gave to other banks.
And that is a real scandal, and that's the one that's being papered over and covered up, told you about it yesterday, while everybody is being agitated about this.
Now, what is a retention bonus?
Best way to explain a retention bonus is to say that a retention bonus is offered to an employee who is being laid off down the road in order to keep the employee, in order to retain the employee.
When a company announces layoffs for whatever reason, they still need cooperation from the employees who are going to eventually lose their jobs.
There is often a transition period to change the business practice, and AIG is like any other of these companies being bailed out.
They're going to have to downsize, and they knew they were going to have to downsize.
And all these people getting bonuses are going to be laid off.
All these people getting bonuses are being fired down the road.
And everybody's known it for a year.
Everybody knew the payout date of the bonuses.
And yet there's Barney Frank acting like he didn't know a thing about the details until he got a letter from Andrew Cuomo this morning.
These people are lying through their teeth to you, members of Congress, the media, they're lying, the president lying through their teeth, they knew of the payout schedule, they knew about the retention bonuses, they knew how much, and they knew the payout date.
And they sit around, they act like innocent bystanders, surprised and shocked.
Just this past weekend, as though they are learning about this for the first time.
During this transition period, the company needs these employees to assist.
They just you can't do work without employees.
So for example, if the employee were told that they had six months left in the job, their immediate focus would be finding a new job.
The only thing that'll keep them there, the only thing that'll keep them working until their termination date is a retention bonus.
Some employees forgo the retention bonus because they uh they get a hiring bonus in their new employer.
So when you hear that these people who getting the bonus ought to be fired, they have been.
They've been told they're being sent packing.
These retention bonuses are to keep them there to keep the company running, which is I thought the purpose of the bailout.
To keep the company running.
Caterpillar.
Caterpillar Inc.
has announced a fresh round of job cuts today, laying off more than two thousand four hundred employees at five plants in Illinois, Indiana, and Georgia, as the heavy equipment maker continues to cut costs amid the global economic downturn.
But But but but the stimulus.
The stimulus was going to fix infrastructure.
Why, there's that bridge over the Osage River in Missouri.
They showed us pictures last week.
The first stimulus job.
And Obama, by the way, told us, don't forget, President Obama told us that the CEO of Caterpillar said that they were going to immediately have been hiring people back after he passed the stimulus or after he signed it.
The CEO of Caterpillar admitted that he was used by President Obama that he had never said that.
So 2,400 more layoffs at Caterpillar despite the stimulus.
You got to have heavy construction, equipment and workers if you're going to do infrastructure building and repairs, and get this Lafayette Indiana Caterpillar told 439 employees at its Lafayette factory.
It plans to lay them off for at least six months.
But, but, but, but, President Obama told everybody that Caterpillar was going to be hiring once he signed the stimulus bill into law.
Oh, well, no big deal.
Hiring, firing.
It's just one letter difference.
Just replace the H with an F. Okay.
Just put it up there on the teleprompter.
Very, very simple.
Wall Street Journal, interesting statistic, ladies and gentlemen.
This happened.
This was published while I was away.
Last Thursday and Friday, we learned that household net worth in the country dropped $11 trillion in 2008.
It was down, I think, 18%.
Household net worth.
The journal had an excellent step chart in the print edition of the journal that revealed some pretty big stuff.
During the Bush presidency, the eight years of the Bush presidency, there was a $22 trillion increase in household net worth that got virtually no coverage.
This $22 trillion increase of household net worth is twice as much as the decline in household net worth in one year in 2008.
Second and more important, the Reagan presidency started out with a household net worth of $10 trillion.
That's the combined net worth of all American households, $10 trillion.
Reaganomics, inherited by Bush 41, Clinton, and Bush 43, increased to over $60 trillion household net worth when George W. Bush assumed office in 2001.
The household net worth had gone from 1981 to 2001 from 10 trillion to 60 trillion dollars.
So since 2001, household net worth has gone from $60 trillion.
Well, it's uh let's see, it's down to $11, is it $49 with $11 trillion lost in 2008?
So the question is this: what would you rather have?
28 boom years like we had after Ronaldus Magnus, with a little correction that we had in the 2000-2001 period.
Or would you rather have twenty-eight doom years, which is the target and the path that we're on now.
Household net worth nationwide, 10 trillion dollars 1981, 60 trillion dollars by the end of 2007.
Lost 11 trillion dollars in 2008.
Any way you look at that.
We got richer.
American households got wealthier.
Their net worth expanded and increased like crazy.
Started in the 1980s.
President Obama's teleprompter tells him to say that the tired ways of the past didn't work.
That we need a new way.
Here we go.
We got the new way.
We got peasants with their pitchforks phoning in death threats at AIG.
We have members of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representative sounding like communist dictators.
We have phony scandals being ginned up by Obama's teleprompter, promoted by White House media designed to distract you from the destruction that is happening to the United States economy and thus our country.
So while you're all exercised and bent out of shape, about $165 million in bonuses, your household net worth, your prospects for a job are plummeting through the floor and headed to the sewer.
But they care about you.
They care about you in Washington.
Obama's teleprompter cares a great deal about you.
So much so they're going to get that $165 million bonus money back.
Just for you.
Just for you.
And then all will be right with the world.
As you people know, I keep reminding you to XSHeritage.org.
A lot of things, a lot of people think conservatism is in short supply these days, particularly in Washington, and it is.
Conservative principles are in short supply.
There are plenty of people who claim to be conservatives, but they don't have the guts and the courage to stand up for conservative principles.
They're too busy trying to be accepted by the dominant social and media culture of Washington.
So they want to redefine conservatives so that they will be accepted.
Conservative principles are what they are, and sometimes you have to dig deep to find them outside of this program.
And that's what the Heritage Foundation excels at.
They do not waver, they do not wilt.
You know, there's polling data, and I mentioned this earlier today that the Obama presidency is faltering.
The approval numbers in three different polls are down.
And I have to ask myself, is it because of the AIG bonuses?
Is that it?
No, I don't think it is.
I think it's dawning on people that this is a gang that can't shoot straight.
They know what they're doing and they're trying to get it done, but they look incompetent in the process.
And one of the polls, this is the Pew poll.
Did this, I just love this.
The pew poll says that one of the reasons people are finding more problem with Obama is they see that he's listening more to liberals than moderates.
That just cracks me up.
I can barely maintain my composure in a straight face.
He's listening to liberals more than moderates.
Well, duh!
Who the hell is Obama?
He is a liberal.
There's nothing moderate about the guy, only his teleprompter is moderate.
But he's not.
If it weren't for his teleprompter, we'd see who the real Obama is.
But people are starting to anyway.
And one of the things they're starting to catch on to is the tax bite that's coming from Obama's budget, and that's what the Heritage Foundation has done some great research on.
Senior policy analyst Brian Reidel has detailed how Obama's budget raises taxes on Americans by $1.4 trillion, regardless what you make.
Remember Obama said if your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increase a single dime, I repeat, not one single dime.
Yet even before the budget was released.
He signed into law a 62 cent tobacco tax increase that does not exempt lower income smokers.
And how could it?
How could it exempt lower income smokers?
The budget proposes a $646 billion cap and trade tax.
Energy companies would immediately pass on to all consumers.
Your electricity bill, your utility bill, your gasoline, everything is going up.
You are going to get taxed out the wazoo because of Obama.
And even if the tax increases are not implemented until 2011, you know how business they plan for long-term investment and hiring, and they're going to start scaling back their growth plans starting in 2011 because they're going to be hit with new taxes too.
This is going to auger against an economic recovery auger against you getting a job.
It's at Askheritage.org.
You won't find it in too many other conservative places, sadly, but there is heritage.
Trium.
We're back, Rush Limbaugh on the cutting edge of societal evolution.
You remember the call last week from the woman in Texas who was distraught over the treatment of the U.S. military by President Obama and was just begging me to continue to stand up for the men and women of the armed forces of this country.
And of course I said I would.
It's in my blood to do so.
This next story is an absolute shocker.
Actually, it's a two-parter.
And it's it's all over the place.
It's McClatchy, it's AP, the veterans' groups have even put out a press release.
The Obama administration is considering making veterans use private insurance to pay for treatment of combat and service-related injuries.
The plan would be at about face on what veterans believe is a long-standing pledge to pay for health care costs that result from their military service.
But in a White House meeting on Monday, veterans' groups apparently failed to persuade President Obama to take the plan off the table.
Veterans of all generations agree this proposal is bad for the country, bad for veterans, said Paul Reichoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans for America.
If the president, he said, and the Office of Management and Budget want to cut costs, they can start at AIG, not the VA.
They can start with well, they write about this.
Don't throw all this money away on failing concerns like these banks that ought to be going bankrupt.
Don't throw the money away, don't bail out losing causes.
Honor the contract with America's men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice to defend and protect this country, its people, and its constitution.
Mr. Reichov is exactly right.
Few details about the plan have been available, and a VA spokesman did not provide additional information.
But the reaction on Capitol Hill to Obama's idea has been swift and harsh.
Patty Murray of Washington, the Democrats said that dead on arrival.
When our troops are injured while serving our country, we should take care of those injuries completely.
The fact is, Obama is considering it.
Just considering it.
I'll tell you what else he's considering, folks, and I have warned you about this on several occasions.
You mark my words.
Some point, not only are going are they going to get rid of the ceiling on taxing people's social security benefits on all their income.
Or the leveling with FICA tax on all income.
They are going to start counting employer-provided health care benefits as income.
This is exactly what they're going to do.
They're out of money.
They don't have any money.
They are going to raise taxes on everybody.
Now there's a companion story to this.
Obama is thinking about making veterans foot the bill for their health care regarding injuries they received in combat.
Here is a story from Bill McGurn in the Wall Street Journal.
Apparently, Michelle My Bell Obama, the first lady, Went to Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
By choosing Fort Bragg for her first official trip outside Washington last week, Michelle Obama signaled that she will use her position to promote one of America's most deserving causes, military families.
The families loved it.
You can see the smiles on their children's faces as Michelle read the cat and a hat to them.
So it was just a little disconcerting the next morning to hear the first lady explain how she came to this issue during last year's campaign.
Michelle Obama said to ABC News, Well, I think I was like most Americans, pretty oblivious to the life of military families, sort of taking it for granted, quote unquote.
Uh...
Uh...
I just don't believe this.
Oblivious to the life, she's admitting she was oblivious to the life of military families, and then, and then go out has the goal to tell the rest of us that so are we.
When we are not oblivious to the lives of military families.
So while she's out touring Fort Bragg, North Carolina, reading the cat and a hat to the children of military personnel and acting like all of a sudden she's just now in the campaign.
She just started to love her country in a campaign.
She just started to be proud of her country, and it was only during the campaign that she finally figured out what military family life is like.
While her husband is mulling eliminating government-paid health care benefits for wounds and injuries suffered in combat.
And I thought it was talk radio that was ginning up all this anger and angst and so forth.
This is I mean, it's just it is outrageous.
It is disingenuous, and it is insulting.
And I resent Mrs. Obama saying that she, her thoughts on military life.
Well, I'm like everybody else.
No, you're not like everybody else.
Your ideas and your plans and the anger you bring to your life, you're not like everybody else, Mrs. Obama.
Please don't equate us with your view of aspects of this country.
All right, to the phones.
This is Bob in uh in South Jacksonville, Florida.
Great to have you on the EIB network, sir.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello, Rice, been listening to you for years.
Keep up the good work, especially now.
Thank you.
Listen, Bonnie Frank, I heard him.
He's talking about pushing this $500,000 limit to all industries.
What about the star basketball or football players?
So poor people go see 40 vets, too.
How about that?
That's not going to happen.
This is pure, well, I mean, he's not going to limit the pay of movie stars, athletes, or any of this.
Look, this is not new.
Grab audio soundbite number 29.
This is not new.
If you want to know where this executive pay limitation garbage began, you need go back only as far back as 1993.
And there it was the president of the United States, William J. Well, yeah, 1993, who put a limit on the deductibility that a corporation may deduct on an CEO or executive salary.
You could pay the CEO 10 mil, but you could only deduct one million of it as a business expense.
Do you know what this gave rise to?
Well, bonuses, but what specific kind of bonuses have always been.
Yes, Mr. Snerdley.
This limitation gave rise to the now famous stock option.
And how many of you people have been told to resent people who have stock options?
Well, I remember Bob Iger.
No, take it back, it was Michael Eisner.
In December of 1992, just a month before Slick Willie was to be inaugurated.
Michael Eisner cashed in 292 million dollars of stock options from Disney to escape Mr. Clinton's forthcoming retroactive tax increase.
So these these uh well it's some stock options were were in were in existence, but the whole the whole notion of limiting the deductibility or limiting any kind of executive pay caused created people to come up with other ways to pay themselves.
And it's going to happen now.
This $500,000 limit on executive pay, let me tell you why it won't work.
New York City will die.
New York City needs a whole bunch of people being paid a whole lot of money so they can tax their butts off so that the city can maintain its stupid streets, potholes, and welfare state.
Without the super wealthy in New York, it's over.
You might as well go get Kurt Russell in there, put a fence around the whole country and turn it into a prison.
Because that's what it would be.
Escape from New York to see the movie.
That's what it would be if you start limiting the pay of people whose taxes pay the freight in that city.
That's why it's never gonna happen.
This it's it's just a it's just a populist ruse.
It's just designed to people get, yeah, yeah.
People are gonna get poorer under Obama.
Their taxes are gonna go up.
They're not gonna have jobs, they're gonna be angry.
One way of ameliorating the anger is to say these bastard SOB execs are not gonna get any more than $500,000.
That's supposed to make you happy when you head down to the unemployment office for your check.
That's supposed to make you happy when you cash in your food stamps for some dog food.
That some CEO has been limited to $500,000 when the CEO is gonna make as much as he always did, particularly if he isn't accepting any bailout money.
So you're being played like stratavariuses.
You're being played like a bunch of violence, all this is typical liberal smoke and mirrors.
You're gonna get poor.
You're gonna get jobless.
You're gonna have inflation.
You're gonna have inflation so bad it's gonna be climbing into every pore of your body.
You think your home's worthless now?
Give it five years.
But the CEOs, yeah.
We're gonna screw those SOBs.
We're gonna make sure they make no more than 500 grand.
And while we're at it, we're gonna get back that 165 million dollars.
That's your money.
That's your money.
We're gonna get your money back for you from those dreaded AIG Drecks.
We're gonna get your money back for you.
That's right.
Why here?
Listen to Barney Frank.
Tell us how it's gonna happen.
Senator Dodge sponsored that in the Senate.
And uh there was uh some modification.
There were two things about club back.
We have required club back with regard to any new rules for compensation.
They have to have clawbacks.
The question about whether or not you can do it retroactively, if that's a problem on a piece of legislation wouldn't necessarily have cured that.
My own view is what I will be talking to administration about, is people have been looking at from the standpoint of the federal government as the entity that lent the money to these parties.
With the owner of that company, there were some covenants that have kept us from doing that.
I think the time has come to exercise our ownership rights and then say, as owner, no, I'm not paying you the bonus.
You didn't live up to this contract.
Screw the contract.
We own the company, screw the contract.
I'm not paying you the bonus.
Oh, by the way, I'm not paying your tax refund next year either because I don't have it.
You don't deserve it.
You should be paying more in taxes.
So tax refund, oh, by the way, we're gonna raise your taxes too.
This man, Barney Frank, and Chris Dodd, these are your saviors.
These are the people, along with President Obama's teleprompter that are gonna lead you to the promised land of prosperity.
God, what a bunch of idiot jerks we are in this country.
What have we given ourselves?
What have we elected for ourselves?
You just heard, you you just heard Elmer Fudd.
Elmer Fudd is in charge of inspiring and motivating you to be the best you can be.
The hell with contracts.
We are going to take that bonus money back.
Well, if they can do that, then nothing you have is yours.
Back in a second.
Meeting and surpassing.
All audience expectations on a daily basis.
Rush Limbaugh.
Making it look easy, but don't try this at home or anywhere in public.
800-282-288-2 Kevin in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.
Nice to have you, sir, on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hey Rush, great to talk to you.
I got a question.
Why doesn't the CEO of AIG have a press conference, cite the exemption in the stimulus bill and its author, and then write a check for the 163 million and throw in a couple million for uh the parties they had and say leave us alone.
Uh well, because they've accepted 173 billion dollars in bailout money, and of the 173 billion, they have awarded 163, 165 million in bonuses.
We've now learned that uh Wall Street Journal's reporting think Andrew Kumo's letter to uh Barney Frank.
Folks, this was known.
I'm telling you, everybody knew this, but we're acting like it's brand new, and it is news because we didn't know it, but the people acting like they're shocked and surprised knew it.
The uh here's the thing.
Uh-huh.
What did I do with it?
Oh, tell me I delete it.
Anyway, there's something like 40 execs, 43 execs who got a million dollars or more in bonuses, including 11 execs who are no longer there.
Uh, must have trashed this.
I didn't mean to trash this.
Ah.
Yeah, here we go.
Let's see.
AIG paid bonuses of one million dollars or more to 73 employees, including 11 who longer work for the company, said Andrew Cuomo, the Reichstag, attorney general in New York.
The top 10 bonus recipients received a combined 42 million dollars, he said.
He described these payments in a letter to Barney Frank, Elmer Fudd, uh now trying to figure out how to get the uh how to get the money back.
I mean, they they could write the government a check for 165 million dollars.
Wouldn't matter.
This this is all this is this set in motion now.
This is, you see, all of this is a giant political ploy to distract people.
This is not about 165 million dollars, folks.
It's not about 100.
If it were about the money, they'd be upset at the 93 billion that AIG gave away and didn't use to shore up its own operations.
That's the dirty little secret.
We've bailed out AIG with 173 billion dollars, and they funneled 93 billion or more of it to other banks without shoring up their own operation.
This 165 million dollars, this is not about the money.
This is a political opportunity to play populism.
Uh and and uh and they're creating the same kind of outrage that Dubai Ports deal did.
It's the same kind of thing here.
But this is fraudulent.
This is entirely phony.
Because AIG announced the bonus structure.
They announced the date.
It's been known for months.
I can't say this enough.
I'm sorry if you're listening all day long today and you're getting tired of me saying this, but I'm sorry, I'm the only voice pointing it out.
Other than some American thinkers doing a good job of this on their blog, but nobody's pointing this out.
This is all a giant joke.
This is a script.
It is a three-act play.
Have you been you people have been watching 24, by the way?
Oh.
You like it, Brian?
Man.
I feel like I'm I I feel like this country is in the middle of its own 24.
I mean, I wrote it down.
I wrote it down last night.
I'll go through all the things happening in this season of 24 with this country involved.
Not the TV show, but our own 24.
I am Jack Bauer.
I am Jack Bauer.
My own government's coming after me at every turn.
Happened again yesterday.
With that bumbling idiot Bob Gibbs.
Anyway, have to take a brief time out.
This is an act.
This is a three-act play.
The script has been written.
Everybody's doing their part.
Except I'm Jack Bauer.
I'm trying to say, no, no, no, what you're being told is a bunch of BS.
We need to torture some people.
Hybrid car sales.
Zilch Zero.
Nada.
Bob Dylan's neighbors in Malibu are being stunk out with orders wafting from his property.
▲
Export Selection