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June 26, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:38
June 26, 2009, Friday, Hour #2
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Hi and welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the most listened-to radio talk show in America.
And I might even add in history.
It's great to have you with us.
It's Friday, where you get to determine the content of the program when we go to the phones, and that's going to happen quick in this hour.
Frankly, I'm tired of carrying the ball on this show.
Turn it over to you people real quick.
Telephone number 800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program, the email address, lrushbo at eibnet.com.
Apparently, the Capitol Hill switchboard and individual members telephone lines are just being inundated.
You can't get through.
Email boxes are full.
Voicemail message are full.
People are not answering the phone, a busy signal.
Don't let that deter you.
Keep trying.
The Waxman-Markey bill is a disaster.
It's not about saving the planet.
It's not about saving the climate.
It's not about anything, folks, other than raising taxes and redistributing wealth.
The Heritage Foundation, www.askheritage.org, has put together a fabulous analysis of this bill, and they have summarized it in a great, understandable way.
I found it because I'm a member at askheritage.org.
It only costs $25.
You can spend more than that if you want to.
If you like the cause, you want to donate to it.
But askheritage.org, a single site, a single resource, other than me, I realize a lot of you use me as your primary resource, and that's fine.
The Heritage Foundation is just a superb place as well.
Later today, the House of Representatives slated to vote on the most convoluted attempt at economic central planning this nation has ever attempted, cap and trade.
The 1,200-plus-page Waxman-Markey climate change bill is nothing more than an energy tax in disguise that by 2035, think your children, by 2035, and this is independent of any other market forces that are going to affect the prices of these items as I'm on the list here.
This bill alone will raise gasoline prices by 58% by 2035.
This bill alone, in addition to whatever increases there are in gasoline between now and then, this bill will raise natural gas prices by 55% by 2035.
It'll raise home heating oil prices by 56% and electricity prices by 90%.
Your electricity bill by 2035 is going to go up by 90%.
Now, if we didn't do this bill, I guarantee you your bill's not going to go up 90% between now and 2035.
Although proponents of the bill are pointing to grossly underestimated and incorrect costs, the reality is that when all the tax impacts have been added up, the average per family of four costs rise by about $3,000 a year.
In the year 2035 alone, the cost will be $4,600 a year per family of four.
Additional taxes on energy.
Energy, of course, is how we move, how we get around, how we heat our homes, cool them, run our refrigerators.
Basically, energy is one of the building blocks of our advancing lifestyle.
The costs per family for the whole energy tax aggregated from 2012 to 2035 are $71,493.
In other words, the bill slated to go into effect in 2012.
If you add up all of these costs per family of four from 2012 to 2035, you've got to come up with $71,493 that you otherwise wouldn't have to.
But on second thought, cap and trade is much more than that.
It kills jobs.
The Heritage People have analyzed this.
Over the 2012 to 2035 timeline, job losses average over $1.1 million.
By 2035, a projected 2.5 million jobs are lost below the baseline without a cap and trade bill.
Particularly hit hard are sectors of the economy very energy-intensive.
Manufacturers, farmers, construction machinery, electrical equipment and appliances, transportation, textiles, paper products, chemicals, plastics, and rubbers, and retail trade would face staggering employment losses as a result of this bill.
It's worth noting that job losses come after accounting for the green jobs policymakers are so adamant about creating.
But don't worry because the architects of the bill built in unemployment insurance too.
You want to hear how that works?
They know that the bill is going to cream you.
Listen to this.
Section 432, energy refund program for low-income consumers.
The administrator of the EPA or the agency designated by the administrator shall formulate and administer the energy refund program at the request of the state agency.
Eligible low-income households within the state shall receive a monthly cash energy refund equal to the estimated loss in purchasing power resulting from this act.
Now, this is just for the poor.
Pay attention.
This is a part where the poor get direct deposit transfers of your money.
They know your purchasing power will be lost resulting from this act.
I'm reading from the act.
Let me read this again.
At the request of the state agency, eligible low-income households within the state shall receive a monthly cash energy refund equal to the estimated loss in purchasing power resulting from the act.
They intend to raise prices on energy.
They intend to make you use less of it.
They intend for you to be less mobile.
They intend for you to be less comfortable.
They intend for you to have less disposable income.
Disposable income is liberty.
Disposable income is freedom.
They intend for you to have less of it.
What's an eligible household?
Well, participation in the energy refund program will be limited to a household that has gross income that does not exceed 150% of the poverty line.
Monthly energy refund amount.
Subject to standards and an implementation schedule set by the administrator, the energy refund shall be provided in monthly installments via direct deposit into the eligible household's designated bank account.
Barack Obama and the Democrat Party intend to just direct deposit your money into the bank accounts of the poor because of their loss of purchasing power due to the passage of this act.
Your loss of purchasing power is not going to be compensated.
In addition to paying these new taxes, you are also going to be redistributing or having, or have redistributed your wealth to the poor.
Straight out of Barack Obama.
This is who he is, what he wants to do.
This is a redistribution scheme.
This is an attack on achievers.
It's an attack on wealth, disguised as something to get to your heart, convincing you that voting for this, supporting this, is somehow going to save Woody Woodpecker, Peter Polar Bear, Flipper, and deform frogs.
Not to mention your own child's climate.
They don't even have the guts to call this a carbon tax.
So much for transparency.
So much for liberal straight talk.
It's a carbon tax.
They're taxing carbon.
We are a carbon-based life form.
We exhale carbon dioxide.
This bill says that we are polluters by virtue of breathing, which we have no choice about, by the way.
We can't, as long as we're alive, they can tax us on that basis.
It just is absurd.
They ought to call this Waxman Markey Madoff because it's a con game.
It promises what it cannot deliver.
It cannot change the climate.
And it certainly is not going to bring about more jobs.
He called it a jobs bill yesterday.
Mr. President, tell us how many.
How many jobs?
How many jobs is this going to cost us?
Now you rattle off all these new jobs, and how about the existing jobs that we're going to lose?
How many more jobs will be lost than the jobs created?
George Will yesterday.
The Spanish professor is puzzled.
Why, he wonders, name is Gabriel Galzada.
Why, he wonders, is the United States president recommending that America emulate the Spanish model for creating green jobs in alternative energy, even though Spain's unemployment rate is 18.1%, more than double the European Union average, partly because of spending on such jobs.
The Spaniards have tried it.
They've got 18.1% unemployment.
The Australians, they're seeing the light.
The Japanese are seeing the light.
Spanish professor, why is Obama doing this when he can see it hasn't created any jobs?
The net job action is a loss, and he's not going to tell us how many jobs are lost.
The Spanish professor's 36 is an econ professor at the Universidad Rejuan Carlos.
He's produced a report that, if true, is inconvenient for the Obama administration's green agenda and for some budget assumptions that are dependent on it.
The professor says that Spain's torrential spending, no other nation, by the way, has so aggressively supported production of electricity from renewable sources on wind farms and other forms of alternative energy, has indeed created jobs.
But Calzada's report concludes that they often are temporary.
And these jobs, in order to be created, have received $752,000 to $800,000 each in subsidies.
In other words, that's how much it costs to create a job so you can say, hey, look at the job we created.
Here's what it costs per job in Spain, up to 800 grand.
Wind industry jobs cost even more, $1.4 million each to create a wind energy job in Spain.
Each new job in Spain entailed the loss of 2.2 other jobs that are either lost or not created in other industries because of the political allocation of capital, of money.
Deplete the private sector, existing energy sources, turn it over to these new inventors.
You lose jobs when you take money from existing private sector businesses.
There is no market.
There is no technology yet to do wind and support ourselves.
So you have to subsidize these businesses and hire these people.
And in Spain, it cost $1.4 million to hire new employees.
Total insanity, and that's why this Spanish professor cannot understand why Obama's going through with this.
European media regularly report eco-corruption, leaving a footprint of sleaze, gaming the subsidy systems, profiteering from land sales for wind farms, etc.
But Professor Galzada says the creation of jobs in alternative energy has subtracted about 110,000 jobs in Spain's economy elsewhere.
So all these new jobs, these new green jobs, and all the cost to get them, produce them, has lost 110,000 jobs elsewhere in Spain's economy, and that's why they are at 18.1%.
The president's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, was asked about the report's contention that the political diversion of capital into green jobs has cost Spain other jobs.
The White House transcript contained this exchange.
Gibbs, it seems weird that we're importing wind-turbine parts from Spain in order to build to meet renewable energy demand here, if that were even remotely the case.
Questioner, is that a suggestion that this study is simply flat wrong?
Gibbs, I haven't read the study, but I think yes.
Questioner, well then, and then they all started laughing.
Actually, what's weird is this idea.
A sobering report about Spain's experience must be false, because otherwise the behavior of some American importers seeking to cash in on the U.S. government's promotion of wind power might be participating in an economically unproductive project.
The administration wants you to think that what's happening in Spain is simply an aberration.
It isn't true.
And we can go ahead and import ideas from Spain.
Windmills are iconic in the land of Don Quixote, whose tilting at them became emblematic of comic futility.
Spain's new windmills are neither amusing nor emblematic of policies America should emulate.
The cheerful and evidently unshakable confidence in such magical solutions to postulated problems is yet another manifestation.
And Republicans are not immune to this.
You know, no child left behind decrees that by 2014 all American students will be proficient in math and reading of what the late Senator Pat Moynihan called a leakage of reality from American life.
There is no reality in this.
The reality is out there for us to see around the world.
We're ignoring it.
That's what's at stake with this legislation.
And I know it's hard for a lot of people to believe that their fellow citizens, elected officials, would do something this destructive.
If you don't understand modern day left-wing, statist-oriented Democrat Party, if you don't understand, and you can't, I mean, I don't, I can't relate to having to desire that much power to control people's lives, to limit other people's freedom.
I don't, I can't relate to it.
I understand it through history.
I understand it's horrible.
I don't want somebody having that kind of power over me.
A lot of people can't understand that there are actually Americans, a significant number of them in electoral power, that have that desire.
Well, they do, and the evidence is all around you in just the first six months of this administration.
All you've got to do is open up your eyes and admit it.
It's plain as day.
You can stay in denial all you want, and the longer you stay in denial, the more disposable income you're going to lose, and the more of your hard work and income produced from it is going to be transferred to somebody else who doesn't deserve it.
And for what?
How does that benefit you or somebody else?
How does it benefit the U.S. economy?
It doesn't.
Destroys it.
President Obama, yes, we can.
No, you won't.
Okay, it's Open Line Friday, and we are going to head to the phones as promised.
Time for you people to start carrying your weight on this program.
Here's Tom in Roanoke, Virginia.
You're up first today, sir.
Great to have you here.
It is, Mr. Lembaugh, and I appreciate very much the opportunity to talk with you.
Thank you very much.
The reason I called is I'm personally outraged.
I called my Republican congressman's office, and I'm from Roanoke, Virginia, and I listened to you originally starting in August of 1988 over the facilities of WFIR.
And I just wanted to say that I have never been as outraged in my life.
The staff member who answered the phone, and I did get through after about 10 attempts this morning, said to me that this congressman, Bob Goodlatt, did not have a position on the cap and trade bill.
And I couldn't believe it.
I was flabbergasted.
And I said, what do you mean he doesn't have a position?
He says, well, we'll be glad to take your message if you'd like to live one and we'll get back to you.
I said, I'll tell you what.
I've got a message you can deliver to him.
And that is if he votes for this crazy bill, that I will work myself silly to see that he doesn't get re-elected.
And I can't believe this is going on and that our Republican, even our Republican congressman, whether he has a position or not, can't be forced to.
What did you say your congressman's name in?
Say his last name slowly.
Good latt.
G-O-O-D-L-A-T-T-E.
Goodlatt.
Good latt.
Good lattice.
Good lattice.
He's a Republican.
He's a person from Virginia.
Is he a Republican?
Yeah, he's a Republican.
I think it's the 6th.
And he said, and his aide said he didn't know how he was going to vote.
Said he didn't have a position on the cap and trade bill.
I had also written him a letter.
Look, there's one thing going on with this.
There's a Democrat, Perillo is his name, I think.
Let's see what I can find real quick here on the list.
Perriello is from Virginia, P-E-R-R-I-E-L-L-O.
He was telling people, and he's a Democrat, and he was waiting.
He was waiting to see because he wants to vote no, but he was waiting to see what was going to happen.
And he is now announcing he's going to vote for it.
He's a Democrat.
I think your guy, there's a lot of fear on these.
A lot of people want to be able to vote on the right side of this, but they don't.
The right side is whichever one's going to win.
Here are the details.
This is from RedState.com.
Congressman Perriello from Virginia has his office told a caller that the congressman wants there to be enough votes to pass cap and trade so he can vote no on it.
Now, let me explain this to you.
He wants his Democrat leadership to be happy at the end of the vote.
But he wants to vote no on this because he knows it's a bad, he knows his constituents don't want it.
So he wants cover.
And he ended up, according to Red State, deciding to vote yes on the bill, according to his office just now.
Now, the state-run media, NBC, is a little concerned over what's happening up there on this.
Mere moments ago on Enria Mitchell, NBC News Repoints, show, she talked with their Capitol Hill reporter, Mike Vickera, the state-run media.
Her question, Harry Reid says, House Bills 2454, the cap and trade bill, he says it doesn't have any prospect of passage in the Senate.
And by the way, the Senate just adjourned without doing anything on health care.
They adjourned for the July 4th recess.
They're out of there.
I think I saw that on the screen.
I looked at it quickly.
And healthcare's in limbo.
But Andrew Mitchell is quoting Dingy Harry, says this cap and trade bill doesn't have any prospect of passage to the Senate.
So why force these Democrats to take a vote like this when it isn't going anyplace?
Well, let's take, for example, a chairman, Nick Rahol.
He's a chairman of the Resources Committee from West Virginia, a coal-producing state.
It's not popular there.
He's voting against Democratic leadership this morning on procedural votes.
That is a heresy.
And so the leadership, the people that are on the fence, a lot of freshmen from moderate districts, look at something like that and they say, why should I walk the plank and vote for this when the prospects of the Senate are unclear and more senior Democrats aren't even voting for it?
So it's a very, very heavy lift for Democratic leadership here in the House.
Well, now, it must be if, I mean, if state-run media is reporting it this way, it must be.
Normally state-run media, oh, slam dunk.
They'd be trying to dispirit everybody and make it look like this thing was going to happen.
This is a real test for Pelosi because if it isn't going anywhere in the Senate, the question is, why make these Democrats vote for this?
And the answer from Pelosi's standpoint is, because I said so.
And I must be supported.
I'm your leader.
And she's been threatening some of these rookies.
She's been threatening some of the freshmen with no reelection campaign money from the campaign committee, finding opponents to run against them and so forth, all kinds of things.
They've had to really pay off some of the agriculture state gas.
For example, Peterson, the chairman that we talked about earlier of the Agriculture Committee, he said back on May 6th, I will not support any kind of climate change bill, even if you fix this, because I don't trust anybody anymore.
I've had it.
But now he supports it.
They bought him off.
He was chairman of the Agriculture Committee in the House who is leading the opposition to the bill.
He is from the most rural part of Minnesota.
He's a leading blue dog Democrat, and they bought him off.
I don't know how.
I don't know what they bought him off with.
But a guy was dead set against it back on May 6th has been turned.
But other Democrats aren't.
Some of these freshmen are saying, why the hell should I, it's not going anywhere.
This is a classic illustration of, you know, to whom do they answer, you, the voters, or to Nancy Pelosi?
And there's fear of both.
I'll guarantee you something.
A lot of members of Congress who vote for this thing, regardless where it goes, have seen their last days in Congress in front of them.
They're going to lose.
The vast majority of them are going to lose re-election.
And I'll tell you, James Carville sent a fundraising letter out from some Democrat, maybe the DNC or maybe the Democrat Senate Campaign Committee, I forget which.
But he's warning Democrats, you know what?
We have the identical set of circumstances we had in 1994 coming up in 2010.
We had a young, popular president, and all of a sudden we woke up on Election Day, 94, and they picked up 56 seats in the House and eight or nine in the Senate, and we were cooked.
The same set of circumstances exists, he said.
They're worried about this.
They're using it as a fundraising thing.
And I do believe they're worried about it.
See, I think that deep in the bowels of this party, and you've got to go deep into the bowels to find these people, but there are a couple.
This is just outrageous.
They don't dare publicly walk away from their president, some of this stuff, but they look at this.
This is not what they want.
They don't want a future for their kids like this either.
So they're worried about this.
And I don't think the circumstances in 2010 are going to be identical to 94, because in 94, there was a bunch of corruption that people learned about the House Bank, the House Post Office, and a couple other things.
The corruption that we have is still like that, but it's not as present because the state-run media doesn't report Democrat corruption.
I mean, Charlie Wrangell, folks, ought to not be in the House anymore.
They have just extended the investigation, the Ethics Committee.
He's out there charging racism over this.
A Republican would have been gone after one allegation of what Wrangell did.
He has homes and apartments that there's no way he can support or own on a congressional salary, for example.
But anyway, Carville points out in his letter, look, the Republicans don't need eight or nine in the Senate.
They just need one or two, and they can totally block anything that's going to happen.
So they are worried about that.
And I'll guarantee you that there's some people, Republicans and Democrats alike, who know full well.
I'll tell you what's happening here on this bill on Capitol Hill is identical what happened to Amnesty.
They're getting flooded.
They are getting overwhelmed.
The phone lines are busy.
The email accounts are full, blocked out.
You can't get in.
They know how you feel about this.
It's just that some of them don't care how you feel on this.
And those are the ones who are going to pay the consequences.
Back to the phones on Open Line Friday.
Frank in New York City, thank you for waiting, sir.
You're next on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hello, Mr. Limbaugh.
It's a pleasure to talk to you.
Thank you, sir.
Okay.
A quick response.
I was listening to Fox and Friends this morning between like 8.15 and 8.45, and they had an interview with Mr. Steny Hoyer, who said that he was voting for the cap and trade.
He says it's a good thing, but that it's not a tax.
And that would only cost the people $174 per year.
Now, if that's not a tax, why would it cost $174?
Obviously, it's a tax of some type, right?
Well, it depends on how you define tax.
I would say that legislation that raises the cost of living, it's a tax or whatever, but it's still bad.
And that number 174 is so low and so untrue that he's making it up.
I think so too, but then he went through the, you know, the wind and the solar and all of this was going to, but wind and solar only account for like 7%.
What is the alternative?
There is no wind and solar.
I know.
There isn't any.
It doesn't work.
Look, one of the things they've done in this bill.
Let me, I've got to find this in this stack.
But one of the things that they have done is offer all kinds of incentives to inventors to get going on this.
Let me take a commercial break and find this.
This is going to be another one of these things I think I put in the stack.
Ah, I found it.
Here it is.
Listen to this.
They had an early morning amendment today, the 300 pages added to the cap and trade bill.
And one of the things they added in this is that creates a new Manhattan Project for Energy Independence.
The project calls on the president to reach 50% energy independence in 10 years and 100% energy independence in 20 years and will award competitive prizes to the first individual or group who can reach any of seven established energy goals.
Here they are.
Double CAFE standards to 70 miles per gallon while keeping vehicles affordable.
If somebody can do that in 10 to 20 years, they'll get a prize.
Now, wait, I want you to stick with me on this.
70 mile per gallon cafe standard.
Anybody who can come up with a way to cut home and business energy usage in half will get a plan.
I could do that.
You know, I could do that.
I could do it right now.
If I were a member of Congress, if I were Obama, I just have my energy czar order every electrical power plant to cut power to every home to 20% of the day.
Voila!
I have cut home and business energy use in half.
Number three, make solar power work at the same cost as coal.
My friends, we are in neverland here.
We're in dreamland.
Here's number four: make the production of biofuels cost-competitive with gasoline, safely and cheaply store carbon emissions from coal-powered plants, safely store or neutralize nuclear waste and produce usable electricity from a nuclear fusion reaction.
If a group or individual can do any of those things, it's 10 or 20 years, and they will be awarded some sort of a prize.
Now, let me tell you how to analyze this after this brief timeout.
Don't go away.
We are back.
I love this, actually, folks.
This is a teachable moment.
So, in the amendment to cap and trade, they have offered some incentives.
They've called it here the new Manhattan Project for Energy Independence.
Do you know what the Manhattan Project was?
Rachel, let me do a look.
Brian, do you know what the Manhattan Project was?
There's no wrong answer.
I'm just trying to illustrate a point.
You don't know what it was.
Rachel, do you know what it was?
Sturdley, you know what the Manhattan Project?
Sturdley does.
This, fascinating.
I got two people here who went to the public school system.
This is not their fault.
They don't know what it is.
It was not a movie.
They don't know what.
The Manhattan Project was our all-out effort to create and invent the nuclear bomb.
We knew we could do it.
Now, this is key.
We knew we could do it.
Price was no object.
Money was no object.
We knew we could do it.
We know that there are nuclear explosions.
The sun is an example.
We knew it could be, so we put our best minds on it and we did it.
That's what they want to replicate here in energy.
But here are the differences.
Double CAFE.
Let's just take the first one.
They're going to award a prize to somebody or some organization who in 10 to 20 years can invent a way to double CAFE standards to 70 miles per gallon while keeping vehicles affordable.
The very fact that they have to offer a prize is evidence we are nowhere near this.
The market does these things.
Government does not decree inventions.
Individuals invent using ambition, their talents, their freedom, their liberty, their passion.
Nobody told Thomas Edison, we're going to give you a million bucks if you invent the light bulb.
Nobody told the Wright brothers, we're going to make you rich if you find a way for us to fly.
They wanted to do it themselves.
Energy is something everybody needs.
There is a huge profit potential in the energy business.
We all know this because everybody needs it.
I'm talking market economics.
You need gasoline.
You need electricity.
There's a profit for the people who provide it.
Ergo, if there were a profit in solar power, we would have it.
If there were a profit in windmill power, we would have it.
If there were profit in a put-put car that got 70 miles a gallon, we would have it.
Don't believe all these conspiracy theories that the oil companies work with the car companies to keep gasoline mileage down.
Propulsion, energy expansion has amazing costs to it.
Right now, there's nothing that compares to oil and natural gas and coal.
Nothing.
Like I said yesterday, why are we using coal-powered coal-fired power plants?
Because it's the cheapest that we have found.
It's the most efficient that we have found.
We don't have to harness the energy.
It's in the coal.
All we got to do is go get the coal.
Ditto oil.
All we've got to do is go get it and refine it.
But we're going to, the rest of the sun has lost energy out there.
Yeah, but we don't know how to harness it yet.
There's no way.
Wind?
Give me a break.
Green technologies.
And by the way, these little putt-putt electric cars are not going to save anybody any emissions.
There's already huge profit potential.
Don't you think if any viable energy technologies were out there, they would already be employed if they really did work?
The people that are engaged in windmills and so forth are simply doing it because they're being paid by the government.
General Electric?
You wonder why they go green every other day on MSNBC?
Because they're getting grants to explore and experiment in this stuff.
They're not doing it on their own.
There's no profit in it.
We're not there.
So the very fact that this horrible, rotten, worthless piece of legislation has to dangle carrots in front of people's eyes is proof positive that none of what this bill seeks to achieve is anywhere around the corner.
Mother, well, necessity is the mother of invention.
And we haven't, you know, government demanding something is not the same thing as necessity.
But running out of oil, which we're in no danger of running out of oil anytime soon.
Ditto natural gas.
What is the thing?
See uh um uh, safely store, double kick, cut home and make solar power work at the same cost as coal.
Why?
All we got to do is go drill for oil, our own oil, if you want to limit our dependence on other people.
But none of this is anywhere near happening.
And just because Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi say, hey, here's a prize.
If you go out and invent some little stupid car that gets 70 miles per gallon and still costs what a car costs today, then we'll give you a big prize.
Yeah, that's really going to inspire some people out there to do it.
The danger is that somebody will claim they've come up with it and stupid politicians say, okay, good, and claim that it works when it doesn't, just to create the image that they have accomplished some miracle back in a second.
Okay, we need to make a correction here.
Congressman Goodlatt's office called us.
He's voting no.
He's always said he's voting no.
And he doesn't understand how somebody in his office told a caller that they were undecided because he's voting no and they were always voting no.
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