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June 4, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:36
June 4, 2010, Friday, Hour #2
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You know, I get all sorts of abuse from Rush fans.
If you're so conservative, how come your state produces so many wackos?
Isn't that the state where Russ Feingold comes from?
Well, yeah, it is.
And isn't that the state where they, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We're not all nuts there.
First of all, there is me.
And we also have some pretty interesting conservative leaders.
I'm going to indulge here and present to you a guy named Paul Ryan.
Now, many of you are familiar with him.
He's the king of the op-eds.
He's always on the op-ed page for the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times because he has become, I think, the ideological leader of the Republican Party right now.
There are a lot of others who are out there talking and criticizing President Obama, but it's Ryan who's become the point man on presenting alternatives.
And the thing that I want to focus on here is whether or not the Republican Party can get by by simply saying, let's not do what we're doing right now, or if it needs to provide an alternative with that.
I'm joined by Congressman Paul Ryan, who is from my home state of Wisconsin and he represents a southeastern Wisconsin district in Congress.
Paul, good afternoon.
Hey, good afternoon.
How are you doing, Mark?
I'm great.
I want to start with this.
I want your impression of whether or not in 2010, I don't mean long term, the Republican Party can make major gains in the congressional elections by simply saying, I'm against nationalized health care.
The economy's messed up.
The president lacks competence.
We need to have a check on him.
He's out of control.
Can they simply run by being the no Obama?
Or this year, do they have to present an alternative?
We have to present it.
I mean, you know I know what my answer is going to be.
We could probably do all right if we just run against what's going on, but we won't do and do as well as we need to do if we don't put up an alternative.
Because there are people who disagree with that.
There are some who say that the American public right now wants – they're afraid of both parties.
And they simply want to put a check on Obama.
In other words, they want to go back to gridlock because gridlock means nobody's going to mess anything up.
Nothing gets done, but at least they won't be making it worse, which is happening now.
Here's the way I see it.
Number one, we owe it.
I mean, just morally, we owe it to the American people to give them an alternative.
So we shouldn't be just the opposition party.
We need to be the alternative party.
Point number two is look at where this country is headed.
Look at what the people running government are doing right now.
They call it ushering in the third wave of progressivism, whatever you want to call it.
I argue with people that we're in the midst of sort of a choice of two futures.
We are sort of at that proverbial fork in the road where they have abandoned the American idea, the founding principles, and have moved us more toward a European-style cradle-grave social welfare state.
We were already heading that direction anyway.
But what this new government, the president and Congress did just doubled down and accelerated our path to that.
We don't have much time to prevent that from happening.
I call it a tipping point where we're going to have more takers than makers in this country.
And so we owe it to people to show them an alternative path, reclaiming the American idea, reinstituting those principles that built this country, those founding principles, and exactly how we would apply those principles to the problems of the day.
And let's have a true realignment election.
Now, I'm just going to take two.
For there to be a realignment election, it has to be an election based on principles as opposed to simply being a referendum on Obama.
That's right.
That's right.
What I mean when I say realignment is we've had realignments throughout our nation's history.
The Reagan Revolution was a political realignment.
These typically last a generation.
We had New Deal, Great Society, Reagan Revolution.
That ended probably 2006, maybe 08.
I'll let the historians figure that one out.
But we are in the midst of a realignment right now.
And right now, this realignment is moving far left.
Question is, do we give the American people a choice of going back toward those founding principles, the American idea, and give them that ability?
I think it's in our interest to have that kind of a referendum now while we're still a center-right country.
You turn on all this government, you hook up more people to a welfare state, and we'll become a center-left country pretty fast, and we won't be able to win that kind of a referendum.
Because if everybody is dependent upon government, they have to keep voting for more government benefits.
They have to vote to keep their own jobs, and so on.
And a lot of people believe that that is the method behind the madness here, that President Obama doesn't care if the economy recovers.
He simply wants everybody dependent one way or another, be it through a government job or a government program or government health care or Social Security or Medicare or their entire future.
They want to be beholden to the government.
And your point is, and you use that term, we need to have more makers than takers.
I talked in the first hour of the program about the latest employment numbers in which all the job growth is in the public sector.
We're moving in the opposite direction.
That's right.
Let me ask you first about the job growth question.
And you've got positions here, and the roadmap that you developed is comprehensive.
And I understand that we can't spend an hour and a half on each of these topics.
And I'm going to force you to be brief on all of this.
Sure.
On job growth, what does the government need to do right now?
Actually, cut spending.
This Keynesian spend and borrow doesn't grow jobs.
We've lost 3.4 million jobs since stimulus passed.
Rescind the rest of the stimulus.
Rescind TARP.
Cut spending.
Cut back on the Federal workforce.
Hiring freeze.
These are ideas we're putting out there.
People can go to AmericanRoadmap.org to see my full details.
Go to the House Republican new website, AmericanspeakingOut.com, to get engaged, to give us your ideas.
But cut spending and do entitlement reform to show the credit markets that we're not going the path of Europe.
We're getting our finances under control.
And then I would argue do tax reform.
Do tax reform that's pro-growth, that will help us turn this economy around, make us more internationally competitive.
And so that shows we're getting our spending under control.
We're getting our debt under control.
We're doing a pro-growth tax policy so that we can make sure that we're more competitive.
That takes pressure off the Federal Reserve.
This will take pressure off bond markets.
It will help us reduce the future inflation that we're probably going to get hit with.
And so if you look at where we're going right now, it's the complete opposite.
Higher taxes, more borrowing, higher interest rates, flirting with a big inflation problem.
And that's what entrepreneurs and businesses are seeing on the horizon.
That's why our growth is slow.
We should be growing at 6 or 8 percent right now, Mark, coming out of the recession we just had.
Now we're limping along at about 3 percent with unemployment at about 10 percent.
You have produced this Republican roadmap for America's future.
It's been associated with you, although a lot of other Republicans have said that they endorse it.
I want to pick through the three or four main issues here, and I want you to summarize what the approach is, what the alternative is on each of them.
We've passed Obamacare.
What's your alternative?
If not this then, if the goal is to repeal what was done a couple of months ago, what is your alternative?
It represents a complete replacement of Obamacare.
The money, instead of coming from the government to you for health care, goes to you, and then you go into the marketplace.
It's a patient-centered, individual-driven health care system where you and your family get the resources, whether it's vouchers or tax credits, to purchase health insurance.
You clean up the rules, interstate shopping, more transparency, tort reform, and all of those things.
But the more important thing is providers compete against each other, doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, for your business, instead of you hoping the government will give you a benefit that isn't rationed too much.
That's where we're headed right now.
We're headed toward a government-run system, which the only way to contain costs are rationing through government.
I'm saying a market-based system where individuals acting as consumers in the marketplace will do what the free market does, bring down costs, improve quality, expand accessibility and affordability.
Right now, almost every American gets a prescription for one thing or another.
There are drugs all over the place, and many of them are improving the quality of Americans' lives.
Yet, they're expensive.
It's one of the things that's driving the cost of health care.
The Obamacare plan purports to deal with it.
I don't think it does.
How does your plan deal with the fact that every new treatment, every new device, every new drug that comes out results in a demand for that product, thus driving up the cost of health care for everyone?
It's just saying competition alone doesn't fix that, does it?
No, but transparency is really important, which is you know what is good, what it costs, what are the alternatives.
That's a big important part of it.
More importantly, we're not going to have people be forced into government-run formularies that deny you certain access to certain drugs.
We're going to open up formularies so there are more competition.
But the key for me is not to sit in Washington and figure out how prescription drugs are going to be handed out in America and what discounts we'll give to which people or if they can get discounts.
This is something that the market needs to do, and you can make people more powerful by giving them the resources to be better consumers.
And that's the whole point that you're making.
I think that the government plan wants to create all of these government boards that says this is the preferred treatment.
You should get this, this, and this, rather than DENF, that you and your doctors no longer make those decisions.
The government will make it.
I understand that that's what personal freedom is all about.
What I'm questioning you and challenging you on is whether or not that reduces costs.
What if what I want happens to be the far more expensive way to go?
Should I be able to take that route and tap into the system?
Look, we've already proven it.
Just the Medicare prescription drug, that's a private-based system.
The prescription drug program actually gets lower costs than if Medicare negotiated these things on their own.
Because what it does is it gives you private plans that pick.
They compete against each other for your business, and they show you, here's what it costs for name-brand, here's what it costs for generic, here's the differences, you choose, but you make the decision.
And that means, yes, you may pay more for a name-brand drug versus a generic drug, but you can flip to different plans.
And these plans have to compete against each other based on access to drugs, based on price to drugs.
That act of competition brought Medicare.
Name me another program that came down 40% below cost projections.
This is the only one.
And it was because we used choice and competition in the drug markets to give the individual consumer more power versus having the government dictate these prices.
When we come back after the break, I'm going to ask Paul Ryan about the two big entitlements, Medicare and Social Security.
Everybody knows what's happening.
The baby boom is aging.
You're going to have millions and millions of people going from paying taxes to support Medicare and Social Security to receiving it.
Everybody wants to run away from this, and there has been absolutely nothing from the administration on how to address it.
Congressman Ryan is actually offering proposals to deal with this, and they may not be popular with everyone, but they have a plan.
And I want to let him have a chance to share it with you in just a moment.
My name is Mark Belling.
I'm being joined right now by Congressman Paul Ryan, and you're listening to EIB.
I'm Mark Belling, sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
You know, the eight years of the President Bush administration, the only thing you heard from the Democrats was we're against whatever Bush is for.
They had no ideas.
This is why when they took power, people were so shocked that they tried to radicalize everything.
The American public had no idea what the Democrats were all about because they were simply naysayers.
It's my contention that Republicans can't play the same game with Obama.
I'm joined by Congressman Paul Ryan, who has authored the Republican Roadmap for America's Future.
One of the things that you address is entitlement reform.
We all know that Medicare is in big trouble because of the aging population.
Those baby boomers are going to go from paying to support the system to being on the system.
How do you fix that?
Well, if you got the recent brochure from Medicare, you wouldn't think that it's in trouble.
I know, we're in denial.
I mean, they're just saying it's fine, and people want to pretend that we can simply pay for Medicare forever and ever and ever and that the numbers are balanced out, but they're not.
In the aggregate, the roadmap is designed to be an alternative to a welfare state.
It is designed to be a system to get us prosperity instead of austerity.
It's basically an opportunity society with a safety net versus the cradle grave welfare state.
What it does on Medicare in particular is it says for people 55 and above, you've already organized your life around this program.
You're already in or near retirement, so that won't change for you.
If you're 54 and below, like my ex-generation and on down, that program is going to have to change because right now it's got a $38 trillion unfunded liability.
What it does is it gives people a payment, like a voucher, to go and get health insurance exactly like I do as a congressman, as a member of Congress, or as a federal employee.
You get a book with a bunch of private plans that are very comprehensive.
You pick which one you want.
You apply your payment to that.
If you don't like those choices and you want to go outside of the network, the Medicare certified network, say what you had at your job, you can continue that as well.
Your plan says that once these people under 55 get to Medicare age, not now, but when they get to Medicare age, instead of being put on the current Medicare system, they'd be given a voucher.
Give me an idea of what you envision that voucher.
That's the program equals the average payment that Medicare people get already.
More money, however, for low-income people so their out-of-pocket costs are totally covered.
More money for people as their illnesses increase to make sure their premiums are stabilized.
And less money for wealthy people.
It's means to say they don't get as much of an increase as everybody else.
And so doing that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, according to the actuaries at Medicare, makes Medicare permanently solvent and pays off its unfunded liability.
It is the biggest driver of our debt crisis.
The roadmap itself pays off the entire United States debt.
It pays off our debt, puts us in surplus, and keeps our government lean and limited so that it stays at its average size over the course of this century instead of going up to double and triple the size of government we've got.
That's an amazing statement.
You are saying that your plan wipes out the American government debt.
Yes.
Yeah, and it's not me saying that.
The Congressional Budget Office has certified that it does that.
Social Security.
Same situation.
Billions of baby boomers are going to go on the system.
How do you deal with it?
Okay.
55 and above, no change.
You're internal retirement.
You've already organized your life around it.
No change.
54 and below, you get one choice, meaning you get a choice.
You can stay in the traditional system.
In the traditional system, we do something called progressive indexing.
I hate using the word progressive, but that's what they call it.
It's basically the wealthier third of Americans don't get an initial benefit increase as much as everybody else.
The lower third get the same exact kind of benefit structure as they have now.
And we very gradually raise the retirement age over the course of the century to reflect longevity.
Let me stop you on that one.
You want to raise the retirement age.
Obviously, if you delay for a year or two or three when people can tap into Social Security, you're saving a fortune.
Will the American public culturally accept that?
Well, it's already going to 67 under current law.
It would go from 67 to 70 very gradually over the course of the century.
It wouldn't reach the age of 70 until 2098.
So very slow increases.
But you're saying you can make the numbers work by gradually.
Every year per decade or so, even more than that, move the entire age up, and then the numbers actually work.
That's right.
It's been certified by the actuaries and by CBO as making it permanently solvent.
And then I give people a choice.
If you want to take a third of your payroll taxes and put it in a plan like I have as a congressman, a thrift savings plan, run by Social Security, just like what federal workers have.
You have a choice of index options.
You can be in the default option, which is adjusted as you age.
So you're not even in the stock market when you get near retirement.
You can do that.
You can harness the power of compound interest.
It's your money, your property.
You pass away, it goes to you.
It helps you get a better benefit.
At my age, I'm looking at, at best, a 1% rate of return on my Social Security payroll taxes.
My children, if they could ever get their money, which obviously they can't under the current structure, would get a negative 1% rate of return on their payroll taxes.
It gives people an ability to get their money to work for them, harness the power of compound interest, and have a property right reattached to Social Security.
And your point is that this has been actuarily documented to work, that the numbers would actually work, that it allows Social Security to be able to sustain itself.
Both the Social Security actuaries and the Congressional Budget Office has certified that this makes Social Security permanently solvent and wipes out its unfunded liability.
And you'd grandfather in, again, people 55 and older so that they would stay in as part of the current system.
That's right.
Now, the ads you will see this fall, run by Democrats against Republicans, based around the roadmap, will be to tap into the emotion of fear, envy, and anger and demagogue and distort, which is they're going to say that Republicans want to throw you to the wolves.
They want to cut your Medicare, your Social Security that you are now on, and we will offer you safety and security.
They'll try and win this debate this year by default by being the lesser of two evils.
I don't think people buy that anymore.
I just finished 10 town hall meetings in the first congressional district, which you know is a very swing area.
It's actually rated by the Cook Political Report as the most swing district in America, 218 out of 435.
And people get this.
The people are ahead of the political class in Washington, and they're ready to be talked to like adults, not like children.
And when it comes to paying this debt off, we have a choice to make.
Do we preempt the debt crisis that's coming, or do we accelerate our path toward it and look like Europe?
You're starting to answer my next question, which is to deal with the public debate.
Can I ask you to stick around through the next break?
Sure.
Because I want to follow up on that.
In terms of whether or not the American public is ready for what Congressman Ryan is talking about here, I'm joined right now by Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.
He's talking about the GOP roadmap for America's future.
It's fascinating stuff.
My name is Mark Belling, and I'm sitting in for Rush Limplaw.
I'm joined this afternoon by Congressman Paul Ryan of my home state of Wisconsin.
He's the ranking Republican on the budget committee, and he has, over the last couple of years, stepped out and laid out what he's calling a roadmap for America's future.
It's pretty vodacious stuff.
He says if you do this, you'll wipe out not the budget deficit, the debt, the whole thing, and preserve a portion of that safety net that we have, Social Security and Medicare, and deal with the health care problem.
Before we went into the break, Paul was discussing how you deal with the fact that Democrats are going to attack this.
And it's true.
Whenever you propose something, it gives your opponents something that they can aim at.
They can take that proposal and they can distort it.
Right now, there is a Republican advantage politically, and that you can say that the cap and trade plan is bad.
It's going to be devastating for industrial states.
You can say that the health care program is bad because it takes away individual choice and is creating this massive new entitlement.
But when you actually come out and take the next step and present an alternative, it can be attacked.
Now, you said that you think that those attacks aren't going to work this time.
But I can easily imagine, just talking about your proposal here for Medicare.
I can easily imagine the distortion that doesn't mention that people 55 and over are grandfathered in and that they twist this and they turn this.
You can't really respond by explaining this in another 30-second ad, can you?
So can you sell this thing is the question.
The way I look at this is if we don't get out there and stand for who we are and what we believe in, then the left wins already.
Look, you know, you probably watched my last campaign, Mark.
I ran on this in 2008.
I introduced this bill in 2008, reintroduced it just recently, and talked about this very, very, you know, I, like you know, I have a swing district.
I did 36 town halls on this, ran on this.
People understand it if you can explain it to them.
The point I'm making is if you're going to run on these ideas, which I encourage people to do if they want to, explain them.
Defend your ground.
You know, be confident in who you are if you're running for office.
And don't hide from this challenge and don't hide from this fight.
The whole point of all of the left's rhetoric and demagoguery is to intimidate conservatives from actually offering real ideas and solutions.
And this is why these kinds of plans have not been put on the table before.
This is why we haven't tackled these fiscal and economic challenges in this country, because the political advisors and the pollsters always tell you, oh, gosh, don't do that.
You know, they could get you.
They could not get you.
You don't actually have a position on anything because then the position can be distorted.
So you end up with nothing ever getting done.
On the other hand, you do have to give Obama and Pelosi and their crowd credit for something.
They actually are acting on some of the destructive radical ideas.
Now, I don't think they ever ran on them.
They never laid them out, but they're actually doing something.
What you're suggesting is that Republicans need to get out there and say what they're going to do and then claim that they have a mandate to go out and do it.
Now, there's an interesting race going on in Florida in which Marco Rubio is running for the United States Senate.
Republican congressman, Charlie Chris, the governor, is running as an independent.
Rubio has essentially come out and said in Florida, the state where Social Security and Medicare is more polarizing than any other state, that he supports many of your ideas here, including raising the retirement age.
If he can win in Florida with this platform, it's an indication that it would sell anywhere, right?
That's exactly my point.
If Marco Rubio can run on and endorse the roadmap and these ideas in Florida, then absolutely this can go everywhere.
And I think Marco Rubio is going to win.
I think he's going to pull ahead.
I think once people realize exactly what Charlie Chris is all about, I think he's going to drop like a lead balloon in the polls.
So I'm one of these people who believes that the country ⁇ you know, I just did 10 town halls, and I've got to tell you, people are really upset.
People are afraid of the direction this country is going.
And it's not just Republicans, it's independents and Democrats.
They are seeing this leftward lurch in our country, and they are ready, and their minds are open for answers that fix this problem.
They know we're going to have a European-style debt crisis if we don't turn this thing around.
What I'm telling people is let's get ahead of it.
Let's do it on our own terms.
That's what the roadmap offers.
Let's have a prosperity plan, not an austerity European plan.
And let's get this sense of limited government and free enterprise back in the center of what we're doing in this country.
There are a lot of people who are alienated by both parties right now.
They voted against the Republicans in 2008.
They had fatigue with President Bush and his administration, and they saw your colleagues, the Republican Congress, as being a bunch of spenders.
And now they're shocked and terrified by what President Obama has done.
Do you have to admit that the Republicans, when they had power on issues other than terrorism and so on, these economic issues that you're talking about, blew their opportunity and need to regain credibility?
Absolutely.
And I think what you're seeing now is an ascension of a younger class of reformers in the Republican Party in Congress.
You've got guys like Cantor and Kevin McCarthy and John Campbell, Mike Pence.
You got Jeff Flake, Jeb Henschling.
You've got people who were backbenchers in those days fighting these decisions that were made, who have now ascended into positions of leadership, who are going to be darn sure that never happens again.
We clearly blew it.
We've got to fess up to it.
But more importantly, we've got to show people how we would be different, not just that we would be different.
And that is why I think we have to run on specific ideas.
Well, and I think a lot of conservatives, the ideological conservatives, those who care about ideas and want to solve some of these problems, got very frustrated with the Republic.
I'm an admirer of President Bush.
I think he was courageous in how he fought the war on terror, but he was orphaned by the Republican Congress.
Whether you agreed with the specifics of it or not, he did attempt to address Social Security in the first term of his administration, and the Republicans left him standing there in the lurch.
And I think a lot of conservatives saw the Republican Party as a party that was afraid to advance its own ideas for fear that it would be rejected by the American public.
Now, you've got this new wave personified by yourself and a number of the others that you mentioned here that appear to be ready to grab that next step.
But I don't think it's fair to say that everybody in the Republican Party wants to do this.
This is an internal fight here for the heart and soul of the party, isn't it?
It is.
And it's ongoing, and it's not completed.
But look at when Bush won in 04, he ran mostly on national security.
He didn't run on Social Security reform.
Then in 2005, he tried to do Social Security reform.
I was at the point of that, and it fell flat.
That's why I think we owe it to people to run on a specific set of ideas so that when we win, we have the moral authority and obligation to act on them.
You know, that's why we set up this whole website, AmericaspeakingOut.com, to get people engaged, to talk about how we reapply these founding principles to the problems of the day and then put them in place when we actually get elected.
You don't run and say one thing and then do another when you get elected like the current crowd run in Washington.
You run saying what you will do when you get elected, and then when you get elected, you actually do it.
And that's what we've got to do.
And yes, we've got growing pains in the party.
We've come a long ways, but we're not all the way there yet.
Realistically, obviously, in order to do this, you not only need to have a takeover of Congress, you have to have a Republican president, meaning these ideas can't be implemented after the 2010 election.
What you're trying to do, however, is throw out an alternative and say, you see the Democrats' way, here's our way, to give people an opportunity to actually decide.
And it's really the first time that I think this has been done.
In 1994, there was this contract with America that Newt Gingrich ran, but that was mostly dealing with congressional reforms and reforms on the process.
This is actually policy stuff.
And I think it's a different step, and it's a fairly bold step that you're taking.
I don't think we have a choice.
Look, we've got a choice of two futures that's right before us.
When I put roadmap in 2008 out, I said we have about 12 years before we become an irreversible cradle-of-the-grave welfare state.
Well, I think it's about half that time now because of the current government we've got and the financial crisis we had.
So I don't think we have a choice.
We've got to decide in this country who do we want to be as a nation.
Do we want the American idea or do we want to follow the leaders we got now and abandon the American idea and put in place this irretractable cradle of the grave European-style welfare state?
One final question, though.
As you know, voters don't generally vote for platforms or policy statements.
They vote for candidates.
In order for any of this to happen, there have to be candidates that believe in it and are willing to act on it, right?
Right.
Well, why don't you run for president?
You know why I'm not.
I've got three reasons.
They're five, seven, and eight years old.
To be candid with you, this career is not my first priority in my life.
My marriage and my family are.
And at this stage, where my kids are this age, you can't spend two years between Iowa and New Hampshire.
If not you then.
If not you then, doesn't the conservative movement itself, those of us who care about these ideas, need to demand that potential leaders at least embrace the core of some of these ideas?
Because without a candidate, this stuff goes nowhere.
The Democrats won in 2008 because people gravitated toward the Obama persona.
They have a great case of buyer's remorse here because of what he's done.
But you need to have a messenger to carry this.
And the Republicans have been looking for that messenger really ever since Reagan.
Somebody's got to be willing to take this thing and run with it.
That's what I'm trying to do.
I'm trying to elevate, not myself, I'm trying to elevate these ideas so that whoever the nominee is, if they want the nomination, is going to have to run on these ideas and recognize where we are in history, what choices we're going to have to make, and how we owe it to the American people to give them an actual plan of action to get the American idea back and prevent us from becoming a mediocre country like a welfare state in Europe.
And that is what's at stake right now.
Whether you agree with it or not, and whether or not Russia's audience buys into the whole thing or not, the one thing that can at least be said is when they turn around and say, oh, you guys are just naysaying.
You're just anti-Obama.
Say, no, that's not true.
And you've got your website, you've got your plan, and say, these are the core beliefs that we have, and these are the things that we think can work.
Throw the website out one more time.
Well, AmericanRoadmap.org.
And what I'm basically saying is...
That's .org, not .com.org.
No, not AmericanRoadmap.org.
I think people, the vast majority of Americans believe in this.
So why don't we give them an actual agenda that does this and win this referendum in America while we still can because we are still a center-right country.
Thanks for joining me, Paul.
You bet, Mark.
I've got one.
That's Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.
He's the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee.
I know that Rush doesn't normally do long-form interviews like we have here, but as somebody who knows Ryan and is very familiar with how he has been preaching these ideas and how so many Republicans right now are running on them in these congressional and Senate races, I wanted to give him a platform to share some of the specifics about them.
And as I said, if you want to read them in detail, he mentioned the website out there.
If anybody would like to react to any of this, let's throw out the phone numbers.
1-800-282-2882.
1-800-282-2882.
My name is Mark Belling, and I'm sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
I have never described myself personally as a Republican.
I almost always vote for Republicans, but I don't consider myself a Republican.
I consider myself a conservative.
The problem with saying that you're a Republican means that you have to embrace everyone else who calls themselves that.
Now, politicians themselves need to attach themselves to a party.
But the fact of the matter is, as much as you want to talk about libertarianism or alternatives, if you are a conservative, the only vehicle out there right now to advance conservative ideas is the Republican Party.
You have to win elections in order to do something.
What I like about Congressman Ryan's proposal is that he's actually coming out there and laying out ideas to get the debate started in America.
And if he and other Republicans win, they can claim that there's a mandate for this stuff if they put it out there before they were elected in the first place.
Let's go to the college.
Let's go to Seaside, California.
And Steve, Steve, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Mark Belling.
Thank you, Mark, for taking my call.
I want to talk about your opening remarks and how they relate to Greece in particular, but also to the European crisis.
But before I get started, can I give a quick shout out to a girl I used to know in Georgia back in the 70s, Linda Harness?
Is this allowed on the Rush Limbaugh program?
Do we do this or not?
I'm told that we do not, but it's too late.
You got it out there.
Okay.
Get to the Greece point.
I just wanted your friends to Google her name and the stranger.
All right.
On Greece or on to Greece, Steve.
Okay.
When I heard that four out of ten people in Greece are employed by the government, it was no mystery to me why they're going belly up.
And in fact, Reagan did the same thing.
And when I confronted Rush Limbaugh about two or three years ago about the fact that Bush Jr. had raised the price, has raised the size of government by 60%, he blew it off like no big deal.
All politicians do it.
All politicians are evil.
And you can.
See, the thing about having a seminar caller on the program is they usually run out of things to say after about 15 to 20 seconds.
I appreciate the call, Steve.
Let's go to actually I don't.
Alan in Hartford, Wisconsin.
You're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Mark, I always enjoy listening to you.
Listen, this is something I really don't understand.
We went through a recession very similar to this in the early 80s when Ronald Reagan first took office.
We had unemployment up to 10%.
And Ronald Reagan cut government spending.
He cut government programs all over the place.
I'm in the medical industry.
Everything was, oh, we can't do this anymore.
The Reagan budget cuts.
But everybody understood we were in a difficult situation.
We have to do this to get out of this fix, out of this mess we're in.
And it worked.
And I don't understand.
Everybody over the age of 40 or at least 50 remembers it worked.
Well, that's the tremendous conundrum of being a conservative.
You know, when you try to do, when you implement conservative ideas, they do work.
Reagan did turn around the economy.
The Democrats' explanation for it was they had to simply discredit and say it was bad that it happened.
They call it the decade of greed.
But it did turn around the American economy.
If you allow people to keep more of their money, if you try to reduce the size of government, you end up with a thriving America.
It's pretty simple stuff.
Now, the era that we're in now, I think, is more difficult than what Reagan inherited because Reagan did have the advantage of this huge mass of population called the baby boomers that were moving into their prime income earning years.
So when we lowered tax rates, they became big income earners and they were able to bankroll government.
Now, we're in an era in which the baby boomers are retiring and they're going to go on and become people who are going to start tapping into the system, which is precisely why we need to encourage private income growth and private employment growth in order to be able to pay for all of this stuff.
So to move in the direction that the Democrats are taking us in right now is absolutely disastrous.
But you're right about what you said.
The Reagan formula worked.
It launched a 25-year economic recovery.
The formula of increasing government growth, increasing government spending, has never led to anything other than total stagnation, which is what Reagan encountered when he came in.
The one thing that history tells us, however, is that most major reversals in American policy come after the other side went too far.
I'm not sure there would have been a Reagan had there not been a Carter.
Had Carter not messed things up as badly as he did, the Republicans might have nominated somebody far more moderate, far less perceived as revolutionary than Reagan.
The one good thing that may come out of Obama is that it results in somebody like Paul Ryan or one of the new reformers coming in with a true alternative rather than these warmed over Republicans who don't really stand for anything.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh.
I'm Mark Belling.
We've been talking this hour about the alternative presented by Congress and Paul Ryan to Democratic governance of America.
I don't know what you do in a state like California where you may have to choose somebody a little bit more moderate in order to win an election, but I do know that within the Republican Party itself, this debate needs to go on.
We are facing major challenges in this country, and we need to do more than simply say no to Obama.
We have to say yes to something.
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