Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Hey, did you see that the Femi WikiLeaks guy, Julian Assange, has called for the resignation of President Obama?
Well, I mean, it just goes to show they're good in everybody.
Greetings, folks.
Nice to have you.
El Rushbo and the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Merry Christmas.
Happy holidays and all of that.
Looking forward to talking to you on the phone today.
800-282-2882 is the number if you want to be on the program.
Email address, El Rushbo at EIBNet.com.
Julian Assange now promising to release files.
That's if we nab him, if we arrest a guy, he's got some he's got some encrypted stuff out there that's not redacted.
It'll flood the country, flood the world with it.
And some of these files supposedly will list the factories and sites that are essential to our national defense so as to make them easier targets for terrorists.
Now, to think there's still some people who don't realize that's his entire purpose is to bring down America's standing in the world.
In fact, I think we ought to call him Barack Hussein Assange because they have some things that they share in common.
But you know, here's, stop and think of this now.
This guy got hold of, well, look at all these State Department cables.
These are the people who want to digitize our health records.
These are the people that are telling us they will not leak any of the nude photos they take with the scanners at the airports.
And we can't even keep track of our own State Department stuff.
Well, he can't flood the world if his servers are down everywhere, but that's what he says he's going to be.
If he learns that they're going to take the servers down, he's got this, these things are already out there on people's computers.
All he's got to do is release the encryption key.
And the encryption key ostensibly is 256 characters, making it veritably impossible to impossible to check.
Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, I have a question.
I've got a whole unemployment stack here.
But before I get to the unemployment news stack per se, I have a question.
I am still kind of reeling here over the theories and the philosophy that we got last week.
And that is that unemployment benefits create robust economic activity.
Still trying to get my arms around that.
And not only that, unemployment benefits, if we fail to extend them, it's going to cost us 600,000 jobs.
Now, my question, if unemployment benefits are so good for the economy, why hasn't it worked for the past 99 or 150 weeks?
Look at all the people that have been unemployment.
We ought to have just a rolling recovery going on.
But of course, we don't.
It's absurd some of the things that being said out there.
Here is the unemployment stack, ladies and gentlemen.
And the first story is from Ben Bernanke.
Bernanke was on 60 Minutes last night.
He said that unemployment might take five years to fall to a normal level and that Fed purchases of Treasury securities beyond the $600 billion announced last month in a controversial move were possible.
Might do it again.
At the rate we are going, it could be four or five years before we're back to more normal unemployment rate of about 5% to 6%.
That's optimistic, considering other things that I have heard.
We're not going to get out of this as long as Obama's president, in other words, that's what he's basically saying here.
As long as Obama's president, we are stuck.
And now from a piece, Business Insider.
Guess what?
Unemployment's up again, even though Wall Street is swimming in cash and the regime is declaring the recession is over.
The U.S. unemployment rate's going even higher.
So are you enjoying the jobless recovery?
The truth is that there shouldn't be any talk of a recovery as long as the official unemployment rate remains around 10%.
The real unemployment continues to hover around 17%.
Millions and millions of American families living every day in deep pain because of the lack of jobs.
Meanwhile, there are all these economic pundits that are declaring that we are just going to have to realize that chronic unemployment is the new normal.
And that if other nations can handle high rates of unemployment, then so can we.
Now, this piece says, if you have never been unemployed, it can be hard to describe how soul-crushing it can be as the bills pile up and the financial obligations mount, the pressure can be debilitating.
The vast majority of Americans have at least one family member or close friend looking for work right now.
Times are really, really tough.
And unfortunately, the long-term outlook is very, very bleak.
We should have compassion on those who are out of work right now because soon many of us may join them.
And then they have a link here: 25 unemployment statistics that are almost too depressing to read.
It's a slideshow, and I'm not going to bother you, but I've got the link to it, Business Insider.
It's a long link.
But it's not good.
And it's, I guess, typified here.
There's a story, UK Daily Mail Online, no end in sight to U.S. economic crisis as scariest job charts ever.
Shows post-recession unemployment is at its worst since World War II.
As unemployment in the U.S. nears the dreaded 10% mark, it's a chart to chill the bones of any job hunter.
Now, I can't describe a chart for you.
Not even someone with the immense talents that I have can describe this thing.
This looks, I mean, this looks like one of those computer model hurricane, one of the spaghetti things.
But down at the very bottom, they're all jumped together, all these different lines starting in 1948 to the present with unemployment rates at 7%, minus 6%, so forth and so on.
Way, way down below, everything is where we are now with the Obama regime.
And it's just all of this, every day this news comes out and it gets worse and worse and worse.
And the fix for this becomes obvious.
And yet, anytime the fix is mentioned, just doing the opposite of what we're doing, Democrats have a cow.
Let's go to the audio sound bites.
This hilarious Friday night.
Sergeant Schultz had on his show Alan Grayson, the certifiably insane, soon-to-be former congressman from central Florida.
And during a discussion about the House debate to extend the Bush tax cuts, Congressman Grayson mentioned me on the House floor last week, Sergeant Schultz.
So why did you do that?
It was very entertaining, but what was the mission there, Congressman?
Because when you listen to these people talk about tax cuts for the rich and how it's going to benefit the economy and create jobs, you have to realize it's a lie.
It's just not true.
They have a hidden agenda.
They have a hidden motivation, and that's tax cuts for themselves.
They should confess that the reason why they keep pushing tax breaks for the rich is because they want a tax cut.
It's that simple.
Now, what to do with this?
What to do?
In fact, no, we don't have a companion.
That's it for Congressman Grayson.
Well, the only reason they keep pushing tax breaks for the rich is because they want a tax cut.
In the first place, Congressman Grayson, you and it seems like all of your compatriots in the media.
But Alan Grayson's worth $31.5 million, by the way.
That's his net worth.
Alan Grayson, $31.3, $31.5 million.
That's how much he has.
And publicly, he would press, no, I don't want a tax cut.
I'm willing to pay more.
Well, then pay more, Congressman, but keep your hands off everybody else's money.
We're not talking about a tax cut.
This is something that John Kyle tried to drill into Bob Schieffer's head yesterday on Slay the Nation.
It's impossible.
It's impossible to tell these Democrats and the media people we're not talking about a tax cut.
We're talking about two things, maintaining current tax rates or a tax increase.
Pure and simple.
Nobody is getting a tax cut.
Now, there's, well, I know if Alan Grayson, if that idiot can end up with $31.5 million, anybody can.
It's one of the greatest motivational details that I've ever imparted to you.
Grayson can do it.
You can do it.
But nobody's talking.
Tax cuts here.
Why doesn't Grayson move to a state where he can pay state income tax if he is so high on all this?
Leave Florida and go to the Bronx.
He was born and raised in New York City.
He was born and raised in the Bronx.
Alan is head back there.
If you're not paying enough taxes, there's plenty of places in the country that'll take you.
Nobody is talking about a tax cut.
We're simply talking about extending current tax rates as opposed to a tax increase, which you start talking people at $250,000 or more.
You're talking about job creators.
And I think, actually, we don't have to do too big a sales job on this.
I think most people have come to understand what this is all about, which is why Obama is going to cave on this.
And it's why the Democrats, the left is livid.
I mean, there are stories today.
We got sound bites too.
Krugman's ticked off.
Let's see.
Everybody's ticked off on the Democrat side.
Claire McCaskill's ticked off.
They're all ticked off at Obama.
And Mark Halpern at Time Magazine, you remember when 9-11 happened?
When 9-11 happened, there were actually a bunch of people, Democrats, and said, ah, damn it, why couldn't this have happened when Clinton was president?
A chance for Clinton to have some greatness.
Why does it have to be wasted on Bush?
Now, the bottom line on this is Clinton had his disaster.
It was the Oklahoma City bombing.
Now, Halpern is writing, it's a piece today.
It's all about what does Obama have to do to come back?
It doesn't matter if it's good for the country or not.
Halpern says, hey, if there's another 9-11, another Oklahoma City bombing, people get killed, that might be what it takes to bring Obama back.
To hell with what's good or bad for the country.
Well, Claire McCaskill, I think she goes to the same school as Alan Grayson.
She keeps saying they're giving money to millionaires and billionaires.
This is what they all, this is their latest mantra.
This is why I went through this whole little monologue last week about, oh, yeah, okay, so we extend the Bush tax cuts.
Washington is going to write people a check?
Is that what's happening here if we extend these Bush tax rates?
This is pure demagoguery.
It's pure lying.
And it is not working.
Washington News, White House Congress reportedly near a deal to extend all Bush-era tax cuts.
Media reports, including stories in all three network newscasts, describe the White House and Congress very close to a deal to extend temporarily all Bush-era tax cuts.
The potential deal being cast as somewhat of a defeat for the president and is a highly disheartening development for Democrats and liberal activists.
ABC's World Old News tonight reported the president's preparing to break one of his biggest campaign promises as it appears Republicans will get all the tax cuts extended.
They're not tax cuts anymore.
They're tax rates.
In a second story, ABC's World Old News tonight said the White House views this as the best, last best chance to get priorities passed, including extending unemployment benefits.
But the flip side is this is happening while Democrats still control Congress.
The view of many on the left is if the president has to move this far right now, it's going to be much farther next month when the Republicans are in the majority.
CBS Evening News reported liberals have been begging Obama not to cave to GOP demands.
The White House is worried about losing twice if no deal is reached and all tax cuts expire.
The economy could buckle.
The president would get the share of the blame.
He already is starting to get the largest share of the blame.
NBC Nightly News John Harwood said it appears that they're headed toward a perhaps two-year extension of all those tax rates.
New York Times on the front page.
Senior Democrats on Sunday said they were resigned to defeat in the highly charged tax debate, and they voiced dismay.
The AP reports some Democrats continued to object to any plan that would continue Bush-era tax rates at the highest income levels.
Politico reports the Republicans seem more sanguine Sunday about the direction of the debate and the negotiations than did Democrats.
McClatchy reports, despite talk of compromise, the rising level of partisan rancor in recent days remains a possible glitch.
Congressional leaders surprised many rank-and-file members by insisting on votes last week.
It goes on and on and on about how Obama's caving when he has the majority in the House of Representatives.
And here's the timepiece.
What Obama needs to come back?
Nothing short of luck.
Wait till you hear this piece.
Anyway, a lot on the plate today here, my friends.
We got plenty of knives and forks.
In fact, pitchforks.
So we'll take a brief obscene profit timeout here.
We'll come right back and continue with all of this right after this.
And we're back, oh, Rushman, a cutting edge of societal evolution.
By the way, I want to know, how was there a Great Depression, ladies and gentlemen, if 20% unemployment would be twice as good as 9%?
I mean, if unemployment, and they had unemployment benefits back then, it was called relief.
Remember that?
Well, you probably don't.
But it was called relief.
And if all of this unemployment benefits is so great for the economy, how did we ever have a Great Depression?
How did it, the two just don't go together?
And I also have another question.
Just last week, the media was wringing its hands over the lack of compromise and wondering whether Republicans compromise with Obama.
Well, here's compromise taking place.
And when Obama does it, it's called caving.
Now, everybody loves compromise, I'm told.
So Obama's going to compromise with the Republicans.
We're going to extend all Bush-era tax rates in exchange for Obama's extended unemployment benefits and his stupid little start treaty.
And everybody's upset that Obama's caving.
We thought the news media, the pundit class, loved compromise.
But you see, ladies and gentlemen, they don't because compromise doesn't mean compromise.
Compromise means Republicans cave in.
And when the appearance is that Obama is caving in, why we can't have that.
Mark Halperin.
There's a line in Mark Halperin's piece at Time magazine, the headline, what Obama needs to come back, nothing short of luck.
And there is a line in this piece toward the end of it.
No one wants the country to suffer another catastrophe.
But no one wants the country to suffer another catastrophe.
But when a struggling Clinton was faced with the Oklahoma City bombing and a floundering George W. Bush was confronted by 9-11, they found their voices and a route to political revival.
Perhaps Obama's crucible can be positive.
The capture of bin Laden, the fall of the Iranian regime, a dramatic technological innovation that revitalizes American manufacturing.
Something to reintroduce him to the American people and show the strengths he demonstrated as a candidate.
If I were drinking coffee, I'd be spitting it out right now.
While he negotiates his way through the lame duck session of Congress, prepares for his State of the Union show and the budget, and braces for the new normals of 2011, the president had better figure out how to react when the moment comes.
No one wants the country to suffer another catastrophe, but president had better figure out how to react when the moment comes.
Without that moment, whatever it is and strong leadership in its wake, Obama may find his luck has run out.
But not a word in this piece about the country's luck.
It's all about Obama.
Nothing is real.
The coalition that got Barack Obama elected president just two years ago has been shattered.
A gaming out the trajectory of the next two years can be done any number of ways, but Obama's efforts to rebuild a politically robust alliance will be the most telling.
It may be the biggest challenges of his career, and he'll need happenstance along with skill if he's to get it done.
And it goes on and on and on.
And this is the mindset of the media.
Oh my gosh, what's Obama going to do?
How's he going to get back to magic?
Hey, Mark, he can't.
He's lost it.
He's a fraud.
Like Tiger Woods never going to be again what we all thought he was.
Mark Halperin, Time Magazine, wonders what Obama can do to come back.
Doesn't wonder what America can do to come back.
You know, America needs to come back.
I think that's a little bit more important than Obama coming back, but not to Mr. Halperin.
When Obama needs to come back, nothing short of luck.
I would say, I'm on a first name basis with Mark Halperin.
Mark, Obama has his crisis.
It's the economy.
He's got a crisis, my friend, and he has bungled it.
He's even had his choice of foreign policy crises.
North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan.
He's bungled them too.
And now he's got the WikiLeaks attack, which Julian Assange thinks is more damaging to the U.S. than 9-11.
You got Julian Assange demanding Obama resign because Obama had to be in on the spying at the UN.
And look how he's jumping into the fray to solve that.
He's in over his head.
Mark, he's an agitator, community organizer, far-left fringe leftist.
And he's got designs on getting even with his country.
The rest of it, he doesn't care about.
I mean, it's patiently obvious out there.
With unemployment high and promising to stay there, it's nearly impossible in the short term for Obama to shift opinion and be seen as a successful president.
But he can't achieve anything in 2011 and 2012 or get re-elected unless he can win back support from some of his core groups.
You know, when are people going to realize he can't do that because he was a fraud?
There was an image presented of Obama that was not real.
You can't go back.
Once a fraud is exposed, there is no more real.
Look, I don't mean to beat up on Tiger Woods, but when you acquiesce in a marketing plan to present you as Mr. Perfect in everything, and then we find out you aren't.
Sorry, dude.
You can't go back to that.
You have to start anew and you have to whatever, but never going to be the same for Tiger Woods, and it's not going to be the same for Obama.
And Halperin here says, this is pure optics.
He's talking about optics.
He's not even talking about substance.
And that's all the media cares about is the optics.
How does Obama appear?
How does he look?
I'll tell you, overqualified.
He looks overmatched or underqualified, whatever.
He looks like he's looks small.
He looks frail.
He looks tiny.
Does not look up to the job.
Doesn't even look interested.
And except for he's really not.
Here's the thing.
Mr. Halperin, here's the real bottom line.
I was in New York over the weekend.
I arrived Friday night, the end of the work day.
Let him audit me.
Didn't do any work in New York.
I arrived Friday night.
Went out to lunch with some friends.
We got talking about all this.
And we concluded, well, they agreed with me because it was my point, and I have been making this point.
From Obama's perspective, he's been overwhelmingly successful.
He's carrying around this little thing, a notepad.
He's clicking.
He says he's accomplished 70% of what he wanted to get done.
From his standpoint, he has been successful.
Now, if you have a different objective, if you're looking at this as optics, you want people to love Obama.
You want this massive fraud recaptured.
That can't happen.
Simply cannot happen.
What could Obama do to win back the independence?
What could he do?
That's why Halperin said, please give us a disaster.
Give us a disaster.
Let Obama show his metal.
He's got disasters.
He's creating the disasters in many ways.
He's extending the disaster.
He's got his crisis.
He's got the economy.
Just an amazing piece.
A window, if you needed it, into the mind, the view, the mind set of the state-controlled media.
Audio soundbites.
Let's go back to me on this program last month, November 17th, what I said about the Democrat Party in the 2010 midterm elections.
They're in disarray.
What are they in disarray about?
What could they possibly be in disarray about?
And that is they don't know what the impact of their decision is going to be.
They got, folks, they got shellacked.
And they know, I mean, the public consumption is it was messaging.
They know it wasn't messaging.
They know full well why they lost big, and it's Obama.
And they know they've got even more seats in the Senate at risk in 2012.
See, there's two kinds of Democrats.
Well, probably many more than them.
Two primary kinds.
One kind that wants to stay in power, wants the Democrats to run things, and just wants to get along here, the Democrat Party being a normal, functioning, everyday leftist party.
And then there's the Obama Democrats that want to destroy the country.
And they're succeeding.
And the other Democrats do not like this.
They did get shellacked.
Look at all the state legislatures they lost, all the governorships they lost.
50, what was it, 60 seats, 61 seats in the House now?
Whatever.
Could be as many as 63.
I mean, it was a huge shellacking.
And they know it's because of this guy.
Here, this is Jim Van de High.
CBS slay the nation during the roundtable.
Bob Schieffer spoke with Van de Hai about the Democrat Party.
He said, look, it does appear that they're going to get this.
I mean, as far as the unemployment benefits, that's very important to millions of Americans with Christmas coming along here.
Democrats on Capitol Hill are privately livid because they feel that the White House basically telegraphed a compromise several weeks ago when David Axelod had made some comments and that they've done so in private meetings ever since.
So this is sort of inevitable.
And you've had that feeling with the senators today.
They both felt like this is inevitable.
This is the extension of the tax rates.
Because here's what these Democrats know.
The Democrats know the Republicans are going to cave on unemployment extension benefits of Christmas anyway and start, you know, let Obama have his toy.
No big deal.
Nobody's going to go to the map over those matt over those two things.
But here's Obama caving, and they're livid.
VanDe High is exactly right.
Dan Rather, this morning on the MSNBC Jensen Company, the host Chris Jansen asked Rather, look, not extending tax cuts on the wealthy GOPs, not agreeing to offset the cost of extending these tax cuts.
Are the Democrats not pounding that point home enough?
This is a political nightmare for Barack Obama as president.
The more left portion of his party hates this.
It hates it with a passion.
And politically, within his own party, if this goes through, Barack Obama will be in the position of he will have his shirt tail on fire, his back to the wall, and the bill collector at the door, which is metaphorically a way of saying he's almost guaranteed, if this goes through, to have a serious challenge in a Democratic primary for president in 2012.
Now, let's not get ahead of ourselves here when Rather starts talking.
You know, Rather's not never right about anything.
So it's always, I think, oversold how good or bad somebody or something is doing at a particular time.
But it doesn't mask the fact that they are livid.
Exactly as I told you back on November 17th.
Here is this, the Chris Matthews' Sunday show on NBC's talking to National Journal congressional correspondent Susan Davis.
You heard of her, right, Susan Davis?
Nor have I. Anyway, she's on Matthew's show talking about the Democrat Party.
Matthew says, Susan, tell me something that I don't know, which, frankly, would be easy.
Pick something.
Here's what she said.
Trouble in the Democratic Party.
One of the things that was highlighted on this week on Capitol Hill is the Congressional Black Caucus and the anger towards their leadership over the censure of Charlie Wrangell.
And I think it's going to be both a political problem for Nancy Pelosi and perhaps for the White House as well.
They very strongly think that the censure was out of line.
Wow.
So now that Obama can't do anything right.
Now the Democrat Party's in disarray over censuring Charlie Wrangell, who, if you listen to him, he didn't do anything wrong.
And then on TV1's Washington Watch with Roland Martin, what the hell, network TV1?
What is TV1?
Can somebody tell me what TV1 is?
Well, I know Roland used to be on CNN, used to be angry on CNN all the time.
TV1 just comes on at night in some places.
Well, I know what New York One is, and this isn't it.
I never heard of TV1.
I'm not trying to offend anybody here.
I don't know what it is, but obviously it's there because we found it.
You probably never heard of it either.
At any rate, Roland Martin spoke with serious XM radio host Joe Madison about the Democrat Party and the extension of Bush tax cuts.
He said, look, on the tax cuts again, I go back to the issue.
Do you believe that he'll stand firm like we heard during the midterm election campaign, or has he already basically opened the door for compromise?
And Cynthia Tucker's also in this soundbite.
You cannot compromise with people who don't want to compromise.
It requires both sides saying, I'm willing to compromise.
Boehner, McConnell, Russell and Baugh, all of them have said, we want this man to fail.
That's right.
Did they just not meet with him?
Say, oh, I think we had a great meeting, da, da, da, da.
And then walked the very next day, walked out and, as we used to say in my neighborhood, ladies, excuse the expect, punk-slapped him.
They went out and punk-slapped him?
I don't remember that.
If you can't say bitch on TV1, then does it mean bitch-slapped is what they really mean or not punk-slapped.
You can't say that TV1.
And TV1's not worth its salt because it's cable.
But anyway, after that meeting, the Republicans went out.
They sat out like Sally Field.
Oh, he liked us.
He really liked it.
These guys are the ones that don't like compromise.
I thought compromise was good.
Now that Obama does it.
No, no, no, no, we can't do that.
The point is, folks, there isn't happiness out there.
And now Bill Maher, separated at birth from Julia Massange, was on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS Sunday morning, and Fareed Zakaria GPS said, so Obama, how do you think he's responded to the shellacking so far?
He looks beaten down.
That's what disturbs me.
You know, I thought when we elected the first black president as a comedian, I thought two years in, I'd be making jokes about what a gangster he was.
For him to be talking about compromising with the Republicans on the Bush tax cuts, where are they going to draw a line in the sand?
He just seems to be another in a long line of Democrats that come across as wimpy and wussy and whatever word you wanted to ascribe to it of not standing up for what they believe in enough.
So now Obama's wimpy and wussy.
Well, I'm going to cut Marr some slack on the gangster business.
He's just being a comedian.
But he does, he keeps talking about how Obama needs to go gangster.
He does.
He keeps saying Obama needs to go gangster on the GOP, and I guess he's upset that Obama hasn't gone gangster on the GOP.
Because he's a wuss.
He's a wimp and he's a wuss.
Now, Mr. Halperin, I'm sure you're hearing all this.
How do you go?
The real question is not how does he get it back.
How did he stumble so far with all the heads-up behavior you gave him, with all of the puff pieces that were written and broadcast about Obama?
Anyway, brief time out here, ladies and gentlemen, once again.
And your phone call's coming up.
Telephone number 800-282-2882.
Back right after this.
Okay, we're going to go to the phones at 800-282-2882.
And who we got?
David in Buffalo.
We're going to start with you, sir.
Nice to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Meghados, Rush.
Thanks for taking my call.
You bet, sir.
Hey, I wanted to bring up that Bernanke interview on 60 Minutes yesterday.
And the point I wanted to make is we have Obama, Reed, and Pelosi making one point, which is that unemployment creates stimulus within the economy.
Yeah.
Yet Bernanke yesterday was saying that we need to get people off of unemployment because they lose their skills, they get very complacent of doing nothing, and it's just poor all the way around in the long term.
Well, it's exactly where Obama, Reed, and Pelosi want them.
Unskilled, doing nothing, and dependent.
And how is, I mean, how is that going to help anybody in the long term?
It helps the Democrats in the long term, in their minds.
It helps them.
Look at Mark Halperin's piece.
It's not about what's good for the country.
What's good for Obama?
Oh, my God, what can Obama do to come back?
Oh, no, what can we do to help Obama?
Nobody wants a catastrophe, but we have some of this Bernanke interview last night on 60 Minutes.
Scott Pelly talked to him.
Here's one bite.
Pelley said, we lost about 8 million jobs from the peak.
And I wonder how many years you think it'll be before we get all those jobs back.
Well, you're absolutely right.
Between the peak and the end of last year, we lost 8.5 million jobs.
We've only gotten about a million of them back so far.
And that doesn't even account the new people coming into the labor force.
At the rate we're going, it could be four or five years before we are back to a more normal unemployment rate somewhere in the vicinity of, say, 5% or 6%.
Folks, look, I hope he is right, but it's going to be longer than that.
The number of jobs that we would have to create a year if no new workers graduated from college, if people stopped growing up, if people stopped entering the job market, it would take, we'll figure it out, how many years, let's say 200,000 jobs a year.
How many years would that take?
Well, if you're going to use 8 million, 200,000, I'm not good at math in my head.
Then you add people coming into the workforce to the people who've lost their job.
We're not talking five or six years to get to 5% or 6% unemployment.
We're talking 10 to 15.
Folks, we have this next presidential election, and these next two years are going to be crucial.
We've got about six to ten years to reverse this before the mathematics becomes geometrically out of our control.
I mean, even now, the notion of paying down this debt.
Everybody knows you can't pay this down.
You're not going to pay down this debt.
You're not going to get rid of it.
But you have to start attacking it.
You have to start reducing it.
You have to start cutting things.
You have to.
Time to reprioritize 50-year-old programs that were created and formed during entirely different economic times and entirely different purposes than those to which they've evolved.
This is serious, serious stuff here.
The length of time to get back to five or six percent.
Look, it just took two years to go from 4.7 unemployment to where we are at two years.
And we're looking at much, much longer than that to correct it.