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Feb. 18, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:53
February 18, 2011, Friday, Hour #2
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Earlier this week when he presented his budget, President Obama said what?
He said, We must start living within our means.
Well, you can you can groan all you want, but that's what he said.
We must start living within our means.
If he were really and truly serious about living within our means, he would be cheering Governor Walker's courage in Wisconsin.
If Obama were serious about cutting the federal budget as he claims to be, if Barack Obama were serious about the need to put our fiscal house in order, he would be encouraging Governor Walker.
He would be encouraging even more states and elected officials to do the same thing.
But we know that he isn't really serious about attacking the deficit.
It's all lip service.
We know that when the Republican Party tries to cut the federal deficit, you can bet Obama's organizing for America will be manning the phone banks and bussing the usual suspects to Washington to demonstrate against them when the time comes.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
I asked you at the beginning of the program if you had any idea what Wisconsin teachers' salaries are.
Nobody knew.
I said if they were poorly paid, the media would be plasting their salaries and benefit schedules and pension plans all over TV and the front page of every newspaper to evoke sympathy for these poor teachers, so put out, sacrificing so much already, making so little in the important task of teaching our children, but we don't know.
They're not telling us what Wisconsin uh Wisconsin teachers' salaries are.
The reason is they're way out of line compared to most people.
Fox News is reporting teachers' salaries in Wisconsin, 89,500 salary and benefits.
The average non-public sector worker in America makes $61,000 a year in salary and benefits.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why you are not hearing what the Wisconsin teachers make.
And I know what some of you are saying, but Rush, but Rush, you're all for prosperity.
You keep talking about the chancer people, yeah, I am.
Oh yeah.
But you can't have this kind of disparity between the people who are paying.
People who are living off of them.
Just can't.
It's not sustainable.
We've reached that point.
Teacher salaries in Wisconsin, $89,500 a year salary and benefits.
Average non-public sector worker in America, $61,000 a year in salary and benefits.
That's why you're not hearing about what salaries are and how tough it's been for these great servants to make ends meet.
Hi, folks, open line Friday, Ilrushbow, 800-282-2882, if you want to be on the program.
Dan Amira, Daily Intel, runaway Wisconsin lawmakers will quickly go mad without sex.
Being the children that they are, precedent for what's happening in Wisconsin right now.
We mentioned it yesterday, 2003.
Democrat legislators in Texas fled for Oklahoma and then New Mexico to deny a quorum for a vote on a Republican-backed redistricting plan, which ultimately passed.
One veteran of that incident has some advice for Wisconsin's runaway state Democrat senators.
Bring your wives to Illinois for emergency sex.
Texas Democrat Letitia Vandipoot.
Well, how would you pronounce it?
P-U-T-T-E.
Vandiput?
Vandipooty.
I like that.
Texas Democrat Letitia Vandipooty, who back in 2003 was one of 11 state senators who fled to New Mexico in order to stall Republican redistricting plans.
Says if you're going to be out more than two weeks, call your spouse for conjugal visits.
After two weeks, and most of my colleagues are men, I said, get their wives here and quick because you're under intense stress.
Now that's just gonna say hire a bunch of hookers and expensive.
I mean, I knew, ladies and gentlemen, Democrat politicians are horny butt.
But two weeks.
Two weeks, and they had a crisis in Texas.
Mr. Ramirez says they never had dry spells in more than two weeks.
They freak out, can't function.
What do they do?
Turn into werewolves, start molesting strangers.
And there's a picture here, the best western uh motel here where the Wisconsin lawmakers have fled.
It's right next to a uh right next to a bar.
Michelle Malkin, as usual.
Some great work on this apocalypse now, Wisconsin versus big labor.
The uh the reason regular private sector people will not get behind this is because even with the concessions that the union wage earners are getting, a much better deal than most private sector employees, even after the concessions, that's going to be the case.
And we're gonna have many more of these times, times where we have to draw a line on the pavement and look these pampered people in the eye and say firmly, no more.
But it is for these times that we en masse elected people all over the country who said they would do just this.
This is why these people were elected.
I'm talking about people like Governor Walker, the Republican freshman in the House of Representatives.
This is what they said they were gonna do.
Walker is simply executing the wishes of those who voted for him.
As Michelle Morkin points out, welcome to the reckoning.
We've met the first apocalypse.
Smack dab in the middle of heartland.
As Wisconsin goes, so goes the nation.
Let us pray it does not go the way of the decrepit welfare states of the European Union.
Here again the lowdown.
State government workers in Wisconsin pay piddling amounts for generous taxpayer subsidized health benefits.
Faced with a $3.6 billion budget hole in a state constitutional ban on running a deficit.
New Republican Governor Scott Walker wants public unions to pay up a little more.
He has proposed raising the public employee share of health care insurance premiums from less than 5% to 12.4%.
He's also pushing for state workers to cover half of their pension contributions.
Half.
To spare taxpayers the soaring costs of Byzantine union negotiated work rules, he would rein in big labor's collective bargaining power to cover only wages unless approved at the ballot box by the voters.
As the Free Market Macyver Institute in Wisconsin points out, the benefit concessions that Governor Walker is asking public union workers to make would still maintain their health insurance contribution rates at the second lowest among Midwest states for family coverage.
Moreover, a new analysis by the benefits think tank HC Trends shows that the new rate would also be less than the employee contributions required at 85% of large Milwaukee area private employers.
They're still making out like bandits even after the reforms.
This is modest.
It's a modest call for shared sacrifice has triggered the wrath of the White House and big labor.
And as I say, this Trump guy from the AFL CIO do in there about now, which is akin to the Muslim Brotherhood showing up in Cairo.
On Thursday, Obama lamented the assault on unions.
If Obama cared, if he meant what he said.
Deficit reduction living within our means, he would be encouraging Governor Walker.
But no, El Presidente is organizing the protests.
Education Secretary Arnie Duncan spurned the opportunity to condemn thousands of Wisconsin public school teachers for lying about being sick and shutting down at least eight scruel districts.
They are lying.
It's a false sick in.
You ought to be fired for that alone.
A lot of teachers out of work who would take these jobs.
Instead, Duncan defended teachers for doing probably the most important work in society.
Really?
I thought that used to be educating the children.
Now it seems the primary role of a teacher and most important work in society is to make a jackass out of yourself in front of the nation.
Only striking government teachers could win federal praise for not doing their jobs.
But that's what's happened.
Open line Friday, happy to have you here, El Rushbow behind the golden EIB microphone back after this.
To all of you in Wisconsin, all of you around the country, be confident here.
We are not without recourse during all of this.
For example, if I were a parent, and everybody knows I'm not, but if I were a parent in Wisconsin, I would insist that my child not be taught by any teacher who is protesting.
It is time for the parents to stand against this as well.
What possibly can any teacher lying about calling in sick to join a protest?
What value can that teacher be?
Depending on what rules are for the use of sick leave in Wisconsin.
If a teacher is protesting while claiming sick leave, that would appear on its face to be fraud.
The taxpayers are not paying for a sick day, but a protest day.
Maybe some criminal fraud charges should be filed against individual teachers.
Maybe it's hardball time here.
Since the President of the United States has inserted himself, the federal government and his political party in Washington, his personal organization of hoods, and thugs into this.
Congress should damn well hold hearings to determine the extent to which federal tax dollars, federal employees are involved in these protests.
And the extent of federal coordination with the Democrat National Committee and local and federal unions.
Just investigate it, Congressman Isaac get going.
Find out exactly what's happening here.
Money, organization, rules, instructions.
We are not without recourse here.
It's hammer time.
They're asking for it.
Republicans ought to be gonna find candidates, candidates to run against these Democrats who refuse to stay in town and vote, start campaigning against them right now.
Because these Democrats are acting against the students, they are acting against the parents, they're flipping everybody the bird, and are insisting on the illegal use of tax dollars.
Teachers at the very least ought to be docked for their illegal absence from their jobs.
I would bet that I'll bet the money lost would be more than what they're being asked to pay for for their own health care.
$89,000 a year.
The Wisconsin governor Scott Walker says his party has been emboldened by all this.
He said demonstrators who filled the state capitol building in Madison and the boycott by state Senate Democrats, some of whom fled the state, have stealed the resolve of members of his party.
If anything, I think it's made the Republicans in the Assembly and the state stronger.
They're not going to be bullied.
They're not going to be intimidated.
Governor Walker, I have a suggestion for you.
There's a line you can use.
It has been used before.
You simply say to all these protesters, I won.
That phrase has been used by no less than our illustrious man child President Barack Obama during a meeting with congressional leaders, Republicans and Democrats in the White House in early 2009.
When he gathered them together to ostensibly talk about joint ideas to help the economy.
The Republicans posed tax ideas or tax cut ideas.
Obama looked at him and said, Well, you can talk about it, but we're not going to do it.
I won.
Well, Governor Walker, you won.
Simple as that.
Who's next?
Julie in Chicago.
Hi, Julie.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hi, how are you?
Thanks so much for having me on the show.
You bet.
Um, yeah, so I was just calling because um I am kind of like your first caller.
Um I also have a master's degree in education.
I'm unable to find a job.
Um, and so hearing all these teachers just choosing not to go into work, um, little disheartening.
Um, but what really got me was um the Madison students who were protesting and they have no idea why.
Um that for me as a young adult, I'm 26, um, kind of trying to figure out like what can I do to help my generation realize what's really going on instead of thinking that Combi Central and Saturday Night Live are really the news.
Um well, let me be selfish for a moment.
I mean at the same time be serious.
If you want to convince them that there's something other than Saturday Night Live and Comedy Central that are news, direct them to this show.
Uh and I don't say that for ego reasons.
My ratings are high enough, like liberals say I've got enough.
I have enough audience here.
Uh direct them to this show.
Tell them to put aside their prejudice, bias, whatever they've heard about it.
Uh tell them that it would be wise to start questioning everything they were taught in college about politics and about government.
Any number of things.
Uh uh how many of your uh friends like you are out of work or for whatever other reason economically challenged.
I I definitely have quite a few friends who have hefty school loans to pay back, uh, counting myself, my family.
Um, yeah.
So I think that's something too that's a good idea.
When you when you talk to them uh about their circumstances, do they blame anybody?
Do they think there's some in in a political sense?
They they think there's somebody politically responsible for their plight.
Um, you know, the typical attitude I think is to kind of yeah, shirk the responsibility, like, oh, it's the government's fault in general.
And of you know, not really finding a real reason for what's going on, or even just, you know, I'm just gonna get a job and work my butt off so that I can get to where I need to be, regardless of, you know, circumstance.
Um that's kind of where I find myself, starting with a new company, just trying my best to work my way up because I may never get a teaching job that I think that I wanted in the first place.
Hang in there.
You're uh you're in Chicago, you're not far from Wisconsin.
There may be some openings.
Would you be willing to work for 89,000 a year?
Um I think so, yeah.
Well, that's what they're making.
89,000 when you have their salary and benefits.
That's what they're meant to.
That's what they're running around ticked off about here.
I know.
I think it's um it's pretty selfish, uh, really, if you think about it, and I really think that you know, if they could just kind of take a step back and see what is really going on, that I mean, I guess I can't say I that they would, you know, buy into it, but you really wish that they would, because it really is selfish, um, not only for you know the kids, obviously, but just you know, the whole community in general, everyone.
It's very, very selfish.
You know, I always struggle.
I'm gonna be honest with I always struggle when people ask me what what could young people do to get more involved?
And the reason is that when I was your age, and when I was sixteen, I believed what I believed now.
Uh no nobody had to teach me to get involved.
Nobody had told me where I was wrong about what I believed.
Now, I had the benefit only going to college for a half year, so my mind was free from the assault of academia.
And I have I had a very politically involved family, very smart people, so I was lucky in that regard.
I've I've never I've never had to uh have a fire lit under me to get involved.
And I've I've never had a to get a fire lit under me to know when certain politicians are full of it.
So it's it's hard.
I I uh you always try to put yourself in under people's shoes, and when I do that, I don't understand.
You know, I I I've nobody would from if I had gone to college, I will guarantee you there's not one instructor who would have ever been able to indoctrinate me.
I was just that firm in my resolve of what I knew and what I believed.
So it's hard for me to sit here and to come up with ideas of what to do to get involved, but seriously, tell them to question authority and to look at someplace other than Comedy Central or wherever else they're looking.
Scott Walker, Governor Wisconsin, has just as big a mandate as uh Obama.
And Walker was elected 5246.
Obama elected 52 to 45.
Scott Walker even told the voters what he was going to do if he was elected.
Obama didn't.
Obama didn't tell us about any of this.
Oh, he told us just the exact opposite was going to happen.
What's all this demonstrating showing?
What is it telling us?
People around the country turn this stuff on.
What do you think they see?
I know what you're afraid of.
In the old days, oh my God, look at those numbers.
America's totally against this Republican governor.
American people really don't like this republic.
Republicans are gonna take it on chin again.
Well, no.
That's probably what you would have said some years ago.
Well, let me calm your fears if you still think that way.
What all of this demonstrating is showing is how destructive public sector unions, especially teachers' unions are to the general population.
That's what all this is showing.
This governor is not implementing a stealth agenda.
Everybody that elected him voted for him by 52 to 46 majority knows what he was going to do.
They wanted it.
People watching this can see how thuggish the union thugs and their supporters are, how thugish Obama is, how anti-taxpayer and anti-public they actually are.
And these people, over half of them showing up just because it's something to do, by the way.
Maybe get their sign and their face on TV.
Represent a really small percentage of the public, terms of basic numbers.
Yet their impact on the lives of citizens is huge in terms of how much money they drain from private citizens, how much control they have over our daily lives.
They're out of control.
And this protest and others prove it.
They're proving what we've said about them for years.
Now here comes Obama and his party, and they are proving what we've said about them too.
They're not about the public and the public's best interests.
They're not about living within our means.
They're not about responsibility with budgets and so forth.
No, no, no, no.
This is all about taking care of their own.
Taking care of their campaign coffers, the children be damned.
Safety be damned, budgets be damned.
Bunch of cowards.
Why, these Democrat senators at this location, they won't even explain and tell anybody where they are.
State troopers in Wisconsin have been ordered to go find one of them and bring them back.
They are insisting that you pay for their way of life.
That you pay for their health care, that you pay for their retirement, that you pay their pension.
They are insisting that you pay their army of Activists.
And if you don't, they punish you.
If you even ask them to back off a bit and slow down a bit.
As you are facing your own economic difficulties.
Do they care?
Nope.
They're demanding even more from you.
They have no sympathy for you for your plight or what have you.
Never again can it be said that the National Education Association cares about children.
Never again can it be said that the Democrat Party cares about the middle class.
Never again can it be said the Democrat Party cares about the little guy.
Never again can it be said that the left and the Democrat Party is out to protect you, the average American from the special interests, because you are watching the special interests on parade.
You are watching the special interest demand even more from you.
Many of you who are out of work, many of you who have had to cut back economically.
You are watching the special interests you've been told are out to harm you.
You are watching the special interests that matter to Barack Obama and the Democrat Party.
A couple of news networks have already interviewed Wisconsin Senate Senate Democrats who are in hiding.
The Democrat senators know they don't have to worry that the media will tell Wisconsin authorities where they are.
This goes to show which side the media is on.
Everybody knows it anyway.
But who is the little guy?
The unions.
That's what the Democrats want us, the working people of America.
The unions, the teachers, averaging 89,000 a year in Wisconsin, the little guy for a nine-month job.
Who is the little guy?
I would submit to you the little guy is the poor schlub taxpayer footing the bill and eating dirt sandwiches to pay their taxes so these people get to do what they're doing.
Which is demand even more from people.
We're up to number 13.
This is um well, it's a montage of all kinds of media people.
These are the same people made fun of uh of Dick Cheney trying to stay alive after 9-11.
Dick Cheney going to the war room, Dick Cheney retreating to someplace.
These are the same people made fun of George W. Bush flying around on Air Force One after 9-11, being a coward, refusing to come back to Washington.
These are the same people who are glorifying Wisconsin Democrats in their undisclosed location.
They are at an undisclosed location on cell phone in their undisclosed location.
They're cloistered away in an undisclosed location.
They're in an undisclosed location.
Undisclosed locations over state lines.
An undisclosed location.
A secure undisclosed location.
They all know where they are.
Last night on CNN's Situation Room fill-in host Candy Crowley interviewed State Senator Jim Holperin.
State Senator Democrat from Wisconsin.
She said, So you're gonna stay out until what happens.
We would hope that the governor of the state would do now what he should have done originally, and that is to sit down with the public employees in Wisconsin and talk this out.
I'm a Democrat, and I support public employees paying more for their pensions, paying more for their health care.
I think public employees would agree to help the state out of its budget difficulties, but they were never asked.
The governor needs to sit down and talk with them.
Whoa.
Whoa.
Here's a Senate Democrat who supports the end game.
He's but they need to be talked to.
That's right.
They need to be talked to, Mr. Lombard.
These people have feelings too.
They need to have this discuss with them.
I don't think they're surprised by any of this.
Do you think the uh public employees had no idea this was coming?
They've known it since the campaign, that's right.
They've known it, they've known it since last year.
You know, if you want another really the the real truth about this, this is not.
If you get down to brass tax, this is not about paying for more of their pensions or health care.
What this is really about is the union leaders don't dig this business.
They have to renegotiate every year.
The union leaders, the Muslim Brotherhood.
They don't like the fact that they're losing some power to negotiate and eventually shut things down.
That's what they don't like.
But here you've got this Democrat.
I support public employees paying more for their pensions, paying more for their health care.
Then get yourself to that chamber and vote for it.
You mean you're holding out because the governor won't talk to them?
That comment right there shows you that this Senate Democrat knows exactly what public opinion is.
And he didn't need a focus group, did he?
He didn't need a poll.
He knows.
His guy wants it known, not where he is, Jim Hopper, and I support public employees paying more for their pensions, paying more for their health care.
I think employees would agree to help.
But they were never asked.
That's if you know a politician, you know a politician.
This guy has just told us where public opinion in Wisconsin is.
I mean, if this guy's gonna run away, undisclosed location, it would be just as easy to curry favor with his supporters.
I'm totally support the protesters.
I don't think they ought to be paying another dime.
He didn't say that, did he?
Candy Crowley's same guy, Jim Hopper in the Senate Democrat Wisconsin.
So where are you now?
How does uh governor and your Republican colleagues, how do how do they coax you back to work?
Well, we're not that far from the Capitol.
We are at an undisclosed location, uh, but we could arrive in a very short time, I think if the governor would agree to just meet and talk with public employees.
Uh I'm not at liberty to speak for all Democrats, but I think for myself, that would be uh something that would need to be done.
Okay, let me ask this.
Do you think if Governor Walker agreed to have a meeting with, say, a representative number of people from that mob outside, that all of a sudden it'd be over?
The mob would agree, the Senate Democrats would come back and vote for it.
I don't either.
Do you know uh the public sector employees in Wisconsin were as part of their deal given Viagra?
Viagra was part of the benefits package.
And it was suggested maybe you should pay for your own Viagra.
Nope.
Nope.
Wisconsin public sector employees would not even give back their free Viagra benefits.
It was part of their health care.
So they they wouldn't give back their free Viagra benefits, and we're supposed to believe they they would agree with a meeting to pay a little bit more for their health care and pensions if they would have just been asked.
Well, they were asked to start paying for their Viagra, and they're still fighting the Viagra gift back, as far as I know.
I'll double check that.
Yeah, the Viagra lawsuits from last August.
You'd even know that, I'll bet.
Fighting the Viagra give back.
All right, a brief time out, my friends, El Rushbo, open line Friday.
There's a guy that sent me a note halfway into the pro well, after the first half hour of the program, claiming he was writing the FCC.
Is he gonna call the FCC to get me taken off the air because I hadn't taken a call yet in the first half hour of the program.
He's got to be really burning his phone lines now.
We've only taken what, two or three, and uh we're almost finished with our second hour.
We'll come back and get some phone calls after this, so sit tight, don't go away.
Never again, ladies and gentlemen, can it be said the Democrat Party cares about the middle class?
Never again can it be said that Obama is an historic president or a president who's a force for good.
It cannot be said that Obama is a force for true reform or a force for unity.
He is the opposite.
Again, it's real simple.
If he meant it Monday when he said we must all live within our means.
Gotta get serious about our deficit, he'd be encouraging people like Governor Walker.
Instead, he is siding with people who would undermine.
The governor who is simply following the Wisconsin State Constitution must have a balanced budget.
Barack Obama just as angry inside as the protesters in Madison.
He's just as hateful of this society as the teachers carrying those signs.
He is just as contemptible to the hardworking taxpayers of this country as are the public sector unions.
This exposes Obama for all to see.
That's what's going on here.
Don't doubt me.
Everybody.
And I have a message for you, Republicans.
You're worried about getting tough on cutting the budget, getting tough on government shutdowns.
Don't worry about the independence.
There's a story.
I've got it somewhere here in the stack.
I'll find it at some point.
I don't need to have it right at the top here to know it.
I read it.
There is some concern over the Republicans being blamed for a government shutdown.
Because they think that will force the independence to race back to Obama.
Why in the hell did they leave Obama?
They left Obama because of the irresponsible fiscal aspects of Obama care.
By the way, Debbie Wasserman Schultz says it's not fair to call it Obamacare.
It's the Affordable Care Act.
You know, it's not fair.
It's not right to call it Obamacare.
Okay, we'll compromise.
We'll call it Bam Care.
We have Lena on the phone from Madison, Wisconsin, 17 years old.
Am I pronouncing your name right, Lena?
Is that it?
Yes, you are.
Thank you very much.
Great to have you here.
Yes, I'm so excited.
I was at the Capitol all week this week for a government leadership class, and we were while we were walking around the Capitol.
One of the main signs that the unions had printed out said, care about our educators the way they care about your children.
And I found that incredibly ironic.
Since what they were essentially saying with all their other signs saying that your student will feel the brunt of this bill, was that they weren't going to teach as well if they had to pay a minuscule amount of their pensions and their insurance costs.
And I just found it ironic that they were saying that they cared about them so much that they wouldn't teach them as well if they didn't get as much money.
And uh also another thing I was saddened by was they would have been nice that they stayed overnight.
They had donuts the next day.
And they had such disrespect for our state constitution that they set their donuts and coffee on top of it.
And I was just so saddened by that and amazed that there they were saying that they were exercising their rights.
But they're not a good thing.
So they actually well I want to go back to the first part of your comment.
They have signs that say um uh be as respectful of uh us as we are.
Well about our educators the way you they care about your children.
Well, but they don't care about the students.
It's obvious.
They're lying about calling them sick.
They're not sick.
They're leaving you up for grabs, and you're not in school, you're not probably I'm actually homeschooled, so I was just gritly.
You don't even care about them enough to give them your same work ethic, even if you're not getting as much money.
Wow.
That's amazing.
This is encouraging.
You're seventeen, did you say?
I am, yes.
Um what you got you have the teachers running around here.
I mean, if if I if if they cared, if the teachers' unions cared about the kids, their scholastic scores wouldn't be in the toilet.
Your scholastic scores are pretty high, I'll bet.
You're doing well in your grades, right?
I am.
This is interesting.
So I well, look it, I'm glad that you called.
This is uh this is just wonderful to hear from you.
Seventeen years old, and she nailed it.
Lady, you know you've got it, you you're you're able to spot the irony, the hypocrisy right in front of you.
Congratulations.
Appreciate the time you've taken to call here.
That's why when people say, What are we doing to involve the youths?
Get them to tune into this program.
Homeschool them, get them to tune in to this program.
Just like in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood wants Scott Walker to tear up the Wisconsin Constitution or write a new one.
That's exactly what's happening.
By the way, one little note this Democrat senator soundbite we played that he is he's all for the teachers paying for more of their benefits and so forth, and he'd vote for it.
He doesn't have to.
He just has to be in the chamber.
The Democrat vote is not needed.
The Republicans have the vote covered.
The Democrats can't stop it except by vanishing, as they've done.
Not one of their votes is needed.
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