Rush Limbaugh Program - February 28, 2011, Monday, Hour #2

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Feb. 28, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program

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February 28, 2011, Monday, Hour #2

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	That is absolutely right, Johnny Donovan, and it is Walter E. Williams coming to you from Washington, D.C. at the Heritage Foundation who have been very courteous and very friendly about allowing me to have their studio for three hours.
	And the reason why I'm here is because Russia is not.
	Rush has a cold.
	And we understand he will be here tomorrow, holding forth.
	Anyway, if you want to be on the show with us, uh call 800, put the one in front of it, 282-2882.
	And uh let's talk about what I'm going to call just plain common sense and morality.
	Now what whether Americans realize it or not, the last decade, I'm not blaming this all on Obama.
	The last decade of Congressional spending is unsustainable.
	We just cannot do it.
	Spending must be reined in, but then you have to ask the question, what should be cut.
	Now, the Republicans, they hold the majority in the House of Representatives.
	And I doubt whether they're going to be very, very bold, because they fear uh being booted out of office and are understandably timid.
	And actually, I don't hold them uh totally responsible.
	Because uh, you know, if this was brought up to me, oh, some years ago during the Reagan administration.
	I was having lunch with Jesse Helms, Senator from North Carolina.
	And uh Senator Helms uh during our lunch, this is uh, I think the second lunch we had, and he knows that I was very critical of farm subsidies.
	And Jesse Helms said to me, he says, Walter, I agree with you 100 percent.
	I don't think that I think that we should cut farm subsidies.
	But he said to me, if I do what you say, the people in North Carolina, they're gonna run me out of town.
	And they're gonna put somebody in worse than I am.
	And this is the first time I ever thought in my life.
	I say I asked myself the question, is it reasonable for us to expect a politician to commit what he considers to be political suicide?
	And and and I say no.
	It's unreasonable for us to expect politicians to commit political suicide because politicians get elected to office to do what they're doing what the people elect them to office to do.
	And I'll talk about that in uh in a few minutes.
	I'll let you think about what the average politician gets elected to office to do.
	I'll talk about that in a minute.
	But let's look at at the at the uh at the House majority and ask the question, what are they gonna cut?
	Well, from what I see, their rule, their rule for what the cut appears to be.
	Look around and see who are the politically weak recipients.
	Now, cutting the politically weak recipients, that's just a drop in the bucket.
	That's just peanuts.
	The most spending done by the Federal Government is the so-called nondiscretionary spending.
	That takes up almost 60 percent of the Federal budget, which is about 3.8 trillion dollars this year.
	So if you're not talking about cutting or doing something about the nondiscretionary part of the budget, and the nondiscretionary part of the budget is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid prescription drugs.
	That's the that's a bulk of the nondiscretionary part of the budget.
	And people saying, oh, well, let's deal with the budget by cutting some defense.
	And I admit that defense, there's there's a lot of wasteful spending and uh misallocated spending in defense.
	But look, think about this.
	Think about how far we've come.
	The defense budget is $685 billion.
	The Federal deficit is 1.6, $1.8 trillion.
	We could eliminate all defense spending, tell all the soldiers to go home, no more flying planes, and that would reduce the deficit by a third, roughly a little bit over a third.
	And so we have to ask the question, where's the huge Federal spending?
	Now, as I left you last hour, I said, well, some Congressmen, some Congressmen in the House, and also in the Senate, I think it's like almost 200 members of the House and roughly 50 senators have co-sponsored a balanced budget amendment to the United States Constitution.
	Well, I've always argued that a balanced budget amendment is no protection against the growth of government and the loss of our liberties.
	Let me give you an example just to highlight what I'm saying.
	The GDP, our gross domestic product, is about $15 trillion.
	That's $15 trillion is what the American people produce every single year, or or that they're going to produce this year.
	Now, I would like for you to tell me, somebody out there tell me that they would be happy if Federal spending was $15 trillion and Federal revenue was $15 trillion.
	We'd have a balanced budget, wouldn't we?
	But we'd be slaves.
	So having a balanced budget is no protection to our liberty.
	Right now, for let's get down hard and fast numbers.
	Estimated Federal revenue for 2011 is $2.2 trillion.
	Federal spending is $3.8 trillion, leaving us a $1.6 trillion deficit.
	Now the budget budget can be easily balanced simply by Congress taking more of our earnings and making us greater Congressional serfs.
	Ladies and gentlemen, the true protection requires that Congress forget about a balanced budget, that Congress, that there be an amendment to the Constitution limiting congressional spending to limit the Federal Congressional spending to a per a certain percentage of the GDP.
	Now back in 1978, I had the honor of being a member of a very, very prestigious group formed by the National Tax Limitation Committee, and some of the members in the group with Milton Friedman, Bill Nuscannon, James Buchanan, Judge Bork, and very, very distinguished economists.
	And what we pushed for was a spending limitation amendment to the United States Constitution.
	And we wrote one up and it was it was shepherded through the Senate.
	And in fact, in 1982, it passed the Senate, but it did not pass the House.
	And then when it was introduced, reintroduced in 1986 in the Senate, it didn't even pass the Senate.
	And what the spending limitation would have done, and I believe that I'm almost right on it, if I recall properly, and matter of fact, it's in the it's in the appendix to Milton Friedman's book of free to choose, and it would have limited Federal spending to something like 18 percent of the GDP.
	And matter of fact, back during that time, people were saying, yeah, I was arguing for 10 percent of the GDP, and the people said, well, the uh our political advisors say, oh, 10 percent will never fly.
	And some people say, well, Walter, why do you say 10 percent?
	Well, I say, well, if 10 percent is good enough for the Baptist Church, it ought to be good enough for the United States Congress.
	And it ought to be good, particularly in light of our history.
	I mean, look, in 1787, when the during the Congressional investigation and when we became a country, an independent country, federal spending from 1787 until 1920 never exceeded 3 percent of the GDP except during wartime.
	Today, during peacetime, federal spending is 25 percent.
	Federal spending is 25 percent of the GDP.
	And here's my question to you.
	How in the world did our country go from a third world poor country in 1787 and to become one of the world's richest countries in 1920 with the federal government spending only 3% of the GDP?
	How in the world did we do that?
	Well, I'll tell you, ladies and gentlemen, the very reason that we became the richest and most prosperous country on the face of this earth was because federal spending was such a small part of the GDT GDP.
	We'll be back with your calls after this.
	Okay, we're back, and you can be on with us by calling 800-282-2882, and I am filling in, the Walter Williams filling in for Rush.
	Now, I know what some of you people out there are saying.
	Okay, Walter, what would be your rule for getting our fiscal house in order?
	Well, I think that we need a rule or a concept that combines our Constitution with simple morality and common sense.
	Let's look at the moral part of it first.
	I think, now you people call in, let me let me know whether you agree with me or not.
	I think that it is immoral for Congress to forcibly take the earnings of one American and give them to another American to whom they do not belong.
	Now, I'm not I'm not making the argument against paying taxes, because yes, we need the constitutional functions of government done that are enumerated in Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution.
	But I just think that's plain immoral.
	For example, suppose I see, and I brought this up to you before, but you people might uh uh might not have heard me before, might not remember, but I could see an elderly lady sleeping out in the grate in downtown Washington.
	It's winter, it's cold, she's hungry, she needs some medical attention, and I walk up to one of you with a gun in my hand, and I say, give me your 200.
	And then having gotten your 200, I buy the lady some medical attention, some food, some clothing, and some shelter.
	Would you find me guilty of theft?
	I'm pretty sure you would, regardless of what I did with the money.
	And so I'm asking you that if a person did the same thing privately that Congress does collectively, he'd be convicted of theft and sent to jail.
	And so what we should do, ask ourselves whether acts that are clearly immoral and despicable when done privately, are they any less so when done by Congress?
	And close to two-thirds of the Federal budget, so-called entitlements, represent exactly what thieves do.
	And what do thieves do?
	They redistribute income.
	They're involved in income redistribution.
	Matter of fact, I've often told people that I think thieves in many ways thieves are better than congressmen.
	And the reason why is that a thief will take your money and be on his way.
	A congressman will take your money and then stand there and bore you with the reasons why you should be happy about it.
	Now you say, well, Williams, you say, well, what about people who need help?
	I do believe in helping our fellow man.
	But I think that to help your fellow man by reaching into your own pockets to help your fellow man is praiseworthy and laudable.
	Reaching into somebody else's pockets to help your fellow man in need is despicable and worthy of condemnation.
	And those people, those people, I know there are a lot of Christians in the audience, and I'm pretty sure that when God gave Moses the commandment, thou shalt not steal, he did not mean that thou shall not steal unless you got a majority vote in Congress.
	And I'm very sure that if you say, well, God, I'm I'm not really involved in stealing, but is it okay to be a recipient of stolen property?
	I'm sure that would be deemed a uh a sin as well.
	So that's the moral aspect to it.
	Now some people, some of you might be saying, Well, Williams, the programs that you'd cut are vital to the welfare of our nation.
	When someone says that, I always ask the question, what did we do before?
	I mean, for example, when the poor Irish in the 1840s fleeing the potato famine, when they land in New York City with only the clothes on their backs, was there a food stamp program for them?
	Did they starve to death?
	And how in the world were they able to make it without a food stamp program?
	Or as I said a little earlier, we went from 1787 to 1979.
	And during that interval, we produced some of the world's most highly educated people without Department of Education.
	And since the in the 1979, since the Department of Education's creation in 1979, American primary and secondary secondary education has become a joke among industrialized nations.
	Do we need a Department of Energy?
	How much energy has it produced?
	From the founding of our nation to 1787 until 1965, our nation went from a third world country and we built the world's mightiest first class cities, such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, and Philadelphia, without the benefit of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
	How do we manage without it?
	And then after HUD was created in 1965, many of our formerly great cities are in decline.
	Now nobody's saying that HUD is responsible for the decline, but need neither was HUD responsible for their development.
	So the questions that we have to ask, you know, if I were a congressman, and which I'm not, which explains why I'd never be one, is that I would push for the elimination or defunding of Department of Education,
	Department of Energy, HUD, HUD, and I mean housing and urban development, and many other of the other alphabet agencies who are in the business of creating favors for one group of Americans at the expense of another group of Americans.
	I know we run against the clock and my clock, you know, you know, one of the hazards of not being at the golden EIB microphone is that I don't have all of the goodies that we normally have, like a clock on the wall telling me how much time that I have.
	But uh how much time do we have?
	Okay.
	Now the one of the questions that we might ask, and when I come back from the break, I'm gonna tell you, and I know people out there are going to get kind of angry with me.
	I'm going to tell you the distinct group of Americans who bear the largest burden, in my opinion for today's runaway government.
	Okay, uh Walt Williams sitting in for Rush, who will be back tomorrow all well from the cold that he's experiencing.
	And you can be on us by uh calling uh 800-282-2882.
	Okay, the um in the last segment, I left you with a question or a statement.
	Actually it was a statement.
	And I said that there's a distinct group of Americans who bear a large burden for today's runaway government.
	So I know you're asking Williams, who are they?
	Well, it's the so-called great generation of Americans.
	It was those Americans who were born during uh, you know, maybe 1910, 1920, 19 uh 30.
	But however, when the great generation of Americans were born, federal spending as a percentage of GDP, as I've already mentioned, was three percent as it was from 1787 to 1920, except during war.
	Now no one denies the sacrifices made and the true greatness of a generation of Americans who suffered through our worst depression, a depression caused by government, by uh by Hoover and FDR,
	the this great uh generation of Americans also managed to conquer some of the meanest tyrants during World War II, and later managed to produce a level of wealth and prosperity heretofore unknown to mankind.
	But this generation of Americans also laid the political foundation for the greatest betrayal of our nation's core founding principles, namely Limited government.
	Limited federal government exercising only constitutionally enumerated powers.
	It was on the watch of this great generation that the foundation was laid for today's massive federal spending that tops 25% of the GDP and going higher.
	And so let me just kind of say before I get to the phones.
	A good part of that generation is still alive.
	And before they defore they depart, they might do their share to help us have a federal government exercising only constitutionally enumerated powers.
	And give us back the kind of constitutional respect that we've had for most of the time we've been a nation.
	Let's go to the phone and welcome.
	Oh, let's say uh welcome uh Dean from Redondo Beach uh Deanne from Redondo Beach, California.
	Welcome to show.
	Uh hello, Mr. Williams.
	Um I want to address an issue that really kind of relates to what you're discussing right now, is the taxpayers and the homeowners of these cities and communities that require and demand so many services from the cities, and this costs so much money.
	Uh they want the parks maintained, they want the pools maintained, they want the libraries open, you know, five, six days a week.
	They want the potholes fixed in their streets, they want the cracks fixed in their sidewalks.
	These services require a large amount of money from the cities.
	And the minute they don't get them, they're the first ones that go to the meetings and holler and scream that why can't you fix my pothole?
	Why don't you fix my street?
	You know, the city my daughter works for, they have free trash pickup.
	Whoever heard of having free trash pickup?
	They have free clean out for their sewers from their homes to their streets.
	Nobody covers things like that.
	That costs a lot of money.
	You know, and it's time that people maybe be a little more responsible.
	Well, I I I think I think one of the things that that can be done, that one of the things that can be done is to charge fees for these services.
	That is, if I don't want to park down the street with beautiful swings on it, why should I have to pay my property taxes to fund that?
	If you like such a park, well, uh, you contribute fees, you know, when you when you enter and leave the park.
	That was just one example.
	And so I think that uh fees for service uh I think is a very good idea and reduce the uh the taxes that uh the ordinary people.
	That is here's a question that we have to ask ourselves.
	It's a moral question.
	If if you benefit from something, who should be forced to pay for it.
	Who should be forced to pay for it?
	That is now keep in mind you have to really p pay attention to this because like a thief doesn't care who pays for all that he wants to do is benefit from it.
	But we're not thieves.
	We at least we hope we're not thieves.
	And so we have to ask the question if you benefit from something, who should be made to pay for it.
	Let's go take another call from Jim from uh from Boston.
	Where's Boston, Jim?
	Hi, Dr. Williams.
	Thank you for taking my call.
	I have two quick points to make, and then I'd love to hear what you have to say.
	I've been a big fan of yours since I first saw the State Against Blacks back about twenty years ago.
	And what you're talking about today reminds me of something that Frederick Bastiat said in the law, that the law cannot create justice, it can only prevent injustice.
	And the problem we're having today is our school system doesn't teach history, and because of that, the old adage, those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it.
	So that's my call on that.
	I I Jim, I I think you're absolutely right.
	And I I'm gonna get into that uh some of that the uh the next hour.
	But uh you're absolutely right.
	That is uh it it's almost sometimes I think of it as a conspiracy to dumb down the Americans so that Congress can take On uh uh take on measures that otherwise could not take on unless the American people were dumbed down.
	Let's uh thanks a lot, Jim, for calling.
	Let's go to Will in Columbus, Ohio.
	Welcome to the show.
	Hey, Walter, agree with uh a lot of what you sp said, especially last segment, but I guess where my concern is is your focus is in the wrong direction.
	I mean, we're focusing on unions when in fact we should be focusing on the politicians.
	Because effectively what you're saying is is politicians are sold to the highest bidder, and corporations, do you think there's not large corporate donations or large individual donations that can afford millions of dollars going to various candidates on the right?
	There is.
	That's the only way to counter counterbalance that is when the people can collectively organize their money and in a form of a union.
	So I think what the the bigger question is is are our politicians available for sale?
	And do we not hold our politicians accountable to the people, not to any one individual group, not to the unions, not to the uh corporate world, but are we holding our politicians accountable?
	Well, I I think one of the one of the problems, you're you're absolutely right.
	I think that politicians have too much power.
	And so if they have the kind of power of life and death over businesses, over contracts, then somebody is going to buy that.
	What we need to do is to strip a politician's ability to do favors.
	That's the only long-term solution.
	If you look in, if you ask the question, why in the world will would a union give millions of dollars to a politician, why would a corporation give millions of dollars to the popul uh uh to a politician?
	Most of the answer is that they're not giving a millions of dollars to a politician for him to uphold and defend the United States Constitution.
	They're not giving him uh millions of dollars to protect uh free speech.
	They're giving him millions of dollars to do a favor for one American that will be denied another American, or they're giving these millions of dollars for a politician to take the property of one American and bring it back to them.
	And so what we have to do to save our country from ultimate disaster, we have to limit the ability of politicians.
	We'll be back with more of your calls after this.
	We're back, uh Walter Williams holding the fourth rush.
	He'll be in tomorrow.
	Hey, look, folks, don't think do not think for a second that unions that I spent a lot of time talking about unions uh at the uh federal trough or state cross uh trough.
	And and the reason why I talk about unions because that's what's in the news with Wisconsin, New Jersey and uh Indiana.
	But look, there are many American, you know, for example, ethanol, ethanol messes up engines and it pollutes the atmosphere.
	Why do we have ethanol in there in in our engines?
	Well, it's because of the power of huge uh uh operations giving handouts and paying politicians such as Archer Daniel Midlands.
	Or why do Americans pay two, three, and four times the world price for sugar?
	Well, it's the sugar producers in our country that that pay politicians to keep foreign sugar out so they can charge us higher prices.
	Or you take, for example, the California Naval Orange Administration.
	Well, they they get together and agree on how many oranges can be brought to the market.
	And and those that uh if if a guy produces more oranges than he's allowed to produce, well then he has to sell them for uh cattle uh uh um cattle feed or to byproduct factories.
	Or look at look at all all the companies, corporations in Washington that have these huge lobby organizations, and they lobby on all kinds of things.
	Let's say they most of them they lobby a whole lot on tariffs, you know, to keep foreign goods out so they can charge you and me higher prices.
	And so our government has become so massive that people are descending from all over the country to say to their congressman, do me this favor, do me that favor.
	Or and and it and it makes good economic sense for them to do that.
	That is, for example, imagine I'm running for your uh the Senate in your state.
	Let's say your state is North Carolina.
	Or your California, any any state, and I go back and forth across your state, and I say, Look, I'm running for the Senate.
	I have read the United States Constitution.
	I swear to uphold and defend United States Constitution, both its letter and spirit.
	So if you elect me to the United States Senate, don't expect for me to bring back aid to higher education.
	It's not in the Constitution.
	Don't expect for me to bring back highway construction funds, d meals on wheels, prescription drugs.
	It's not in the Constitution.
	Now, ladies and gentlemen, I ask you, do you think I would get elected to the Senate from your state?
	No, I wouldn't.
	And why wouldn't I do get elected?
	Well, because I would not be w doing what the people want me to do.
	And what do the people want me to do?
	They use the power of my office to take what belongs to one American and bring it back to them.
	And and from an strictly economic point of view, that makes absolute sense.
	That is, for example, let's say I'm I'm the Senator from North Carolina.
	I'm the Senator from Virginia.
	And let's say I tell my I I give the spiel to my fellow Virginians.
	Well, if I don't bring back billions of dollars of goodies to the citizens of Virginia, it doesn't mean that they're going to pay a lower federal income tax.
	All that it means is that Maryland will get it instead.
	That is, once legalized theft begins, it pays for everybody to participate.
	And those who don't participate will wind up holding the brown end of the stick.
	And you people who with a rural background know what I mean by that.
	Let's uh let's go to the phone.
	Uh let's talk to Tom in uh South Holland, Michigan.
	Welcome to the show, Tom.
	Well uh let's take a break.
	I think Tom is uh gone, but uh let's take a break and we'll come back and we'll talk to somebody else who's been waiting.
	We'll be back after this.
	We're back, and let's uh go right to the phones.
	And Tom, you have a reprieve.
	Walt, yeah, I'm sorry about that as a pleasure to talk to you.
	Okay.
	We do a very little known thing in the United States anymore now.
	It's called working for a living in the manufacturing part of the steel industry.
	Uh-huh.
	And uh the reason I had called and told your screener, I guess so uh second time they're talking about the taxes, the percentage of taxes and how many taxes since 1920, my wife brought it up on a computer today, there's like seventy-five taxes that are in place today that weren't in place when uh, like I said, I have the original tax quote in front of me here, 1913, one percent up to 20,000.
	And geez, if you made up to 50,000, you were whacked another one percent on your own.
	And and matter of fact, just to interrupt a second though, and when when Congress uh during the legislative debate over these taxes, income taxes, Congress said that ninety-five percent of the people will never pay income taxes.
	Oh, yeah.
	Well, you know, they say a lot of things.
	They used to say, don't fight the seatbelt laws in Illinois, because if you don't fight them and you get let us pass them, you'll never ever get pulled over for not wearing a sheep belt.
	Guess what?
	You know what I mean?
	Right, absolutely.
	If we had the Pinocchio syndrome in place at this time, you wouldn't be able to walk out there for all the noses you'd see left and right.
	I mean, it would be a mess.
	That's right, absolutely right.
	And and and the complexity of you know, just simply complying with the tax code is fervor costly.
	I understand, and I'd have to look up the figures again, that if you took all the time that Americans spend just complying with the tax code, I'm not talking about paying the money, just complying with tax, you know, keeping records, uh, getting accountants to get interpretations of the tax codes and things like this.
	If you took all those hours that Americans spend and put them in Detroit, they could have produced the entire annual output of automobiles in the country.
	They could have produced the entire truck output and the entire and most of the airplanes in United the built in the United States.
	That's a huge cost.
	That's like throwing away a lot of wealth just right in the ocean by people having to comply with the tax code.
	So you're absol you're absolutely right that taxes have gotten too complex.
	By the way, before I leave the subject of what government should be doing, I have an idea for the Congress to deal with, let's say, the insolvency of Social Security.
	The government owns a whole lot of wasting assets.
	Namely, they own most of the land in Nevada, Utah, I believe California, and Alaska.
	I'll tell you what I would do.
	I will make a deal with the United States Congress.
	I will exchange all of my Social Security payments in the future for a hundred acres of land in Alaska anywhere.
	Yeah, that's right.
	And they can keep the mule that they promised my ancestors.
	Just give me a hundred acres of land, and I will give up all of my rights to Social Security.

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