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March 11, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
31:09
March 11, 2011, Friday, Hour #3
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Time Text
Yeah, I'll explain it.
There's really not much to it, but I'll be happy to explain it.
I guess it does need to be explained.
I've already explained it a couple times, but I'll do it again.
Geez, everybody, everybody thinks they know how to do this.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's open line Friday.
What am I even here for?
Everybody knows how to do it.
I'm just teasing here, folks.
Great to have you back, Rush Limbaugh, on Open Line Friday.
Telephone number is 800-282-2882.
And the email address, El Rushball at EIBNet.com.
I just want to review here.
Let me see if I have this straight.
From the Obama press conference, where the subject of Wisconsin did not come up, either as a question or as a statement.
Obama is blocking drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, but we are producing more oil and gas than ever.
That's what he said.
Obama wants us to reduce our use of fossil fuels, but we are producing more oil and gas than ever.
It's what he said.
Obama is killing jobs and industry, but we are producing more oil and gas than ever.
Does this add up to anyone?
Our economy is increasing the use and therefore the cost of fuel.
He says the price of gasoline, folks, in case you missed this, the price of gasoline is going up because of his economic recovery.
His economic recovery means rising gas prices.
And to him, he's very happy.
That means reduced demand.
The higher the price, the less people will want to use it.
He likes that because that equals no economic growth.
In other words, a continued recession.
There's no other outcome.
If our energy production is not increasing, and if we're, if, if, forget that, if our demands for energy are being reduced, then there's no way our economy is growing.
I don't care what anybody says.
So our economy is increasing the use and therefore the cost of fuel.
We had 5% unemployment a few years ago.
We have 9% today.
So how can any of this that he said be?
Great to have you here.
Telephone number is 800-282-2882 and the email address, El Rushbo at EIBNet.com.
On the Open Line Friday, whatever you want to talk about, free rain.
Not the case Monday through Thursday.
Email question: Open line Friday.
Have you ever been tempted to take your plane and do a flyover in one of these big natural disasters to see it firsthand?
I've done it.
The oil spill in the Gulf.
I had to go to California.
The route takes us across the Florida Peninsula into the Gulf.
Asked for clearance to fly a little low for a while.
It's not always granted, but not that low.
Well, I wanted to see it.
I wanted to actually see the oil on the surface.
I wanted to see how bad it really was.
Yeah, you can see it.
You can see it.
It was way out.
There wasn't a whole lot of it near shore at the time I flew over.
But you mean, like, hop the jet to Japan and fly over that?
No, I could get there non-stop, but I don't want to go because I'd have to land after getting there.
We can do with just me on there and The very, very limited provisions that I would require.
We break it 15 hours.
But you'd have to land after that somewhere.
Not that against Japan, misunderstand.
I have, on occasion, requested a route that would be out of what has been assigned so as to see a hurricane from above it.
And I've seen that.
Yeah.
No, not seeing a volcano other than the big island Hawaii.
I mean, but that thing's been erupting every day for a number of years.
It's just sort of like pus coming out of a zip compared to the giant Pompeii eruption that you think of in a volcano.
But it's amazing what you can see up there.
It's amazing what things do look like at altitude.
All right, here's what people want me to explain.
There's an ongoing debate within the Republican caucus in the House over the $105 billion allocation to implement Obamacare that Pelosi snuck in there.
There are a number of Republicans.
Steve King led this ball rolling.
Michelle Bachman has now picked it up.
King's still on it.
He's from Iowa.
That, hey, look what we just found.
Here we are.
We're trying to repeal it.
We're trying to roll it back.
We're trying to at least incrementally defund it.
And there's $105 billion that is authorized every year to be spent, I think, to implement this.
It's just, and it's nefarious.
It's just $105 billion of spending.
The thing is, the Republican leadership doesn't want to do anything about it.
The Tea Party Republicans in the House want the leadership to take it out, have a vote to take it out.
That would require a suspension of the rules.
We are operating under a continuing resolution, not a budget.
And the rules stipulate that only discretionary spending can be taken out or talked about, dealt with during a continuing resolution.
And this is not discretionary.
It is authorized.
It is hardwired.
So it would require a suspension of the rules to even go debate it, talk about it, and take it out of there.
The position of the House leadership is we are going to obey the rules, unlike Pelosi.
We're not going to turn this place into a lawless organization where we as the majority just do anything we want to do regardless of the rules.
We're not going to show the kind of disrespect for the place.
The Michelle Bachman Steve King wing says you could get rid of it without breaking the rules, and they've explained how this could be done.
The leadership says we've already voted to repeal this, and we've already voted to repeal it in total.
Don't accuse us of not caring about this, but we have the rules.
It really hasn't changed, folks.
I mean, from the first time we started talking about this, when Steve King first brought it to everybody's attention, the House leadership has made it plain that they're going to remain loyal to the rules of the House.
That they're not going to just willy-nilly ignore them or what have you.
And that's where we are here.
And it's going to lead to problems.
It's going to lead to problems because the people who voted for the Republican majority in November fully expected this not even be an argument.
You got $105 billion.
Look at Obamacare, everybody on our side agrees, got to go.
It has got to be repealed, or the country as we know it is over.
It's got to go.
Okay, we found $105 billion of spending described as necessary to implement the bill.
Well, we're trying to stop the implementation.
And if we're not going to try to get that $105 billion taken out, then does it mean we're really not serious?
And I don't think it means that.
I think this is all, if you just want my two cents, I think this is all about a government shutdown and some people just a little nervous to pull a trigger on one.
I don't think there's anything more to it than that.
And so the argument would then be among people: what do you mean?
Look at what happened to Wisconsin.
Why are we afraid of a government shutdown?
Who the hell was perceived as shutting down the government in the first place?
The Democrats.
And what happened?
They didn't get one question about it here at the Obama press conference today.
Not one question.
So the Democrats do not want to talk about what happened to Wisconsin.
That's only because they lost.
They've lost in the court of public opinion.
They lost for real.
So what is this tepidness here in a government shutdown?
The polls all say that the Democrats would take the burden of criticism here, of a far greater burden of criticism than Republicans if there was a shutdown.
Well, you got a lot of Republicans there who were around in 1995 and saw what happened.
And don't forget, folks, it was just yesterday that I brought to your attention and I had seen names are not important here.
You wouldn't know the name.
I don't know the name.
It's a conservative website.
And it was about Wisconsin.
And it was a blog post.
And the blogger was distressed that we had losing the headline battle with Twitter and Facebook over what happened in Wisconsin.
Yeah, it was a great victory, but how come it's not being reflected?
How come the fact that our side won isn't in the news?
How come?
And I'm thinking, how does this young blogger?
Because that's never happened.
Our victories are not celebrated.
The press.
Excuse me, Facebook, Twitter.
So all I know is that the Tea Party caucus and the Tea Party voters, a great percentage of the people who elected the Republican majority in November, are not going to forget it.
They expect to see the same kind of energy that they have themselves on stopping this.
And to be told, look, we got the rules and all that.
We'll get to it.
You know, we can't do everything here in the first three or four months.
We'll get to it.
All they know is that if they were there, they'd be getting to it.
So how this is going to turn out anybody's guess.
By the way, there's been a new earthquake.
I'm just told magnitude 6.6 earthquake strikes central Japan, causing buildings in Tokyo to sway.
So I don't, aftershock, maybe aftershock news, a new earthquake altogether.
Anyway, that's what's going on with $105 billion.
As best as I can explain it to you, those are the lines of demarcation here.
And to strip it all away, I really think it's about some who just don't want to get anywhere near a government shutdown and others who wouldn't mind at all a government shutdown because it's worth it, in their view, to stop this any way and every way they can.
Obamacare.
And the people who are urging it don't care about their press coverage anyway, which is the way you have to be.
To my view, in my view, the most successful politicians on our side are going to be those who don't care what the press says because we already know what they're going to say.
No matter what we do, we know what they're going to say.
So you might as well do the right thing.
That's where it is.
That's the answer question.
Everybody's been asking me, who come you talking about it?
Because we did explain all of this over the course of many, many days.
What, sterlingly?
What?
What now?
No, we explained it first, but it's still, there hasn't been a resolution to it.
And Michelle Bachman is still on television.
She's still trying to drum up support for this and explain what's going on.
So open line Friday.
I promise.
You've got a question, I'll answer it.
That's a large number of questions in the email.
Brief timeout.
We'll continue.
Here's Andre in Ridgefield, Connecticut.
Welcome to the EIB network, sir.
Great to have you here.
Thanks very much, Rush.
Thank you.
Many details.
Rush, what I wanted to talk to you about is democracy.
And when people today say democracy, in everybody's mind, what we think is one man, one vote, usually, which is called equal suffrage, usually universal suffrage is also attached to that.
And my simple thought is that this type of democracy is, number one, detrimental to liberty.
Number two, a natural political system of Marxism.
And let me explain why.
Before you dig deep into this, most people really understand that what we have here is not a democracy.
It's just a term people use.
Like, I myself will describe the Western socialist countries as Western socialist democracies simply because they do vote, but they are still socialist democracies.
But we don't really have a democracy's mob rule.
It's bare minimum.
Most people know that.
Yes, Rush, except I would differ a little bit in terminology.
Of course, the democracies that we have all around the world are socialist democracies.
But this is because they're one man, one vote.
Socialism just flows naturally from it.
And this is why, when it's one man, one vote, the majority of people always have an incentive to redistribute wealth, to expropriate wealth of the top few and redistribute it among themselves.
Among themselves is the key.
Of course.
Yes, of course.
Right.
And so you see, the democracy, the kind of democracy that, for example, our founding fathers tried to implement with the Constitution was not one man, one vote.
Democracy, it was.
No, no, it's a republic.
It's a representative republic.
Well, by republic, they just meant representative democracy.
What I'm talking about is something else.
You see, yeah, when founders talk about that, they differentiated between democracy and republic, but what they meant by that was something else.
By republic, they meant representative democracy, which is what everybody has today in the world.
By democracy, they meant, and they were negative about it, they meant a form of government where everything is decided by referenda.
And what they felt is that it should be representative democracy, meaning that there is a layer between the will of the people and the actual law, which are the representatives.
But the form of democracy that they tried to institute in part was, for example, the original provision in the Constitution, which was overturned by the 16th Amendment, which is the income tax, was that each state has as many representatives in Congress at that place.
Andre, I've got to stop here because I have 15 seconds.
I'm going to hold you through the break, but I don't really know where this is going.
I'm assuming you think that democracies are harmful, but I haven't heard you say so wise yet.
So tell me why, if I'm right, tell me why you think that when we get back, which will be back soon.
Okay, we're back to Andre in Ridgefield, Connecticut.
Andre, I gather that you want to tell us that Western democracies are harmful.
You've been talking about the founding fathers.
Now, our federal system with the checks and balances was to keep power out of the hands of a mob.
What is it about our democracy that you think is harmful?
How is it?
The democracy which eventually came to be is one man, one vote.
It wasn't so from the outset.
And the harmful thing about that sort of democracy, I call it egalitarian, is that the majority always has an incentive to demand the distribution of wealth, to expropriate from the top few and redistribute it to themselves by the means of government.
Therefore, it's incompatible with liberty.
Liberty, of course, must respect private property.
We started from utmost respect to private property and through advances and inroads that egalitarian democracy made, we're very, very far from that idea.
So I'm still trying to figure out who you're mad at.
Or who is responsible for this?
Oh, I'm not mad at anybody.
The founding fathers just made mistakes and miscalculations.
I'm not blaming them.
Their task was formidable.
They did not have the mathematical machinery, if you wish, of today to figure things out.
They did not have the benefit of our experience looking back at two centuries.
No, I'm not mad at anybody.
I'm just saying that they've miscalculated, unfortunately.
Okay.
So what are you suggesting then?
Oh, well, I'm afraid it's too late for our Western.
It's too high.
No, no, no, no, not in general.
Not in general.
What I'm suggesting is a form of democracy which was partially instituted in the Constitution where each vote is exactly proportionate by the amount of taxes extropriated from you minus the benefits that you get back from the government, specific benefits.
Okay.
This just removes incentive to redistribute wealth.
I see.
Okay.
I think I got it now.
Anyway, well, look, Andre, thanks for the call.
I appreciate it.
Well, no, I'm sitting here.
I'm I don't know what the solution is.
One man, one vote.
If that's the problem, we really don't have one man, one vote.
My representative represents a whole bunch of people.
He votes once for a whole...
So I'm...
I must confess, folks, I'm not going to help out here, but I'm clueless.
I don't know what the problem, or better yet, I don't know what the alternative is.
At any rate, one thing I do know, and I want to go back to this business of the continuing resolution, the House rule, the $105 billion that a bunch of Republicans think ought to be attacked and taken out, but it can't be because a continuing resolution doesn't allow discretionary, only discretionary spending can be dealt with.
And that $105 billion in the health care bill is not discretionary.
It is authorized.
So according to the rule, it can't be dealt with.
Therein lies the answer why the Democrats don't want a budget.
It's why they want a just never-ending continuing resolution.
It's obvious.
It's patently obvious now.
And in fact, Dingy Harry has ended the Senate.
He's gabbled it closed.
Ten Republican senators have sent him a letter, and they are warning Dingy Harry that they will block any bills that don't address fiscal issues until the current impasse on spending is resolved.
But Harry Reid doesn't want anything that deals with spending dealt with here.
The letter says this.
While there are many issues that warrant the Senate's consideration, we feel the Senate must not debate and consider bills at this time that don't affirmatively cut spending.
Well, Reed doesn't want those bills.
He doesn't want to cut spending.
So he's using the ongoing continuing resolution as a way of not having to deal with that.
And also, if the Republicans in the House are going to maintain that they've got to be loyal to this rule, then guess where Dingy Harry's taking us?
He's taking us to a shutdown.
I have to assume that Boehner and the guys in the House understand that this is what the objective is, that the Democrats want this shutdown.
For whatever reason, they are forcing the shutdown.
Now, the 10 Republican senators are David Vitter of Louisiana, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Johnny Ensign of Nevada, who's retiring, Mike Lee of Utah, DeMint, Rand Paul, Roger Wicker of Mississippi, Marco Rubio of Florida, and Kelly Ayot of New Hampshire, Patumia, Pennsylvania.
And they're hell-bent here on having everybody understand that where Harry Reid's taking this is right to a shutdown.
That's what Reed wants.
So I'd say, especially coming here on the heels of Wisconsin, let's have at it.
Let's pick a fight.
They're the ones picking it.
Obviously, they somehow believe that they can relive 1995 and win everything.
They didn't win a thing after 95, by the way.
The Republicans still won the House of Representatives, and Clinton still ended up signing welfare reform.
What happened in 1995 was the headlines were not nice.
That's where they got creamed in 1995, was the headlines.
You remember all that.
Some of you might be too young.
You weren't paying attention back then, but the big deal in 1995 budget battle was Republicans want to starve kids.
They were going to cut the school lunch program, which they weren't.
There were no cuts anywhere.
There were some reductions in the rate of growth.
But the Democrats had little kids from New Orleans with crayons writing letters to Republicans in Washington.
Please, Mr. Gingrich, I can't worry if I don't have one time.
I won't learn anything if I can't eat.
We don't take away lunch.
Of course, this stuff all makes the media.
It's on the evening news at night.
Remember, 1994, 1995, still, there's no Fox News.
There's no blogospheres, just El Rushbo and CNN.
And we did not, no, we didn't lose the majority at all.
We didn't lose the majority until 2006 when we started spending out the wazoo.
And, of course, the Mark Foley thing.
Don't ever think that wasn't a factor in losing in 2006.
Nobody wants to talk about it.
Everybody wants to say spending did it.
But you take the Foley thing out of there, and it's still not guaranteed that Republicans would lose.
But the bottom line is the government shutdown in 95.
And this is another thing.
It won't shut down.
Social Security checks will still go out.
All those things, it's still going to happen.
The government shuts down a lot when it snows.
They do it voluntarily.
Not often enough, as far as I'm concerned.
But clearly, given that $105 billion and its Republicans in the House say we can't touch it because we're dealing with a continuing resolution here, not an actual budget.
Well, Reed doesn't want an actual budget.
He wants a shutdown for obvious reasons.
So that's where this is all headed.
And Dingy Harry, he still has, he really can't do much.
He doesn't have 60 votes.
Without 60 votes, he's really, he can block Republicans at what they want, but he really can't advance his own agenda.
And what he's doing right now is blocking Republicans.
They want to cut spending.
Now, he's got the votes to stop that because what, their 47 votes in the Senate, and Dingy Harry has his 53.
All right, look, it's this simple, folks.
The Democrats do not want a real normal budget, particularly right now, simply because in a continuing resolution, meaning a temporary peace of time to keep the government running.
That's all a CR is, just enough money to keep it running.
You can't cut funding in a continuing resolution.
You just can't.
And that's what these 10 Republicans are saying.
Look, Dingy, get in gear here, pal.
We're going to cut spending.
That's what we're here to do.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But a continued resolution automatically prevents cutting any spending.
That's what Dingy Harry's up to.
Now, as to Andre, I finally, I went back and I was reading the transcript of his call.
My problem there, just to be honest, I didn't know what inspired the call.
I know it's Openline Friday, but I was trying to use some associate.
Okay, what could he possibly be talking about that we might have talked about today that he didn't say?
I'm trying to relate it, trying to understand it.
And I went back and I read enough of the transcript.
And I think what old Andre was saying is the problem with democracies is that people can vote themselves money.
Is that what he was trying to say?
When he's talking about this one-man, one-vote business, if you go back in the original days, only people who owned property could vote.
Only landowners, people of property could vote.
Once the vote was turned, and this is his theory now, just telling me what he was saying.
A democracy, everybody gets a vote.
Well, obviously, when people figure out that they can get themselves some money from the treasury, even though they don't own anything, what's to stop them?
And inherently, he was doing a roundabout version of Tocqueville.
And maybe not Tocqueville.
I often get confused.
There's so many, so many, well, It's a great quote, and it's often attributed to people incorrectly.
And I'm always confused over who said it, but it was basically once people figure out that they can vote themselves money from the Treasury, then democracy is over.
Eventually, it all comes crashing down upon everybody.
That's what he was talking about.
And it wasn't related to anything.
It was actually a good Open Line Friday call.
I just was having, because I also was not understanding every word he said.
Not his problem, that's mine.
It's a cochlear implant problem, which is why I have Dawn here who transcribes calls like that in case I can't understand everything being said.
But it took me a while to catch up, but eventually I did.
Now, we got Matthew in Harrisburg next as we roll on with Open Line Friday.
Welcome to the program.
Hello.
Hello, Mr. Limbaugh.
Hi.
I have 99.6% mega-dittos.
I'm calling to call you on.
You're saying that the NFL can't raise our taxes.
Who do you think builds their coliseums?
Most specifically, your beloved Pittsburgh Steelers, which I like too.
The stadium they had to add.
All right.
All right.
Okay.
Okay, Touche.
You have a point.
You do.
They threaten to move, threaten to leave unless the city builds them a stadium.
They let some bonds and a sales tax increase.
Yep, yep.
I have to admit.
But we still have a chance to vote on it.
We still, at the end of the day, the Stevers could have lost it.
The people of the community could, and the NFL does have to think about that now.
If they do anger voters this way, next time they want a new stadium someplace that's going to be publicly financed, they could lose it.
But, Mr. Limbaugh, it was actually voted down by the taxpayers.
They said they didn't want to do it, and so they just initiated it anyway.
I used to live there.
No, I had forgotten that.
Oh, yes.
It was voted down by the public.
It was some kind of a regional asset, regional asset district tax.
So the people put it down by the populace, but our esteemed leaders, our most knowledgeable ones, still put it into being.
Yeah, well, they didn't want to lose the team.
They didn't want to lose the team.
That's understandable.
Yeah, it is.
Okay, so I got 20 seconds.
Where does that put you in the current disagreement over the collective bargaining agreement?
Where does it put you?
Collective bargaining agreement.
I have to agree that I agree with the Wisconsin governor.
I agree with the Wisconsin governor because we need to find a way for the taxpayers to have a voice in our government.
Right.
Okay, Matthew, I appreciate it.
Well, here I am, properly chagrined.
What a way to end Open Line Friday.
Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
All right, look, for the last time, folks, public sector unions have nothing to do with the National Football League.
If the NFL doesn't get people voluntarily attending their games, it ends.
They cannot compel attendance.
They cannot compel ticket sales.
But if you don't pay your taxes, you lose your house.
You go to jail, unless you're getting Obama's mortgage program.
Sports leagues, they've been tried.
Some have failed.
They don't exist anymore.
But government never goes away, does it?
Never at any level.
And it's time some of it did.
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