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April 12, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:59
April 12, 2011, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Okay, so the big budget deal, $38.5 billion.
$38.5 billion.
In and of itself, big whoop.
Still real cuts.
Got to give it that.
$38.5 billion.
But here's how we got there.
By the way, hi.
I'm Rush Limbaugh.
You know that, and you love that.
Some of you hate it, but you're still here.
The EIB Network and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Our telephone number is 800-282-2882.
And the email address, illrushbo at EIBNet.com.
So $38.5 billion in cuts.
There's a big story at the Hill today, and I'm going to synthesize it here.
I said it to Snerdley.
Snerdley was aghast, and you will be too.
There were, of the $38.5 billion in cuts, $12 billion in cuts from three previous stopgap continuing resolutions.
In other words, old money.
$12 billion of the 38.5 came from old CRs, three stopgaps.
$10 billion came from the previous continuing resolution.
Now, we talked about this yesterday.
It had been said that $10 billion of it was from a previous CR.
We couldn't find any documentation.
We did overnight.
And the number of real cuts in this continuing resolution that was agreed to on Friday night was $2 billion.
House and Senate appropriators revealed details of the 2011 spending cut deal early this morning, missing a self-imposed midnight deadline.
They were supposed to tell us at midnight last night, but they didn't.
They got it done early this morning.
In dueling press releases, House Republicans emphasized the magnitude of cuts they won in the six-month spending bill after marathon negotiations, while the Senate Democrats emphasized cuts that they were able to avoid or diminish.
Hal Rogers, Appropriations Committee Chairman, Republican Kentucky, said in a statement, never before has any Congress made dramatic cuts such as those that are in this final legislation.
The near $40 billion reduction in non-defense spending, nearly five times larger than any other cut in history.
It's the result of this new Republican majority's commitment to bring about real change in the way Washington spends the people's money.
Senator Daniel Inno Way, a Democrat from Hawaii Senate Appropriations Committee, said in his release, some of the cuts would be especially painful.
This is a crock.
Nobody's going to miss this.
But it said the bill preserves critical programs targeted by the original House passed spending bill, including Head Start, Pell Grants, scientific and medical research programs.
Those were all maintained.
To hold a vote on H.R. 1473 on Wednesday as planned, the House will have to waive a rule that a bill be on view for three calendar days or find a technical way around it.
In total, the bill sets final 2011 spending levels at $1.049 trillion.
That's a $78.5 billion decrease from Obama's 2011 budget request, $39.9 billion decrease from the 2010 spending bills.
Republicans had sought $61 billion cut in spending, but negotiations scaled those demands back.
The total cuts, and here's how it's reported word for word in the story.
The total cuts, which span nearly the entire federal government.
Oh, wow.
That's sweeping sounding, isn't it?
$12 billion in cuts through three stopgap continuing resolutions and $28 billion in new cuts.
Compared to 2010 levels, there are big cuts to cherish Democrat-backed programs.
The Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition Program is cut $504 million.
Foreign food assistance by $194 million.
These are characterized as sweeping, major.
My gosh, never, ever before seen cut.
These are accounting error type things.
These are the kind of things the green eyeshade guys miss after a long day in the office.
The EPA is cut by $1.6 billion, a 16% reduction.
At any rate, here, the bottom line is that $2 billion in cuts in this final continuing resolution is how we got to the 38.
Some say it's actually only 28.
Now we move on to AP and also Politico.
Notice the tide now turning.
Politico, the story, Obama gets more budget deal credit.
Here, another AP story.
This is a different reporter.
Budget tricks helped Obama save programs from cuts.
Details of last week's hard-won agreement to avoid a government shutdown and cut federal spending by $38 billion were released this morning.
They reveal that the budget cuts were significantly eased by pruning money left over from previous years.
That's the put this behind me.
Let me grab it back out.
That's the $12 billion using accounting sleight of hand and going after programs Obama had targeted anyway.
So a lot of what was agreed to was what Obama had previously said he didn't care anything about.
Such moves permitted Obama to save Pell Grants, race to the top aid for public scruels, among others, from Republican knives.
Big holes in foreign aid and the EPA were patched in large part.
Republicans gave up politically treacherous cuts to the Agriculture Department's food inspection program.
Still, Obama and his Democrat allies accepted $600 million in cuts to a community health center program, $414 million in cuts to grants for state and local police departments.
All these things he had agreed to previously.
There was a lot of nothing he had to be convinced of to cut along the lines of this talk.
And then there is this Andrew Taylor from the Associated Press.
A close look at the now, remember now, this is supposed to be a news story.
A close look at the government shutdown dodging agreement to cut federal spending by $38 billion reveals that lawmakers significantly eased the fiscal pain by pruning money left over from previous years using accounting sleight of hand and going after programs Obama had targeted anyway.
And I still love it here.
$38 billion, the $519 billion, $1.6 billion, they're all categorized as unbelievably huge numbers and cuts.
My God, it's a miracle the nation will survive.
That's how these cuts are.
Folks, I'm telling you, we're being scammed here like you can't believe it.
The thing is, we know it.
None of us are surprised.
I mean, these cuts don't even amount to a nick while shaving, if you want to get right down to it.
Now, the political claims that for the last two years, all of Obama's cuts are actually programs that Bush had also tried to cut.
So, I'm not sure who's coming out the loser here.
It says here that such moves permitted Obama to save favorite programs from Republican knives.
So, now, now the tide is turning, Obama the great savior.
Not Obama got rolled, but Obama's the great savior.
Obama gets more budget deal credit.
Nearly six in ten Americans say they backed the budget deal reached by the White House and Congressional Republicans late last week and are giving a bit more credit to Obama than they are to members of Congress from either party.
It's a CNN poll.
58% of those surveyed over the weekend said that they approve of the deal that includes $38.5 billion in spending cuts through the rest of fiscal 2011.
Support for the deal stronger among Democrats.
56% of independents said they are in favor of the deal.
Overall, Americans give Obama and congressional Democrats more credit for making the deal happen.
With 48% of those surveyed crediting them for the deal, House Speaker John Boehner, who many are identifying as the big winner in the negotiations, doesn't get such positive marks in the CNN poll.
41% approve of the job he's doing, 44% disapprove.
56% of independents support the deal.
Obama, the Democrats, are getting the credit, and yet Boehner was the big winner all through the weekend.
I wonder if our inside-the-belt way intelligentsia guys who went for this spin over the weekend that Boehner's the big winner, I wonder if they have figured out how they were victimized.
I wonder if they figure out how they were used.
But here's a little observation, ladies and gentlemen.
By the way, this poll is of 800 adults, not likely voters, not registered voters, not, I mean, it could be adults from another planet.
I mean, it's a pretty wide suave here of supposed humanity.
But the real question I have here is one of the reasons for doing this was to win the PR battle.
One of the reasons for doing that was for avoiding the government shutdown.
One of the reasons for not really pushing back and going hard was so that we didn't end up being categorized and portrayed as the Newt gang was in 1994.
Now, look what's happening.
We're still being portrayed now as losers.
After three days being winners, now as losers, and Obama saved the nation.
Obama saved the country from these sharp Republican knives.
And the American people understand it and agree.
And by 56%, the independents understand it and agree.
The whole reason that we did this was to avoid after-the-fact coverage like this.
As long as that is going to remain the motivation, the reason, the inspiration for our political actions, we're always going to end up on the short end of the stick because we're never going to win a PR press battle.
I hope some of the intelligentsia who helped start this notion that Boehner and the Republicans were the big winners over the weekend.
I hope you understand how you were used to set up today the media coverage of last night and today.
To those of us outside the Beltway who have a far greater perspective on how things happen there, what's going on there, all this is totally predictable, totally understandable.
And we know full well.
I mean, I can even give you examples if I wanted to make a fool of myself in my earlier years of my career.
I can give you examples of how I used to do, not many, but before I learned the lay of the land, I did things to try to get positive press coverage.
I did things to try to engender the kind of coverage that I saw everybody else getting.
It never worked.
And it was never going to work.
And there's nothing I could have done to make it work in a lasting way because I'm a conservative.
At the end of the day, I'm always going to be an enemy.
I'm always going to have to be trounced.
And this, I'll just tell you, and HR, now you're going to get a phone call on this, and you got to tell the guy who calls, you know him, you got to tell him this is not about him.
There's a famous magazine that did a profile of me early on.
And I love the reporter and I still do.
And this guy kept telling me, you know, once this is out, you're going to be on the Hamptons invitation list.
You're going to be, you're going to, you're going to cross the new boundary.
You're going to step over that line.
You're going to have a whole new kind of world opening.
And after ABC does that profile of you, 2020, and it never did.
And it's not the reason I did it, but this was one of the lures, one of the things was held out.
So I've been there, done that.
I've had this dangled, this carrot dangled in front of me.
And it wasn't that I wanted it.
I was just, you know, early years trying to figure all this out.
There was nobody.
Gosh, I wish there'd somebody to advise me.
I wish there had been somebody to tell me what I know now.
There were people that knew it.
They just didn't tell me or didn't want to tell me or didn't think it was important or what have you.
So I learned it by doing.
And that's why I have a full-fledged understanding of the left and the media and knowing full why.
For example, to put it in different terms, if you're going to have a debate, if you're going to have a negotiation on the budget, and if your objective is when it's all over to have the press say great things about you, you're going to get skunked because you're going to do something not aimed at the real objective, which is cutting spending, which is reducing the deficit, which is tackling this out-of-control direction the government's going.
If you're aiming for positive press coverage, or if you're aiming for coverage, it's not going to be excoriating, you're going to lose every which way from Sunday.
You're going to lose at the negotiations, and you're going to lose in the press coverage ultimately.
And you're going to lose your base at the same time.
You're going to lose your people.
You're going to lose.
In my case, I would have lost my audience in the elected arena.
You lose your voters.
So it's frustrating to sit here and watch try to share the benefit of your experience, the benefit of your wisdom.
And all of this is just, it's so, in a way, sadly predictable.
So now the stories are out, not just the political.
No, it's the people.
56% of independents, man, Obama saved the government.
Now, what was the alternative?
The alternative was, well, what was the big fear?
Oh, we're going to shut down the government.
They're going to rush if we shut down the government.
They're going to hate us.
I mean, remember 1995?
We can't shut down the government.
Oh, my God, we got creamed.
No, you didn't.
You picked up two seats in the Senate in 96 elections.
You did not lose the House.
And yeah, Clinton was re-elected, but you lost the PR battle.
But you didn't lose anything substantively.
Can't shut down the government.
I'm going to shut it down.
So many Republicans, I'm not going to relive 1995.
Well, we're practically reliving 1995 in the sense of the post-event press coverage now, plus the relative minuscule amount of dollars that have been cut.
Anyway, let me take a break here.
Otherwise, the broadcast engineer is going to panic and shut me up himself.
Your guiding light through times of trouble, confusion, murkiness, tumult, chaos, the seemingly inexplicable, and even the good times Rush Limbaugh making the complex understandable.
Now, folks, it's not all sweetness and light and roses out there on the left.
For example, this AP story.
I mean, if I read the whole thing, and I've read portions of it to you, I'm not going to read the whole thing because it's kind of disjointed.
I'm having trouble figuring out what their motive is.
There's always a motive to state-controlled media.
And I'm as good as anybody at reading the stitches on a fastball.
But I don't know if the primary purpose of their piece here is to reassure Obama's base that Boehner did not win after all.
I mean, the headline, Obama prevents budget cuts to favorite programs, or if they're trying to turn the Tea Party against Boehner.
What are you saying in there?
What are you shouting?
You're already, I think the Tea Party is already kind of lined up against leadership right now.
I don't think AP is needed for that job.
But nevertheless, some liberals are not happy over this historic budget deal.
And even more of them are unhappy over the performance of the great pharaoh, Abu Baraka Obama, whatever Gaddafi pronounces his name.
The Politico is reporting that among Democrats, there's real unhappiness that Obama has not done more to address the consequences of what Democrats fear is going to become a steady erosion in funds for government programs.
The Democrats make this first step.
There's more to come.
And they are paranoid.
There's also another story.
The press is ecstatic, by the way.
Obama is ready to reneg on his four-month-old pledge to leave the Bush tax cuts alone.
In his speech tomorrow night, Obama is going to talk about raising taxes, and the press is happy about that.
Now, the liberals over at salon.com are vociferous.
Andrew Leonard says he finds it sickening to hear Obama and Harry Reid declare the budget deal as historic because they're looking at it as a gamble with an unknown outcome.
I feel like I'm from Mars.
I really feel like I'm surrounded by aliens on a planet I've never been to before.
Now, there is a lot of panic on the left, as I was saying.
I'm going to give you an example here from salon.com, but you'll find similar stuff in today's Washington Post.
Andrew Leonard, salon.com, says he finds it sickening to hear Obama and Dingy Harry declare the budget deal is historic because it's a gamble with an unknown outcome.
But he says the truly baffling part of Obama's presidency is that we don't hear him making the big picture case to the American public often enough.
He said the Republican agenda is clear.
Roll back the great society in the New Deal.
Keep taxes low.
Assert that we can't afford to take care of our poor, our sick, and our elderly.
The Democrat agenda should be just the opposite, so let's hear it.
Okay, so that's what this guy at Salon thinks our agenda is.
Cut taxes for the rich and throw the poor, the sick, and the elderly under the bus, overboard, or just get rid of them.
That's what he thinks we want to do.
He thinks Obama ought to stand for the opposite.
Now, for the record, Republicans do not claim we can't afford to take care of the poor, sick, and elderly.
What the Republicans are saying is we can't afford to spend ourselves into bankruptcy.
What the Republicans are saying is if you can take care of yourself, it's about time you start.
There's nothing more complicated than that.
If you can take care of yourself, it's your responsibility.
There is a moral component to the Paul Ryan budget.
And the moral component is self-reliance.
You know, where did all this talk about sacrifice go?
You know, during the Iraq War, the Democrats said, where is the sacrifice?
Meaning, where are the tax increases?
Well, the top 1% already pay 40% of the tax burden.
There's not a whole lot more you can do to them.
We've gotten ourselves to this convoluted position now where government spending is considered to be the best economic stimulus there is.
Somehow, there is more reverence on the left for transfer payments to people who do not work as a boon to the economy than there is assisting people with regulatory changes, tax changes who are working.
Somehow it's the people who are working who are the enemy.
Somehow, on the Democrat side of the aisle, people who are working are the targets.
It is on their backs we have to balance everything.
It's on their backs we've got to somehow come to grips with where we are.
And at the same time, the key to our economic recovery lies in people who aren't working continuing to receive transfer payments.
That's where they are.
You could get by with an IQ of a pencil eraser and understand which side is wrong in this side, in this argument.
We can't afford to keep spending the way we're spending.
We cannot continue to support a union money laundering operation that does nothing but re-elect Democrat after Democrat after Democrat.
We cannot pay anymore for every socialist utopian dream of an ever-expanding government.
And we certainly cannot have a vibrant, growing country leading the world where the majority of people don't work, receive some sort of transfer payment, and are said to be the backbone of the country, which is where the Democrats are now.
Now, conventional wisdom says that if both sides, at the end of a deal, any deal, if both sides are unhappy, that's a good compromise.
But you know me and conventional wisdom, I think it's often wrong.
And in this case, if so many on both sides are unhappy, could the simple reason be that it's not really a good deal?
It remains a distinct possibility.
Now, as you all know, I admire National Review.
National Review magazine was crucial in my development.
One of the greatest things ever happened to me was becoming friends with its founder, William F. Buckley Jr.
I have supported National Review and their website operations for a long time.
They've got a, I mean, given what we know today, what's in the news today, I don't know, sort of alternative universe editorial from their editors.
And here's how it begins: John Boehner and congressional Republicans are to be congratulated for their performance in the recent budget negotiations, both for the modest victory they achieved and the potential defeat they escaped in wringing another 38 billion dollars in spending cuts.
It's actually 2 billion now.
There's 12 billion that was already cut in previous CRs that we're counting another 10 billion from a previous CR really, according to Hill.com, it's $2 to $5 billion in real cuts.
They have made another, Boehner and the Republicans made another marginal gain in the struggle for the long-term solvency of the American government in their willingness to take half a loaf.
They avoided a shutdown and the risk they would be blamed for it, a high wire act for very low stakes.
So the guys at National Review, the editors there are praising the Republican leadership for avoiding a shutdown.
Now, why avoid a shutdown?
What was paramount?
Let's review.
What was the dire consequence if there was a government shutdown?
Well, the fear apparently was that if the government shuts down, we get blamed again.
Republicans get blamed.
We don't care about people.
And we're cold-hearted and mean-spirited.
And we only care about ourselves and the rich and blah, blah, blah, blah.
And we're anti-government, and we just don't want to have that stuff said about us anymore.
We got through the way.
Stop writing this.
So we can't have a government shutdown.
Okay, so we avoided a government shutdown.
And look at the news today.
Right out of the right on schedule, CNN poll.
Independents abandoned Republicans, flocked back to Obama.
People all over the country in a CNN poll vastly support Obama, the Democrats, and the budget deal.
Republicans are portrayed as they are always going to be portrayed.
So we got the same treatment essentially, whether we shut down the government or not.
And this is what we all know is going to happen.
I don't know, folks.
Maybe things I find easy, and I used to not, but maybe things I find easy are just too difficult for a lot of people.
For example, I'm like everybody else, I used to be practically, I was in a prison of my own making because I was solely concerned with what people thought.
My actions, the things I would say in public, not at work so much, but just out at dinner or the things I would measure everything I said on the basis of what I thought people would think of it.
And you know, when you do that, the one thing that is inescapable that you're doing is you are subordinating yourself to everybody else.
You are by definition telling yourself that you are less consequential, less important, that you matter less than those other people, some of whom you'll never even meet or know.
If you are going to be more concerned about what somebody thinks of you or what they're going to think of what you do, you are saying you don't think much of yourself.
And that is a prison.
And all it does is deny whoever is in that behavior mode from being who they really are.
The minute you start trying to figure out what everybody else wants you to be and then try to be it, you are finished.
And you are living a life defined by fear.
And fear kills.
Now, I happen to know that it's very rare.
And you can tell it's very rare by looking at the number of people about whom it is said.
You know, it really doesn't care what people think.
It's not very many people that that is said about because it is pretty rare for somebody not really to care what somebody else thinks about them.
Now, to be reasonable, certain circumstances, certain situations, we all have to take into account the reactions of others, family and so forth, business circumstances.
But in a fight like this, where the stakes we claim are saving the country, we're not talking about maintaining a family relationship here or seeing to it we don't offend a business client.
These are once-in-a-lifetime stakes, as far as we're concerned, saving the country.
So if you go into this with, oh, gosh, we can't shut down the government.
Oh, my gosh, what are they going to say about us if we shut down the government?
Well, the answer is they're going to say about us the same thing as if we don't shut down the government.
They're still going to say whatever they say about us because we are conservatives.
And if you don't like that, become a liberal.
If you don't like what liberals say about you, the only cure is to join them because it's never going to change.
And there's not one action you can take that will make liberals say nice things about you.
And the more you try to manage what they think and say about you, the more they own you.
Now, when you start talking about elite cliques and groups of people, guess what dominates?
Groupthink, not individualism.
And when you're talking about groupthink, you're talking about people who subordinate their own individuality for the sake of being accepted by the group.
And then you do whatever you think the group will tolerate.
But the real killer in this, the real killer is that in order to do this, you have to tell yourself you are less important, less consequential than the people you're trying to impress or the people you're trying not to offend or what have you.
Because you're essentially saying that what they think is more important than what you think.
If you're worried about what they think, and who the hell are they?
I mean, in any group, not necessarily a political agreement, just, you know, your bowling league or whatever.
What do you care what the people of lane five think?
Whether you know them or not.
But why are you going to grant them superiority status over you?
But I know this is the way of the world.
The vast majority of people live their lives this way.
Practically every A-list celebrity does.
Frankly, every A-list celebrity is paranoid of what's said about them in those tabloid newspapers, magazines, and so forth.
And they try to massage it and manage it.
And when you live by that kind of stuff, you die by it.
When you live by press coverage, you're going to get killed by it because it can't maintain itself, especially if you engineer some phony kind of press coverage.
Well, look, politics is just showbiz for the ugly.
The same principles apply.
Once you start trying to manage what your political enemies or opponents or the political press says about you, and if you're going to have your image dictated by what you can convince them to write about, at some point, you're dead if it's not grounded in any truth or reality about you.
David Brinkley once said that a successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that other people throw at him.
I like that quote.
Now, let's face it, we all do this.
We all do it.
I much less than I ever did before.
Practically, I don't care now.
I really don't.
And it can make enemies because people expect you to be deferential to them.
People expect you to protect their feelings.
People expect you.
They play on it.
But the stakes here are too important here to start getting caught up in all this high school quiet stuff.
What are you going to think of me?
I can't.
Gee, man, we can't have them right that we shut down the government.
Why not?
Why have to sit there and accept their primitive?
Why can't say if there's a government shutdown, you guys, it's going to be because of you.
Let me tell you this, before I have to go to a break, I once met a man, became a pretty good friend of him for a while, Howard Slusher.
He used to be a sports agent.
He was at Nike for a while, but he represented, among other people, Dan Fouts.
Let me take a break here because I've got to spend a little bit more time on this than I have before we go to the break.
Dan Fouts, a former great quarterback in the San Diego Chargers.
And Slusher held Fouts out one year in a contract dispute.
And I remember talking to him about it.
A very educational thing, what Slusher said to me about that circumstance.
We'll be right back.
Don't go away.
So I was talking to Howard Slusher and I said, man, why did you hold Dan Fouts out?
He said, I didn't hold Dan Foutz out.
What do you mean you did?
You're his agent.
He said, the owners held Dan Foutz out.
He owned the Chargers.
They're the ones that wouldn't pay.
He was worth X. I'm not going to let him work for anything less than that.
The point here was, and the point here is, is that why do we always subordinate ourselves to their premise?
Okay, let's say that last week happens, but we don't come to an agreement and there's a government shutdown.
Why is it automatic?
It's our fault.
Why can't we go on offense and say they shut down the government?
They are the ones who have created this train wreck.
The Democrat Party has put us on the tracks to utter disaster.
We are trying to derail this and get back on the tracks to prosperity.
Why not?
What is so hard about saying they shut it?
Well, Russian media will never cover us.
So you don't have just their media out there.
You are the media in some of these cases I'm talking about.
Some of these, you know, our conservative intelligence, you are the media.
So I just think we start worried about what people think of us.
We're subordinating ourselves.
We're everybody else better than we are.
Well, the people who do it do that.
It's not healthy.
When it's happening from leaders in politics, it's not a good thing, folks.
And that's exactly where we are here, and it's how we got to where we're not going to shut the government down because of what happened in 1995 and what they said about us.
It wasn't that bad anyway.
Anyway, let me help here with the fights that are happening within the Democrat Party.
This all has to be put in perspective, too.
And I'm the one to do it.
The way to look, and this is just a little prelude here to more details coming.
The way to look at the fights within the Democrat Party is the way that you look at fights within the Communist Party in the old Soviet Union.
They had their purists, too, the pure Marxists.
And then there's the Leninists.
Now, the Leninists were more totalitarian.
This is not a perfect example, but it's a good parallel.
Now, on the left, they have these battles.
It does not mean that the Leninists are centrists or moderates.
They still believe what they believe.
They just believe there are different ways to achieve the same end-massive, centralized, big government.
So, when they start fighting amongst themselves, don't confuse that with moderation or centrism when it applies to our system of government, our economic system, because the end they pursue is the same end.
Whether, you know, Salon's unhappy with Obama, but not because they have different objectives.
Salon's unhappy about how Obama's getting there.
Nobody on the left is genuinely unhappy with the march to totalitarianism Obama is underway with.
They're just upset with the speed at which he's going, or the deference he might be showing Republicans here and there, or the methodology he's using to get there.
They're upset about the speed.
They're upset maybe he's not showing enough energy for it, but they all have the same goals.
Anyway, got to take a break.
Your phone calls.
Got a pretty good soundbite roster today, too.
A lot to squeeze in in our remaining two hours.
If anybody can do it, it is I.
Well, another exciting hour of broadcast excellence is now in the can and ready to live in the archives forever for future generations to love and learn from, as they certainly will.
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