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April 13, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:45
April 13, 2011, Wednesday, Hour #2
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And we're back, and we are 30 minutes away now.
30 minutes from President Obama and his next campaign speech on winning the future through tax increases.
Well, that's what he's going to talk about.
No question it's what it's going to be.
According to the White House.
135 president speaks about balanced approach to reduce the deficit and win the future.
So it's going to be another campaign speech, just like all of his other speeches really are, winning the future through tax increases.
Now, this little program note, both to you, the audience and to our uh beloved affiliate stations along the EIB network.
We are going to gyp this.
We're going to carry it from the beginning.
A number of our stations called us, the EIB offices this morning and inquired as to what my plans were regarding carrying the speech because they want to.
It's considered to be very potent.
There's been a big buildup to it, uh, the budget.
It's like I told you, and even if they'd be honest with these program directors at stations all across the country, tell you, 20 years ago, they would fire somebody who wanted to make the budget a subject of a talk show.
It'd be boring as anything you could talk about, and it'd be dead.
Now Republicans and Democrats want to make speeches about it, and stations want to carry it.
So I understand that.
We love our affiliate stations here, but I just want to say this to the affiliates.
It is a campaign speech.
This is not a state ahead of state speech.
The Republicans are going to have their response to it at four o'clock.
Now we, of course, will be long gone.
I, in fact, will be on my way to Washington.
I have a secret dinner in D.C. tonight.
So it's going to be a late night tonight, and they're not going to be a whole lot of sleep tonight.
So tomorrow, Thursday gonna be giddy.
So I I um it's not a meeting, it's a dinner.
It's a big difference.
I don't do meetings at dinner.
Though we're having uh it's a super secret dinner that I'm attending tonight.
I'll be able to watch on the way up there uh the Republican response, but I will of course not be on the uh on the radio because the program will be over.
So I just want to all of you affiliate program directors.
I may not stick with the whole thing.
So you may want to carry it on your own separate feed so that when we bump out of it here, because in all likelihood, I I just want to tell you this a little inside baseball, we are not gonna blow a commercial break for it.
Okay.
We'll take a commercial break.
We might rejoin it after the break, but we're not gonna lose money here.
I have I have made that decision.
And if you want to run through the Blake, have your own raw feed, but I, of course, will be offering insightful immediate analysis and commentary while the president is making his campaign speech.
Okay, February 4th, 2010.
A little over a year ago, when the House of Representatives voted to increase the legal limit on the national debt by another 1.9 trillion dollars.
That lifted the limit from 12.3 trillion to 14.2 trillion.
Not one Republican voted for the increase.
It's amazing how this tracks.
Like I just say, if you go back to 2006, not one Democrat voted to raise the debt limit in 2006.
Republicans ran the show then.
One year ago, not one Republican voted to raise the debt ceiling when they didn't run the show, of course.
Just a year ago, one year, the debt ceiling has gone up by two trillion dollars.
Now, the majority whip at the time was Eric Cantor of Virginia.
He stood up on the House floor that day and said that it was beyond comprehension and that it was a travesty to talk about raising the legal debt limit to 14.2 trillion dollars.
Last week, the Republican House leadership agreed to a deal with President Obama and Denji Harry to spend 3.7555 trillion dollars in this fiscal year, even though at the close of bidness on Friday, as the deal was being struck, the Treasury reported that it could borrow only an additional 80 billion before hitting the 12.294 trillion debt limit Congress set last year.
So the debt ceiling increase of last year, we've we're bump up again it now, against it.
It's we need to do it again.
In the first six months of this fiscal year, which would be October through March, according to the Treasury Department, the debt increased $708 billion.
Even if you subtracted the $38.5 billion of this deal from that number, the federal government would still be on a pace to increase the debt by about another $670 billion in the remaining six months of this fiscal year.
Just to put that $38.5 billion into further perspective.
Simply put, by the way, these numbers, these are Terrence Jeffrey and a piece he has at the Cybercast News Service to put this in perspective.
To consummate the spending deal, the Republican House leaders cut with Obama and Reed on Friday.
Where is page two?
Stupid printer.
To concentrate the deal, or commensate, can consummate the deal.
Republicans would need to lift the debt ceiling by hundreds of billions of dollars just to let the government borrow the money the Republicans have already agreed to let the government spend between now and September 30th.
Back in February of 2010, when the then Democrat-controlled House of Representatives voted to lift the debt ceiling up to the 14.294 trillion is when Cantor delivered a scathing speech against it.
He said it would be recklessly naive to go about our business in Washington pretending there won't be severe consequences for the mountains of debt that we're piling up.
Yet today, it is evident that this kind of uh willful ignorance is sweeping across Washington.
We are set to lift our nation's debt burden to $14 trillion.
I would ask my colleagues in this chamber if they know how many zeros 14 trillion has.
I would ask the American people if they know how many zeros are in 14 trillion.
It's 14 trillion, it's beyond comprehension to be talking about numbers this big more precisely.
The limit is, and then he read it out $14294000.
It's a travesty, he said.
The writing is on the wall, said Cantor.
Congress needs to wake up and realize the future of American prosperity is in dire straits, moral danger.
And he was right then.
But if you go back to 2006, when the Democrats, sorry, when the Republicans had control, when you go back to 2006, it was the Democrats saying almost identical, word for word, what Cantor is saying here.
So what we've learned here is is that the party out of power is always opposed to raising the debt limit.
And they use the same arguments that the previous time another party was out of power used.
Mind-boggling here.
It's all about who's running the show.
And if you're not in charge, if you're not in control, if you're not the majority, you're going to oppose raising the debt ceiling, except we're kicking it.
We're going to kick the can down the road.
This is why Terrence Jeffrey has written the piece.
If you're just joining us, the Republicans are sending a signal out that they're not going to fight The debt ceiling increase.
The Ryan budget deal, that really should be our area focus.
That's what they're saying.
From the political today, Republicans are growing increasingly concerned about the impact, a bruising fight over raising the nation's uh $14 trillion debt ceiling could have on U.S. financial markets.
Speaker Boehner has had conversations with top Wall Street executives asking how close Congress could push to the debt limit deadline without sending interest rates soaring and causing stock prices to go lower.
People familiar with the matter said.
Boehner spokesman Michael Steele said last night he was not aware of any such conversations.
But the media is reporting that Wall Street execs are warning Boehner, you guys, you better, you better, you better not fight this fight.
So that's where we are.
And we're 14 and we're 24 minutes away.
As we count down President Obama's winning the future through tax increases campaign speech coming up.
Hi, welcome back.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network.
And the Limbaugh Institute for advanced conservative studies.
What would happen?
You know, folks, we're getting the same kind of hysteria about the need to raise the debt ceiling we got about the government shutdown.
We're getting the hysteria is the same as we got for TARP.
We better do this.
If we don't do this, there could be a whole collapse.
If we don't do this, the financial system of the world could come clumbo with everything can.
Remember that?
There's still unspent TARP money.
And then the same thing with uh with uh the stimulus bill.
I mean, we had to do that right there.
We couldn't, we had to bail out General Motors, all that stuff in the fall of 2008 had to be done right now.
And we're getting the same kind of hysteria about the need to raise the debt ceiling.
Washington knows how to do this.
Why shouldn't they?
They got what they wanted, every bit of it in 2008 playing us this way.
So the Democrats and their copy boys in the media are saying that it would be an apocalypse if the debt ceiling is not raised.
Michelle Bachman was on Fox and Friends this morning.
She pointed out that it would probably take six to seven months before the debt ceiling would force the government to shut down.
If ever, and that's the bottom line.
A genuine shutdown of the United States government isn't going to happen.
It simply will not happen.
Revenue would still be coming in.
People are still working and paying taxes.
Revenue is still coming in.
The worst that would come out of it is that we would have to prioritize our spending.
In fact, it would she pointed out it'd be almost like a de facto balanced budget amendment, which would be a good thing.
But we're getting we're getting the same kind of hysteria.
Oh, we can't, well, no, no, just like we can't have a shutdown.
Can't have a shutdown.
Oh, no, no, we can't.
We got to raise the debts.
It's the same damn way, folks.
It's the same damn procedure.
It's the same strategy.
It's the same promise of calamity, apocalypse.
And it's not true.
There is not imminent disaster on the other side of failing to raise the debt limit.
You see, what's guiding all this is that which I believe is our biggest single problem.
And that's hard to really categorize.
But if it's not the single biggest problem, it's very close.
And that is the notion that not one meaningful thing in this country can happen unless the government is involved in it.
That's destroying us.
The notion that kids can't eat, that people can't learn, that products can't be manufactured, that services can't be performed.
Nothing.
Nothing can happen unless government is open and actively involved in it.
And folks, that whole Premise is fallacious, and yet it is destroying us.
What would happen if we don't raise the debt ceiling?
Well, we couldn't borrow any more money.
It's a good thing, right?
If the United States government were a person or a family, would anybody loan them any money?
Nope, just the sharks.
Just the predatory lenders out there.
Wouldn't that force the government to finally make some real cuts, set some priorities if it couldn't borrow any money?
We keep hearing that government, like family.
Family sits around the kitchen table, although I don't think families do that much anymore.
Families sit around the kitchen table and pour over the monthly bills.
Yeah, you can just see that.
Mom, dad, the 2.8 kids and family dogs pouring over the family.
You do that with your daughters, Don.
Sit down and go over the bills with your daughters.
I didn't think so.
Yeah, okay, the college bills.
But I mean, the whole no, you don't.
At any rate, what would be so bad if the federal government couldn't borrow any money?
Oh see, this my whole point.
We are falling for this.
It would destroy the confidence in the there is n you know the fastest way to destroy confidence in the United States is to have Obama succeed at everything he wants to do.
We're going to become a laughing stock.
Obama wants to take this country is precisely to where it has no respect around the country and around the world.
Because it isn't anything special.
But we've been there, said that, done that.
This whole notion here that any time the ruling class in Washington desperately wants something, the same tactic is employed.
If they don't get it, it is the apocalypse.
It is an utter unthinkable disaster.
And in none of these cases has that been true, as it turns out.
As I say, there's still TARP money that hadn't been spent.
Excuse me.
There's still stimulus money that hasn't been spent.
Hell, folks.
Heck, for those of you offended by hell.
Some of the 38 and a half billion dollars in the budget cuts is simply money that hasn't been spent yet from previous budgets.
It's not new cuts.
It's all kinds of money that hasn't been spent.
Let's look at this realistically.
You mean to tell me that this government cannot get along on a measly 14.3 trillion dollars.
We got a budget of 3.7, 3.9 trillion.
We can't get by on that?
This is absurd.
We've lost all perspective.
We've we've lost all connection to reality here.
A real debt limit seems to me to be exactly what we need here.
And you know what?
I think the rest of the world would actually be happy that we are beginning to act like adults for once, where our debt is concerned.
Well, look at the IMF.
Not particularly fond of the IMF, but let's look at them anyway.
They and everybody else telling us that we need to get our house in order.
Well, wouldn't it be a real cap on our borrowing be a big important first step to getting our house in order?
I, folks, my my resist this.
We have to resist that there's a disaster in the next 24 hours.
There's a disaster in the next month.
The disaster is in the Oval Office.
The disaster is going to be making a speech here in about seven and a half minutes.
The disaster is going to be making a campaign speech on winning the future with tax increases.
Let me grab a quick phone call here.
Hendersonville, North Carolina.
Hi, Kurt.
I'm glad you called.
Welcome to the program.
Hello, Rush.
I appreciate you taking my call and my question is regarding the debt ceiling.
But before I ask that, I just want to compliment and thank you for you educating us and for keeping us informed.
It's very difficult for the average born animal to weed through the maze of misinformation, and I appreciate it.
Appreciate that, sir, very much.
Farm animals do too.
Well, the question I have for you is just before I I actually clicked on your program on the news I saw that that there are some congressmen and senators that were saying, in essence, we are not going to up the debt limit until we vote, or until we get a handle, until we and there is a bipartisan consensus that we must um agree to spending that will be responsible and and and so on and so forth.
Well, if that happens, then why are we why do we need to increase the the debt limit if the if those things have been accomplished?
I mean, that's not a rhetorical question.
I'm asking I'm really serious.
I don't understand.
If they've already pre-agreed, so all right, we're gonna, you know, we've come to we realize that we we can't spend more than we're taking in, da-da-da-da.
But we still need to increase the debt limit?
Well, what am I missing?
What you're missing is uh.
What you're missing is it.
I don't know what you think you heard, but nobody has agreed to stop spending.
And nobody's agreed to spend anything less than what we're spending now.
I don't know what you think you heard.
If you did hear that, they're lying to you.
We are uh one minute away.
One minute away from President Obama and his campaign speech, winning the future through tax increases.
Stop and think seriously now for a moment.
Stop and think what a a golden opportunity Obama has right now to do something truly historic, something actually good for the country.
And I want to say this to really be a contrast to what he's actually going to say.
Try to imagine what a shot in the arm to the economy it would be if Barack Obama announced that he and the Democrats were going to cut the deficit dramatically, not by raising taxes, but by slashing government spending to the bone.
Folks, the economy would take off like a rocket.
Businesses would actually start to hire again.
Like crazy.
Now, the fact that Obama will never do such a simple and obvious thing that he will do, in fact, the polar opposite, only shows that he is not at all serious about wanting to create or save jobs.
He is not at all serious about wanting to grow the United States private sector economy.
He is not serious about anything.
We're now we've got two years of failure.
We got two years of policies that will do the exact opposite of what he's promising.
He's gonna double down now and promise more intense applications of the same policies, and this time add real tax increases to the mix, which is gonna kill jobs.
It is going to start whatever job creation might say that very loosely, be happening.
Is going to be short-circuited.
Because President Obama, and you will hear it in near moments, is not serious about growing the private sector economy or creating jobs or any of that.
It if it if it looks like he really wants to destroy the private sector U.S. economy, it's because he either wants to or what but it is happening.
He's only moments away.
Wolf Butser, I'm sure is panicked by now because he's a minute late.
But a debt limit.
Back to that for just a second.
We in fact aren't we demanding that it be lowered?
Isn't our side demanding that it be lowered?
Isn't that what we're talking about?
Isn't that what November was all about?
Lowering this, reducing the debt, reversing the direction of government spending.
But no, it's crisis.
It's a calamity.
It's Armageddon.
It's the apocalypse.
We're going to reach our debt limit.
The projected date is May the 14th or May 16th.
And if if we don't do something about it by then, we don't even want to think about it.
Why?
The government might shut down.
Oh, really?
Uh, ladies and gentlemen, we have just been given a brief by the White House that there is a 10-minute delay in the start of President Obama's campaign speech.
He doesn't want us to miss a commercial break either.
Okay, ten minute delay.
That means uh eight minutes from now, President Obama will speak.
Let's return to the audio sound bites this morning, uh, this morning in Washington, Eric Cantor, the majority leader for the Republicans in the House.
This speech is coming a full two months after the president's original uh budget proposal and speech to the nation of the State of the Union.
You know, this is Vintage Obama.
He's been standing on the sidelines expecting the rest of us uh to make the tough decisions to lead this country.
Yep, that's what he does.
Sits around, lets other people do it, comes in at the end of the day, and takes credit for it if he thinks there is credit to be taken.
Now, there was a AP story, and we quoted from it widely yesterday, but there was this little nugget buried in there.
Treasury department reported Tuesday that the deficit already totals 829.4 billion dollars through the first six months of the budget year.
A figure that until 2009 would have been the biggest ever for an entire year.
For March alone, the government ran a deficit of 188 billion dollars.
The George W. Bush annual deficit in 2007, I think, 2005, was a hundred and sixty some odd billion.
Oh, I know they were howling like a bunch of werewolves in a Lon Cheney movie.
They were just how they're trying to create the notion of a of an economic collapse, uh employment, unemployment was around five percent, too.
So in one month, Obama has given us a budget deficit larger than Bush's annual budget deficit.
That is an astonishing fact.
It's staggering the amount of debt that's been piled up.
Just since Obama was uh immaculated.
Doubly so that the AP would print it.
There for one and all to see.
That was kind of buried, as I say, it took highly trained broadcast specialist talents and eyes to spot it.
And if there was a Republican in the White House, it would have been the top news story of the week.
Uh Paul Ryan was on with uh George Stephanopoulos.
Good morning, America today.
Stephanopoulos question do you accept what Secretary Geitner says that it'll be a financial catastrophe if the debt limit is not extended?
Default is not our option or strategy.
Um, but we also want to make sure that as this debt limit increases, which is based on past spending, we get something in place to address with future spending, spending cuts, spending controls.
But you will still vote to make sure the country doesn't go into default.
No, I think it is possible.
I don't I don't accept that premise of that question, which is we need to have real spending cuts, real spending controls in combination with the debt limit increase.
And I don't accept a notion that that's not possible.
I think it is.
Yeah, that's uh great going, Paul Ryan.
The question is so you'll you'll vote to make sure the country doesn't go into default, right?
I'm not what is it?
Going to default.
We're not gonna go into default.
Just like we weren't gonna destroy the world's financial system last October of 2008.
Why would we go into default?
Why should we go into default?
You see how an easy it is for these themes to attach themselves to everybody and just Be accepted.
Chuck Schumer, yesterday in Washington on the Senate floor.
The Ryan budget has all the wrong priorities.
The House Republican budget puts the entire burden of reducing the deficit on senior citizens, students, and middle class families.
At the same time, it protects corporate subsidies for oil companies.
Let's waste at the Pentagon, go untouched, and would give even more tax breaks to the millionaires amongst us.
In short, the Ryan budget puts the middle class last instead of first.
As a result, it will never pass the Senate.
And there you have Senator Chuck Yu Schumer in New York knocking down the uh the the Paul Ryan budget, uh, which will be the focal point because the debt ceiling, apparently, if you're just joining us, the Republicans have decided that they're not gonna try to take the hill on the debt ceiling fight now.
It's too iffy.
Uh we're going to be we're gonna really focus on the Ryan budget.
That's that's where we are at the uh at the latest.
All right, let's take the commercial break that I vowed last hour not to lose because of Obama's speech.
And if he's on time, according to the White House, shouldn't be long after we get back, that we're all treated to whatever it is he has to say for a while.
Okay, about eleven minutes ago, the White House said that the President would be ten minutes late, ten minutes delayed in uh his remarks, his uh campaign speech uh on winning the future with tax increases.
We are still awaiting the president's remarks.
And uh now they just saw another five minutes.
What I we we've talked about this here at the uh EIB network uh during our commercial break.
Here's what we think is happening.
We think that the White House is having to regroup.
Normally we don't carry.
We do not JIP or broadcast live the President's remarks.
We wait and play highlights on our audio soundbite role.
But now we've announced that we're going to, and I think what's happening is that the uh teleprompter pauses are being tightened.
And I think the speech coaches are telling the president, look, Limbaugh is gonna be jipping you and probably commenting as you go.
So don't pause as much.
Don't give limb any more entry points than you have to, in other words.
And we're probably rehearsing and seeing if it can work out.
This is Snerdley's theory.
Brian's theory is that they are going to cancel the speech or postpone until after three o'clock.
Since they have determined that we are going to cover it here.
We'll see.
In the meantime, we're going to go back to the phones.
Mike in Columbia, South Carolina.
Hi, sir.
Welcome to the program.
Hi, Ryan Rush, Ditto's for all you do.
Thank you, sir.
If the debt ceiling increase is so important to Obama and to the nation, as he would put it, and if the Ryan plan is so important to the GOP, as I think it is, why cannot, why does not the GOP make the deal?
You want the debt ceiling increase?
Fine.
Here's ob here's Ryan care.
Here's the Ryan's budget.
It's a two-for-deal in a sense.
You need this so bad, that's great.
We're going to ensure that the cap that we put in place in this new ceiling is adhered to through Ryan's budget.
Okay, let me ask you a quick comment.
Question.
In all candor, what makes you think?
What have you seen lately?
It makes you think the Democrats want to compromise with uh the Republicans.
I don't think they do, but I think they have to.
The debt ceiling they're portraying and the media is portraying as having their backs against the wall.
The nation is at risk.
We're gonna fall.
The Republicans are already out there today saying, you know, we're not we're not gonna fight them on the debt ceiling.
We're not gonna fight them on the debt.
We're gonna we're gonna focus on the Ryan budget now.
There's too much at stake here.
Uh we can't afford a U.S. default.
The Republican leaders are are are using the same words that the Democrats are in talking about the uh the danger here in in uh not raising the debt cities.
I think the Republicans have already caved on it.
I I don't think we've heard it from them officially.
So let's give them a chance.
Well, we'll see.
Here in the meantime, the uh the uh leader of the regime has found the podium, ladies and gentlemen.
Our microphones are turned on, is that right?
He's at George Washington University, by the way.
One of the reasons that I worked so hard with Democrats and Republicans to keep the government open was so that I could show up here today.
I want to make sure that all of you had one more excuse to skip class.
You're welcome.
Uh I want to give a special thanks to uh Stephen Knapp, the President of GW.
Uh he I just saw him.
Where is he?
There he is, right there.
I want to uh we've got a lot of distinguished guests here, a couple of people I want to uh acknowledge.
First of all, uh my outstanding Vice President Joe Biden is here.
Uh our Secretary of the Treasury, Tim Geitner is in the House.
Oh, wow, aren't you excited?
Jack Lou, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Gene Sperling, uh Chair of the National Economic Council is here.
It's bigger than everyone.
Members of our bipartisan fiscal commissioner here, including the two outstanding chairs, uh Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson are here.
We have a number of members of Congress here today.
Uh I'm grateful uh for all of you taking the time uh to attend.
Uh what we've been debating here in Washington uh over the last few weeks will affect uh the lives of the students here and families all across America in potentially profound ways.
This debate over budgets and deficits is about more than just numbers on a page.
Really?
It's about more than just cutting and spending.
It's about the kind of future that we want.
It's about the kind of country that we believe in.
You believe.
And that's what I want to spend some time talking about today.
Good.
From our first days as a nation, we have put our faith in free markets and free enterprise as the engine of America's wealth and prosperity.
It hadn't worked, has it?
More than citizens of any other country, we are rugged individualists.
Oh, come on.
I can't.
A self-reliant people.
With a healthy skepticism of too much government.
He doesn't believe this.
But there's always been another thread running through our history.
Yeah, here we go.
A belief that we're all connected.
And that there are some things we can only do together as a nation.
Government.
We believe in the words of the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, that through government we should do together what we cannot do as well for ourselves.
And so we've built a strong military to keep us secure in public schools and universities, to educate our citizens.
We've laid down railroads and highways to facilitate travel and commerce.
Recycling.
We supported the work of scientists and researchers whose discoveries have saved lives.
What you're hearing here, because we've got a commercial break to take, we're going to take it.
And led to countless jobs for the expansion of government.
That's what you're getting here.
From these investments.
And we're a more prosperous country as a result.
Nope.
Nope, nope, nope, nope.
Part of this American belief that we're all connected also expresses itself in a conviction that each one of us deserves some basic measure of security and dignity.
We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, hard times or bad luck, a crippling illness or a layoff, may strike any one of us.
This stuff is right out of his book, folks.
This is right out of the audacity of hope.
So we contribute To programs like Medicare and Social Security.
Which guarantee us health care and a measure of basic income after a lifetime of hard work.
Unemployment insurance, which protects us against unexpected job loss.
And Medicaid, which provides care for millions of seniors in nursing homes, poor children, those with disabilities.
We're a better country because of these commitments.
I'll go further.
We would not be a great country without those commitments.
And for much of the last century, our nation found a way to afford the All right, that's it.
Take it out.
This is that's not what has made us a great country.
Social Security, Medicare, that's that's not what has defined our greatness, and everybody knows it.
So you're getting here just we know what's coming.
More government, more taxes, higher taxes, more together, there's more interconnectedness, more whatever.
This is the buildup, this is the sales pitch for more government.
Uh the build-up for more of what has brought us to the brink of financial disaster.
Time now for our promised and pledged EIB obscene profit timeout.
He just said it.
He just said it.
Our problem is trillions of dollars in unpaid for tax cuts.
Trillions of dollars in unpaid for tax cuts.
The Bush tax cuts.
He's back on that.
That's why we are where we are today.
He's blaming this deficit and this debt on George W. Bush.
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