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June 30, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:43
June 30, 2011, Thursday, Hour #2
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Breaks my heart, folks.
I can't tell you 39%.
39% of the American people believe the U.S. economy is now entered permanent decline, according to a new poll from the CBS New York Times poll.
And sixty-three percent of the country believe it's headed in the wrong direction.
I don't know.
I don't know how to voice my frustration.
Uh, and I I don't know how to um I don't know how to voice my my sorrow over this.
Real people are affected, and there's no there's no empathy from this White House.
There's no I don't mean sympathy.
There's no connection here.
There's no people are just a bunch of robots.
The liberals, this is just one giant social experiment.
People's lives here are being gutted.
And these are people that are in large part playing by the rules, trying as hard as they can.
And every time they uh make a move, there's a new obstacle in their way, or the threat of a new obstacle in their way.
Welcome back, folks.
It's Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network.
Great to have you here.
Telephone number is 800-282-2882 and the email address, L Rushboard, EIBNet.com.
It's important to point out polling data, even back in the Great Depression, nobody believed the situation was permanent, my friends.
This is striking.
39% of Americans believe the economy has now entered a permanent decline, meaning they don't think it's ever going to reverse.
Nobody thought that during the depression.
Nobody believed the situation was permanent.
People still believe that prosperity was just around the corner.
And by the way, that corporate jet thing, I need to clarify one thing.
It's even worse than I said.
That $3 billion that would be generated by getting rid of the accelerated depreciation tax break for corporate jets, that's over 10 years.
Over 10 years.
That's how insignificant an amount of money we're talking about.
In terms of the corporate tax break, it would raise $3 billion over 10 years, yet this year alone we're going to spend $42 billion on student assistance.
And whatever assistance we're giving them, it isn't working.
Because they aren't learning anything that is valuable to them.
So look at this.
There are still reasons that people should be optimistic.
And that's one of the reasons why we are here at the EIB network is to try to maintain and still promote optimism.
Because we're going to come through this, and we're going to triumph over this.
And we're going to do it on election day in November in 2012.
We actually started last November with that election.
I want to take you to Wisconsin.
We can cut our way to prosperity.
The President of the United States says that we cannot cut our way to prosperity.
We can.
Scott Walker is the governor of Wisconsin.
Little story here from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Cost savings from worker contributions to health care and retirement taking effect today as part of the new collective bargaining laws will swing the Cocona School District from a 400,000 budget deficit to an estimated one and a half million dollar surplus.
The post-crescent newspaper in Appleton reports.
The district tells the Post Crescent it plans to hire teachers and reduce class size.
What does this mean?
It means, remember, all of those fights and all of those protests and all the bickering and all the caterwalling and all the complaining from these public employees in Wisconsin, but taking their collective bargaining rights away from them.
And suggesting, not suggesting, mandating that finally, for the first time, they start contributing a little bit to their own pensions and their own health care benefits.
That law goes into effect and immediately turns a $400,000 budget deficit into a $1.5 million surplus in one school district.
It's a win-win.
Public sector employees are paid by the taxpayers.
It is not too much to ask public sector workers to contribute a little bit to their own pensions and to their own health care.
They're not having to pay for all of it.
They're now having to pay a little.
But that little that they are contributing themselves, which is now not having to be paid for by the taxpayers, has resulted in a flip from a $400,000 budget deficit to an estimated $1.5 million surplus in one school district in Wisconsin.
This is an example of a Republican governor.
We talked yesterday about how Republican governors, conservative Republican governors, are showing the way.
How this can be done, how this can be fixed.
And by the way, these public sector employees who are now contributing a little to their pensions and a little to their health care.
They're still getting up every day.
They're still able to turn on the TV and watch whatever channel they want.
They're able to eat breakfast, they're able to get in their cars, go to gas station, put gasoline in a tank, and head to work.
After work, they're able to go home, go to a movie, whatever they want to do.
Their lives have not been destroyed.
They've not been turned into paupers.
They simply have been asked to contribute a little bit to their own retirement rather than their taxpayer neighbors paying all of it.
And voila.
We're running a surplus of one and a half million dollars in one school district in the state of Wisconsin.
Cutting spending is what this is.
State spending in Wisconsin has been cut because individuals are now forced to assume a small bit of responsibility for their own wherewithal.
As an added bonus, we've cut into the Democrat public sector union money laundering scheme in the same time.
Not fully, not totally.
But here's an example.
Conservatism works every time it's tried.
Scott Walker's budget helps the children.
A school district has a one and a half billion, a million dollar surplus.
And we have our own president yesterday, corporate jets versus children.
Republicans hate the kids.
Republicans hate the elderly.
Republicans want everybody to die.
The oil companies want their customers to get poisoned.
Walmart wants their customers to die somehow.
If you listen to these people on the left, in the meantime, a Republican governor stood firm, stood tall during all of that, and ends up cutting spending, ending the money laundering scheme, and helping the children and producing a budget surplus in just one screw district in the state of Wisconsin.
Meanwhile, the jobs picture remains ugly as weekly claims are still high.
This is from a flummoxed Reuters flummoxed CNBC.
they just don't get it.
And Obama owns this ugly jobs picture.
In fact, he painted it.
The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits was mostly unchanged last week, evidence that the struggling economy isn't generating many jobs.
Applications have topped 400,000 for 12 straight weeks.
Applications had fallen in February to 375,000, a level that signals sustainable growth, but it didn't stay there.
Now, how embarrassingly adolescent was it for Obama to lecture Congress for being lazy.
He's golfing, he's vacationing his way to irrelevancy.
He's lashing out because Greek columns and godlike echoes and speeches no longer work, folks.
He's mired in the quicksand of his own decisions.
Now, speaking of the Republicans, how do you respond to a serial liar?
This is a question that we have all faced.
You know, everybody asks me all the well, what should the Republicans do?
What should we by the way?
Nobody's been laid off in Wisconsin either.
Thanks to Scott Walker to Republicans, it is an important point.
Nobody's been laid off in the process of the budget cuts that produced a one and a half million dollar surplus in that school district.
Not one person has been fired or laid off.
So none of the horror that was predicted has come to pass.
In fact, just the exact opposite of the horror has come to pass.
I have people ask me all the way, well, what should a Republicans do?
Or why don't the Republicans say this?
Or why don't the Republicans well, how do you respond to a serial liar?
Do you uh you take every sentence of a speech or a press conference line by line, and do you say this isn't so and that isn't so?
Do you try to explain why you don't hate the elderly or why you don't hate the poor, or why you don't hate children, or why you don't hate cats and dogs, why you don't hate rainbows.
The Republicans, led by conservative Republicans, have put forth plans to cap spending, taxes, and regulations.
They have a means to deal with the debt ceiling increase, which is simple.
It's basically spending cuts for every dollar over the limit.
This is good.
Every day Republicans ought to propose new cuts in spending.
That's the elixir here.
Let Jay Carney make the excuses.
Every day propose the elimination of some more red tape.
Do it with specificity, and let Jay Carney stand up there at the White House briefing looking stupid.
Every day explain how tax cuts increase revenues.
You want a statistic?
Try this one.
After the Bush investment tax, this is from the uh Wall Street Journal.
After the Bush investment tax cuts of 2003, the now famous Bush tax cuts that were extended last December in the uh lame duck session.
After the Bush tax cuts of 2003, tax revenues were 786 billion dollars higher in 2007 than they were in 2003.
The biggest four-year increase in American history.
In 2003, tax revenues were $1.7 trillion.
After the Bush tax cuts, four years later...
The revenue generated was 2.5 trillion.
We went from 1.7 to 2.5 trillion after the Bush tax cuts.
Tax cuts generated revenue.
Now, the dirty little secret here is the Democrats don't care about the revenue.
They care about the so-called fairness.
They care about the so-called percentages.
But the if if you're concerned about debt, if you're concerned about raising revenue, if you're concerned about generating economic growth, if you want jobs, the blueprint is there.
And the opposite of that blueprint has been used since Obama assumed office.
I would like for some reporter to throw those numbers at Jay Carney at the White House press briefing and say, Do you care to comment, Mr. Shipman?
Well, I know it never happened.
We can sit here and fantasize.
But let the president and his mouthpiece respond to some proposals, but most of all, let him respond to the economic numbers produced by the economy he owns as they roll in.
Anyway, got to take a break here, folks.
We'll come back and get to your phone calls.
I need to put some people here to work, and I need to be honest in my pledge to you to get to your call.
So sit tight, coming right back and talking to you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Got an email, uh, dear rush.
It does not break my heart that so many people see a permanent decline.
It's about the New York Times CBS poll.
39%.
The American people think the economy is in a permanent decline.
I'm glad so many think we're in decline.
That's good news.
We need people to realize what's happening.
And it's the direct result of Obama nomics, not Bush, not the GOP.
It's all a result of the Democrats.
Liberalism, bam.
It looks bad, but we can fix it.
We just need one more election.
All is not lost.
Well, I'm not saying all is lost.
I just it it the greatest nation in the history of the world.
Unparalleled prosperity and opportunity for everybody in the world generated by this country.
And for residents here to 39% think that we are in permanent decline.
Whoa, that's th that that is such a great illustration of the damage done by Barack Obama.
Now, if you want to look at that as uh as good news in the sense that people realize what's happened.
Well, if there is an accompanying we got a vote Republican or conservative as a result of the opinion fine and dandy, it still bothers me that people in this country have that attitude about it.
Anyway, where are we starting?
Mountain New York and Scott, your first.
It's great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hi, Ross.
Thanks for taking my call.
You bet, sir.
I'm just wondering after listen listening to Obama's press conference.
I'm really, really wondering if this guy is somewhat interested in a deal.
I'm really wondering.
I mean, this guy he I I will take it with Chris Christie.
You mean a uh you mean a deal on the debt ceiling?
Yes, yes.
I'm I will take it with Chris Christie.
Chris Christie was on me the press, and he explained for David Gregory how he was able to cut a deal on pension reform with democratic lec legislature in New Jersey.
Explained, you know what I would I would tell you, David uh Gregory?
He spoke to Dave Gregory.
He said, Do you know what I would tell you?
We didn't demagogue each other.
When you start demagoguing, you you are a non-starter.
Here we have President Barack Obama, the leader of America, and why does it have you done on by his press conference?
Just demagoguing the Republicans.
He's he's an all-starter.
And what a what does he mean?
He goes comparing the deficit, the death ceiling to Malina Sasha's spelling test?
I don't get it.
What which planet is he living on?
Well, I know it's hard to understand this guy if you don't uh where are you from, by the way.
I'm amongst in New York.
No, but your nationality.
Oh, I'm Jewish.
You're Jewish.
Um then you get it.
Uh I'm not I you sound like you're from a different country.
I don't mean to be insulting here.
It's no problem.
No, don't take it as an insult.
It's not a problem.
I was wondering if you had experience with a totalitarian regime.
We have a lot of people that call here from former Eastern block countries.
I thought you might be one of those because you sound your attitude sounds like somebody um uh recently discovered freedom from oppression, and you're listening to some guy to remind you of what it was like when you lived in tyranny.
Uh-huh.
I know I'm I'm originally born in in the USA.
I'm just not talking a lot of English, so that's wonderful.
I'm happy to have you on the program, brother.
Okay, thank you.
Um you're exactly right.
You what you were dealing with a man child here.
You're you're trying to analyze an adult when in fact what we have here is a is a narcissist who since childhood has had the way paved for him.
Exactly.
Uh and and that's why it's it's a little dangerous here because this is the first time anything's ever gone wrong.
And it's the first time it's ever gone wrong directly traceable to him.
And how he's dealing with it is that that's why you get these nonsensical comparisons to his daughters whose ages he doesn't even know finishing their homework early versus Congress not getting done.
Well, he's out playing golf or plotting his next vacation.
Well, he said he said he was here take um uh taking on Bin Laden.
They took him from a golf game.
He shall take on Bin Laden.
Uh that's right.
They have to take him away from a golf game.
Problem is they had Bin Laden all the way last August.
It took them months to get Obama to even act on that.
Yep.
Well, I you know, the um you compare Obama.
Uh do I think there's gonna be a deal on the on the debt ceiling.
Uh I'm being asked if I think there's going to be a deal on the debt ceiling, and I think that's a distraction.
I th I think that's getting caught up in this it in the uh in the minutiae.
As to whether or not there's gonna be a of course, somewhere down the line there's gonna be a deal on the debt ceiling.
Of course there will be.
There's no question there will be.
Anyway, uh more on that when we come back.
What I mean, folks, the the the debt ceiling business it's just it's just the latest phony crisis.
It's just the latest tarp.
It's just the latest uh uh stimulus.
It's just the latest auto bailout.
We we better do this in a country's finished.
If we don't do this, why you might have to give up two of your kids if we don't do this, it's the end of the world as we know it.
It's it's it's how the Democrats sell everything.
And all this is is a ploy to raise spending to avoid cutting spending.
It's the it's the same old thing.
Liberals are who they are, folks.
Democrats are who they are.
The contrast could not be more stark.
And the choices that we face in the future could not be more stark.
In fact, there's a there's a great piece.
This guy, Daniel Henniger, at the Wall Street Journal, writes every Thursday column, and uh his column this week is is superb and it puts this debt limit thing in perfect perspective.
He calls it a debt limit election.
This is this column plays right off the points that I was making yesterday.
I'll get to it here in just a second, but I'm gonna get a couple of more phone calls in here.
Uh uh, Jack and Peoria.
Jack, welcome to the uh EIB network.
Great to have you here.
Well, good afternoon, Rush.
Nice to talk to you.
Thank you, sir.
I asked you a call screener yesterday.
I guess it's Mr. Snerdley, uh, interesting question about do you think any politician is ever gonna have the guts to come out and say we have to cut entitlements.
American people now just take them as a God-given right.
And I would come out if I was running for president and say, hey, we cannot afford to give you thirty-six months of unemployment.
If you can't get it in twenty-six weeks like you used to get it, tough.
You're on your own.
Um I don't think any politicians ever gonna say that.
I don't think they would ever get elected.
Um excuse me, Paul Ryan has.
Oh, he has.
Well, very good.
Uh yeah.
Uh Paul Ryan has proposed significant changes to the Medicare entitlement.
But if you stop and look at the entitlements people are getting now, you know, the seventy five hundred dollars tax break to buy a Shivvy vote.
Uh, how many people are getting By the way?
That's not an entitlement.
Oh, okay.
How about the S and all subject?
Let me tell you what, that's not an entire entitlements are Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, uh uh and and they make up almost sixty percent of the budget, if not more.
The things you're talking about uh are individual pieces of of legislation.
The subsidy seventy five hundred dollars to buy a car nobody wants.
Ethanol subsidies.
But there are people.
Tim Pollenty went to Iowa when he announced his presidential intentions and said we can no longer afford them.
I think I think Michelle Bachman has done the same.
The Republicans are proposing these things.
This is the point.
There's real work being done out there.
There's real guts being shown.
The Democrats are sitting around demagonging everything.
Entitlements are things that we are supposed to have paid into, like Social Security, like Medicare.
Medicaid is an entitlement.
Well, we actually we do pay into it.
Hell, we pay into everything.
But no, the Republicans are proposing all kinds of things like this that we can no longer afford.
In fact, there's a there's a there was a piece.
I had it in yesterday's stack.
I think I've still I've got to find it.
Steve Ratner.
This blew my mind.
By the way, Steve Ratner is the best friend of that little pinch.
Schultzberger runs the New York Times.
Steve Ratner used to be a Lazard for a Steve Ratner is part of the New York ruling class social elite.
Steve Ratner was the first guy to run General Motors when Obama bought it.
And he had a piece.
It's either in the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, just ripping ethanol subsidies to shreds.
And he's a huge liberal.
I'll find it here during the uh during the break.
I've got, because I didn't get to a lot of yesterday's stack, and I've got it here somewhere.
But no, there are a lot of people proposing these things, just not being proposed by anybody on the Democrat side of the aisle.
The proposals are being made, and then the Democrats are demagoguing and character assassinating, uh playing the class enemy card whatever they can.
You know, you're you actually make a good point out there, Jack.
You're what would what you think entitlements are.
People are confusing entitlements with benefits.
And that's one of the reasons that we are in severe problems because people think, too many people think, that being an American means they're entitled to benefits.
And you know what that entails.
Sick days, veterinarian days, vacation days, more sick days, babysitter days, uh, social security, uh student loans that you don't have to repay.
Yeah, Ratner wrote that for the New York Times.
I I it was it was an anti-ethanol editorial, and it was in the New York Times.
Uh and and you know, this is it was stunning.
Four out of every ten ears of corn go to ethanol.
Four out of ten ears of corn do not go to the production of food.
Here's how it starts.
Feeling the need for an example of government policy run amok, look no further than the box of cornflakes on your kitchen shelf.
In its myriad corn-related interventions, Washington has managed simultaneously to help drive up food prices and add tens of billions of dollars to the deficit while arguably increasing energy use and harming the environment.
Now, I I was it's it's all true.
The source is what stunned me.
Steve Ratner and the fact that it was in the New York Times.
But here now, here uh uh uh back to Daniel Henniger.
Democrats say that they won't vote to raise the debt limit unless they get someone in the private sector to pay higher taxes.
Republicans say they won't raise the debt limit unless they get reductions in public sector spending without raising taxes.
Shall we put this to a Vote, not a vote of Congress, but of the American people, the 130 million or so who will vote for president November 2012.
The debt limit fight is being depicted as mostly a green eyeshades funding technicality dating back not surprisingly to 1939.
It's bigger than that.
When Congressman Paul Ryan says that we have arrived at a defining moment, this is what he means.
The issues that have surfaced in the debt limit struggle will define how this country's people see themselves for at least a generation.
And this is exactly what I was saying yesterday.
We have to elect conservatives to turn this around.
Not just Republicans, conservative Republicans.
We have here a generational challenge.
We have to fix this horrible mistake that was made in 2008, electing Obama.
This experiment in unchecked liberalism has proved beyond disastrous.
Barack Obama is the greatest natural disaster of our lifetime.
Forget Hurricane Katrina.
And so the things embodied in this debt ceiling argument or debate are going to be on the ballot.
One way or the other.
And the people of this country are going to tell us what kind of country they want.
That's why that election's crucial.
The nation's total debt, now 14.29 trillion dollars, is the cumulative result of budget deficits extending back to at least 30 years.
Republicans blame all of this on out-of-control spending.
But no.
That debt is the product of our politics of open elections and successive Congresses and presidencies.
Some of them Republicans sifting through all sorts of public wants, such as subsidized medical care for the elderly.
Running alongside the American people went to work every day and produced the tax revenue that enabled these wants to become history's biggest public budget.
point here is that everything we have here was voted on.
The American people wanted the elderly taken care of.
The American people wanted Social Security.
The American people, All of these things.
I don't totally agree with all of that, but I get the point that Mr. Henniger's making here.
He said this isn't just numbers.
It's who we are and what we've become.
Politics are us.
Now, after all these decades of politicking, the two parties have arrived at a 14 trillion dollar debt limit.
And we're going to decide right here who we will be in the future.
Some part of the American people manifestly, obviously does not want to go further into what this debt represents.
Some do.
Some do want to go further into debt.
Every damned one of them a Democrat.
Now, as always, I'm reading for Mr. Henniger, we'll work this out, not with tear gas in the streets, but through two political parties.
Independent voters, that great swath of Hamlets who never quite know what they want, will have to cast a vote in 2012 that matters beyond the next election cycle.
Now the way we watch these fights through the media suggests four guys named Obama, Boehner, Biden, and McConnell work something out.
And the ship of state will groan forward, but that's not quite true.
This debt fight is the result of opposed forces in the body politic more powerful than this foresome of politicians.
In November of 2010, an anxious American public, stunned by the wreckage caused by the 2008 financial crisis, swept Republicans into power.
Absent those political forces, it's likely a debt limit increase with Mickey Mouse taxes already would have passed the status quo Congress with Republicans waving some matador defense at the onrushing Trillions.
So far it hasn't happened.
As to the Democrats, given the huge scale of the spending numbers beneath the debt reduction talks, how to explain the mismatch of their piddling cats and dogs tax proposals, such as taxing private jets for them, the negotiations numbers are irrelevant.
What matters is protecting the principle of raising taxes to pay for public spending in the future.
That's all the Democrats care about.
Raising taxes to pay for more spending in the future.
So that's one thing you're going to have to vote on in November of 2012.
Now, in the universe inhabited by this generation's Democrats, public spending is life and taxes are their oxygen.
Or as I would say, their fanatical religion.
In this universe inhabited by this generation's Democrats, public spending is life Taxes are their oxygen.
The party's base, progressives, unionists, liberal politicians, comedians, is furious over the Obama decision in December to extend the Bush tax rates.
Now they're engulfed in the math of this spending reduction nightmare with the safety valve of big taxes shut.
The debt limit debate has made explicit that the Democrats will address whatever debt and deficit concerns are agitating the public by matching an upward spending curve with a steadily rising stream of tax revenue.
That's all they care about.
More spending and raising taxes ostensibly to pay for it.
But they could never raise enough taxes to cover all the spending that they plan.
That's why we're 14 trillion dollars in debt.
So what's ultimately at stake here may be found in the pages of the Congressional Budget Office's long-term budget outlook released this month.
I'll tell you about that after I take a brief time out here.
Don't go away.
Don't go away.
Now, what is ultimately at stake is in the pages of the CBO long-term budget outlook released this month from 2022 through 2085.
They project an annual growth of our economy of 2.2% and growth in real earnings per worker of 1.4% for 63 years.
Folks, the CBO has just projected that we are Europe.
2.2% growth every year and wages that go up 1.4% every year.
That's not who we are.
That's what we're going to become if this isn't stopped.
Mr. Hinniger says here, given the stakes, any Republican candidate, presidential candidate, who tries to get the nomination with no more argument than the economy is all Obama's fault should be defeated.
People are looking for a path forward, not some Republican version of hope and change.
And what he means by this is, yeah, go ahead and blame Obama, but don't make that the basis.
We have fundamentally got to change the way we view our country and what the purpose of our government is.
And it is not to guarantee the equality of outcomes.
And that's what's at stake in the next election.
And I will be back.
And I know you want that to happen as much as I do.
Okay, so the CBO is projecting growth of 2.2% every year for the next 63 years.
The New York Times called a 3.3% GDP a recession when Bush was in office.
Just to put this in perspective, you sit tight.
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