Rush Limbaugh Program - July 11, 2011, Monday, Hour #3

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July 11, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program

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July 11, 2011, Monday, Hour #3

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	Okay, we're back.
	It's Rush Limbaugh and the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
	Telephone number is 800-282-2882, the email address ilrushbaugh at eibnet.com.
	Okay.
	Yeah, well, the Russians wanted Reagan to get rid of SDI.
	That's what Reykjavik was about.
	Gorbachev shows up, if you'll get rid of the strategic defense initiative, Star Wars, which we, of course, we hadn't deployed.
	We just, at that point in time, Reagan had simply said, we'll do it.
	And that's what broke the Soviet Union, by the way.
	They were a third world nation with a first world army is all they were.
	And they were economically Greece and Portugal and all these other place combined.
	They were just bankrupt.
	I mean, folks, there were lines a mile long for bread in the Soviet Union.
	You get vodka anytime you wanted it.
	But that was about it.
	And everybody did.
	So Gorbachev shows up at Reykjavik and says, look, if you guys get rid of SDI, Reagan had proposed banning all ballistic missiles, but he wanted to continue research on SDI.
	And he was willing to share it, by the way, with the world, a missile shield that would shoot down any nuke that was launched from anywhere.
	And Gorbachev said, nope, nope.
	We'll only go along with you getting rid of all the nukes if you give up this SDI business.
	And Reagan said, no.
	And of course, why give up SDI?
	It was a purely defensive mechanism.
	It wasn't offensive at all.
	And Gorbachev was trying to pull a trick, typical liberal Democrat trick.
	It's like, I'll give you what you want if you get rid of this.
	And then, oh, by the way, we won't get rid of our nukes.
	That would have been the result.
	The Russians would have not gotten rid of the Soviets would have not gotten rid of their nukes.
	We would have promised to do away with SDI.
	And Reagan knew it.
	He said, nope, nope, not happening.
	He had experience dealing with liberal Democrats in the Tefrotax War in 1982.
	That's he saw Gorbachev as another one of them.
	Except he had the big capital C in front of his name as well, County Pinko.
	So that's what it was.
	Now, this 14th Amendment story that our last caller called about, it's a preposterous idea.
	There's the notion here that somewhere in the 14th Amendment it says that the president can spend money without Congress knowing about it or approving it.
	The idea is preposterous, and it was first floated as a trial balloon on a bunch of left-wing blogs from the White House.
	The White House put it out.
	The left-wing blogs run with it.
	Then the AP picks it up as though it's a genuinely referenced and sourced story from constitutional scholars.
	Then it goes into the Democrat Party's political machine.
	Now Geithner is denying he ever supported the idea, but he did.
	Geithner was one of the guys first talking about its possibility.
	Now, some legal experts believe that he could, Obama citing the 14th Amendment adopted in 1868, the validity of the public debt of the United States authorized by law shall not be questioned.
	And there's more to this.
	There was a great piece at nationalreview.com on Friday or Saturday by John Burlough, who was the director of the Center for Investors and Entrepreneurs at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
	And his piece was entitled Constitutional Nonsense on the Debt.
	Lo and behold, as we celebrated this 4th of July amid the debt ceiling fight, the net roots and progressive pundits suddenly discovered the Constitution's relevance in fiscal matters.
	It doesn't seem like that long ago, because it wasn't that long ago, that they ridiculed the very idea of constitutional limits on Congress in economic policymaking.
	They even made fun of the Republicans' public reading of the Constitution at the beginning of the current session of the new House rule requiring a statement of the constitutional authority for bills.
	Ian Millheiser wrote at Think Progress: The constitutional lunatics are now in charge of the Republican asylum.
	He said it was completely unnecessary for Congress to cite constitutional justification for its actions because Article 1 of the Constitution gives Congress broad authority and leaves budgeting decisions almost entirely to the judgment of Congress.
	But now that the Republican Congress is exercising this broad authority, Millheiser and others at the Huffington Post of the New Republic have suddenly discovered that in one instance, the Constitution supposedly limits Congress's economic powers.
	Section 4 of the 14th Amendment, which states that the validity of the public debt of the United States authorized by law shall not be questioned, makes the debt ceiling itself unconstitutional.
	The left-wing blogs started out by saying that Section 4 of the 14th Amendment, the validity of the public debt of the U.S., shall not be questioned.
	They think that makes the debt ceiling unconstitutional.
	People who were railing against the unitary executive a few years ago are now arguing if Congress doesn't give Obama what he wants, the 14th Amendment gives Obama the constitutional authority to issue new debt all by himself.
	Otherwise, there wouldn't be enough money to pay the existing debt.
	The 14th Amendment doesn't allow that, they say.
	Just a few months after arguing majestically about how the Constitution puts virtually no limits on the judgment of Congress, left-wing bloggers now hope the White House begins seriously exploring whether the Constitution will save America's economy from Republicans' extortionary tactics.
	And then Mr. Burlau cites even more from left-wing bloggers at Fire Dog Lake and some other places.
	And then writes, this tortured interpretation of the 14th Amendment actually shows why members of Congress should have participated in the public reading of the entire Constitution earlier this year.
	If they had done that, they might not have skipped over an essential passage regarding the power to borrow.
	Essentially, what we have here is another bunch of lies and an attempt to deceive by a bunch of people that think the Constitution is worth nothing more than toilet paper except when they want it to be gold.
	Totally, in order to advance an unconstitutional idea, put out blog posts and get the media and the Democrat Party to pick it up.
	That the Constitution says something that it doesn't.
	I mean, the height of dishonesty.
	They might not have skipped over an essential passage regarding the power to borrow.
	Article 1, Section 8, The same part of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to tax, appropriate, and regulate commerce also states the Congress shall have power to borrow money on the credit of the United States.
	The 14th Amendment doesn't affect that power one bit.
	The Congress shall have the power to borrow money on the credit of the not the president.
	And the 14th Amendment doesn't affect that at all.
	It applies only to debt authorized by law.
	As Catholic University Law School distinguished scholar John Baker wrote recently, National Review Online, only Congress makes the law, not the president.
	What it perhaps does do based on one Supreme Court case is require the Treasury Department to prioritize payment of existing debt to bondholders over other spending in the event the debt ceiling isn't raised.
	So if the government finds itself short on cash, it has to keep paying the bondholders, as we said Friday, and then find the necessary savings in some other part of the budget.
	This is exactly what will happen if we don't raise the debt ceiling, just like the monopoly game I described to you.
	And this is exactly what conservatives like Senator Pat Toomey have been trying to codify through legislation.
	As Michael McConnell, distinguished director of Stanford Constitutional Law Center, has put it, the real effect of Section 4 of the 14th Amendment is almost the opposite of what hopeful voices in Washington are saying.
	Let me let me excerpt this because it goes over a couple more pages.
	Cites Supreme Court case, Perry versus United States, may require paying bondholders first, but it does not allow the issuing of new debt without congressional authorization.
	The Supreme Court does not, that one case that they're citing does not give the president any authority.
	They're just, they've made it up.
	They're totally lying about this.
	And any of you who have bought this 14th Amendment business know that it is bogus.
	So far, these people have found just one Supreme Court case that purportedly supports their case for borrowing without congressional authorization, Perry versus U.S., it was a 1935 case, which challenged the Roosevelt administration's repudiation of a gold clause in a U.S. bond.
	But the court's opinion in this case reaffirms that only Congress can approve the issuance of new debt.
	In authorizing the Congress to borrow money, the Constitution empowers Congress to fix the amount to be borrowed and the terms of payment.
	The court also ruled the U.S. government cannot shirk its obligations to bondholders from existing debt, a point that if held as binding president, works to conservatives' advantage.
	As Professor Baker noted, the ruling is somewhat ambiguous.
	The plurality opinion did not rule that the plaintiff was entitled to payment in gold, but merely upheld the obligation of government to pay the bondholder in legal tender currency.
	Here's another thing.
	Public debt does not include government benefits.
	Now, this is a biggie.
	And this is Supreme Court ruling.
	Liberal constitutionalists argue that the term public debt embraces every transfer payment of every spending program under the sun.
	But the Supreme Court shot down that argument that government benefits, even if they are labeled entitlements, represent contractual obligations.
	And he cites the case here.
	Well, the bottom line is, folks, that the 14th Amendment does not authorize the president to spend money or issue new debt.
	The one Supreme Court case that they cite actually affirms the opposite.
	1935 Supreme Court case ruled that the debt ceiling is constitutional.
	Now you say, why are they confused?
	They're not confused.
	They're playing games.
	They are lying.
	They are trashing the Constitution.
	They're doing anything they can.
	They know that their position is in quicksand.
	They are trying to make conservatives believe, because they've made fun of us for being constitutionalists.
	So they think the only way they can get us is to say the Constitution says, hey, you guys, the Constitution says our guy can borrow money.
	It does not say that.
	It says, in fact, it says the opposite of what the left is trying to make it sound as though it says.
	All right, be right back, my friends.
	Much more straight ahead here on the EIB network.
	Don't go away.
	Here it is, folks.
	I mean, very simply, from that Supreme Court case, Perry versus the U.S. in 1935, the power given Congress to borrow money on credit of the United States is unqualified and vital to the government.
	And the binding quality of the promise of the United States is the essence of the credit pledged.
	Again, this was a case where a bondholder wanted to be paid when his bond matured in gold.
	And the Supreme Court said the government pay him in whatever medium they damn well felt like as long as it was legal.
	Said, screw you, buddy.
	If they want to pay you in dollars, they're going to pay you in dollars.
	They don't have to give you gold.
	But the case was not about which branch of government can borrow money, per se.
	I mean, did the Bush administration come up with these cockamamie theories when the Democrats voted against raising a debt ceiling?
	No.
	It's only the dishonest left that comes up with this kind of stuff.
	But trust me, there's nothing to it.
	Binghamton, New York.
	Hello, Richard.
	Great you called.
	Great to have you on the EIB network.
	Hi.
	Hi.
	How are you, Rich?
	Excellent, sir.
	Thank you.
	Yes, I'm probably the perfect age for this.
	I'm 66 years old.
	But this whole argument of debt ceilings, taxes, cuts, cutting entitlements, it all goes away if you take care of one thing.
	Obamacare.
	Obamacare.
	Right.
	Get rid of it and all it goes away.
	Number one, in there, there's the Democrats taking care of us, good old elderly folks.
	And there's one half trillion dollars in, now they call them savings.
	If Republicans do what they're called, cuts to Medicare in there.
	Basically what that means, those have already started.
	You know, they've cut the doctor's pay, which has driven doctors into back into the hospital practices.
	And there's huge increases in spending, way beyond that half trillion for Medicaid coming, which is going to have a tremendous impact in New York.
	And automatically, you don't need any increase in the debt ceiling if you cut that.
	In fact, all the Republicans really have to do is just sit back and let Obama suffer the consequences when the Medicaid cuts start coming.
	That's all they've got to do, period.
	That's correct.
	Really, I mean, it's, it's, you're, you're so right.
	If Obamacare were repealed, you know, that talk, Obama wants entitlements talked about.
	He makes a big deal, even saying so today.
	He's willing to put entitlements on the table.
	No, he's not.
	Get rid of Obamacare.
	Do you realize if they take that off the table, that all of these numbers that we're talking about, future entitlement growth, tax rates to pay for, it's cut dramatically.
	It would make it make such a huge difference.
	The markets would revive.
	Businesses would start hiring again.
	I mean, in droves, at least it'd be making plans to grow.
	I'd be planning on investing and so forth.
	You are so right.
	The number one thing, if you want to eliminate a majority of the debt that's accumulated and it's going to accumulate, get rid of Obamacare.
	I'm glad that you mentioned that.
	And of course, they did.
	They did cut $500 billion in Medicare.
	Try to blame the Republicans for it and so forth.
	But it's just obvious to anybody paying attention here what's going wrong and what's making it worse, and that's Obama and the Democrats.
	I still find it humorous.
	They think they're at their wits end that they've tried everything.
	Now, F. Chuck Todd was on MSNBC yesterday on the Meet the Press.
	And he talked about the debt, the deficit deal.
	And he said the Tea Party won the argument on the issue of spending and deficits.
	And we know this, he said, because Obama has put entitlements on the table.
	He did not.
	Obama has not put entitlements on the table.
	What Obama's done is expand them with Obamacare.
	And then he double-counted the supposed savings in Medicare the caller just talked about.
	And he used those to expand Medicaid.
	Expanding already unsustainably unaffordable entitlements.
	And the misinformation, trying to say that the Tea Party won the argument because Obama's talking about entitlements.
	F. Chuck, I mean, come on, man.
	We haven't won anything.
	We got the biggest entitlement on the history of the earth in Obamacare, and it's not on the table.
	And Medicare has been expanded, and Medicaid has been expanded.
	$1 trillion has been taken out of the economy by Obama.
	This is nuts.
	I'm going to explain this in a little bit more time because it's typical.
	Not a whole lot of people watch Meet the Press, but those who did yesterday tuned in the roundtable.
	They heard F. Chuck Todd from MSNBC say that the Tea Party won the argument on the issue of spending and deficits in these debt negotiations.
	Why did Tea Party win the argument?
	Republicans won the army.
	Well, because Obama has put entitlements on the table.
	This is akin to saying the chickens have won because Colonel Sanders has decided to add roast beef to the menu.
	The chickens are still going to be slaughtered and served, but there's also going to be roast beef.
	What the hell is he talking about?
	The Tea Party won the argument because Obama put entitlements.
	He did not put entitlements on the table.
	What Obama has done is expand them all and created a new one called Obamacare.
	And in creating that new one, he double-counted supposed savings in Medicare and then used those supposed savings to expand Medicaid.
	Both these entitlements are already unsustainable and unaffordable, Medicare and Medicaid.
	And the Tea Party somehow wins the argument?
	What is the sound argument about taking $1 trillion out of the economy and have Obama spend it like he did his spending bill?
	Is that the Tea Party winning it?
	I mean, the Tea Party has won the argument?
	Obama is wrecking.
	He's a one-man wrecking ball.
	The administration, the regime, and this country spent way more than they should have.
	And now they're saying that the fair thing to do is to take money out of this economy from people who just happen to have it.
	That's who's going to get taxed.
	The only people who have any money left.
	So we're going to tax them so that they don't have any money left when we're finished.
	Those same people you take a trillion dollars away from are supposed to go out and create jobs.
	After we take all the money from them, they're going to go out and create jobs.
	That's how this works.
	This is how convoluted the inside the Beltway press corps is.
	The regime goes out and spins us into oblivion.
	Then they say the fair thing to do is to raise taxes on the only people who have any money left.
	And then after we raise taxes on the only people who have any money left, those people are going to go out and create the jobs.
	That's the Obama proposal in a nutshell.
	And that, to David Gregory, is the Tea Party winning the argument.
	F. Chuck.
	What did I say?
	Same difference.
	What's the difference of David Gregory and F. Chuck?
	They're both the same mold.
	You know, hairdos are a little different.
	Other than that, tell me the difference.
	Yeah, it was a minor slip-up, but they're the same people.
	You don't get hired otherwise.
	The only way, the only way this country is going to bounce back is if you get off the back of the people who have any money left and let them do what they did when they built the country the first time.
	That's the only way.
	Leave them alone.
	Let them take care of it and everything will start to rebound.
	Heritage Foundation today says Heritage.
	Heritage.
	Wall Street Journal, Wall Street Journal, has published an editorial, Taxes Upon Taxes Upon Dot, dot, dot, with a list of all of Obama's tax increases since he assumed orifice.
	I've got the list here.
	They total $438 billion.
	Oh, wait.
	No, those are just the tax increases in the health care bill.
	Those are just the tax increases in the health care bill.
	It lists all the other.
	It's too depressing to go through.
	But the point here again is that after Obama has written, and healthcare is not being discussed, F. Chuck, it ain't on the table.
	$438 billion in new taxes in Obamacare.
	Tea Party wins the day.
	How about that?
	See how easy it is to win in the left-wing media's mind?
	They actually got themselves so convinced we won, they hate us even more.
	After Obama's done what he's done, and he's talking about raising taxes on the only people who have any money left, and we're not even talking about the $438 million in new taxes in his health care bill.
	Who's next?
	Tim in Biloxi, Mississippi.
	Hello, sir.
	Great to have you on the program.
	Thank you, Rush.
	A real pleasure.
	First of all, Hank wants to know if you've adopted a better liking for the practice range at the golf course before you go play.
	Yeah, I do.
	Good.
	Well, good.
	Listen, I'm a CPA, and there are a couple of things I wanted to kind of bring up, and you just started to hit on one of them.
	The buzzword in the liberal leftist agenda recently has been shared sacrifice.
	And then he wants to, in his big deal, it was $4 trillion worth of deficit reduction, but $1 trillion worth better the next 10 years was going to be in tax increases in the name of shared sacrifice.
	The top 25% of the wage earners in this country today already pay 78% of the tax.
	That's right.
	So if we're going to share this sacrifice, how is the other 75% going to participate in this?
	This is so typical of Obama and the nonsense and the total disregard and disdain he has for the intelligence of the American people.
	We know that.
	We see through that.
	And as far as the Tea Party winning, I'm a Tea Party organizer.
	I am not racist.
	I don't live in the sticks.
	I have a master's degree.
	Well, you sound like a hick.
	I'm sorry?
	You sound like a hick.
	Oh, okay.
	Yeah.
	Well, I'm sure I do.
	We'll find out.
	But it's as if Obama is completely delusional.
	The whole midterms in November of last year.
	Wait a second.
	You understand here, I was voicing a liberal listening to the program.
	You're denying being a Tea Partier, and I'm just liberals.
	Well, you still sound like a hick.
	So it means you are a Tea Party.
	I was voicing what the liberals think of you, not me.
	You understand?
	I learned a long time ago that people who are just ideologically on the left, you can't, it doesn't do any good to respond to them because they don't care about the facts.
	Exactly right.
	And I long ago gave up on trying to convince or persuade those people.
	The people that need persuading are the ones who are out running their own lives because that's what we have to do.
	But the amount of time that this takes out of our days, the people that are concerned about where this country is headed, it angers us.
	You know, it does me too.
	I mean, I'm be selfish for a moment.
	I'm looking at the stacks of stuff I had for the program today, and I've gotten to 10% of it because there's some really great stuff in here, funny stuff.
	Like what happened to Paul Ryan at dinner last week?
	I'll tell you the story when we get to the next segment.
	But basically, some drunk liberal female economist found out that his bottle of wine cost $350 and went over and gave him business for it and called Talking Points Memo, a blog about how Paul Ryan, who wants to cut all people's Medicare, is drinking $350 bottle of wine with a couple lobbyists.
	And a bunch of blogs picked up.
	It became a huge story over the weekend.
	And of course, he wasn't dining with lobbyists.
	He was dining with a couple of economists, and they paid for it themselves.
	And she, by the way, had an $80 bottle of wine.
	But the point is, she's a liberal economist in Princeton, and she felt it necessary to get up and walk over to him and insult him and tell him how insensitive he was while people are hurting and suffering and starving when he's having a 300, and they had two of them by the two bottles of $350 wine.
	And he said that he didn't know how much it cost.
	He didn't order it.
	His guests did.
	The bottom line, two economist buddies, they paid for their own meal.
	It's none of her business.
	See, the point is, she didn't, she didn't even, you know, people were talking about, well, how about all the money that Pelosi spent on a liquor for Pelosi One on all these Air Force flights that she took?
	How about all of that that you people never complain about?
	All the wasteful spending, the selfish personal indulgence Charlie Wrangel down and whatever.
	You people never complain about Paul Randall, a $350 bottle of wine.
	And the difference is he paid for it or his guests did themselves.
	So the point is the government can spend whatever it wants.
	People can buy whatever they want on taxpayer money, and there's no question.
	But you, a private citizen, spend what you want.
	You go buy a corporate jet, are you going to pay for it?
	You go buy an expensive car, you're going to pay for it.
	$350 bottle of wine, by the way, hell, never mind.
	But if you go do that and some liberal snoot at her birthday dinner, and the name of the restaurant was Bistro Beast, B-I-S, gets out of her chair and walks over to you and tells you how insensitive you are.
	And it was their own money.
	It was not her money.
	It was not taxpayer money.
	It was nobody else's money.
	But when Nancy Pelosi spends $100,000 on a liquor for a government jet to fly her family around, that female, Susan Feinberg, I think is her name from Princeton.
	And she's not talking about it now.
	But it was in the blogs.
	It was a cause celebro over the weekend.
	And it's turned out she's now a laughing stock.
	And Talking Points Memo is a laughingstock now.
	That's some guy named Josh Marshall runs it.
	He's a three-page story on lobbyist rules and how they were violated.
	He wasn't with lobbyists.
	It was classic liberalism.
	All these assumptions and all this snootiness and all this arrogance and all this none of this is their business, what everybody else is doing with their money on their time.
	It was just classic.
	Anyway, Tim, I appreciate the call.
	I really do.
	And again, Susan Feinberg, Associate Professor of Management and Global Business at Rutgers.
	Yeah.
	She teaches private sector economics at Rutgers, right.
	If I wouldn't have a $350 bottle of wine, well, I've got them, I use them for cooking.
	but I wouldn't serve a $350 bottle of wine to guests in my house.
	I don't understand what all the hubbub's about.
	$350 bottle of wine.
	It was a California wine.
	And then this woman goes baddie.
	Everybody was writing about this over the weekend.
	Obama serves $399 bottles of wine to the ChiComs during the state dinner.
	So Obama can serve $400 bottles of wine to the TRICOMs.
	Paul Ryan and his buddies cannot buy their own $350 bottle of wine.
	If my guests knew that I was, I don't know if they'd come back.
	That's just amazing.
	How out of touch can people get?
	And this woman's there celebrating her birthday.
	You know what this, I'll tell you what this, folks.
	This just goes to show you.
	She's had an $80 bottle of wine.
	And it just, this woman, it shows the dangers of drinking cheap wine.
	She said she had a bottle and a half of this stuff.
	She said, a cheap 80-buck bottle of wine.
	She gets plastered and gets up out of her seat and goes over and starts ragging on Paul Ryan.
	Susan Feinberg, Associate Professor, Management and Global Business at Rutgers.
	We are back.
	Great to have you with us as we wrap it up here.
	Susan Feinberg, this is typical.
	Here is a Rutgers economics professor who is essentially saying that the free market ain't no way.
	If the government, if Ryan had been a government employee and the government were buying that bottle of wine, she wouldn't have had a problem with it.
	But since it was their money and they spent it the way they wanted to, the essence of the free market, this woman was moved to get out of her seat and go accost them verbally.

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