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July 12, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:00
July 12, 2011, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
You can see what's happening here now.
The latest round of debt negotiations at the White House is scheduled for 345.
You can see what's Obama does not offer anything specific in public.
Just says, come on back up here, boys, and be the obstructionists that you are.
The Republicans need to stop going.
You can see what the plan is here.
You can see what's happening as the attempt to get these guys to cave is well underway.
And by the way, you know, and hi, how are you, Rush Limbaugh?
You know that EIB network, you know that telephone number, you know that.
800-282-2882.
There's already a story out there that now there's infighting on the Republican side.
Cantor and Boehner not getting along.
That's all part of the plan.
And it won't be long.
Ladies and gentlemen, you know how we've often told you that Supreme Court decisions, when they're really key, the Washington Post style section to go out and do a big puff piece on one of the justices, usually Anthony Kennedy or somebody on the left to make sure they do the right thing.
Don't be surprised if down the road there isn't a puff piece on some Republican in the House or the Senate who opposes Boehner.
And the point is that Boehner's supposed to read that and say, gee, I wish I could get coverage like that.
Gee, I wish they liked me like that.
Gee, how come these, I mean, I'm doing heavy lifting and they're not rewarding me.
All I'm getting is grief.
That's what's underway here.
In the meantime, does anybody know, do any of you have any idea what Obama's specific proposal is?
No, no, I said specific.
I don't want to hear shared sacrifice and I don't want to hear balance, balanced approach.
I want to know, does anybody know what Obama has proposed?
Has Obama announced that he'll accept X number in cuts?
Has Obama is there any specific from Obama or anybody in the line?
There is not, is there?
The Republicans are offering specifics and it's, oh, it doesn't work.
No, no, we're going to have shared sacrifice.
Oh, no, no, no.
We need a balanced approach.
I think if I'm Boehner, we're stopping up.
We're not coming up here anymore until you go public with what your specifics are, until the American public knows what you want, because I'm sick and tired of coming up here and being your whipping boy.
And by the way, Mr. President, I am not going to be your lifeline to re-election because that's, like I said yesterday, when they get in this room, Barack Hussein Obama looks at Boehner and he says, my lifeline.
I get this guy to cave, I get re-elected.
And that's all this is about.
You know, I'm going to ask it again, why have a debt limit if it doesn't matter?
Every time we approach one, we get this damn crisis.
We got to raise it.
Why have one in the first place?
Why have a debt limit?
Why not just get rid of it?
Why not just say, you know what?
We never stay within the limit.
There is no limit.
We're just going to get rid of this.
Numbers arbitrary.
This number B.
The new debt limit that they're talking about will get us through another 13 months.
And we'll be back here again in the middle of the presidential campaign.
I just, you know, look at this headline from the hill.
Debt ceiling talks hit brick wall as Obama, GOP, trade jobs.
Isn't that what a debt ceiling is supposed to be?
Is it, Dawn?
Isn't it supposed to be a brick wall?
That's what the debt limited.
We're not going to exceed this.
If it isn't, why even bother to have one?
Why go through all of this?
We go through all of this to eventually embarrass and defeat the Republicans.
That's why we go through all of this.
Now, Boehner's done great so far.
The Republicans have done great, but you can see, you can see what the plan is here.
I know exactly what when I saw that story, Cantor and Boehner in fighting, disagreeing.
You just know what's coming next.
And yeah, the only specific is getting rid of the corporate jet deduction and some of the, but we don't have any specifics from Obama.
Nobody knows what he's, he gets to sit up there after running up all this debt, after breaking the bank, after destroying the U.S. economy, he gets to sit up there like he had nothing to do with any of this and gets to play the adult while the kids who broke it come in here and have to fix it with his approval.
And frankly, my friends, since he's the least experienced guy in any room he walks into and thus the most incompetent guy in any room he walks into, I don't like this setup bugs me.
Remember now, as we go through all this, the Democrat Party is the party of John Kerry and Charlie Wrangell.
That's the party lecturing us on the importance of shared sacrifice, of everybody paying their fair share in taxes.
John Kerry goes by his sailboat yacht, parks it in Rhode Island where he doesn't have to pay any taxes on it until he gets caught.
And he mumbles about, no, I always intended to pay taxes.
It's like a stupid.
And then pays it.
And Wrangell doesn't pay taxes for years because I don't have to.
Gets caught.
Doesn't matter.
This is the party.
And I can come up with probably other Democrat examples not paying their fair share.
Oh, yeah.
Treasury Secretary, little Timmy, the tax cheat.
And now he's demanding a deal.
He's a Treasury Secretary demanding a deal by Thursday.
Demanding.
Little Timmy.
Little Timmy's Charlie Brown.
You ought to be Charlie Brown Boehner's Lucy.
Little Timmy demanding a deal.
I didn't know Treasury secretaries could do that.
Ladies and gentlemen, I know that after the next five or six minutes or so, I will never, ever work or appear or have anything to do with anybody at NBC.
Well, they still own a portion of it.
Comcast owns majority, but I think GE still owns some of NBC, right?
I think they do.
Well, their CEO of GE, Jeffrey Imelt, sits on Obama's private sector job creation council.
And Imelt has come out with a speech.
He was, where was he?
A summit, jobs summit at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce yesterday.
And he said businesses need to take the lead on job creation.
And furthermore, Jeffrey Imelt, the CEO of General Electric and now a minority owner of NBC says that businesses need to stop complaining about government.
This is the guy who runs a company with five, what was it, billion dollars in profit and paid no federal income tax.
Now, I have an idea.
Let Obama give every company in America the same tax breaks that he's given General Electric.
And let's see how many people they hire.
If you tell every American business, hey, you know what?
No taxes.
Earn whatever you want, wherever you want to earn it, no income taxes.
You think they might start hiring people.
So it's easy for Imelt to sit up there and tell businesses at a Chamber of Commerce job summit to stop complaining about government.
He's got no complaints with government, but telling all these other people to stop complaining.
Obama and Imelt, you know what they're like?
They're like a couple of radical Islamic Imams telling these business owners to go out and sacrifice themselves for the cause.
They're bringing them into the room and they're saying, here's the cause.
You guys, you go out, blow yourselves up, destroy your businesses, and you with it, go out and hire people.
Do you think that if businesses could expand by hiring more employees, if that was the magic bullet going out and hiring workers was the ticket to profits, if hiring workers, new workers was the ticket to expansion, don't you think they would do it?
No, they're not doing it because it's not the ticket to new profits by itself.
That comes after expansion and growth.
That's when you start hiring people to keep up with the new demand.
It's what's happening to us at 2IFBT.com.
But I'm telling you, this is absurd.
A guy running a company, $5 billion profits, paying no taxes, tells everybody else, the Chamber of Commerce to stop complaining about business, government, and then says go out and start hiring people.
Look, business owners are not going to kill their businesses just so Obama's approval numbers will go up.
And they're not going to go out and kill their businesses just so Imelt looks like he knows what he's doing with Obama's commission.
Now, I happen to look something up.
I'm holding what I looked up right here, my formerly nicotine-stained fingers.
I found it at CNNmoney.com.
CNN Money publishes what it calls the Global 500.
Counting down here about two minutes, and I will never probably set foot inside an NBC property.
If you think I just did it, no, no, no, I have, no, no, no.
If you think that's bad, you do.
Okay, what do we have here?
We got Jeff Imelt runs NBC.
Well, doesn't run it anymore.
Minority stakeholder, General Electric, Obama's private sector job commission chamber of commerce, telling these business people, stop complaining about the government.
Go out and hire people.
Pays no taxes.
Easy for him to not complain, right?
Go hire people.
It's up to you.
Go out and get more workers on the payroll.
Jeff Imelt, CEO, General Electric.
CNN Money publishes what it calls a global 500.
It's a snapshot of the country's largest companies.
One of the quick facts they note is the number of employees.
I want to look at what is the trend.
What's the hiring trend at General Electric?
In 2009, CNN Money ranked GE number 12 out of a global 500 with 323,000 employees.
In 2010, they were ranked 13, dropped a point from number 12, and they had 304,000 employees.
So Mr. Imel got rid of 19,000 employees from 2009 to 2010.
So I kept looking.
2011, rank 16.
Employees, 287,000.
So I didn't do the math here, but in 2009, we're at 323.
This year, 287,000.
Let's see, that's 13.
And it's 30.
Why, look at this.
Since 2009, GE has reduced its payroll by 36,000 employees while paying no taxes on $5 billion of income.
Its CEO tells businesses at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to stop complaining about government, start hiring people while he is firing people.
And we'll be back.
Still alive and breathing, Rush Limbaugh still behind a golden EIB microphone serving humanity simply by showing up.
Happy to have you with us.
Telephone number again, if you want to be on the program, is 800-282-2882.
Did you get that set up?
In the old way, it's ready to go.
All right.
Marco Rubio, Senator Florida, who has been saying some wonderful things from the floor of the Senate.
Boehner even quoted him yesterday.
We don't need new taxes.
We need new taxpayers.
Senator Marco Rubio on the program in about 50 minutes, 50, 55 minutes.
I'll tell you why.
You know, I can sit here all day and say this stuff, and nobody says it better.
But we need elected Republicans on the right.
We need powerful elected Republicans saying this stuff as well.
Publicly with as loud an amplification as we can provide.
So I'm looking forward.
I've not spoken to Senator Rubio before.
I've chatted back and forth email-wise, but never on the phone.
So it'll be a first.
Senator Marco Rubio and Senator McConnell, Mitch McConnell, a Republican leader in the Senate from the Wall Street Journal.
McConnell says real deal not possible with Obama.
Now, I don't know if the Senate has anybody in these meetings, but McConnell actually said, I mean, you don't walk back from this.
Listen to this.
A real solution to U.S. fiscal problems isn't possible as long as Barack Obama remains in office, Mitch McConnell said today, heightening the rhetoric surrounding the debt ceiling debate.
I don't know how you walk back from that.
You go say something like that.
You are committed to it.
That's not something you tell the Washington Post tomorrow, you know what?
Well, wait a minute.
I mean, I guess you could tell the Washington Post I wasn't thinking, but you wouldn't.
I mean, you don't walk this back.
A real solution is not possible as long as Obama's in office.
McConnell said he had gone into negotiations in good faith over how to formulate a deficit reduction package to accompany an increase in the debt limit.
Quote, but after years of discussions and months of negotiations, I have little question that as long as this president is in the Oval Office, a real solution is unattainable.
And he said it on the floor.
He said it on the Senate floor.
It isn't possible.
A real solution isn't possible with Obama in the Oval Office, the New York Times.
See, this story also part of the plan that the left, the Democrats, the White House, the Democrat Party, the media have.
Obama grasping centrist banner in debt impasse.
Jackie Kalmas writing in the New York Times, seeking to shed the image of big government liberal that Republicans used effectively against him last year.
They were only able to use it, by the way, because it works.
Because it's true.
Calling him a big government liberal is actually being nice.
Calling Barack Obama a big government liberal is downplaying what he is.
Seeking to shed the image of big government liberal that Republicans used effectively against him last year.
He has made or offered policy compromises on an array of issues and cast himself in the role of the adult referee for both parties' gamesmanship or the parent of stubborn children.
Yeah, and he hasn't offered diddly squat.
He hasn't offered any policy compromises.
What are they?
Somebody tell me.
Somebody tell me what Obama's compromises are and don't say shared sacrifice.
By the way, do you think we've maybe sacrificed enough as it is?
What do you call 9.2% unemployment?
What do you call real unemployment of close to 17%?
What do you call losing the value of your home?
What do you call all of what's happened to way too many Americans?
What do you call that if it's not sacrifice?
Where's the shared sacrifice from government?
Where's the shared sacrifice from Obama?
There isn't any.
All of this is poppycock.
Republicans need to say, give us something specific, or we're not going up there anymore.
It's about as specific as he's gotten.
Give peas a chance.
Hi, welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, New York Times, Obama grasping centrist banner in debt impasse.
He has made or offered policy compromises on an array of issues.
He has not offered an array of anything.
The New York Times is going back in 2008 and they're using that blank, a blank canvas that is Obama, and they're putting up centrist colors on it.
And you know why?
I'll tell you why, folks, it's really hard to paint over a failed economic stimulus and a failed health care reform, failed to deliver on its promise, but they are trying.
We're looking at an abject failure, getting to run around here as the only adult in the room.
Look, I know I got a lot of people reminding me, hey, McConnell is channeling you.
You said there could be no real change until we changed the Occupy White House yesterday.
I know I said that.
I don't know that McConnell listens to the program.
Maybe he's channeling me, but I don't care.
He said it.
He said there's no real solution to any of this.
As long as Obama's in the Oval Office, he sat on the floor of a Senate.
You don't walk that back.
That's look, Republicans don't say that kind of stuff.
When they do, and when it's the right thing to say, you've got to give them credit when they say it.
I know Obama's plan boils down to one thing.
It's what the Democrat plan always is, make the Republicans raise taxes.
By the way, do you know that there's a blogger?
I think it's a blogger.
Yeah, here it is.
VirumSerum.com.
Somebody named Morgan, M-O-R-G-E-N.
If a tax increase is key to any deal, why didn't the Democrats raise taxes any of the last six times they raised the debt limit?
Did you know that?
Did you know that the last six times we raised the debt limit, we did not raise taxes and the Democrats didn't demand it?
So even here, we are in uncharted territory.
Now, when I got in today, started working on prepping the program, well, continued prep from last night, I see flashed all over the media, talks breakdown.
Talks break down.
Folks, these talks have never started.
Obama never got these talks started.
There are no talks.
It's the Republicans offering specifics and Obama saying no.
And then going out and calling a press conference or an immediate appearance and act like the adult.
As usual, Obama went into the last minute.
He's made absurd demands that would play to his crazed, deranged base, but would irresponsibly damage the economy and destroy businesses and jobs.
That's what he's done.
That's what has happened up till now.
That's what he wants more of.
And he positions himself politically every day.
What talks?
This is a mirage.
It's a head fake, a joke.
There are no talks.
There are meetings.
They get together.
Nothing happens.
All part of the grand scheme.
Look, let me put something in perspective here for you.
I have said that Obama wants to destroy this economy.
When I said I hope he fails now, you know what I meant.
He has succeeded in destroying the economy.
He has successfully implemented a boatload of liberalism and socialism on our country.
And I didn't want that to happen.
So I said, I hope he fails.
And I said, I told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, in addition to telling you from behind this golden EIB microphone that I thought he wanted to destroy the economy, that I thought this was purposeful.
Now, he has said he wants to change it.
He doesn't, of course, say he wants to destroy it.
He just says he wants to change it.
Okay, so I've said he wants to destroy it.
He said he wants to change it.
If there is a collapse or a default, it's something that he wants and has planned.
Wow, Rush, that's really a tough thing as well.
Look, folks, he has the ability to prevent what he's predicting.
That's another quite obvious reality underneath the surface.
He has the ability to prevent what he's predicting.
Collapse, default.
His demands that sensible, rational elected officials join him in destroying jobs and businesses by increasing taxes on wealth creation in the middle of a recession.
That's irrational.
As a substantive matter, it is irrational.
And that's what he's demanding the Republicans do.
Join him in destroying jobs and businesses.
So, yeah, I stand by it.
He wants to.
And if the Republicans go along at some point, they're contributing to the destruction of our economy.
But I think Obama is betting if they don't go along, he can crash the system anyway and blame it on them.
He knows he can get the media to blame them.
He knows he can get Debbie Blabbermouth Schultz and the people over at the DNC to join him.
He knows his deranged base will blame the Republicans.
So he's figuring that if they don't go along and help him destroy it, he'll do it anyway and then blame it on them.
Because he knows, and we know, that the Republicans will be attacked by the media and they'll have a difficult time dealing with it, particularly if at the same time the media, as I mentioned, is doing a puff piece or two on some Republicans who agree with Obama.
Or let's let me, a puff piece on a couple of Republicans who disagree with Boehner.
Let's leave it at them.
Maybe you don't have to go out and go so far as to agree with Obama, but a couple of courageous Republicans in the House and the Senate can be found by the Washington Post or the boy is at Politico and a bunch of puff pieces on these people disagree with Obama, thereby illustrating how, if you're a Republican, you get fawning press coverage.
You simply trash your own party and its leaders.
That's what we face here.
That's where we are.
I mean, I'd stop going up there.
What's the point?
There aren't any specifics of Obama.
Well, but Rush, but Rush, if they do that, they're going to look like they already do, don't they?
That's what the media is trying to, the media's already making them out to be the obstructionists.
There's nothing new in that.
They always are.
I mean, these guys talking about, of course, we've got to raise the debt limit.
Of course, it's going to be sacrificed.
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
They got to, you know, these are magic political words image-wise.
Obama said that he was going to create 200,000 jobs a month.
Now, my question is, Mr. Obama, why did you stop?
We're at only 18,000 a month.
You said 200,000.
Why did you stop creating jobs?
Yep, using the GOP as extras, using the GOP leaders as extras.
Listen to this.
This sort of illustrates what I'm talking about.
We have a montage here from the state control media illustrating my point that Obama is outsmarting the Republicans and triangulating in these never-ending reports on television.
Republicans, they watch TV, they're supposed to see this.
It's supposed to demoralize them.
The president went before the cameras this morning using his home field advantage at the White House to push his side of the argument.
The president is winning the process fight.
It seems the president is winning that basic argument, preparing the Obama message for 2012, and Republicans can see privately is doing a much better job of it.
The president clearly is willing to triangulate.
That's kind of triangulation.
We're seeing a rerun of Bill Clinton in the 1990s all over again.
Triangulation.
This was full-on triangulation.
It may be in the end that Obama ends up being the smartest guy after all.
See?
Exactly what's shaping up here.
And meanwhile, it's Obama who's losing his shirt.
It's Obama who's in a state of panic.
The Republicans don't have to do anything.
Pure and simple.
I hope they know that.
This morning on CNN's American Morning, Kieran Chetri, co-host, spoke with James Carville about the debt negotiations.
She said the president's in a tough position right now.
How does he sort of find a way to reconcile this with the countdown ticking?
I think a lot of Republicans want to shut the government down.
A majority of American people want a government shutdown, and a big majority are Republican Congress.
You listen to a Rush Members, a lot of the Titans of the Republican Party, they said it doesn't matter if you shut the government down.
My own feeling is we're probably going to get one.
My guess is, is I hope I'm wrong.
Put it this way.
I hope that the experts are wrong because they say a shutdown would be a disastrous thing.
But I think they're going to go ahead and shut it down.
I really do.
Ain't going to be a shutdown.
You're going to have plenty of gumbo.
There isn't going to be a shutdown.
A default is not a shutdown, and there's not going to be a default.
Got to take a break.
We'll be back.
You know what?
Let's grab some phone calls when we come back just to shake it up a bit.
Hey, this is also good, folks, and I apologize.
I did not know that Boehner had said this today.
This is this morning in Washington, Boehner-Hella Press Conference, and had this to say about the debt negotiations.
The fact is, is that House of Republicans have a plan.
We passed our budget back in the spring, outlined our priorities.
Where's the president's plan?
When's he going to lay his cards on the table?
This debt limit increase is his problem.
And I think it's time for him to leave by putting his plan on the table.
It's something that the Congress can pass.
Well, okay, now you lay the marker down.
Better be in concrete.
It's like McConnell saying in the floor of the Senate, no real solution possible with Obama in the White House echoing what I said yesterday.
And here's what the Democrats have, despite all this BS in the media about Obama winning with triangulation, winning at the end of the day.
This is all BS.
Everything in the media about Obama in the lead and winning this is as BS as anything in the media ever has been.
And don't doubt me and don't be swayed by it.
And don't go getting all depressed and call me about it because it's just a bunch of, it's spin.
Directly from the White House.
Here's Chuck Yu Schumer on the Senate floor from this morning.
A budget agreement cannot be considered bold or comprehensive unless it asks millionaires, billionaires, and wealthy corporations to contribute to deficit reduction.
They don't have to do the whole thing, but they've got to do their share.
All right.
Yo, they've got to do their share.
We've destroyed practically everybody except the people who have money.
Now we're going to go tax them.
The millionaires and billionaires.
Remember now, these people start at $250,000 a year.
That's where millionaires and billionaires start in Chuck Yu Schumer's world in Obama's world.
So now we go out.
The only people who have any money left, we go tax the hell out of them.
And then after that, Im Elt and Obama get together and say, okay, stop complaining about government and go hire people.
Well, Imelt has fired between 36,000 and 50,000 people since 2009 at GE.
They are snurdily.
Obama and Imelm are like a couple of imams sending out these business guys as suicide bombers.
Here's McConnell.
This is just what he said on the Senate floor this morning.
After years of discussions and months of negotiations, I have little question that as long as this president is in the Oval Office, a real solution is probably unattainable.
All right.
There you have it.
So he said it.
Boehner, what's the president's plan, Mr. President?
Where's your plan?
We've presented ours.
Where's your plan?
And McConnell, no real solution with him in the White House.
Okay, we're going to start on the phones.
We'll start in the Bronx.
It's Richie.
Richie, hello, sir.
Great to have you on the program.
Hello, Rush.
Thanks for taking my call.
Yeah, you bet.
I think that you have presented some misleading information regarding GE's employment and tax situation.
Now, you've just, regarding the employment situation, you've just provided the raw numbers, but you have to take into account businesses that GE might have sold to other people during the period, Such as, you said, they got rid of NBC.
So those NBC employees...
No, no, they still have a minority stake.
Okay, a minority stake.
Okay, but not a majority stake.
Well, no, a majority stake.
So the NBC.
It doesn't matter.
I mean, but nobody at NBC has been canned.
Which might have previously been recorded as GE employees.
No, that would.
No, no.
That would, I mean, if you count it that way, then it fired a lot more than 36,000.
I mean, NBC's got, they've got NBC Universal, they've got movie, they've got all kinds, no, no, no, no.
That's not how accounting works, Richie.
I'm sorry.
Nice, but it doesn't work.
Oh, well, I didn't, well, it sounded like you were just reporting raw data and not data after accounting for dispositions and sales of businesses to other people.
That's what I'm saying.
What are some of the businesses that GE sold?
I'm using numbers provided by CNNMoney.com and the total employees in the GE universe.
But do those figures include, do you know if those figures include accounting for GE dispositions of businesses to other people, to other companies?
I don't know that they don't either.
Right, we don't know anything.
You just reported the raw data.
No, no, I didn't say I don't know anything.
I know.
I know that there are between 36 and 50,000 fewer people working at General Electric now than there were in 2009.
I don't care.
General Electric's the parent and whatever they own comes under the umbrella.
Richie, give it up.
Well, no, okay.
What's the next attempt?
Okay, now regarding GE's tax situation, it's not only legal, but also ethical, because in 2008, GE lost $32 billion.
Now, when you make money, you pay tax.
The IRS's way of refunding to you taxes when you lose money is that they allow you to take your loss in the year you lost money and carry it back three years and forward five years until GE.
Look, I'm not suggesting that they did anything illegal.
I never said that.
I don't think that they would be that bold as to cheat on $5 billion of taxes.
I'm just saying they didn't pay any income.
They didn't owe.
However, it happened.
And the guy up there now that runs that company is telling everybody, stop complaining about government.
I said, look, I'm a CEO.
Give me the same deal.
I'll start hiring people.
Yeah, I'll the same deal.
We've got a guy on the hold in Saratoga Springs, New York who wants to know if Obama's done anything right.
Yeah, he has.
Obama's done something right.
I'll tell you about that when we get the gym in Saratoga Springs in the next hour.
A note to board ops at our affiliate stations.
I'm going to take the first break in the next hour, a couple minutes, maybe three minutes earlier than normal, because we have Marco Rubio coming on in a second segment in the next half hour.
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