All Episodes
Previous Next
July 14, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
32:17
July 14, 2011, Thursday, Hour #3
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
And we are back serving humanity.
How?
We're here.
That's all it takes to adjust for another hour.
There's a reminder or a warning, whichever is most applicable here.
Mark Belling will be here tomorrow, Mark Stein, Monday and Tuesday.
I'm going golfing.
It's our annual member guest in the secret confines of a rather large area of the great Northeast.
And as such, Boehner and the boys are on their own on the debt talks resuming in tomorrow.
The White House, Obama has given them an ultimatum.
Show up with a plan or else.
And I have told Boehner and the boys that they're going to go up there with their own plan, and that is you're going to present a plan.
You're going to tell the American people what your budget numbers are.
And Harry Reid, you're going to present a budget for the first time in two and a half years in the Senate.
Obamacare is going to be on the table.
Those are the instructions.
Now, there's an idea going around out there that, and this is a risky thing to do.
This is a really risky thing to do, but there's an idea circulating.
What Boehner ought to do is get somebody to propose a piece of legislation that repeals the Bush tax cuts and then vote on it tomorrow, today, whatever.
Do it today.
Piece of legislation.
Move the Bush tax cuts be repealed tomorrow and let it go down to a stinging defeat.
Then go to the meetings.
Look, Obama, we put your demand up for a vote and it lost.
What more can we do?
We're not going to raise taxes in the House.
The danger in doing that is what if it passes?
What if you can't run that or you never know what can happen between the time you put it up or a vote and people are targeted and gotten to?
It'd be a fun thing if it worked out because they're going, hey, wait, did it see the vote yesterday on repealing the Bush tax cuts?
It didn't work.
What more do you want us to do?
What you're demanding can't pass.
We don't need to do it that way.
It's just there's no chance, Mr. President, that any tax increase is going to pass the House right now.
Look, Obama knows that.
Obama knows that.
The sooner everybody realizes that from Obama's perspective, none of this is about the substance, then the better off and the better informed and better positioned everybody is going to be.
This is not about the substance.
Oh, yeah, if Obama could get the substance he wants, yeah, fine, but that's not what he's doing here.
It's all about reelection.
This is all about, at the end of this, Republicans, once again, they don't care what happens to the military, social security recipients.
All they care about is the rich, corporate jet owners.
That's the game they're playing.
Hell, Obama couldn't get a tax increase through Congress when the Democrats had super majorities in both houses, folks.
It was Obama who insisted on the Bush tax cuts remaining in force last December.
Obama couldn't get a tax increase through the House.
So he knows what the reality is.
And it's also the case that that's not what this is about.
And I think Boehner and the boys know what this is about.
The problem is that our guys know we got a serious problem.
It has to be dealt with honestly in an adult fashion, and we're trying to do it.
Really, there's two different things going on in these meetings.
Boehner and the boys are treating this with the seriousness and respect it deserves, and Obama's not.
That's what's going on here.
That's why Boehner says, it's like dealing with Jell-O.
I mean, one day the guy says okay to this, and the next day it's like we never spoke about it.
That's because Obama couldn't care less about the Obama is aiming for no deal.
Now, don't misunderstand.
If he could get a deal with a Republicans caving, he'd do it.
Don't misunderstand.
But if that doesn't happen, it's not the end of the world for him in the way he's thinking.
Listen to this George Orwell quote.
Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful.
Political language designed to make murder respectable.
Political language designed to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
Now, is that Obama or what?
Pure wind described as solidity.
Now, I mentioned we've been talking about books.
In fact, I spoke to Gretchen Morgenson, who wrote the book about the financial mess, the housing.
It's a fabulous book, and I recommend it to you.
We spoke to her for the interview, the next issue of the Limbaugh Letter, which is coming up El Quico.
And I mentioned all kinds of books I've been reading, like Jefferson Key, Marine One.
I mean, I look at novels, use them as escape, and I describe them as 5 a.m. novels.
Time doesn't matter.
Start one, and if they're that good to me, you just don't stop, no matter what the clock says.
And the Jefferson Key was that way, and Marine One, and there have been a bunch of them.
And I can't remember them all.
And Laura Ingram's latest book is That Way is Good, of the I-Zing.
And it's all about the deterioration in culture from a humorous point of view and an attempt here to provide a recovery of sorts from it.
She was walking through a Northern Virginia shopping mall.
Well, she's on a train.
I guess the Acela trainer, one of the trains, Washington and New York.
She's an adoptive mother.
She has, I think, three adopted kids now.
And there's some guy watching porn on his computer within sight of her kids.
So she said, do you think he didn't think of it?
Nobody else did either.
Some guy watching porn on the train in front of kid.
That's no big deal.
It's his space.
It's nobody else's business.
She was appalled.
And she's, you know, 500-pound women wearing tank tops, getting their nails done in the shopping said, wait a minute, we're out of control here.
So she has written a book about it, of the I-Zing.
It's just recently out, and it's worth it.
Peter Orzog, remember him?
Now, he's one of the Obama budget people who have split the scene.
Joseph Lawler, the American Spectator blog, has this piece.
Peter Orzog simply is becoming increasingly honest now that he is no longer the head of the Office of Management and Budget.
Now, my theory is, as I announced earlier in the progress, I explained, I think Obama's economic team, they're all gone.
There's only one left.
That's Geithner, Treasury Secretary.
They've all left.
And I'm pretty confident the reason they're gone, they don't want their names tied to this.
I'm sure that after two years of this stuff, some of them advised him to do different things and he wouldn't even hear of it.
And they said, okay, this isn't going anywhere.
It isn't working.
We need to try something different.
He's not going to do it.
I'm gone.
There's no reason for me to be here.
There are a lot of people abandoning the ship.
And Orzog was one of them.
And Lawler says, Orzog becoming increasingly honest now that he's no longer the head of the Office of Management and Budget.
Here he is on Rosie's scenarios.
This is Orzog.
The CBO assumes economic growth will exceed 3% per year from 2012 to 2016 before gradually declining a bit, more than 2% in 2021.
What if instead growth remains at 2% to 2.5% for the next 10 years?
I asked Kogan to recalculate the budget numbers, assuming a constant growth rate of 2.25% per year, which seems plausible.
And he found that the deficit then averages more than 7% of GDP.
By 2021, it's more than 8.5% of GDP and increasing.
Under these modified growth assumptions, 2.25% growth rate a year, the cumulative deficit for the next decade is $13.7 trillion.
Now, folks, this is a guy who has left the administration.
He is now warning.
This makes my point of earlier today that they got out of there because they didn't like where it was headed, didn't want to be tied to it.
And now he is sounding a warning bill.
He has just, he's saying this publicly.
And by the way, a growth rate of 2.25%, a lot of people don't think we're going to be able to hit that.
Daniel Henninger has a piece in the Wall Street Journal.
I ought to read portions of it to you, in which he cites an economic expert, an author, a professor, whatever, who thinks, we're done.
What if we are Europe?
What if our growth rate every year is 1.8% to 2% max?
What if that has already happened to us?
What if we have been Europeanized?
Well, I don't even want to think about that.
But if we have been European, we haven't totally been Europeanized because we haven't gotten rid of our military.
But we're on the way, with these guys get their way, to be totally Europeanized.
You get rid of your military so that you don't have to defend yourself.
You call on the United States to do that.
But Orzog, back to him.
Orzog is saying that at a growth rate of 2.25% and current spending levels, that we're going to add $13.7 trillion to the national debt the next 10 years.
It took from the founding until today to get to 14.3 trillion.
We're going to add, this is incalculable.
The national debt today, 14.3 trillion, took 235 years to get there.
In the next 10 years, we're going to add another $13 trillion to it.
Total $28 trillion national debt, with 13.7 of it added in the next 10 years.
That is unsustainable.
And that's the road Obama has put us on.
And that's the point at which Orzog decides to get out.
In other words, the impact from sluggish growth on the budget shortfall over the same period exceeds $2.5 trillion, which is more than the roughly $2 trillion in deficit reduction that may wind up being agreed to as part of a deal to lift the debt ceiling.
That's how serious this is.
That's unbelievable.
That's why Mr. Lawler says, may be becoming honest now that he's no longer the head of OMB.
And let's take a brief timeout.
We'll come back and get more of your phone calls in after this.
Okay, to Salem, Oregon, as we return to the phones, it's Brian.
Brian, great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
I know that you know that this is a great honor and a thrill for me to speak to you.
Thank you, sir, very much.
I do know that.
I'd like to touch bases on something you discussed a couple of weeks ago.
And if I may, maybe float a question about technology, you being the technology guru.
A couple of weeks ago, you were discussing how the media was pushing an independent or a moderate candidate in the Republican presidential primaries to the independents in order to try to draw independent votes.
Rush, you know, I used to be, I was registered as a Democrat.
I've listened to you for years.
I'm currently independent.
And I think under the circumstances that that's going to be a huge mistake.
They're going to wind up with another John McCain.
All the independents I know are considerably more conservative than the moderates that the media has attempted to push.
Who again is advising, who are you hearing this advice from?
Well, you're hearing the media pushing.
Okay, you're right.
They want us to nominate a loser.
Exactly.
That's exactly right.
But most of the independents that I know are considerably more conservative than the media would give them credit for.
And I think, and I'm proof positive of that.
My wife is.
Thanks to you, she's been educated in the ways of conservatism as well.
And I think under the circumstances, it would be another huge mistake if they push another moderate as their presidential hopeful.
Well, there are a bunch of them in there.
There are a bunch of moderates, and one of them is currently the fundraising leader.
Well, that's a huge disappointment, and I think it's going to be another losing proposition for the Republican Party under those circumstances.
Well, yeah, we don't.
Of course not.
We'll see.
It's early, and everybody on the conservative side of things understands that.
Nobody is interested in nominating another moderate in any way, shape, manner, or form.
If that happens, it's going to be, I don't want to think about it.
Not going to be pretty.
But it could well be, you know, there's such anti-Obama sediment out there, you really don't know.
But not time to throw in the towel on that yet.
Your concern, well understood by many people.
I'm glad you called.
I appreciate it.
Thanks very much.
I don't know what's going on here, but man, the Democrats are pulling out all the stops.
They got Dingy Hair's oppressor.
It just ended.
Dingy Harry introduced little Timmy tax cheat Geithner, and then he introduced Schumer.
Now, obviously, this is why the Republicans are very nervous.
I'm sure cookies rolling on this.
If there was anything new in this, we'll have it.
But This is Geithner warning, if we don't raise the debt limit, it's the end of America as we know it.
If we don't take this step, I can't guarantee that when we get up tomorrow, there will be an American financial system.
All that kind of thing.
Fear-mongering compounded upon fear-mongering is what is going on here.
And I'll tell you what it means.
It means panic has set in on the Democrat side.
They call, and it's at one of these press conferences in the middle of a room with all kinds of Democrats standing.
Like Patty Murray was there.
They're all standing behind Dingy Gary as he speaks.
And old Timmy slithers up to the microphone.
Then Schumer angles his way in there.
And this is scare everybody to death time.
And I just want to remind you, if Obama had some sort of a plan, an idea that everybody in this country loved, he would be presenting it 24-7.
If Obama's idea was going to be universally popular and accepted, he would be out there every day identifying it, defining it, and telling us everything about it he could.
But he's not.
All they can do is to try to scare us.
And it is panic time on the Democrat side.
Now, Trump, Trump has been tweeting Boehner with excerpts from his book, The Art of the Deal.
One of the messages that Trump tweeted, Boehner, is this.
The worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it.
That was in last Friday.
And that's exactly right.
The worst thing you can do is seem eager to make it, desperate to make it.
Worst thing you can do.
The Republicans are doing that because they think they need to show the American people that they're desperate to do the right thing.
That's why the Republicans are doing it.
But Trump thinks they're showing a weak hand.
Trump also said that he thinks the Republicans are talking tough, but they're not acting tough.
He thinks it's El Foldo.
America's real anchor man.
America's truth detector and doctor of democracy.
So what did they say?
We're running out of time.
We're running out of time.
We don't have any time.
Geithner, we don't have any time.
We're running out of time.
Gary Reid, we're running out of time.
We're running out of time, Mr. President.
We're running out of time.
Chuck Schumer, we're running out of time.
Isn't that what we were told about TARP?
And every other bad deal that we've been stampeded into that we're running out of time.
I thought Mr. Obama was Mr. Cool, Calm, and collected, and rational.
Whatever happened to doing things in a cool, calm, collected, rational manner.
We're running out of time.
We're running out of time.
No, we're not running out of time.
Here's Susie in Philadelphia.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Thanks, Rush.
Quite a pleasure to speak with you today.
Thank you.
Pleasure is mine.
Well, something finally prompted me, kind of hit my button, and I just needed to share, I guess.
Last night, I happened to listen in on a television program my husband had on some Democrat congressman on some late-night PBS news show.
It doesn't even matter who.
And he mentioned about tax loopholes that are indefensible.
And I thought to myself, the first thing that came to my mind is, where do those tax loopholes come from?
Isn't there a little group called the Lays and Means Committee that gives a benefit to us to tax law?
Yeah.
He's acting like we're the victims.
He's the victim.
It's some outside power with forcing these loopholes on us.
And of course, the interviewed or didn't even bother to challenge us.
What on the next question?
He also mentioned that there are some who in the country who want us to default on the debt.
Could that be Obama?
He didn't name names, but it's the only name I could come up with.
Well, I actually don't when it comes to Obama and the and defaulting on the debt, I think Obama's probably tortured on that.
He goes, on one hand, yeah, he would like to, but number two, not a year and a half before he runs for reelection.
And it's going to work.
Well, we're going to find out because it's ultimately going to be up to him.
The Republicans don't have to do anything here.
This is all a political sideshow.
Obama and the Democrats are not talking about anything substantive here.
They're not.
They don't have anything.
They've not presented any ideas.
This is not about the substance of the subject matter to them.
This is nothing but the latest political opportunity to run for re-election, get Obama re-elected, and they're running out of the playbook.
Blame Republicans, corporate jets, play the class envy card.
That's all they're doing.
That's all they know how to do.
It's kind of frustrating in a sense that they get away with the media coverage that they are very serious about the substance of all this, and they're not.
I mean, folks, it's very simple.
If they were serious about being conservative, they wouldn't have done the policies that led us here.
They don't care.
You think Obama cares about spending?
He doesn't care.
He doesn't care.
On the other side of that, he's very supportive of it.
So does he mind if we default?
Just the fact we're asking the question is enough of a problem for me without even knowing for certain the answer.
Mitch in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Hello, sir.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hey, Rush.
Yeah, I'm listening to what you're saying about raising the debt ceiling.
And I think you're falling right into Obama's trap.
I mean, I think he's really got to be, I think this is all planned out.
I mean, that's why I like Mitch McConnell's plan because he's thinking three, four, five moves ahead, and everyone else is just like thinking one or two moves ahead.
I mean, all he has to do next week, and I wouldn't be surprised if he does it, is send out a letter to every Social Security recipient saying that there's no guarantee you're going to get your check and that you need to call your congressman.
And then all he has to do is delay checks for about five or six days.
Everyone will be freaking out.
The media will be reading his press releases verbatim.
And the basic, the bottom line, he doesn't care.
He doesn't care if the economy tanks.
He's been told by his political advisors that this would guarantee his reelection because he will blame it on the Republicans and demonize them among old people.
And, you know, you've got to realize that you don't have any leverage and you just, I would do what Mitch McConnell is suggesting.
Just give him what he wants and run against them.
Well, I profoundly disagree with that, but the McConnell deal is dead anyway.
It doesn't have a prayer.
Okay.
Well, if Social Security checks don't go out.
If Social Security checks don't go out, then that is Obama's fault.
And I don't know why we're so afraid to try to make the case.
Yeah, we know what we're up against.
We're up against the media.
I just don't like this throw-in-the-towel business.
You know, we had a call like this last week, or maybe two weeks ago.
Let me see if I can recall it.
It was Vinny.
Oh, yeah, it was Vinny NeBronx.
What was it about?
He said, oh, it's Palin.
We got a cat.
We got to throw her away, Russia.
Throw her overboard.
The media's already destroyed her.
No, Bob, she can't win.
Okay, fine.
So we sit here and we let the media once again determine what policies we're going to believe in, what policies we're going to support, and what people we're going to get.
Let the media determine it, right?
Sorry.
I don't go.
I just, I'm sorry.
I don't go along with it.
And I got a very good reason.
The media didn't make me, and the media didn't break me.
Now, I'm maybe being selfish.
Maybe these guys on the Republican side think the media can break them.
But I don't think so.
The media didn't make them.
They're not elected because of the media.
They got elected in spite of the media.
But I don't want to get too passionate here.
Like I said yesterday, what I do and what they do are totally different things.
Getting an audience or getting votes are entirely different propositions.
And nobody understands that better than I do.
And I can imagine the frustration that McConnell and these people feel.
For 30 years, they've had to sit here and be subjected to the lies and the distortions and the outright character assassination that the media launches at them while building up Democrats and all this blaming them and calling them murderers for all practical purposes.
And I can understand the desire to not have that happen anymore.
I can understand them being fed up with it and wanting to come up with a plan that'll make it so that that doesn't happen this time.
I understand that.
But that doesn't move us forward.
Playing a game of shifting blame does not get anywhere near solving the problem.
Who says the country won't blame Obama if Social Security checks don't go out anyway?
Who says this?
For a lot of the country, the president is the country.
For a lot of people getting checks, Obama is the government.
Try and blame the Republicans for it.
I know that the game, I know this.
See, I guess one of my problems is since everybody knows what they're trying to do and that we can't stop.
They're not a tsunami.
They're not a force of nature.
They're just like Hillary.
They put their pants on one leg at a time.
And nothing superhuman about any of these people.
You're describing El Foldo.
That's Trump appropriating a term affectionately nearby to El Rushbo, although it doesn't mean the same.
But remember, to a lot of Americans, it's Obama's stash.
To a lot of people, it's Obama's stash.
To a lot of people, Obama is the country.
The president.
The president is the government.
Make hay out of that.
Let me have some by 25.
This is Geithner from this recent press conference that I was just describing to you.
By the way, I want to, here's the McConnell plan, folks.
And for our last caller who wanted to do it, the McConnell plan is you give Obama $2.5 trillion, you chase off the Tea Party activists, get them so ticked off they leave and they stop bothering you.
Let Obama change the relationship between the executive and Congress by giving him spending authority, and then you declare victory.
Because in that, no way we can get blamed.
And that's the objective.
We don't going to get blamed.
And so that's how we do it.
Let Obama basically have what he wants.
Now, the reality is it is Obama who is panicking, and there's more evidence.
Gallup poll.
We had some news from it yesterday.
Here's more.
Republican candidate, whoever, the generic Republican, extends his lead versus Obama 47 to 39 right now if the election were held today.
Unnamed Republican, anybody beats Obama 47-39 Gallup poll.
If the election were held today, they are panicking.
Here's Geithner this afternoon, about 20 minutes ago.
We're a country that pays our bills and that we will act and do what's necessary to make sure that we can maintain that commitment.
We're running out of time.
And the eyes of the country are on us.
And the eyes of the world are on us.
And we need to make sure we stand together and send a definitive signal.
Right.
We're going to take the steps necessary to avoid default and also take advantage of this opportunity to make some progress in dealing with our long-term fiscal problems.
We don't have much time.
Yeah, we didn't have much time during TARP.
We didn't have much time during the study loss.
We didn't have much time, period, folks.
Armageddon, Obamageddon.
It's next week.
It's right around the corner.
We're dead.
You're dead.
Your kids, dead.
Grandkids, dead.
No hope.
It's all over.
It's that simple.
Unless you give Obama what he wants.
And then, hunky-dory.
That soundbite from Geithner was what all the hubbub was about.
That's what they stopped everything and called a press conference for.
That.
We're running out of time.
Charles in Philadelphia.
Hi.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Hey.
Hey, Don Rush.
Good.
Good talking to you.
Hey, Rush, let me give you the liberal rundown here, the liberal statistics of me before I give you Mike Wright.
Number one, I'm a 62-year-old white male.
I'm a Vietnam combat, and I'm a disabled veteran.
To President Obama and Pelosi and Reed, don't send my check.
I don't care.
This is about my children's future.
President Obama, what are the cuts you are proposing?
Are you taking away illegal immigrant money or what?
You know what I mean, Rush?
And I am not a Tea Party member.
I am just a mad American about the spending of my children's future.
That's great.
Don't send me a check.
No, I understand.
I understand perfectly.
I know.
I understand perfectly.
You've got a great point, actually.
Okay, who else is getting paid if you're not going to send the veterans their checks and if you're not going to send the seasoned citizens their checks, who is?
Because you're not going to shut them all down.
That's an excellent point.
And you also are not going to be blaming the Republicans.
That's another thing that I hear you say.
And there are probably millions more just like you out there.
So who is sabotaging the economy right now?
Who is saying things that will hurt our credit rating in the world?
Who's saying it?
Reed?
Geithner?
Obama?
The Democrats?
Schumer?
Saboteurs all.
Again, a reminder, Mark Belling will be here tomorrow.
On Monday and Tuesday, Mark Stein.
I'll be back on Wednesday.
I'm hitting the golf course.
It's the annual member guest tournament that I play in every year at this time.
Our August golf trip's coming up, of course, in August.
Just preparing you for that.
We'll see you on Wednesday.
▲
Export Selection