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July 22, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:39
July 22, 2011, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Yes, America's Anchorman is away today, and this is your undocumented anchor man sitting in.
Mark Stein, honored to be here.
No supporting paperwork whatsoever.
I'm a foreign exchange student at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
It's a great program.
Guys like me get to study here, and in return, Ben Bernanke gets to use the Central Bank of Zimbabwe printing presses on alternate weekends.
So it all works out, all works out.
And yes, I know on Tuesday I said Rush was going to be here with authentic full-strength made in America excellence in broadcasting through the end of the week, but I'm afraid it's the cheap foreign knockoff excellence in broadcasting today.
But it's like a Bangladeshi Rolex.
You won't be able to tell the difference until it breaks down after 20 minutes.
Rush is in Massachusetts attending a funeral today.
Myra Kraft, a great philanthropist in Massachusetts, Rush was talking about her earlier in the week, and he's a good and loyal friend, and he's there through the tough times too.
So he'll be back on Monday in time, no doubt, for the latest ludicrous bipartisan debt deal.
But in the meantime, we have debt.
We have deficits, decline, doom, despair.
Yes, the weekend starts here.
Live from New York City.
It's open line Friday.
Actually, we're live from the White Mountains of New Hampshire, but the Federal Jingle Regulatory Authority hasn't approved the new ident yet.
Mr. Snerdley, you're in New York, right?
Okay, so let me see if I've got this right.
Yesterday, Rush was in Los Angeles, but you were running the show from Palm Beach.
Today I'm in New Hampshire, so you're running the show from New York.
It's like some National Labor Relations Board thing with Boeing being told where they have to build a factory.
When we get a guest host from the Solomon Islands, Mr. Snerdley will be producing the show live from Tajikistan.
You know it makes sense.
1-800-282-2882, Open Line Friday.
You know how this works.
From Monday to Thursday, a highly trained broadcast specialist determines the content of the show.
But we don't have one of those available today, so it's a free-for-all.
Whatever you want to talk about, ballet, cricket, go for it.
Now's your chance.
1-800-282-2882.
Yesterday on the show, Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, called in to talk to Rush.
Here's how that conversation went.
Happy to have with us the Speaker of the House John Boehner.
I'm glad that we had a chance to talk to you here, Mr. Speaker, because the first flying and people are confused with all of these leaks as to what's going on.
Well, Rush, there is no deal.
No deal publicly.
No deal privately.
There is absolutely no deal.
Are you talking about a deal, though?
Pardon me?
Are you talking about a deal in secret?
Our focus right now is getting the Senate to follow us in the House and pass cut cap and balance.
I believe that we've got to act to prevent a default and to prevent a downgrade of our nation's credit rating.
And the best way to do that is to enact cut cap and balance.
But let me be clear.
I believe that is the best course of action.
I said all the way along that we've got to keep the lines of communication open.
That's why Leader Cantor and I have talked with Mitch McConnell.
We've talked to Nancy Pelosi.
We've talked to the president.
We talked about fallback options if, in fact, cut cap and balance does go down.
And I do think that it's our obligation to have a fallback plan, but it doesn't work.
Well, but that's what everybody's worried about.
What is the fallback plan?
The congressional aides out there today saying that the deal's been struck.
He's unnamed.
He's unfoxed.
He's saying it's $3 trillion of cuts with no tax revenue.
National Journal says $3 trillion in cuts with insignificant tax revenues.
So a lot of people out here are of the opinion that Obama is the one who ought to be caving.
He's the one that doesn't have a plan.
He's forcing you to compromise with yourself.
And he's done great damage to the economy.
People want it to stop.
I understand.
I'm concerned about the nation defaulting on its credit rating.
I'm concerned about us not doing anything about our debt, which will cause our credit rating to fall, and which then would mean everybody's interest rates go up.
I think that's irresponsible.
Frankly, we've looked at a half a dozen fallback plans, none of which are all that appetizing.
That's why we continue to support cut cap and balance.
So you're convinced that a default would make it be unable.
We were to be unable to service our debt if there's a default.
I'm concerned that we're getting into uncharted territory that could wreak great havoc on our nation.
And I don't think it's necessary to get into that unknown zone and take the chance.
I frankly believe that we've got to find a way to cut our budget deficit, cut our debt, and balance our budget.
Why is it not Obama's responsibility to do that?
He is the one that's put us in this position.
It would have been nice if the president would have put a plan on the table months ago, but the president has refused to put any plan on the table.
It's obviously been driving me right up a wall.
Well, he wants you to take the heat for whatever happens.
Yeah, but I think at the end of the day, he knows that he's the commander-in-chief, he's the president of the United States, and he will take the heat.
Well, a lot of people are concerned that you are his lifeline to re-election and that that's how he sees you.
And that if he can get you to, in any way, act that can be portrayed as a cave, that he wins.
And that's what people are definitely afraid of.
Rush, I'm trying to do what I taught my kids to do, and the same thing my parents taught me to do.
You do the right things for the right reasons, good things will happen.
All right.
Speaker Boehner, thanks much.
I wish we had more time, but we don't.
Thanks very much.
That was John Boehner, Speaker of the House of Representatives, calling into the Rush Limbaugh show yesterday.
And the key point to remember about that exchange is that the president has not put any plan on the table.
The president does not have a plan.
And Rush was trying to get Speaker Boehner to address this, which is that there's something kind of slightly crazy about negotiating with a guy who refuses to put anything in writing on the table.
People talk about the media have given this kind of ludicrous misrepresentation of what's going on here.
They've said that Obama is the grown-up in the room.
Obama is the grown-up in the room because he has a plan for $4 trillion worth of savings.
He doesn't have a plan.
He's got nothing in writing that is a plan of any kind.
He wrote an op-ed in USA Today yesterday.
It's got no specifics in there on anything.
It's all just the usual gacious platitudinous generalities.
How can you negotiate with someone who won't even put anything on the table to negotiate?
There is no plan.
By a plan, they mean that he read out the number $4 trillion.
That means that he got his aides to book the extra-wide teleprompter, the one you can get the 12 zeros on, and he read out the number $4 trillion.
And the fact that he's announced, the fact that he stood there in public and he said and he said $4 trillion, everyone thinks he's got a $4 trillion plan.
He hasn't.
He hasn't got a plan for anything.
The only specific for this plan, by the way, This is what the adult in the room, the grown-up in the room, is proposing.
He's rumored to be in favor of raising the age of Social Security eligibility from 65 to 67.
Okay?
65 to 67, he's going to raise, but don't worry!
Don't worry if you're like 64 and a half now.
Don't worry about that because this dramatic, game-changing, debt-reducing move will not be made till the year 2036.
That is the only specific that there's even a rumor about in the so-called Obama plan that he will be willing, he's willing to talk about considering, perhaps discussing raising the age of Social Security eligibility from 65 to 67 by the year 2036.
If that's the best offer, there isn't going to be a 2036, not for America.
Yet this is the guy that the media portray as the grown-up in the room.
And you know, Speaker Boehner is doing a difficult job here because it's hard to negotiate in good faith with a guy who won't put anything in writing, a guy who's actually responsible, who is, as he said, the commander-in-chief, the president of the United States, the chief executive of the failing company.
But he won't put anything on paper.
How do you negotiate with that?
And when John Boehner talks about default and a cut in the debt rating, I think this gets to the heart to the way the media has utterly, fraudulently misrepresented this story.
To the court eunuchs of the Obama media, a failure to raise the debt ceiling by a couple of trillion on August the 2nd would signal to the world that American government was embarrassingly dysfunctional.
That's not the issue here.
That's not what the world is looking for.
In reality, raising the debt ceiling by a couple of trillion without any spending cuts would confirm to the world that American government is terminally dysfunctional.
The world is looking for, to avoid a downgrading of U.S. Treasury debt in the same way that Ireland's was downgraded to junk a few days ago, the world is looking for at least $4 trillion worth of cuts and now, cuts now, not cuts in the year 2036, but cuts now.
Otherwise, we're looking at a downgrade and the implications for a downgrade are not going to be pretty.
1-800-282-2882.
It's interesting to contrast that, what's what's going on in the debt talks, with what's going on with Borders.
Today is the last day of Borders, not the national borders, the Borders bookstore.
Borders, the big chain store, is going the way of the southern border.
It's basically out of business.
It's gone.
It's great news for me.
I've got a new book coming out in a week or two, and for the first time in my life, it's in the front window at Borders because even the looters didn't want it.
So it's Bye-bye Borders.
Rich Lowry has an interesting column at National Review today.
And he makes the point that the market corrects.
When Borders had a 1990s business model that failed to take into account the arrival of the internet and online book sales and the development of the Kindle and the Nook and all the rest of it.
So it had a 1990s business model and the market has worked and the market has ruled that the 1990s business model is inefficient and the company couldn't adapt so it's died.
That's the creativity of capitalism.
That's the dynamism of a free market at work.
Do you know if The United States government had merely a 1990s out-moded business model.
In other words, if its business model was only 15 to 20 years out of date, that would be the best news ever for the United States.
But in fact, our business model is 50 to 80 years out of date.
And when you look at our business model, you've got to wonder.
It's a lot harder to fix than what's going on at Borders or Blockbusters or any of these companies.
Blockbuster, Blockbuster Video went bankrupt because it was wedded to a 1980s technology and distribution system.
But in government, if you were only a quarter century out of date, that would be a huge achievement.
I mean, basically, the Obama Democrats are insisting that an 80-year-old, 8-0, we're not talking about the 1990s like the Borders business model or the 1980s like the Blockbuster Video model.
We're talking about an 80-year-old social program.
Social Security, an early 1930s social program is inviolable.
It can't be touched.
You can't do anything to it.
They're saying it was set up that way 80 years ago and it's got to stay the same for all eternity.
That's like Blockbuster insisting in 2011 that there's no problem with its business model for rentals of silent movies with live orchestral accompaniment.
And you imagine that.
You think Blockbuster Video has a problem because of its 1980s business model.
You imagine if they were still selling, they were renting silent movies with live orchestral accompaniment and saying, oh, no, no, don't worry about it.
There's no need to change.
Yes, there are some problems parking the musician's bus in residential cul-de-sacs, but you know, it's nothing that we don't really need to make any changes.
That's Borders had a 1990s business model.
It's gone.
Blockbuster had a 1980s business model.
The problem with the United States government is that it's got an early and mid-20th century business model and it's not going to, and it's refusing to change them.
We'll talk about that and we will talk about lots of other things.
There are explosions in Norway.
Some kind of bomb has shattered the windows of the Prime Minister's office.
We'll keep an eye on that.
Lots of dramatic things happening around the world, but this is your day to call in on what you want to talk about.
1-800-282-2882.
Mark Stein in for Rush on the EIB network.
Rush returns Monday, Open Line Friday, 1-800-282-2882.
August the 3rd, by the way, is not just the day after the debt limit is reached, the day of the Republic's crash, the day of the default, the day of the downgrading of the dollar, the day of total societal collapse.
It's also by happy coincidence.
Yes, it is.
That's exactly right, Mr. Snowdy.
It is Obama's birthday.
Fancy that.
They've scheduled the collapse of the Republic and Obama's birthday for the same day.
So I think there's no doubt what.
Well, I don't.
I might.
Do you have to genuflect toward Mecca, or can you just genuflect in any direction?
I don't know.
I'll have to take.
Well, if you genuflected his direction, I think he's at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago where they're having the big fundraiser, big birthday fundraiser for him.
But, you know, it's not enough just to have like one birthday party.
The Obama, the myobama.com website has issued A special glossy four-page step-by-step guide that instructs you, you the humble peasant subject of Good King Barack, how to hold your own Obama birthday party.
It's not, I mean, he won't be coming to it.
He won't be coming to your birthday party because you're just a peasant nobody.
But you can still hold a birthday party for him, and he will deliver a live 50-minute speech, which is what every party needs to go with the swing.
Don't you think?
A 50-minute speech for Obama?
And come on, give the guy some credit.
He's only speaking for one minute for every year he's spent on his planet.
I hope they are.
I think they should rename it.
Washington, D.C. should be renamed Obamaton, Obamaville, D.C., Obamaville, D.C.
And I hope they take down all those losers on Mount Rushmore and just change it to Mount Barackmore.
And they should have 50, they should just take all those loser schlubs off Mount Rushmore and just have 50 massive stone barracks just gazing out from the mountain in honor of his birthday.
But if, yeah, well, I think there will be official, the governors of all 57 states will be at the party to pay homage to it.
In fact, I think in order to emphasize how critical Barack is to the Republic, I think they will expel seven of those states from the Republic.
So we will only have 50 states to match the number of years that our blessed Savior has passed upon this earth.
But, you know, as a special treat, they're going to be handing out the 50-calorie no-fat, no-taste yogurt.
So Michelle Obama will be handing the 50-calorie no-taste, low-fat, no-fat, no-taste yogurt out.
And then Barack will be chowing down on whatever he wants to chow down because he's in fabulous shape.
That's why they can.
No, no, no.
I mean, this is the House of Bourbon, Louis XVIII.
He had debt approaching, I think, interest payments approaching 60% of revenues in the year before the French Revolution.
And that's why Mary Antoinette said, let them eat cake.
We're going the same way, our debt, but we can't eat cake.
So we're an improvement on Mary Antoinette and the House of Bourbon in that respect.
But this guide, so you can, you losers out there, you nobodies, you peasant subjects of Good King Barack, you can have your own happy birthday, Barack, 50th birthday party.
They're telling you to invite 50 friends.
So if you know 50 people on your street who want to hear a 50-minute speech from Barack Obama, and let's face it, let's face it, you only have to be in a very small cul-de-sac, and everyone will come.
50 people who want to sit through a 50-minute speech from Barack Obama because nothing says partying like it's 2008 than listening to a 50-minute speech from Barack Obama.
Then there's a special website, myobama.com.
They've got all the 50th birthday logos there, and they fortuitously timed it to coincide with the collapse of the Republic.
Yes, Rush is away at a funeral in Massachusetts today.
He will be back live 12 noon Monday for a full week of excellence in broadcasting.
From the Atlanta Journal Constitution, McDonald's manager punched customer who had service dog.
A Marietta McDonald's manager is accused of punching a mother who brought a service dog and her autistic children into the restaurant.
A Cobb County warrant charges Tiffany Denise Allen with simple battery, simple assault, fear, and disorderly conduct.
This woman just happens to go into McDonald's with her service dog, and the manager takes against the dog, follows the woman into her bathroom.
The woman tries to flee.
She throws her cup of McDonald's coffee to the ground and runs away.
And the McDonald's manager follows her into the parking lot and hits her in the face.
So the poor woman goes in to McDonald's to get a quarter pounder and comes out a quarter pounded.
That's marvelous, isn't it?
McDonald's McDonald's, yes.
Now, what is it?
Burger King, have it your way.
Wow, that's, it's a funny thing.
You know, the business with service dogs leads to odd altercations, I find.
Someone should publish an anthology of service dog conflicts in the world.
I wouldn't mind betting that actually it's at the root of most wars that break out.
There was a story in Australia somewhere, I think it was Adelaide, that this blind man went into a restaurant and he asked, and the waiter said, What's that dog with you for?
And instead of saying that it was a guide dog, a guide dog, that's what they called them in Australia, the waiter thought he said it was a gay dog and refused and refused and refused to let him in the restaurant.
What, gay dogs?
Yeah, but this was a non-gay dog.
It was a confusion over the Australian accent because if you think, you know, the Australian accent where the waiter goes, hey, what's that dog?
And the blind guy just said, oy, Mike, it's my guide dog.
And the waiter, who was apparently an Asian waiter, misunderstood the Australian accent.
He hadn't been there that long, and he thought it was a gay dog.
And so the restaurant wound getting fined for homophobia and being ordered to pay compensation because even though the dog was a heterosexual dog, the implication that the restaurant didn't take in homosexual dogs was regarded as, you know, put them absolutely beyond the pale.
The case went to whatever they call it down there, the Equal Opportunity Tribunal.
And the statement of the restaurant owner was that they thought the dog was not a blind person's dog, but an ordinary dog that had been turned gay, as the owner put it, which only made his case worse.
So there's crazy things happening with service dogs.
What do you call a dog?
What's that, Mr. Snerdley?
Well, that's all dogs, isn't it?
Mr. Snerdley wants to know what's the what do you call a dog who likes human legs?
All dogs like human legs.
I've yet to meet a dog that doesn't like a human leg.
I don't believe that dog has been invented.
If you know of one, if you know of a breed that isn't taken by human legs, then let me know.
1-800-282-282.
If you're a dog expert and you know the non-leg appreciating, most dogs are leg men, whether they're gay dogs or heterosexual dogs.
Let's go to Richard in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
Richard, you are live on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Great to have you with us.
Well, thank you, Mark.
I have a suggestion for the Republicans on closing the deficit.
And it starts by: let's agree with the Democrats.
Let's make very clear that we don't want to cut programs for anyone in need.
And second, though, let's make those wealthy pay their fair share.
And let's start by not sending checks to those that don't need them.
And there's a great article a couple of days ago in our local paper that highlights that.
So your theory then is by accepting the Democrat proposition and saying that things like Medicare should in fact be means tested and should only go to people who need it.
Exactly.
And let's agree with them.
We're not going to throw poor old Granny outside, but let's get those poor wealthy people.
Now, there's an article in the main Arkansas paper, supposed to be sympathetic two days ago, about a man who's been spending his weekend going to Washington lobbying for Medicaid.
And it's because of the benefits he gets.
Right.
Well, it happens to mention that he's a doctor with the university health system and makes $327,000 a year.
Yeah, but you know you're right.
A man who makes $327,000 a year doesn't need the government in charge of his health care.
But the reason the Democrats will never go along with that is to go back to the line on guns, you know, just as gun control isn't about guns, it's about control.
Lemonade stand control isn't about lemonade stands, it's about control.
Healthcare control isn't about health care, it's about control.
They do not want, if you look at the way poverty is defined in this country now, poverty is ridiculous.
No people, the poor people of today, if you look at the way it's defined, would be regarded as the wealthy people of the Middle Ages because we have so redefined poverty that our poverty programs now are targeting people who would be middle class and upper middle class in any previous society.
And that suits the Democrats just fine because the more people who are receiving checks from the state.
Obama gave the game away a couple of days ago when he said, oh, well, you know, if this August the 3rd deadline, you know, if my birthday deadline, my birthday debt ceiling deadline passes, I can't guarantee that the August checks will go out.
So in other words, he's saying to grandma, he's holding the gun to the grandma's head, as he'd put it, and he's saying, if the Republicans don't cave before my birthday, you're going to get it, lady, because your check ain't going to be going out.
And he gave the game away here, that that is the business of the United States now, to send checks out to the citizenry.
And as you point out, Richard, most of these people, a doctor making $300,000 in Arkansas, doesn't need, doesn't need to be getting his health care from the distant national government on the far horizon.
It's absolutely stupid.
It's pointless.
And by the time it's been sluiced, if you think of the pipe for the delivery of Medicaid from Washington to this $300,000 a year doctor in Arkansas, it's like a leech field pipe.
It's like the pipe out of your septic tank.
There's these holes all the way along and government employees all the way along leeching money and services out of this thing.
So it's an inefficient delivery system.
But what it does is it justifies the Leviathan state.
It justifies the big government behemoth.
And so if you say to Democrats, that's where your pals at the Arkansas Democrat Gazette aren't thinking straight on this.
If you say, if you, obviously, there would be no problem if we just said, look, we're going to stop all this government spending, but we're just going to concentrate on the poor and needy.
That's not what the big entitlement state is now.
The big entitlement state is where people earning $300,000 a year pay huge amounts in taxes in order for the government to give them little lollipops back as tax credits for this or government programs for that, which are like prizes, which are like rewards, which are like treats, like birthday treats at the Obama birthday party.
They're like little birthday treats in which the good King Barak rewards you for agreeing to live your life like the statists want you to live.
And that's why they're never ever going to go, they're never going to go along with these programs that say only the really poor, only the really needy are going to get them.
They want them to be big universal programs because by doing that, you accept that the state is the legitimate arbiter of how you live your life.
And that is what the Democrats want, I'm afraid.
Thanks for your call, Richard.
1-800-282-2882.
Richard's theory is we should just say, you're right.
People need to, the wealthy need to pay more.
Some of these wealthy people shouldn't be getting the benefits of Medicare and Medicaid and all these other programs.
And so they should be taken off the rolls.
But the Democrats will not go along with that because the Democrats want a big, big universal social programs because they require big government bureaucracies and big government to run them.
And because they establish the principle that in the United States of America, the government is entitled to take what it has from you and give you a little bit of it back in Obama's 50th birthday treats for agreeing to live your life the way the government wants them to live.
1-800-282-2882, Open Line Friday, lots more straight ahead.
Mark Stein in for Rush.
Open Line Friday.
1-800-282-2882.
Los Angeles.
A city official says a Los Angeles traffic officer has been fired for appearing in uniform in a pornographic film.
Bruce Widden, executive director of the city's Civil Service Commission, told the Los Angeles Times Thursday the officer was fired earlier this week.
Widden says John Dankler.
John, is that John Dankler or John Dangler?
I can't tell.
It's like a little blur on the printout here.
John Dangler, is that his porn name or is that his regular Los Angeles traffic cop name?
John Dangler was dismissed for misconduct on the job and in uniform and for indecent acts that reflected poorly on the city workforce.
What's interesting about this story, he's a 23-year employee of the city's Department of Transportation.
And he and another uniformed traffic officer came under investigation three months ago after it turned out that they had appeared in this pornographic film with an actress performing lewd acts.
I don't know what happened to the other uniformed traffic officer.
Maybe they're still there.
But I think this is absolutely deplorable.
You know, if you look at the benefits that your average Los Angeles traffic officer gets, you look at the pension, you look at the time they get to retire.
This guy is a 23-year employee of the city's Department of Transportation, not that far away from retirement.
Why is he taking the jobs of good, honest private sector porno actors?
They don't have the benefits that John Dangler has.
They don't have the retirement and health care options that John Dangler has.
What about won't we spare a thought for the poor minimum wage porno actor who's having his jobs taken from him by uniformed Los Angeles traffic officers?
This is just terrible.
I think the only possible defense for this is if he turned out to be from, I think it was the California, or whatever they call it, the occupational health and safety guys, who were considering regulating pornographic movie shoots by requiring them to maintain the same hygiene standards as a California hospital.
And if you've ever been to California hospitals the last couple of years, you'll know that shouldn't be that difficult.
But no, they were going to require that everybody in the pornographic movie had to wear latex gloves and surgical masks.
So they would be brought up to the same hygiene standards as a California hospital.
By the way, if you've ever been in a National Health Service socialized hospital in Scotland, it would be nice if you could bring the standard of hygiene in the average Scottish hospital up to that of a California porn movie shoot.
But so the only excuse would be if this LA traffic officer was actually in uniform there because he had been assigned to check whether everybody in the lewd act was wearing sufficient amounts of latex gloves and surgical marks.
Yes, probably, probably, well, I don't know whether he was wearing his helmet in this particular scene, but I think that's good.
I think it's good that we should have uniformed security people.
I don't know whether he was there.
I mean, I don't even see what the objection is.
I mean, basically, uniformed members of the Transport Security Administration are taking part in lewd acts at every airport in the country.
They don't seem to be in danger of getting fired.
Why should the poor LAPD traffic cop wind up getting fired?
Let us go to Tim in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Tim, you're live on the Rush Limbaugh Show as we contemplate the looming date with destiny.
Mark, how are you?
I'm doing good.
How's things with you?
No legitimate complaints outside of governmental issues, but that's another story entirely.
I wanted to put forward the notion that the Democrats have an ulterior motive in these budget discussions, which I know comes as a shock.
And what is the ulterior motive then?
Well, I will tell you.
I think that they're trying to, how do I say this, sodomize the political vernacular by conflating taxes and revenue so that the two become inseparable in the public mind.
And what part of revenue they're trying to replace the word taxes with revenue because they think revenue sounds sober and responsible, but without terrifying people that it just means they have to write a bigger check at the end of the year.
Well, I think it's more than that, even.
I think that what they're trying to do is make the two terms interchangeable so that the future be populated by a public who thinks that the way out of economic despair is a bevy of new taxes.
And they'll never even stop to think that cutting taxes would actually do more to alleviate economic woes.
Oh, I see.
Yeah.
Now, you're absolutely right here.
Yeah, because increasing the tax rate does not mean an increase in revenues.
Right.
And you're absolutely right on that.
And by the way, there's no real, the evidence suggests that you cannot get, you cannot get revenues up above 19% of GDP.
All the historical evidence suggests that when you try to go above that, people just make alternative arrangements.
They don't work as hard.
They move their money offshore.
They park it somewhere.
So it's not declared as income for a few years.
You can't get it up above 19%.
People don't want to, beyond a certain point, the people who generate economic activity, the dynamism in the economy, does not want to go above 19% of GDP.
Now, the Obama sickness, the Obama depravity, the Obama-Reed-Pelosi depravity of the last few years assumes that you can have government expenditures of 25% of GDP or more, 25 to 30% of GDP by the federal government as a permanent fact of life.
You could tax everybody.
You could take everything from everybody and you are not going to get enough to cover that because the evidence, the evidence is plain on this, that that you can't push it up above 19 percent unless in very particular agreed circumstances.
If you happen to be, I think the most that that most revenue that the United States government ever collected as a proportion of GDP was the year 1944, the very the very climax of the war.
when we were gearing up to land on the beaches of Norway and liberate a continent and the national focus was on that.
But absent that, you can't do it.
And these guys, as you say, by confusing the words revenue with taxes, by saying, oh well, if you increase taxes, you increase revenue.
No, Obama's increased taxes and everything, and he and he ain't gonna have any revenue to show for it because he's killing the economy.
By the way, did you know Larry Flint was arguing for a porn movie industry bailout a couple of years ago?
Maybe it's because of all these LAPD moonlighting officers.
Mark Stein, in for Rush.
Lots more straight ahead.
It's Open Line Friday.
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