All Episodes
Previous Next
July 27, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:39
July 27, 2011, Wednesday, Hour #1
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
So Obama has told the bankers secretly and privately, according to the Drudge Report, that we're not going to be defaulting, that there will not be a default.
Charles Gasparino had the story.
The Fox Business Network.
It's just as we've told you.
And there probably won't be a downgrade.
All of this is hocus pocus.
Readings, my friends, Rush Limbaugh opening the American mind, one listener at a time.
And we're up now to about 40 million mines opened.
Which still means there's a lot of room for growth.
Great to have you here.
What, Boehner's coming back on the show?
Did you what oh, that's from yesterday?
There's a note up there on my prof notes that uh Boehner interview 806, what?
Nobody told me.
Boehner's not coming.
No, no, no, no.
Okay, that's from yesterday.
Greetings, my friends.
Welcome, Rush Limbaugh here.
Great to have you.
The telephone number 800 282-2882, the email address L Rushball at EIB net.com.
Look at what a great lousy job the drive-bys have done in educating the American people on the subject of the debt ceiling.
For instance, how many of you realize that we have more than doubled the debt ceiling in just five years?
In 2006, a debt ceiling was 8.2 trillion.
Now, with what's going to end up happening here, the debt ceiling will be raised to 16.7 trillion.
It's at 14.3 now.
You would think that would qualify as news.
And of course, we're still not spending enough money for Obama.
You know, we're really being played for a bunch of saps, folks.
I you know, we we left the air, left the program talking about this uh yesterday in the context of the baseline, the way the budget is working.
And I have I have an even more shocking bit of news today to illustrate the baseline.
Let me, for those of you that don't know what the baseline is and a baseline budgeting works, let me give you the real quick explanation of it.
When you put together your budget, or if you do one, you take last year's spending and income, and you take a look at it and you figure out if you spent more than you had, or if you didn't spend more than you had, what did you do with what you had left over?
Where did it get spent?
If the next budget you prepare has to be smaller because your incomes drop, you start going through items, figuring out where you're going to cut.
Your baseline is reality.
Your baseline every year is reality.
Your baseline is the amount of money you have to start with.
That is not how it works in Washington.
The basel baseline budgeting is based on the presumption that every item in the budget will automatically increase between three and ten percent, depending on what the item is every year.
Regardless what happened in the previous year.
This is why, for example, at the end of the year, the uh agriculture department starts advertising for food stamp applicants because they want their budget to increase.
So they don't look at the reality, says, you know what?
We don't need this much money in this department.
We have more money than we need.
We don't have as many people needing food stamps as we have food stamps.
They don't look at it and then cut back and tell the government, you know what, you can cut us here.
We don't they will go out and give away food stamps in order to make sure they get that 3-10% increase.
But that 3-10% increase every year becomes the starting point for every budget negotiation.
So for example, when Obama passes the stimulus bill, another trillion dollars effectively is added to the baseline.
No consideration is given to whether or not the money was spent wisely, wasted, effectively, or whatever.
It was just spent.
And because it was spent, there must be an increase in that line item every year.
The way this manifests itself in Washington, the best way I have ever found to illustrate this is to put yourself in a situation where you're going to go buy a new car.
You've looked at your budget and you have decided that you can afford the monthly payment on a $40,000 car.
So now you go to the showrooms or you go to the internet or you go wherever you look to buy a car, and you find a car you really love for $70,000 that the dealer tells you is on sale that you can get it for $60,000.
So you and the family discuss it.
And if you're like Washington, what you do is you tell yourself, you know what?
Let's get that $60,000, $70,000 car that only costs $60,000, and we will save ourselves $10,000.
But you haven't.
You have spent $20,000 more than you originally allocated.
You originally said I'm going to go buy a $40,000 car.
Then you found one you really like for $70,000 on sale for $60.
You plop down the $60,000, which is $20 more than you wanted to spend, and tell yourself you save $10.
That's how it works.
That's baseline budgeting.
That is how a cut or a saving is actually an increase.
Now the best most accurate illustration of where we are with the current baseline in the United States federal budget.
I was sent a note from legislative director of a member of the House of Representatives.
I'm not going to mention the name, nor am I going to mention the state.
But trust me, it is a real person, and of course it's a real state and it's a real legislative director.
And here's the note.
One final thought to illustrate the absurdity of our baseline, and I'll leave you alone.
If Speaker Boehner, now listen to me very carefully, folks.
If Speaker Boehner were to propose that we simply freeze all government spending immediately, including mandatory and discretionary, meaning including the entitlements,
If we just freeze everything and spend no more this year than we spent last year, the Congressional Budget Office would score that as a $9.5 trillion cut.
That's how out of whack the baseline is.
$9.5 trillion cut.
Remember the nine trillion dollar figure we used at the end of the program yesterday.
That is the cumulative total of automatic baseline increases for the next ten years.
But if there's a simple budget freeze, and of course there's not going to be, this is just an educational exercise.
Again now, this is not what is, it is how it is scored.
If the Boehner plan Were a simple freeze.
We're not going to spend another dime next year beyond what we spent this year.
It would equal a $9.5 trillion cut because the baseline in our budget obviously includes $9.5 trillion of new spending minimum over the next 10 years.
So this is how when you hear a proposal reacted to by saying that's a draconian cut.
Look at what they're doing to school lunch programs.
Nothing is ever cut.
Folks, you don't need me to tell you we have doubled the debt limit in five years.
In 2006, the debt limit was $8.2 trillion.
After the Rasmataz that we're going through now is finished and done with, it'll be effectively 16 trillion.
We're at 14.3 now, and they're going to bump it up by two trillion at some point in the next two years, it's going to get there.
Of course, the porculus, they're not budgeting for porculus, but the per se, but the money that porculus cost is automatically included in next year's budget.
It could be for widgets.
Whatever they spend it on is not known.
It's just this is why it was so crucial for Obama to get that passed and Obamacare too, because it ups the baseline.
And therefore, the automatic increases are off the charts.
And therefore, it's impossible to actually cut and reduce anything.
So whatever plan Boehner had to go back to the drawing board with, or anybody, I don't care.
Reed, you name it.
There's not one penny being cut from anything.
The way it's being scored.
Now, if there were a budget freeze, and if we didn't spend another dime, in the world of reality, it would be good.
But Washington is not reality, and Washington budget budgeting is unlike any other.
You think Enron was bad.
The way Washington does things is criminal.
Those people, we don't have enough jails to put everybody in.
So the best illustration yet, we freeze spending.
If we did that, we didn't spend one more dime next year over what we've spent this year.
People in Washington, the Democrats would say that's Boehner is cutting $9.5 trillion.
And what they mean is there's $9.5 trillion in the baseline that's authorized to be spent that won't be spent, therefore we're cutting it.
Just like you allocate $40,000 for your car, you find one for $70 that you like, it's on sale for $60,000, and you think, whoa, can't pass this up.
So you plop down the $60 and tell yourself you've saved $10 when you've spent $20,000 more than you budgeted.
That's how they do it.
There are countless uh other examples on the reverse side of this.
Let's say in your home, you have enough toilet paper for six months.
But you look at the newspaper and there's coupons in there, and the price of toilet paper, you go out and buy toilet paper for half price.
So you say to yourself, man, I'm gonna go stock up.
Look at what I saved.
You didn't save anything.
Then you went out and bought a whole bunch more than you needed.
Then you tell yourself that you got a deal that the unit price was half of what it would normally cost, but you didn't need it.
Well, people in reality heights where we live cannot budget our lives the way Washington does.
We can't just assume that next year we're gonna have a $50,000 more dollars income than we had this year.
They do.
They are assuming they're acting out on the premise that the next 10 years, they're automatically, Just by sitting there without even passing new legislation.
There will be $9.5 trillion spent over the next 10 years.
Where is irrelevant right now?
That comes later when they start actually doing the budget.
The baseline just tells them what they've got to work with.
Then, you know, the appropriations committee gets in gear and the lobbyists and where the money goes, then that's a whole nother ball of insider wax.
But this, when I when I got this email last night, I mean, this put this in total perspective.
Where we're sitting here, it's less than chump change what we're talking about.
Now after Speaker Boehner appeared on this program yesterday, then the president goes out there and he starts asking people a call.
I'm telling you, that place melted.
Washington, once again, the phone lines melted because the American people, they may not understand the specifics of what I just explained, but they know instinctively, just as you do, that this is not how it works, that this is not right, that none of this is making any sense, and you're not buying any longer the fact that the Speaker Boehner even admitted on the program yesterday.
Obama gets a trillion dollars to spend today the minute that bill signed, and we maybe get our trillion dollars in cuts, maybe over 10 years.
Which of course, the maybe over 10 years never happens because this Congress can't commit another Congress 10 years down the line to whatever it does.
The Congress ten years from now will decide what it's gonna do with uh with its money.
If a person who expects he's gonna gain 100 pounds in a year, only gained 75, tells himself he lost 25 pounds.
Thought works.
Yeah, I lost 25 pounds.
Really?
You look 75 pounds heavier.
Well, I was gonna gain a hundred.
But only gained 75, so I lost 25 pounds.
I know some of you hearing this for the first time.
No, Rush, you can't possibly know what you're talking about.
Sadly, I do.
And if it's difficult to understand, it's because it's so outside the realm of reality.
So, and I we've got we've got the figures here.
The uh CBO baseline numbers for the years 2012 through 2021.
For example, the baseline budget for 2021 is uh 5.7 trillion.
It's it's already it, it's it's etched in stone.
That's what, as of today, we're gonna spend in 2021.
The baseline budget there.
That's the automatic increase.
That's nothing can be done about that.
That's done.
I gotta take a brief timeout.
And we'll be back out, and by the way, the increase over 2012 is two trillion.
So we we're we're we're committed, we're committed to two trillion dollars, almost three trillion dollars of additional spending without anybody having a meeting.
It's already the law back after this.
That's right.
To the person that sent me the email here.
That is exactly right.
If a government agency's budget is projected to grow by 100 billion dollars.
Let's say it next year.
If that's the projected growth, if that's how much more money it's gonna get.
But they end up only getting $75 billion.
They run around and caterwall and claim that they sustained a $25 billion cut.
This is how the Democrats made all that hay back in 1995 talking about school lunch program cuts.
weren't any.
The school lunch program was increased.
We were trying to balance the budget back in 1995 and And by the way, we succeeded.
In the process, we reduced the rate of growth by a lot of agency, but none of them got cut.
We just reduced the rate of growth.
And over time, things balanced.
But at the time the Democrats are running around saying Republicans wanted to starve children.
And they had little kids in New Orleans writing letters to members of Congress, the Republicans.
Please don't let me starve.
I can't learn when I'm hungry.
I can't study when I'm hungry.
And all these letters made the news.
But there were no cuts.
There never are any cuts.
There are only reductions in the rate of growth.
When you're talking about the federal budget, never are there any cuts.
It's it's it's a it's a trick that Washington has been playing.
I forget when this all started, baseline budgeting, I forget.
There is a starting point for it, and it's fairly recent.
It's in the last 50 years.
I will have to jog my fertile grace cells to come up with it.
And of course, the reason for starting it was to have accomplished what has been accomplished.
And I'll tell you what, the both parties in on this, but the Democrats are A1 guilty of it all.
Okay, here's the history of baseline budgeting.
Um, ladies and gentlemen, by the way, the credit agencies, these credit rating agencies, they are not fooled by the games included in baseline budgeting.
When the credit rating agencies talk about how the United States is going to lose its triple A credit rating if it doesn't cut at least four trillion in spending, they mean real cuts.
And I'm overwhelmed or overflowing with emails here from people.
I need to explain this again.
I did not say that if we froze spending next year at current levels, that we would cut 9.5 trillion dollars.
That's the point.
That's what they want you to believe.
The way the federal budget is put together, over the next 10 years, there is an automatic budget increase of 9.5 trillion dollars.
It's already written in.
It's just how baseline budgeting is.
Every item automatically increases by a certain percentage.
It's the law, so to speak.
And to show you how out of kilter and how out of whack it is, if the United States government does not spend a dime more next year than this, the Democrats would run to television sets and cameras and start wailing and moaning about Boehner and the Republicans cutting $9.5 trillion from crucial children for women and kids and
minorities and the poor.
That's what would happen.
And then the average American public watching the news would figure that the Republicans are going to cut $9.5 trillion of crucial spending.
When no cuts at all have taken place.
It's simply the baseline automatically adds that nine and a half trillion, whether it's needed or not, and whether we have it or not.
And we don't have it, so we print it or borrow it.
And it would be simple to fix.
It's called a balanced budget amendment.
It's very simple to fix.
You simply wipe this manner of budgeting off the books.
You tell a U.S. government you're Enron, you come up with a new law, so you can't do Enron type stuff, or whatever.
Whatever accounting practice you don't like.
Doesn't have to be Enron, there are a number of others.
But the point is that even if we don't spend another dime, official Washington will tell itself that it's being deprived of 9.5 trillion dollars.
When it's getting the exact same amount next year as it had this year.
Now the genesis of baseline budget projections can be found in the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.
Gosh, I can't tell you how much happened, but Watergate, OSHA, EPA, all of these.
And all of this was done by Richard Nixon, trying to make the left love him.
All of this stuff.
Nixon was hated and despised.
He really hated that.
He wanted to be loved.
He gave them everything they wanted.
And they hate him more today in the grave than they hated him when he was alive.
you can't buy love.
You can't, especially from the left.
They don't know what love is.
Anyway.
The Genesis of baseline budgeting projections can be found in the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.
That act required the Office of Management and Budget to prepare projections of federal spending for the upcoming fiscal year based on a continuation of the existing level of government services.
It was government.
It was Democrats.
They ran the show then basically saying, you know what?
We're going to come up with a new budget that guarantees us every year an increase.
It's right here.
The Act required the Office of Management and Budget to prepare projections of federal spending for the upcoming fiscal year based on a continuation of the existing level of government services.
It means no longer could you look back and say, we spent X on this and we don't need that anymore.
So we're gonna why you couldn't do that.
You had to spend exactly the same.
Of course, that wasn't gonna last long.
It also required the newly established Congressional Budget Office.
That's when that came into existence, 1974, the CBO, required the CBO to prepare five-year projections of budget authority, outlays, revenues, and the surplus or deficit.
OMB published its initial current services budget projections, and that's what the baseline is.
Current services budget projections.
In other words, to maintain current services.
That's the baseline.
Required the CBO to prepare five-year projections of budget authority, blah, blah, blah in its uh initial current services budget projections in November of 1974, and CBO's five-year projections first appeared in January of 76.
Today's baseline budget projections are very much like those prepared more than 20 years ago, although they now span 10 years instead of five.
Yep.
That's right.
This will not, this will not be fixed.
This will not be dealt with until this current baseline is samurai.
Till this current baseline's done away with.
That's my point.
That's my point.
If we don't spend another dime, they are going to tell us that nine and a half trillion dollars are being cut.
Nine and a half trillion dollars are not being cut.
Nine and a half trillion won't be spent, is what they mean.
But the same amount of money spent last year would uh uh as next year as opposed to this year would be the identical name, and they would still call it a cut.
We can't win this.
We can't win the word war.
Because the vast majority of the American people don't know this.
They're not gonna understand this.
All they're gonna hear is Republicans cutting $9.5 trillion, Social Security, uh, veterans, whatever the Democrats come up with.
And then the Republicans, the closer they get to actually making substantive cuts, the more intense the rhetoric in the Democrats becomes, and then the Democrats uh eventually cause the Republicans to cave.
And to uh end a fold.
Now I'm gonna take you back to this program, Octo, actually, the TV show.
Rush the TV show October 3rd 1994.
What is that?
That's 17 years, 18 years ago, right?
2012, 75, yeah.
That's how long we have been teaching.
It never stops on this program.
This is about a minute from a program October 3rd, 1994.
The notion that we can continue with baseline budgeting and continue the processes we have been doing now is only gonna lead to further disarray and higher deficits.
What we need to do is get to real budgeting and in fact a freeze.
If we just had a budget freeze, freeze every item in the budget, and then allow for inflation-sized growth every year, whether it's 2%, 3%, 4%, or whatever it is, we could theoretically come closer to balancing the budget without raising taxes and without cutting spending than going through these particular little uh debates and arguments that we have.
Right now with baseline budgeting, every department gets a 10 to 12 percent increase regardless how much they need.
And then if they only spend a six percent increase, they say to the American people they've had a six percent cut.
When nothing has been cut.
The budget's not being cut, the deficit really isn't being cut, it's only being refinanced with the lower interest rates for a short time.
And to prove it, there is when does the last time you saw the budget get smaller?
Versus how often have you heard Democrats whining and moaning about all the draconian cuts in a Republican budget?
How many times you've heard you hear it multiple times a day.
But there are never any cuts.
Never have been.
I mean, I I play that sound by just to show you and remind those of you who have been around that long.
Just how long this has been uh a teachable item on this program.
Now, also, we're gonna go back in time to the archives of this program May the 11th, May the 11th on this program.
This was me.
I'm here to tell you right now, Obama is landslidable beatable if we have somebody with the guts to tie him to everything that's happened since 2007.
That's when the Democrats took over.
That's when the Democrats won the House, and that's when all this began.
That's when the unemployment started trending up.
And in November, after the election of Obama, it really you go back and take a look at the charts.
It spikes upward like crazy.
Small business people knew what was coming, started letting people go then, even before Obama had been immaculated.
Quite simply, the Republicans are going to have to tie everything in this country's economy, all of the destruction, all of the economic malaise to Barack Obama and his policies.
Which to me tease us up.
Months ago, months ago, and in so doing, I coined the phrase or the word land slightable.
Now, from the National Journal today, Obama's battleground state blues.
The president's national poll numbers aren't good, but they're worse in battleground states.
Obama's job approval rating in the latest national polls has been in a danger zone ranging from 42% Gallup to 47% ABC.
Every survey showing him with the higher unfavorables than favorables.
Just needs to be on TV for, folks.
That's uh.
So while the national polls are useful in gauging the president's popularity, the more instructive numbers are those from the battlegrounds, and those polls are even more ominous for the president.
In every reputable battleground state poll conducted over the past 30 days, Obama's support is weak.
In most of them, he trails Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney.
For all the talk of a closely fought 2012 election, if Obama can't turn around his fortunes in states like Michigan and New Hampshire, next year's presidential election could end up being a GOP land slide.
National Journal.
F. Chuck Todd just a bunch of libs themselves.
This is the hotline crowd.
And And they're now starting to quake in their boots as they look at their own polling data, the polling data they trust.
But you heard it as a matter of ontological certitude on this program back in May.
We'll be right back.
Hi, welcome back, Rush Limbaugh.
Great to have you serving humanity simply by showing up.
By the way, folks, in 1987, Congress amended the definition of the baseline So that discretionary appropriations would be adjusted to keep pace with inflation.
So they've just kept adding to the baseline.
I mean, when you do that, definition of the baseline amended so that discretionary appropriation would be adjusted to keep pace with inflation before the automatic increase every year.
Before the scheduled automatic increase.
You get to do that with your income?
Nobody does.
No business does.
No private household does.
But our federal government does.
Con Carroll, the Washington Examiner, Beltway Confidential.
More than a third of Americans now believe it, President Obama's policies are hurting the economy.
And confidence in his ability to create jobs is sharply eroding his base.
That's in the Washington Post today, folks.
More than a third of Americans now believe Obama's policies are hurting the economy.
Now, I know it ought to be two-thirds believe that.
Gotta be patient.
It's a long process.
But this is good.
According to the Post poll, 57% of Americans currently disapprove of Obama's handling of the economy.
And 37% believe his policies have made the economy worse.
Only 29% of Americans believe Obama's economic policies have made things better.
Now, you gotta wonder what are they smoking or who are they?
But I'll guarantee you there are people that don't have any income.
The people that don't work.
The Post goes on to report that liberal activists hope that Obama will shift from spending cuts to new spending programs after the debt fight is over.
Many liberal Democrats are hoping Obama can pivot from defending Social Security in Medicare and Medicaid to putting forward his own plans for creating jobs.
So the Democrats, Liberal Democrats are worried Obama has to talk about cutting spending right now.
There is no spending cut.
There are no spending cuts.
Nevertheless, these liberal Democrats can't wait for the debt fight to be over so Obama can go spend more.
Which is what they expect government to be.
Yeah, Geitner said it more than 80 million people get federal government checks.
And how many relatives, et cetera, are dependent on those 80 million who get government checks?
So there's your 29% who think that Obama's doing a great job.
But as Mr. Carroll points out here, there's uh just one problem.
Obama's failed record on the economy seems to have convinced Americans that spending cuts and not more spending are the better way to create jobs.
See, anybody paying attention would have to realize that all this spending is not helping.
If they don't get that it's hurting yet, they have to understand all this spending is not helping.
There is no utopia.
There is no nirvana.
People do not have those new kitchens they thought they were going to get.
They still run out of chicken McNuggets up there at McDonald's in Port St. Lucy.
No, no.
I'm I'm I'm I'm mostly serious here.
This is what some people thought they were gonna get.
Anyway, all this spending has not led to new jobs.
It hasn't led to new prosperity.
Quite the opposite.
Now the Post does not report this in their write-up of their own poll, but it's in their own poll.
For the first time since the Post has been asking questions.
More Americans, 47%, now say that large cuts in federal spending will do more to create jobs than to cut jobs.
For the first Time.
More Americans now say that large cuts in federal spending will create more jobs.
First time that's ever happened in a poll.
So, at least in terms of public attitudes and opinion, shift taking place in the right direction.
By the way, you know, people are learning from their Republican governors.
That spending cuts yield jobs.
You look at these states run by Republicans where they're cutting spending and the economy is growing and jobs are being created, they're learning it at the state level.
Federalism works, folks.
▲
Export Selection