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July 27, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
32:33
July 27, 2011, Wednesday, Hour #3
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And we're back.
We've got Broadcast Excellence, Rush Limbaugh behind the Golden EIB microphone here at the distinguished and prestigious Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, opening the American mind one listener at a time or 40 million at a time.
However you want to look at it.
Regardless, my friends, we are your bridge over troubled waters.
And the waters are troubled out there.
Now, here's what's happening.
You know, this is, I started to explain this in great detail.
This is not easy for me, folks.
This is not easy.
We're all Republicans here.
Some of these Republicans up on Capitol Hill are trying very hard.
Others just want to get something done they get credit for, regardless what the impact is.
The effort that is being made by certain Republican leaders to spin whatever it is they're doing, if they would simply put that effort into passing cut, cap, and balance, if they would put that effort into a balanced budget amount.
You know, we only needed, what was it, three or four Democrat votes for, what was it, cut, cap, and balance.
We only need three or four Democrat votes to get that law passed.
But there's the lines of demarcation are clear.
There is a ruling class in Washington.
It has Republican members.
And the Republican members of the ruling class don't want there to be any real significant change.
So the Boehner bill or the McConnell bill, they serve as a decent starting point.
And you have elements of the Republican establishment media pushing them now.
And they are the Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard and National Review.
They are doing their best to spin.
And the various leaders are calling as many people as they can, radio, TV personalities, to try to sell their version of this, which is not the quote-unquote Tea Party version or desire.
Genuine cuts, get rid of this silly baseline way of doing things.
So they're spending a lot of energy in trying to spin and get people to agree with what's going on.
We have an opportunity here.
The frustrating thing here is Obama's who's on the ropes.
And what I, if they call me and ask my opinion, which they don't, by the way, I may be the titular head of the party, but they don't call me and ask my opinion.
If they did, I'd say, I think you guys ought to stop going up there.
You know, you did the right thing when you didn't return a phone call.
You did the right thing.
They're the ones that need this.
It's Obama who needs to pull his irons out of the fire.
It's Obama's reelection we're talking about here.
That's what all this is about.
This is not about anything other than Obama's reelection.
Why help him?
Why be his lifeline to that?
He doesn't present a plan.
Make him pay a price for this.
Make him put a plan on paper.
Who is this guy?
He's the least qualified guy when he walks into any room he's in.
And he gets to be referee, and he gets to act after running up all this spending, after practically personally doubling the debt ceiling himself with his spending.
He now gets to sit there and tell us what's approvable and what isn't, and what will work and what won't, and what he'll sign and what he won't.
I know he's president of the United States, I understand that, but it's his reelection that all this is about.
Obama's reelection has been cast here as saving America.
It is Obama's defeat that saves America, not Obama's reelection.
Anything that is a lifeline to Obama on this that gets him out of a mess, we're not going to get there's no moral victory to be had here.
What do you mean by moral victory?
I'll give you an exact definition of a moral victory: it's the Super Bowl.
Your team qualified by virtue of a bunch of quirk plays in the playoffs.
There are five teams better than yours, but you make the Super Bowl, and you're playing the best team in the NFL.
And for three quarters, you keep the game close, but then in the fourth quarter, you get blown out.
The end of the game, the coach says, You guys, this is a great moral victory.
You showed the world something today.
You showed that you don't give up.
It's a loss.
There's no such thing as a moral victory.
And you don't get credit for moral victories.
Voters do not credit losers for moral victories.
Now, we won the election in November, and as such, we don't compromise.
Winners don't compromise.
Losers compromise.
But we are compromising with ourselves because we are scared, because we are afraid we're going to get blamed for whatever calamity that might befall a country.
There is no way, in real terms, we get blamed for this because we didn't do this.
I'm talking about all this reckless spending, the loss of jobs, this economic disaster.
This ain't us.
We didn't do this.
Mr. Sturdley, I am fully aware that the press goes ape every time somebody says, don't compromise.
Which line?
Oh, the media is playing that line.
Oh, I didn't know that.
I didn't know that.
I've been too busy playing with the OS 10 Lion.
I didn't know they're replaying that line that losers don't compromise.
Losers compromise, winners don't.
That line's being played up.
Oh, that's why.
That's why they're calling me the titular head.
That's why they're now all of a sudden saying these guys are listening to me because I'm the architect of no compromise.
Well, then I wear that badge proudly.
I wear that uniform proudly.
I wear that hat proudly.
I told the speaker on this program in Los Angeles last week, you're compromising with yourself.
There's not even a plan.
You come up with a plan, you go to the White House, the president says, I don't like that, I don't like that, I don't like that like that.
You go back, you come back, you go back, you come back.
He doesn't ever submit anything.
He just tells you, what about your plan?
He's not going to sign it, doesn't like.
Well, they end up compromising with themselves.
Meanwhile, Carney, the press secretary, said yesterday, they don't even have a plan.
Somebody tell me what's wrong, what's incorrect about the philosophy: winners don't compromise.
Let me tell you, when the Democrats win, show me, give me the examples of their compromises when they win.
They don't.
They don't compromise when they lose.
Why should we?
Why is it always on us?
Why is the onus always on us to compromise?
And the only reason we have people who think the onus is on us and that we should compromise is because they've been made to believe that whatever it is we want or believe somehow is extreme.
When it's not, it's mainstream.
We are the mainstream.
The kooks in this country are the left.
Obama is president of the kooks.
You and I, ladies and gentlemen, are not the kooks.
The Tea Party is not a collection of kooks.
Mainstream conservatives are not kooks.
Now, I think you're going to see, if I'm right about this, you're going to see Republicans go after some conservatives, leading conservatives in the House as being obstructionists.
So if we're standing in the way, that's what will happen.
That's the ruling class going after the new arrivals.
Where was the compromise on Obamacare?
Somebody tell me, where was the compromise on Obamacare?
Point is, they didn't compromise anything.
I just am saying, why is the onus always on us?
Now, you might say, okay, well, Rush, Obama won the president.
He won.
He's the president.
He won.
What Obama believes, what Obama ran on, what Obama has done, lost in the November elections.
Obama won nothing in the November elections.
And furthermore, what Obama believes and what Obama wants, he's been losing at the state level.
He lost in Wisconsin.
He's losing in Texas.
He's going to lose in Ohio.
He's going to lose in Indiana.
He's in big trouble.
Obama is not winning.
He is not the winner that we're talking about now.
And he's not compromising either.
They lose cap and trade in the Senate.
What do they do?
Pursue it at the EPA.
That's compromise, right?
Got to take a break.
Sit tight, my friends, El Rushbull, behind the golden EIB microphone back before you know it.
Here's Scott in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Hi.
Hey, Rush, how are you doing, longtime listener?
I'm wondering what you would think if we went a different direction and created a new tax directly for repayment of debt.
You did the map with me for just a moment.
$14 trillion divided by 200 million taxpayers, $70,000 over 50 years is $1,400 a person.
And we prorate it according to exactly how much you make, not any kind of weird scale, just directly proportional.
And I know we don't want new taxes, but this makes every person feel it every year, every time they go over budget.
And so now raise the debt ceiling as much as you want because every time it goes over, baseline or no baseline, we recalculate.
And the person that makes $35,000 a year who has to pay $350 a year of debt repayment, now he's got to pay $425,000.
And that seems to be the only way to get the ignorance attention is whatever comes out of their pocket.
I was just wondering what you thought about that.
First place, I'm not sure your numbers are right because I don't know how many taxpayers you're calculating.
I've seen the numbers on what each household owes as its share of the national debt.
And a household's defined hell.
You know, two dogs and a hamster these days.
Who the hell knows?
But the problem is with something like that, the minute you pass that law that raises taxes and the receipts are directed to a specific entity.
First, I don't know.
Now I'm going to have to check this.
I don't know that it's even legal.
But even if it were, it wouldn't last a week before they would change it and assign it and allow themselves the opportunity to do something else with the revenue.
But the problem that we face isn't a revenue problem.
If it was about revenue, 49% of Americans would not be paying income tax.
We have a spending problem.
This is too many people look at all of this as social justice and thus class warfare.
That kind of law would never see the light of day because there are 49% of the American people not paying taxes now who would have to start under your plan.
And I guarantee you, those people have been raised and conditioned to believe that being an American means they don't pay anything and they get whatever they want for the most part just because they're Americans.
And so whoever proposed that, those people wouldn't stand a prayer of being re-elected.
But this problem is not going to be solved with taxation is the main thing people have to understand.
This problem is going to be solved with more taxpayers, growing economy, more people paying taxes because there are more people being hired with the economy growing, coupled with spending.
This is a pure spending problem.
We don't have, let me tell you, you could confiscate all the wealth over $250,000 in this country, and you would run the government for a couple of weeks.
Taxation's not the solution here.
When you hear Democrats talk about raising taxes, fairness, what is it, shared sacrifice and all that, all they're trying to do is prevent the creation of wealth.
And I don't want to sign up with anybody whose main objective is Denying people the ability to create wealth for themselves.
John in Elmira, New York.
Hello, sir.
Welcome, EIB Network.
Great to have you here.
Hey, Rush.
I was listening yesterday when John Boehner was on and he mentioned 10,000 people retiring and receiving Medicare every day.
I did some quick math on that at $750 a month over 10 years.
That works out to $2 trillion.
Now, of course, people are dying and not receiving Medicare every day as well, but not as many people are dying as are receiving it.
So when you talk about baseline budgeting, if you kept everything flat, you'd have to cut Medicare, wouldn't you?
And not to mention Social Security.
I mean, you talk about what a bad deal it is.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
What you're talking about is making that deal worse.
What do you mean if you kept everything flat, you'd have to cut Medicare?
You were talking about baseline budgeting.
No, I'm talking about how it automatically increases year over year.
Whereas if we had baseline budgeting, it would stay flat every year and we decide how much it was going to increase or not increase.
And I'm saying the reason the budget's increasing every year is because we've got more.
John Boehner said it.
This isn't me.
He said 10,000 people are entering Medicare every single day.
So unless you're going to cut Medicare, you're going to have to grow the budget.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think we're talking about two different things here, but I know what you're trying to say.
You're trying to say a freeze, we couldn't freeze the budget because we're going to have to spend more because new people are entering the entitlement field.
I've got to take a break.
Let me deal with this when we come back after this brief timeout.
Okay, I think what the previous caller was suggesting was that no matter what we do, we're screwed, Ms. Boehner said, because the baby boomers are retiring.
And no matter what, more people are entering the entitlement arena, Medicare, Social Security, so forth and so on.
All of which is true.
And so you ask, where are the Social Security funds?
Where are the Medicare funds?
Well, they're supposed to be segregated, but they're not.
A famous lockbox that Al Gore talked about.
Where are the funds?
Where is the money?
Every baby boomer entering the entitlement market has had over the course of his life that little section on a pay stub called FICA.
And those deductions, Social Security combined with Medicare, supposed to be there for that taxpayer.
Well, of course, it's long ago been spent.
And what's in place of the funds are IOUs because Congress spent the money on other things.
So the money isn't there.
The money isn't there for anything.
I don't know how else to say this.
The Democrats gave us all of these entitlement programs, and now they are saying that they cannot cut any spending.
They are saying we have to increase spending hugely because of Medicare and Social Security.
And we don't talk about Obamacare.
You add that, where every American thinks that everything they get in health care is now going to be free.
Have they got a rude awakening coming?
The baby boomers are going to find out there isn't any money from them, even though they paid into it.
And this supposed free Obamacare isn't going to be free.
It's going to be more expensive than it's ever been.
All of this can be synthesized down to one simple, easy-to-understand concept.
Hard to accept.
We don't have the money for any of this.
Now, John Boehner called here.
He's called here twice.
The most recent Boehner plan doesn't address entitlements.
Ryan's budget did.
Paul Ryan's budget addressed Medicare and Medicaid, not Social Security.
The Senate, the Democrat Senate, killed it.
The Ryan plan had a pretty responsible way of dealing with Medicare and Medicaid.
But Donald Trump rode into the scene on that one and said, anytime somebody says Medicare cuts and Republicans, then you're going to have Republican political people running in one way, not on my watch.
No Medicare cuts.
And it effectively doesn't have a chance because of the language.
The Boehner plan deals with the budget, not entitlements.
So nobody's doing anything about entitlements.
When Boehner talked about the baby boomers entering the entitlement arena, I think I'd have to go back and look at it.
I think he was addressing at that point in the conversation the whole concept of our credit rating and the morality of not defaulting on our debt.
But all of this is the result of Democrat programs resulting from Democrat lies.
They're now coming home to roost.
And of course, who gets blamed for it?
Republicans.
60% of our budget is entitlements.
19%, I think, is defense.
9% is interest on the debt.
And out of the remaining 14%, how do you balance the budget?
So that's why Ryan came along and had a plan to deal with Medicare.
He didn't use this term.
It essentially means testing it.
But none of this is going to get solved when we stop spending more money for the same purposes that it's been spent for the last 50, 60 years to buy votes.
I don't know how that's going to happen when people in charge of writing these proposals have to get re-elected after doing it.
Who's next?
Martin in Dallas, Texas.
Martin, welcome to the EIB Network, sir.
Hello.
Thank you so much for taking my call.
I'd like to address this compromise business and then offer you a thank you.
All right.
I seem to remember that our president informed us that the Republicans can go along for the ride, but they have to sit in the back of the bus.
So I don't think that there's a whole lot of compromising coming on his end.
And my thank you is: there's four days I'll never forget.
One marrying my wife, the birth of my children, becoming a citizen, and now getting to talk to you today.
Well, thank you very much, sir.
I appreciate that.
When did you become a citizen?
In 2001.
Fortunately, it was right after 9-11, so it was bittersweet.
Well, but you're coming up on your 10-year anniversary of being a citizen.
Yes, sir, and I'm very, very proud to be in this country.
Actually, I've been here since I was four years old.
Where are you from originally?
Germany.
Germany?
Yes.
And I wish I could sit down with you and tell some of the stories of what I had to go through to become a citizen.
It'd make your head explode.
You should have just come on through Mexico.
Well, you know, oddly enough, they asked me one time in 86, I was trying to apply for amnesty without getting too long-winded about it.
They asked me how I came here, and I said, well, my father was transferred here.
We came here legally.
And she goes, so you came here legally with your father.
I said, yes, sir.
And she said, well, then you don't qualify.
So I said, so basically what you're telling me, because I didn't break the law, I don't qualify for amnesty.
And she said, yes, sir, that's right.
Anyway.
Well, we've only got 40%.
Well, you're absolutely right.
The president, there is no compromise.
Where is it?
We're compromising with ourselves.
Stop sending stuff up there.
I don't get blue in the face.
You've heard me say this the whole program and all of last week.
Anyway, I appreciate the call.
Thanks much.
One more before the break.
Roger in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Hi.
Welcome, sir.
Great to have you.
Hello, Rush.
Giga Dittos to you.
Thank you.
Hey, I always wonder why, whenever there has to be a cut in government expenses, it's always Social Security and Medicare.
Those are two things that I bought and paid for all my life.
I just started collecting.
That's the first thing on the list to cut.
How about everything that's going to illegals?
How about all these other, you know, you say entitlements, Rush.
I think I am entitled to this product because I bought and paid for it.
I didn't have any option.
It was mandated by the government that I pay for Social Security and Medicare.
Right.
Okay, I got to the age.
I've made these layaway payments for 45 years, and now I'm here to pick up the product.
And that's the thing they're going to cut?
A fine point here, but just make sure you know the reason that they're called entitlements is not because the recipients are entitled to me.
They're called entitlements.
That simply means Congress cannot change the legislation.
Okay.
Simply means it's etched in stone.
Okay, but why aren't they?
It's untouchable.
That's why by the time you get rid of all that stuff, you've got 14% of the budget left you can play with to balance.
Can't touch Social Security.
Can't touch Medicare.
The reason that the Democrats use the language you just described is to scare the recipients of those programs into believing that the Republicans don't want them to have the money.
So based on that, can I be rest in peace knowing that my Social Security and Medicare are going to be okay?
No, because it doesn't exist.
It's in an IOU form now.
Yeah, well, that's true.
But nevertheless, I can think of a lot of things that they could cut that should be a higher priority.
Oh, hell yes.
Sure.
Everybody can.
Just the redundancy in people, the redundancy in agencies.
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
It's just like local government.
You know, first thing to go is fire protection, use protection in teachers.
Exactly.
Well, it never goes.
The reason why they do that is so the citizenry will stand up.
No, no, no, no cuts.
No cuts.
Okay.
You don't want any cuts?
Well, not if it means you're going to cut the cops in the farm.
Well, okay, no cuts.
They never, it's a common trick.
But I tell you that the sophistication and the level, the understanding of this is at an all-time high and growing.
That's what the Tea Party is essentially all about.
It's why we need to keep winning elections.
I mean, the ultimate solution to this stuff is winning election after election after election and getting Tea Party-type people in positions of leadership.
The Rubios, whose name has come up today, and Paul Ryan, get them in leadership positions, and then the dynamic changes entirely.
Appreciate the call, Raj.
We'll take a brief timeout.
We'll continue after this.
Don't go away.
Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Hello, Dave.
Great to have you with us on the program, sir.
Hello.
Rush, we have fought the good fight.
The Speaker has fought the good fight.
We have concessions.
There will be no taxes in this agreement.
We have two options, Rush.
We have the Speaker's plan or Reed's plan.
Rush, you said many times, we live in Rielville.
This is real, Realville, Rush.
We have two plans: the Speaker's or the Senator Reed's plan.
The Speaker's plan is way better for us than Senator Reed's plan will ever be.
Senator Reed's plan doesn't have the votes.
Senator Reed's plan is not going to give votes, and the Boehner plan doesn't have any votes in the Senate.
Rush, they're going to have to pass Boehner's plan.
It's the only thing left on the table.
No, no, wait a second.
Where is this coming from?
On what basis do we have to pass anything right now?
Rush, the president has the bully pulpit.
He will turn this on us.
He will blame everything on the Republican Party.
We can't take the chance.
At least the Speaker's plan is a step in the right direction, Rush.
It's our only option.
We're going to get blamed no matter what happens.
By the way, Dingy Harry has already announced that not one Democrat will vote for the Boehner plan.
I don't understand why.
Why do you want to cave right now?
I don't want to cave.
I'm not caving, Rush.
You are.
It's July 27th.
We're not going to default.
What is it?
Why do you think the best plan out there has already been proposed?
Rush, what if all the things that they say are going to happen happen?
It will be blamed on the Republican Party, and it will be four more years of Obama.
With this, we at least have fought the good fight.
We have another election in 2012.
We get more people in that think like we do, and we make the real changes that need to be made.
I don't know if we do the wrong plan here.
We've just re-elected Obama.
No, Rush, this is a step in the right direction.
We'll still be able to run.
All of our leaders will be able to say we would have done more if we had more of the right people in government, but they're just not there, Rush.
We don't have this sound.
I guarantee you.
If they say that, it's hello, third party.
If they go out, because it's Obama who's on the right.
Rush.
The third party, third party equals Obama re-election.
I know.
That's exactly what I'm telling you.
The Tea Party needs to understand that.
That third party equals Obama re-election.
I know.
And you're giving me the architectural mechanism to create a third party here.
Rush, a third party will equal Obama's reelection, and the Tea Party and anybody else that would like to start a third party need to fully understand that.
You're not hearing me.
I am.
I'm trying, Rush.
What I'm telling you is, is that if we go out and say, okay, this is the plan, and this is the best we can do, but we need four more years and we need another election, that will create a third party.
No, no.
Well, no.
It will because it's giving up.
It's because it's waving the white flag, because it's saying, we won that November election in a landslide.
In a landslide, and the result of that landslide is, this is the best we could do.
We need one more election.
It would be looked at as a cave.
Be right back.
Well, again, a bunch of stuff I didn't get to.
Like there's a doctor's group that says hot dogs now are as dangerous as cigarettes.
So I'm going to put that with the stack from Bill Keller.
New York Times says there's too many books out there.
There's all kinds of stuff that we've got to discuss.
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