All Episodes
Previous Next
Aug. 2, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:11
August 2, 2011, Tuesday, Hour #2
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Okay, I think I will.
And it will jip Obama when he shows up.
Here he comes now, just in time to be jipped.
Okay, kill the music.
Our statements, our microphones are there.
The deficit and avert a default that would have devastated our economy.
This is a long and contentious debate.
And I want to thank the American people for keeping up the pressure on their elected officials to put politics aside and work together for the good of the country.
This compromise guarantees more than $2 trillion in deficit reduction.
It does not.
It's an important first step to ensuring that as a nation we live within our means.
It does not.
Yet it also allows us to keep making key investments in things like education and research that lead to new jobs and ensures that we're not cutting too abruptly while the economy is still fragile.
We're not cutting anything.
This is, however, just the first step.
This compromise requires that both parties work together on a larger plan to cut the deficit, which is important for the long-term health of our economy.
Extra flowers close the debt with just spending cuts.
We'll need a balanced approach where everything's on the table.
Balanced my answer.
Yes, that means making some adjustments to protect health care programs like Medicare so they're there for future generations.
Jackass.
It also means reforming our tax code so that the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations pay their fair share.
Here we go.
And it means getting rid of taxpayer subsidies to oil and gas companies and tax loopholes that help billionaires pay a lower tax rate than teachers and nurses.
Bye-bye, America.
I've said it before.
I will say it again.
We can't balance the budget on the backs of the very people who have borne the biggest brunt of this recession.
We're not balancing it periods.
We can't make it tougher for young people to go to college or ask seniors to pay more for health care or ask scientists to give up on promising medical research because we couldn't close a tax shelter for the most fortunate among us.
Everyone's going to have to chip in.
That's only fair.
That's the principle I'll be fighting for during the next phase of this process.
What?
Pay it.
And in the coming months, I'll continue also to fight for what the American people care most about.
New jobs, higher wages, and faster economic growth.
Oh, yeah, how are you going to do that?
Well, Washington has been working with deficits.
People across the country are asking, what can we do to help the father looking for work?
What are we going to do for the single mom who's seen her hours cut back at the hospital?
Get a husband.
What are we going to do to make it easier for businesses to put up that now hiring sign?
Get rid of you.
That's part of the reason that people are so frustrated with what's been going on in this town.
In the last few months, the economy's already had to absorb an earthquake in Japan, economic headwinds coming from Europe, the Arab Spring, and the rile in oil prices, all of which have been very challenging for the recovery.
And the worst part has been you.
These are things we couldn't control.
Our economy didn't need Washington to come along with a manufactured crisis to make things worse.
That wasn't.
It did.
We just got one.
It's pretty likely that the uncertainty surrounding the raising of the debt ceiling for both businesses and consumers has been unsettling and just one more impediment to the full recovery that we need.
And it's something that we could have avoided entirely.
Wrong.
So, voters may have chosen divided government, but they sure didn't vote for dysfunctional government.
They want us to solve problems.
They want us to get this economy growing and adding jobs.
And while deficit reduction is part of that agenda, there isn't any, it is not the whole agenda.
Growing the economy isn't just about cutting spending.
It's not about rolling back regulations to protect our air and our water and keep our people safe.
That's not how we're going to get past this recession.
How are we?
We're going to have to do more than that.
Like what?
And that's why when Congress gets back from recess, I will urge them to immediately take some steps.
What?
Bipartisan, common sense steps.
What steps?
That will make a difference.
What?
That will create a climate where businesses can hire, where folks have more money in their pockets to spend.
You've got more than where people who are out of work can find good jobs.
We need to begin by extending tax cuts for middle-class families.
They don't have more money in your paychecks next year.
If you've got more money in your paycheck, you're more likely to spend it.
And that means small businesses and medium-sized businesses and large businesses will all have more customers.
That means they'll be in better position.
And while we're at it, we need to make sure that millions of workers who are still pounding the pavement looking for jobs to support their families are not denied needed unemployment benefits through panel.
We can cut the red tape that stops too many inventors and entrepreneurs from quickly turning new ideas into thriving businesses, which holds our whole economy back.
And I want Congress to pass a set of trade deals, deals we've already negotiated that would help displaced workers looking for new jobs and would allow our businesses to sell more products in countries in Asia and South America, products that are stamped with the words made in America.
What trade deals?
We also need to give more opportunities to all those construction workers out there who lost their jobs when the housing boom went bust.
Well, we could put them to work right now by giving loans to private companies that want to repair our roads and our bridges and our airports.
That was what the deal.
Rebuilding our infrastructure.
We already did that.
We have workers who need jobs and a country that needs rebuilding.
We already did that.
An infrastructure bank would help us put them together.
An infrastructure bank.
And while we're on the topic of infrastructure, there's another stalemate in Congress right now involving our aviation industry, which has stalled airport construction projects all around the country and put the jobs of tens of thousands of construction workers and others at risk because of politics.
It's another Washington-inflicted wound on America, and Congress needs to break that impasse now, hopefully before the Senate adjourns, so these folks can get back to work.
So these are some of the things that we could be doing right now.
There's no reason for Congress not to send me those bills so I can sign them into law right away as soon as they get back from recess.
Send them up there.
That's right.
Both parties share power in Washington.
Yeah.
And both parties need to take responsibility for improving this economy.
It's not a Democratic responsibility or a Republican responsibility.
It is our collective responsibility as Americans.
And I'll be discussing additional ideas in the weeks ahead to help companies hire, invest, and expand.
You don't know a thing about it.
So we've seen in the past few days that Washington has the ability to focus when there's a timer ticking down and when there's a looming disaster.
Screw everything up.
It shouldn't take the risk of default, the risk of economic catastrophe, to get folks in this town to work together and do their jobs.
There wasn't going to be a lot of work.
Because there's already a quiet crisis going on in the lives of a lot of families and a lot of communities all across the country.
They're looking for work, and they have been for a while.
They're making do with fewer hours or fewer customers, or they're just trying to make ends meet.
That ought to compel Washington to cooperate.
That ought to compel Washington to compromise, and it ought to compel Washington to act.
How about get out of the way?
That ought to be enough to get all of us in this town to do the jobs we were sent here to do.
You haven't the slightest clue what to do.
We've got to do everything in our power to grow this economy and put America back to work.
That's what I intend to do, and I'm looking forward to working with Congress to make it happen.
All right, Dan.
Thanks very much, Herbert.
I told you.
I told you in the last hour, he's calling for more stimulus spending.
That's all that was.
He wants more stimulus spending.
Folks, he's going to break this country.
He is going to break this.
More stimulus spending.
That's all it is.
Meanwhile, our guys, God love them.
Our guys think they headed off some big crisis at the pass.
Our guys think they headed off of mean old stagecoach at the pass.
Why we staved off at mean old default.
And it was never about default.
We were never going to default.
It was a phony, man-made crisis, and our guys fell for it.
We don't want to get blamed for it.
We're not going to get blamed for it.
We only got one-third of the government.
All this is about more stimulus.
All this is about more spending.
How dare he talk about doing more on infrastructure when the first stimulus was sold on that basis?
Of course, the first stimulus we know went to teachers and state employees, Democrats.
Keep them employed because they pay dues, because those dues come right back to the Democrat Party.
So Christmas in August for Obama, that is what he got.
His official campaign speech using the word folks and dropping his Gs, that makes it a campaign speech.
How come Obama didn't tell Grandmom that her Social Security check is going to run out?
She has nothing to worry about when it comes to Social Security and Medicare.
How come he didn't tell her that?
How come he didn't tell her that all these things have been saved?
How come he didn't tell her that Medicare has been saved, that Social Security has been saved, and that the veterans' checks, they're now going to go out.
Why didn't he say any of that?
Because they were never threatened in the first place.
I've just been handed a note here that says, Rush, you were right.
Harry Reid, joint committee must include taxes or trigger will kick in.
Well, I told you yesterday we were sitting here and we're discussing whether the Bush tax cuts sunset or not.
No matter what the scenario, there will have to be a tax increase.
The Republicans were running around all day yesterday and the day before claiming victory because they had come up with a plan that guarantees no tax increases.
Obama doesn't get to raise taxes, no tax increases in this deal.
Here's Dingy Harry in a statement fairly recently.
We've had too much talk the last few days of Republicans as early as this morning.
Republican leaders in the Senate saying there will be no revenue.
Well, that's not going to happen.
Otherwise, the trigger is going to kick in.
The only way we could arrive at a fair arrangement for the American people with this joint committee is to have equal sharing.
It's going to be painful.
Each party, if they do the right thing, it's going to be painful for them because to be fair, we have to move forward.
There has to be equal spending cuts.
There has to be some revenue that matches that, said Dingy Harry on the floor of the Senate right before voting started on the debt deal.
So the joint committee must include taxes or the trigger will kick in.
I was right.
And here's Harry Reid saying, you know, these Republicans saying that they won.
There's no tax increases in the deal.
That's not true.
And of course, there will be tax increases.
Obama just spelled it out.
Yeah.
On the day, yeah, we're supposed to be celebrating spending cuts.
I mean, that's the meme, right?
The Republican meme is: look what we did.
Boy, we headed them off at a pass.
Why we stopped all these massive spending because happy days are here again.
And out from the Oval Orifice comes Obama to detail all of his new spending in a campaign speech.
All because we didn't want to get blamed for a phantom default that was never going to happen.
Audio Sunby 24, here is Dingy Harry vowing to raise taxes.
You know, I just got a note.
I just got a note from a friend of mine who plays the markets.
And he just heard Obama.
He said, boy, how stupid is Obama?
What an idiot, Obama.
Boy, how stupid is Obama here?
A Republican said, no new taxes.
No new taxes.
And there's Obama talking about tax increases.
And I'm thinking my friend got who's stupid backwards.
Here's dingy Harry talking about how it's going to be done.
We've had too much talk the last few days of Republicans, as early as this morning, Republican leaders in the Senate saying there will be no revenue.
That's not going to happen.
Otherwise, the trigger is going to kick in.
The only way we can arrive at a fair arrangement for the American people with this joint committee is to have equal sharing.
It's going to be painful.
Each party, if they do the right thing, it's going to be painful for them.
Because to be fair, we have to move forward.
There has to be equal spending cuts.
There has to be some revenue that matches that.
Now, the thing is, ladies and gentlemen, here's Harry Reid saying that there would be tax increases.
But you must know, most Senate Republicans voted for the bill.
They know it as well.
The Senate Republicans, most of them know the same thing that Harry Reid knows, that there will be tax increases.
It is the House of Representatives where tax increases are expected to be stopped.
Dingy Harry is, of course, talking about the Senate.
It's the House where tax increases are expected to be stopped.
And that's, of course, where the arm twisting when it comes time to raise taxes will begin and where it'll happen.
Here's Amos in Detroit.
Amos, thank you for calling.
I'm glad you waited.
Welcome to EIB.
Excuse me, EIB Network.
Thank you, Rush.
It's an honor to speak with you.
And thanks for the laughter and the laughs during the break.
I needed them.
You bet, sir.
I just heard about this Sunday night about the potential deal, and I was already livid about it.
And everything I've learned since then has reinforced it tenfold.
And when I hear Obama and Reed say for the American people, they're saying over and in spite of the American people.
And that the ruling class has prevailed once again over us and putting our grandkids on their backs and the American people on the American people, not for them.
Yeah, I think you pretty much got it.
I think Washington is governing against the will of the people.
And one more thing: I got to say, you know, I've always liked John Boehner.
I'm very disappointed in he and McConnell.
And it makes me go back to the day that he golfed with Obama and the media made a big deal out of it.
And then since then, the supposed fallout at the White House last week, I'm even questioning all of the sincerity of all of that.
So beginning to feel like we've been scammed.
I think we have.
I think we've been played.
I don't think there's any doubt that we've been played.
The whole point is to play us.
Spending cuts?
No tax increases?
Spending cuts, really?
When the baseline raises the spending over 10 years, a minimum of $7 trillion?
Let me go back to the, I want to finish my point.
I actually started this an hour ago.
All my life, I heard older people warning me about the national debt and how it was even then untenable when it was $400 billion.
When I was a kid, it was untenable.
I had, I remember a lot of adults, my grandfather and father, worried about it.
No end in sight to it.
But the sky never fell.
You know, all of this talk about it was going to be the ruination of the country, the sky never fell.
In fact, the economic cycles continued.
We'd have booms, we'd have slowdowns, we'd have a recession now and then.
But overall, we kept growing.
And the American standard of living kept rising.
The national debt kept going up, but I kept hearing from older people: the national debt is going to wipe us out.
And I always poo-pooed it because that big monster out there never even took a bite, never even tried to catch us.
Well, the one thing I didn't know back then, because I was too young, was what the national debt really was.
Everybody said, that's no big deal, Rush.
We owe it to ourselves.
So it's not really like we owe a bank that can come take our stuff away or an automobile dealer come take the car away.
We owe it to ourselves.
It really never has to be paid off.
I don't know how many of you heard that when you were growing up.
We owe it to ourselves.
It doesn't have to be paid off.
But the fact of the matter is, what it really has led to is that nothing is real.
Everything's built on money that doesn't exist.
And that's kind of scary.
Guiding light through times of trouble, confusion, murkiness, tumult, chaos, even the good times, Rush Limbaugh, the hardest working man in the no business.
Harry Reid, you know, I just get mad at myself.
I just get mad at myself.
Finish this national debt thought.
The national debt, all my life, older people said it's going to ruin the country.
Other people said, no, we owe it to ourselves.
It never has to be paid back.
So therefore, it really isn't real.
And all through my life, hearing about how horrible the national debt was, all I saw was prosperity, standard of living increase.
Everybody, every level of income that we qualify in this country, even poverty, is a different standard of living in this country than it is in other parts of the world where there is real poverty.
And yet, national debt's out there.
So I'm asking myself, why all of a sudden now, when I turn 60, have I done a 180?
Why all of a sudden is this national debt thing is why?
Why am I starting to sound like my father and my grandfather?
And there are a number of obvious answers.
I mean, one of them is Obama.
We've gotten to a point where there is no concern for it.
There's not even a pretense at balancing a budget.
In fact, it's just the opposite.
But the hard, cold reality that hit me, and this is one of these things that should have hit me years ago, and slow on the uptake.
When you add in consumer credit card debt and our government's national debt and all the other debt that's there, you realize that the U.S. standard of living, according to real dollars, the real money supply isn't that high.
Without massive debt that people can barely afford, they wouldn't have the cars that they have and they wouldn't have the homes that they have.
This country can't afford what we're spending on education.
This country can't afford what we spent on the space program.
We can't really afford what we're spending on defense.
We don't have it.
We have about $1 trillion a year in income.
We can't afford to pay people food stamps.
We can't afford to pay people Social Security above and beyond what they have contributed to their own accounts.
We can't afford to treat the poor medically.
None of this is real.
And of course, when That reality hits that none of this is real, that's when you become cognizant of the ultimate, inevitable collapse.
Because what isn't real is built on the flimsiest of foundations.
But rush, but rush, how could people buy a car if they had to pay cash for it, if they couldn't borrow it?
Well, there's a certain amount of debt everybody could afford.
Most people have debt they can't afford.
Our government certainly is in debt that it can't afford.
So, really, all this is fake.
So much of this is phony.
I mean, in material terms, it's real.
It's there.
You go out and touch it.
All those television sets of people have a reel, and all those cars, they own a reel, and gasoline in them, and they drive, and they're real.
But the money that bought those cars is not real.
And it's a very, to me, scary situation.
And now we're just piling more fakery on top of more fakery.
With Obama targeting the only place left in this country where the people who have money actually have it.
That's his euphemism: his corporate jet owners is whatever else.
But when you realize that it's not real, and I'm not in an unusual twist here, I'm not explaining this as well as I should be or could.
Because I see Snerdley in there frowning.
And normally when I'm making perfect sense, nerdily nodding and smiling when he's in there frowning, can't figure out what I'm trying to say.
Look at all of the pensions, all of the health care.
We don't have the money to pay any of that.
Well, there's a lot that isn't real.
People think that they have a pension that pays them X for the rest of their lives.
And somebody, we're living in a Ponzi scheme.
How real is a Ponzi scheme?
At some point, the reality of the Ponzi scheme hits and Bernie Madoff says, guess what?
I no longer can continue to pay people what they want.
They're living in a Ponzi scheme.
We're living in several Ponzi schemes.
So we just now have gone through the motions of ostensibly stopping a default and saving our credit rating.
And now here's Dingy Harry this afternoon.
He's back at a press conference, Audio Soundbite 25.
Here's what's next on the Democrat agenda.
Each side laments some of the things we had to give up, but that's the way it is.
It's that way because that's how our system works.
That's what compromise is all about.
It was a bipartisan compromise.
It wasn't the right-wing cap cut and whatever it is over there.
That was not bipartisan.
It's nothing that we could agree to a short-term.
It was really a disaster for America.
We look forward to the work on the committee to make sure that millionaires and billionaires and corporate jet owners and people who have those yachts who get tax benefits, oil companies who get these huge tax subsidies, that that's in the mix of thinking what goes on.
That's what this select committee is going to be about.
So Harry Reid assuring us that the select committee is going to be focused on raising taxes on the wealthy.
Corporate jet owners, the people who have those yachts get tax benefits, oil companies that get these huge tax subsidies.
That's in the mix of thinking that's what's going on.
And him making a joke about cut cap and balance.
He said that right-wing cup cat, whatever it is over there, wasn't cut cap and balance essentially a Joe Biden idea.
Wasn't that something that we came up with Biden?
Or am I confusing it with something else?
Well, regardless.
I thought it was something that we came up with in a joint meeting with Biden on some of this.
Anyway, Harry Reid making fun of cut cap and whatever it is they got going on over there.
But now our joint committee, now we're not working on it, now it's time to get serious.
And Chuck U. Schumer during a Senate Democrat press conference to discuss the passage of the bill raising the federal debt ceiling.
It's now time for Congress to get back to our regularly scheduled programming, and that means jobs.
While Washington has been consumed with averting a default, our nation's unemployment problem has been worsening.
It's time for jobs to be moved back to the front burner.
We can reset the debate, and that's what we intend to do.
The jobs issue won't have to play second fiddle to the deficit issue anymore.
And that's what the American people want.
The public is glad to see we've moved to rein in our deficits, but now they will put the political premium on efforts to create jobs.
As Democrats, that's our strong suit.
So the Democrats are going to say, okay, we've reined in the deficit.
We've closed the debt.
Now we can go back to spending.
And that's what the American people want.
Taxing and spending.
That's what this deal means.
And I'm sitting here and I'm thinking of all of the wizards of SMART on our side who told us this is the best deal we could get.
We have to head off default or we're going to get blamed for it.
And we've got Obama on the ropes.
And we did have Obama on the ropes.
We did have Obama on the ropes if we had hung in and stuck in with our own deal.
We could have prevented all of these press conferences today.
We could have prevented all of this.
We could have hung all of this on Obama.
But we chickened out because we didn't want to be blamed for the default.
We didn't want the media saying that about us.
So now it's clear.
It's clear where the Democrats are going and what they think.
We're going to start spending.
We're going to have a new slush fund.
We're going to have a new stimulus.
We're going to raise taxes on the rich, corporate jet owners and those yachts out there.
What did Harry Reid give up?
Hey, I keep hearing about this compromise.
What compromise?
The Democrats haven't even presented a budget.
What did they give up?
What did Chuck Schumer give up?
What did the Democrats give away in compromise?
What did they give up?
Nothing.
The Republicans compromised with themselves.
The Republicans constantly took away their own ideas from themselves.
Every plan they presented, a Democrat with no plan would say, no, we don't like that.
Nope, we don't like that.
You better come back with something better.
Well, what's your plan?
Well, it doesn't matter.
We don't have a plan.
We haven't had a plan for two years.
That's not the point.
So now, Harry Reid and all these people, Chuck Hugh Schumer, talk about all the compromise.
What did they give away?
What did they give up?
Zilch Zero Nada.
It was a debt debate that has caused unemployment to be so bad.
A debt debate that's caused unemployment to be so bad.
That's what they're trying to tell us.
Now we can get back to the real thing of jobs.
That's what Schumer's telling us.
This debt debate, that led to all this unemployment.
And that was the Republicans' problem because they were so recalcitrant and so reluctant to agree.
But now, now that we got this, now we can go back to creating jobs.
It was just this debt debate.
We'll be back.
Sit tight.
If you want to know why Obama's upset about the FAA, he mentioned the FAA in his Rosegarten speech.
This is from the Atlantic Wire, AtlanticMonthly.com, whatever, the headline, airlines are making millions from an FAA shutdown.
Congress failed to pass new legislation to fund the Federal Aviation Agency by Friday.
So the agency, last Friday, so the agency now unable to collect taxes on excises, fuel, and cargo.
FAA head Randy Babbitt told reporters on Monday that which is costing the agency millions of dollars of lost revenue a day.
The situation amounts to a tax holiday for airlines.
One would think that travelers might save a buck or two from the airline's windfall, but Scott McCartney of the Wall Street Journal reports they are not in a sharing mood.
The FAA is out a total of about $200 million a week, $30 million a day.
They're not collecting because the FAA legislation to fund it.
And this is part of the show of the debt ceiling.
Oh, no.
This is an example of what's going to happen.
We can't fund the FAA.
So they're not collecting all these taxes.
Can't have that.
So Obama had to specifically mention that.
So in Obama's view, the airlines are stealing from his stash.
Can't have that.
Massapequa in New York.
Hello, Bert.
Glad you called on the EIB network.
Great to have you with us.
Hi.
How you doing, Rush?
It's a pleasure to speak with you.
Thank you, sir.
You know, it's clear that Obama's plan is to drain the wealth from the private sector through increased taxes.
But he's going to draw another arrow from his quiver.
And I believe that it's going to be cap and trade.
This way, his spending will go unimpeded.
And I was wondering what you thought about that.
Cap and trade.
Cap and trade, value-added tax, something along those lines is going to happen.
Absolutely.
It has to.
Why do you think cap and trade particularly?
Because cap and trade will bring in unprecedented revenues into the government so they can spend more.
Yeah, but I mean, why cap and trade as opposed to VAT?
Well, VAT too.
But cap-and-trade is part of his agenda regarding nationalizing energy.
He wants us to reduce the carbon emissions, and he's going to do it this way.
And he's going to play the global warming card.
Right.
Well, the EPA is in clear, they are clear sailing to do this if they want.
But you make a good point.
Cap and trade, value-added tax, card check, union card check, all these things.
It's amazing one vote can do.
We'll be back.
Stock markets stumble again.
Tuesday is on pace for the longest losing streak in two years.
Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped below 12,000.
▲
Export Selection