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Aug. 2, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:14
August 2, 2011, Tuesday, Hour #3
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Hi, folks, and welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, America's real anchorman, America's truth detector, doctor of democracy, and the esteemed leader of the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Ideological Purity.
I'm also known as the hardest working man in the no business.
Happy to have you along.
Had dowed down 158 now.
It was supposed to soar.
The stock markets were supposed to celebrate.
We had headed off default.
We had preserved our precious AAA credit rating.
And the markets were going to go bananas.
But they didn't go bananas.
It means we need new spending.
It means we need QE3.
It means we need a new stimulus.
It means we need to work on infrastructure and roads and bridges.
Honest to God, Barack Obama, who two and a half years ago, in pitching his first stimulus, said we need to rebuild the roads and bridges in schools and was authorized $787 billion for that purpose, came out today and said, okay, now we need to start working on our infrastructure and make great investments in education.
Chuck Schumer said, now that we've got this debt deal behind us, now we can start focusing on jobs.
So it was these debt negotiations that prevented jobs from being created in the country.
Here is Jay Carney this afternoon of the White House press briefing.
During the Q ⁇ A, AP's Ben Feller had a question.
The question was this.
We're already hearing rumblings from Republicans that they won't take members who are inclined to go for tax increases.
My question is, does the president, indirectly, in your view, have any say over who gets picked for this commission on the Democrat side?
Will he try to have some say?
The authority is vested, if you will, in the leaders of Congress to appoint these members by Caramel, bipartisan membership of the committee.
The president has made his opinion known and will make his opinion known that it's important to take this seriously and to appoint members who will try to get to a product that can emerge from the committee and get a yes vote from Congress.
And balance is required to achieve that.
Balance is required.
Carney is saying here that Obama will push for Democrats on the commission who want to raise taxes.
That's exactly right as far as they're concerned.
What other kind of taxes are there other than increases?
And what other kind of Democrats are there?
Where do you find a Democrat who doesn't want to raise taxes?
But the point is that now we get to the special commission and now we get to the compromise and now we get to the real nutcracking aspect of this and it is raising taxes.
Let's go to the Republican side.
Let's listen to what the Republicans are saying here.
Late yesterday afternoon, we have a montage, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, and Paul Ryan talking about the tentative, as it was yesterday, deal.
This is the best we could get controlling one-third of the government.
This is the best defense number we're going to get.
The best shot that we've had in the 20 years that I've been here to build support for a balanced budget amendment.
This gets us two-thirds of the cuts in discretionary spending we were looking for in our budget.
Did we get 100% of the discretionary cuts we were looking for?
No, we got two-thirds.
That's better than zero.
That's Paul Ryan at the end.
Geez, folks, we had a balanced budget in the 90s.
We had a balanced budget without a balanced budget amendment.
The balanced budget amendment in the 90s failed by one vote, but we still balanced the budget.
John Kasich and Newt Gingrich, Dick Army and the boys.
We balanced the budget.
It was done.
Did I say in the 90s?
But now we hear this is the best defense number we're going to get, the best shot we've had in 20 years that I've been here to build support for a balanced budget amendment.
That's one of these moral victories.
We don't have a balanced budget amendment.
We didn't get one.
This is the best shot that we've had in 20 years that I've been here to build support for what, well, we didn't get it.
So big whoop.
There's your moral victory for you.
Gold has hit another new high, by the way.
All of this means, folks, we're going to have to extend unemployment benefits.
That's how you create jobs.
That's how you create employment.
Whenever Obama or one of his minions says balance, they mean tax increases.
Anybody who doesn't want a tax increase must be unbalanced.
So what are the cuts?
What are the cuts?
The budget's been passed and signed and is now law.
Somebody should be able to point to the specific cuts in it by now.
There were cuts, remember?
There were real cuts.
This gets us two-thirds of the cuts of the discretionary spending that we're looking for in our budget.
It's Paul Ryan.
Did we get 100% of the discretionary cuts we were looking for?
No, we got two-thirds.
Where are they?
I hate to be disrespectful here, but how can anybody say we got budget cuts when the whole point of this was to raise the debt ceiling $2.4 trillion?
But Rush, but Rush, aren't you forgetting that for every dollar of debt ceiling increase, there are cuts?
Well, that is part of the deal, but man, as I listen to Obama and Schumer, the hell with that, they're saying, I mean, they're going nuts all here, raising taxes, they're spending.
And every time we've made a deal like this with the Democrats, I don't care, Reagan did it, learned his lesson.
I don't care who makes this deal.
It never happens.
The spending cuts that are supposed to accompany the tax increases or the debt level increase that never happened.
Okay, so that was Mitch McConnell and Boehner and Ryan from late yesterday.
Let's see.
Here's Jim DeMint last night on the Senate floor.
This is during a debate on raising the debt ceiling in the Senate on the Senate bill.
While this deal may be the best that we can do with the leadership in the White House or lack thereof, as well as the leadership or lack thereof here in the Senate, it may be the best political solution that we can get, but it does not solve America's problem.
It certainly does not solve America's job problem, and it does nothing but add another $10 trillion to our debt if we're able to go that far.
I will be voting against this bill because I do not believe we have 10 years to try to get it right.
That's the baseline again.
DeMint talking about the baseline, automatic $10 trillion of new spending in the next 10 years, regardless of the two and whatever cuts that there were in the deal.
And he wasn't through.
He continued.
This deal is not a good deal for America.
It may be the best deal that Washington can come up with with the current leadership, but it puts our country at risk.
But in a Washington where there is no leadership in the White House, there is no accountability, and there's someone sitting in the Oval Office who will not take responsibility for anything.
This may be a deal that we have to accept for now.
I intend to vote against it because it's important that we tell America the truth, that this puts our country at risk.
It does, and our country has been at risk.
And I, folks, I really wish that I had a better way of explaining what I mean when I say that none of this is real, that our standard of living isn't real, that the prosperity in the country isn't real.
Oh, yeah, people have those cars and people have the houses and they have their possessions.
They have the outward trappings.
But nobody, very few people actually have the money those things cost.
Very few.
Our government certainly can't afford anything it's doing.
We do not have the money.
I think this is important.
We don't have the money for all these food stamps.
We don't have the money for the Social Security we're paying.
We don't have the money for the veterans' benefits we're paying.
When we are 14.3 and now nearly $17 trillion in debt, we don't have the money for the fuel to put in our military planes.
Nothing is real.
It's almost as though it's an illusion.
Anytime something is purchased or owned with a debt leverage factor of over 25% of someone's income, we're really talking about things that are not real.
They're there.
The products are made.
The products are sold in stores.
The products are bought in stores and they're taken home.
But our gross domestic product isn't what they say it is because of so much government borrowing.
When you look at how big a percentage of our gross domestic product government is, then you realize government doesn't produce anything, that all government does is confiscate wealth and redistribute it.
then you realize our gross domestic product is nowhere near what we're led to believe that it is.
At some point down the road, And I guess this is what my grandfather and father were all telling me back when I was a kid, and they were warning me about the national debt.
And I poo-pooed it and kept poo-pooing it because kept saying, well, to my grandfather and my father, well, you keep preaching doom and gloom about this, but the country still grows.
I mean, it's nothing's going wrong.
The national debt's not gobbling us up.
But as I say, now that I've reached this old fuddy-dutty status, I'm age 60, combined with who we have in the White House, what his policies are, the way he is spending money that we don't have in the most reckless, irresponsible way it has ever been spent by any chief executive in this country.
We're on a race course to collapse.
We're not cruising around town.
We're on an actual race course.
And at some point, when the foundation is so outweighed by the debt, there has to be a collapse.
And when that happens, the fact that nothing's real is going to become patently obvious.
The pensions, all the health care plans for the union employees, all the retirement plans that pay all these public employees who work for 20 years, pay them 80% of what they earn for the rest of their lives.
That can't possibly be real.
We don't have that money.
And now, especially, there aren't enough people working to enlarge the tax base to even come close to producing the revenue necessary for government to fulfill these obligations that it has made: state, federal, local, what have you.
The only place where money and things are real is among people who don't owe anything, who aren't in debt, and those are Obama's targets.
Those people are Obama's targets.
That's where what's left of what's real is.
That's where he's aimed.
But Rush, but Rush, nobody would own anything if it weren't for debt.
I understand.
This is not an anti-debt diatribe here.
I know full well that if you couldn't borrow money, have a mortgage, you wouldn't have a house.
Nobody, I mean, the percentages of people that would live in a house would be less than 2%.
But that alone makes my point, in a way.
You live in a house and you're still paying for it.
It's not yours.
You don't own it.
It is not yours.
Whoever you're making payments to owns that house Until you're finished making payments on it for whatever your mortgage is.
15, 30 years, what have you.
You don't own it.
It isn't yours.
And if you waited to buy a house until you had the money to actually afford it, the vast majority of Americans would never live in a house.
Because the vast majority of Americans would never have, at one point, that lump sum to plump down and buy a house.
So you have to have some amount of debt.
I don't want people to think I'm against it.
I'm just saying at some point it becomes overwhelming.
California is not real.
All the obligations that they have, all the debt obligations that they have, versus all the feeders versus the contributors.
It's at some point it has to implode.
Nobody knows when, but that's the great fear.
If this guy isn't stopped, in a political sense, then the chance of saving the implosion goes down the drain.
Anyway, a little long, brief time out here.
We'll continue as we come back.
Don't go away.
The biggest city in Rhode Island is not Newport.
The biggest city in Rhode Island is called Central Falls.
Central Falls just went bankrupt because they can't afford the pensions and health care benefits for their public employment unions who retire at age 50, sometimes even at age 40.
Now, in days not all that long ago, people did not usually get a mortgage to buy a house.
That really started to become common practice after World War II.
Well, they waited until they could afford it.
That's who lived in houses, people who could afford to buy them.
But here you have a city in Rhode Island.
Rhode Island, Central Falls just went bankrupt because they can't afford the pensions and health care benefits of their public employment unions.
They didn't have the money.
It wasn't real.
Central Falls, Rhode Island wasn't real.
An interesting story here from CNNMoney.com.
Some students will have to start paying off their loans while they're in school under a last-minute debt ceiling deal to keep the country out of default and reduce deficits by at least 2.1 trillion over a decade.
You know what?
I've got some engraved iPads in there.
And I'll bet two people, engraved iPads, that there's not $2.1 trillion of deficit reduction over 10 years as a result of this deal.
Which means I will not have to give away, at least under these circumstances, a couple of my engraved iPad 2s.
These are the top of the line, babies.
These are the A5 processor.
There's only about 25 of these engraved Il Rochebo iPads out there.
So you students, some students have to start paying off their loans while they're in school under a last-minute debt ceiling deal to keep the country out of default and reduce deficits by at least 2.1 trillion over a decade.
As part of the savings to trim the deficits, Congress would scrap a special kind of federal loan for graduate students.
So-called subsidized student loans don't charge students any interest on the principal of student loans until six months after they graduate.
The change would take place July 1st, 2012.
Congress would also nix a special credit for all students who make 12 months of on-time loan payments.
So no special credit if you pay on time.
There used to be special credit if you paid on time.
Imagine that.
Imagine if we're doing the right thing.
So many people were lacking a daysicle.
So many people missing payments that we decided to bonus people who made payments on time according to terms of the loan.
They got a bonus.
Not more.
Not anymore.
For taxpayers, the savings taken from the pockets of students will total $21.6 billion over the next 10 years.
So making students pay off their loans while they're in school and nixing a special credit for all students who make 12 months of on-time loan payments will lop off an incredible $21.6 billion of the $2.1 trillion deficit reduction we're going to have.
Now, the thing is, if the government would just get out of the college business, just get out of the student loan business, of course, the government has taken it over.
One of the things that first happened after Obama was imaculated, I think within the first six months, took over the vast majority of the student loan program.
If the government would just get out of the college business, the costs would come down.
College costs are able to rise much faster than inflation because of government involvement.
But it's not about education.
It's not about lowering costs.
It's about the federal government being the banker, of all things.
That's what they want.
Being the banker is the power.
Being the banker determines who gets to go to college.
Being the banker means determining who doesn't get in.
And of course, we do hear about rising tuition, but somehow big education always escapes the anger from the Democrats' mouths.
But boy, big oil, big pharmaceutical, big retail, big corporate jet.
If you're in any, you are a villain.
But big education, we don't say a word.
We don't say a word.
All we do is try to come up with new student loan programs.
We don't do one thing about the rising, exorbiting, exorbitant tuition costs.
And do you know why?
Well, because that's where all the liberals are.
Well, it's not yes, but it's not just the training ground.
It's so that the Skip Gates of the world can also have a house on Martha's Vineyard.
It's so that the professors who teach at these places earn big bucks.
Teaching is not a high-paying industry.
It's not a high-pay business.
But if you're at the right liberal institution of higher learning where tuition costs are going through the roof and nobody ever cuts tuition costs, they never get reduced.
We just come up with new creative financing of student loans.
Skip Gates, Obama's bud, you know, the guy who was arrested by the cop had to have the beer summit.
Obama calls him Skip Gates.
I forget Professor Gates.
I forget what his formal name is, but he does have a place on Martha's Vineyard.
Now, I've got no problem with that.
He's got a place on Martha's Vineyard, but that place on Martha's Vineyard is built and lived in on the backs of parents and students paying $50,000 a year to go to Harvard or wherever it is he teaches.
What, we got another delivery out there?
Yeah, good.
Full funding for Pell Grants is absolutely essential to fulfilling the president's goal of the United States once again having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020.
There you go.
So students, as part of the deal, you're going to have to start paying your loans back.
Henry Lewis Gates, that's the guy's name.
Skip Gates is known as Henry Lewis Gates.
You students are going to have to start paying back your student loans while you are still in screw.
The average salary of Harvard is $168,700.
But as I say, the student loan program is all about who decides, who gets to decide who goes to college.
With the bank being the federal government, they get to decide who gets that mortgage and who gets health care and who doesn't.
And that's what it's all about.
The absolute power.
Who's next?
St. George, Utah.
This is Ron.
Thank you for calling, sir.
Appreciate it.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
My deep respect to you, sir.
Thank you very much, sir.
Rush, this could sound a bit out there, but I tell you what, as you've mentioned, the banker has the power.
Our banker is China.
And I'm afraid that our debt to China is sooner or later going to prove to be a down payment on Taiwan.
And when they invade, we're just going to set back and act as though it's not happening.
Interesting that you say that.
I just, oh, gosh, I can't say this.
I would give away the, I can't say it.
Just read something about this, though.
Judges about it.
It's been inside of me for well over a couple years now as the debts climbed and as we've disrespected our allies throughout the world.
And it's a great concern to me.
It could be one of the prices that ChiComs have for going easy on us on our debt.
And that'd be Formosa.
It could well be.
You think Obama gives a rat's rear end about a treaty we have with Taiwan?
I know he doesn't give a rip.
Seeing what he has transpired with Israel, nearly, you know, it's enough to make a person sick.
Yeah.
No, that's a good point.
That is an interesting point that you make.
Interesting point.
And I'd love to tell you the book, but if I, if I, if it, the whole point of the book would be blown to smithereens if I give you any detail about it.
So it's Marine One by James Houston.
H-U-S-T-O-N.
Did you go out and get the Jefferson Key by Steve Berry?
Have you gone out and got Laura Ingram's book?
You got Ingram's.
Okay.
That's, I'm having a mental block on the title, but that's good.
Gosh, there's so many good ones out there.
There's a new Tom Clancy that's.
Oh, and there's a new Frederick Forsyth.
You know, he did The Day of the Jackal when he did the first book about Carlos.
No, no, no.
Take it back.
His book was not about Carlos the Jackal, Ilyich Ramirez-Sanchez.
It was the Day of the Jackal that led to Ilyich Ramirez-Sanchez being nicknamed the Jackal.
Anyway, he's got a follow-up after years and years and years to the day of the jackal.
Frederick Forsyth.
Gosh, there's so many that I have been reading.
Novels are how I unwind.
That and certain television shows.
Brief, brief little time out, my friends here.
El Rushbow at the EIB Network, back with much more of your phone calls on the other side.
Stocks drop as economic worries resurface.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average down, my figure here is 174.90, down 174.90.
Here comes the real numbers.
It's 11,950.
Yeah, down 177.
Economic worries resurface.
I didn't think the economic worries ever went away.
In fact, I thought the economic worries were supposed to go away when we raised the debt limit yesterday or today when the Senate did it.
You know, this is why I feel like such a sap because this game has been played ever since I've been alive.
And I remember it was in the late 80s, early 90s.
And I was invited to go to the Bakersfield Business Conference, which is a big deal.
Two days, the law firm out there, Borton Petrini, puts the thing on.
Inside tents, people pay a lot of money to come here.
Speeches made by big names.
I mean, Schwartzkoff was there at one of these things.
I went to two of them.
I got the hook my first time about 10 minutes into my speech.
That's another story I don't have time for right now.
Here's the story was that I spoke in front of Robert McNamara, who was the former Secretary of Defense for the Kennedy regime.
And this particular weekend, the Congress had just miraculously passed legislation to solve the federal deficit.
Big monster, like $400 billion, huge deficit, $300 billion.
It was going to destroy us.
Same argument.
It was going to destroy us.
We had to get this fixed.
So I walked out and in my best sarcastic voice said, folks, I am so happy.
I am ecstatic to be able to come here to the Bakersfield Business Conference and be among the first speakers to celebrate the joy of finally ending forever the United States budget deficit.
With legislation passed just this week, a couple days before we all gathered here, the deficit is over.
The deficit's been slayed.
We finally did it.
And the crowd starts laughing and all that.
I'm appropriately cynical and sarcastic.
Lo and behold, when I finish, I got the hook during this speech.
They had lights, red, green, and yellow.
When it's green, keep going.
You have a time limit.
When it turns yellow, I think you've got two minutes to wrap it up.
It turns red, you're supposed to finish.
I got the red in about seven or eight minutes because I started ripping the TV info babe they had that, they had a deal with that was doing interviews with all the participants and she asked me, what about your latest ratings?
That show your audience has zero black people listening to it.
There is no such rating service and I told this story when I went out there and it humiliated the station that they had the deal with.
So I got the hook anyway.
After I finished with my deficit, Robert Mcnamara was the next speaker.
He walks out there.
I, I must respectfully disagree with mr Limbaugh.
I uh, really don't believe.
The deficit is a systemic problem, has been dealt with, and I was, of course, making a flat out joke that of course it wasn't dealt with.
It was nothing more than a stopgap, it was a band-aid.
It was pure Washington.
And so here, everything that we were told we were going to have, the stock market was going to be saved, the stock market was going to be reassured, we were going to raise the debt limit.
We're going to save our AAA rating.
We heard Mitch McConnell and Boehner, New York, say, we're not going to be the ones to preside over the default.
We're not going to preside over a decline in the debt rating where it's not going to happen.
So the deal is passed.
Obama comes out, promises more spending, more tax increases, kumbaya happy days of here again.
U.s stocks declined sharply Tuesday as another disappointing economic report did little to calm investors fears over the pace of the recovery.
All a giant scam.
Well, we certainly saw the housing crisis and the financial crisis coming a long time before Moody's at SP saw them coming course.
We weren't making money off of those crises either.
It's almost as if we've been lied to at every turn during this debt ceiling Crisis.
That's how I feel.
We've been lied to at every turn.
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