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Sept. 12, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:03
September 12, 2011, Monday, Hour #3
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Oh, oh, uh-oh.
Mark McKinnon's up there on NBC, MSNB.
You know, he's the no labels guy, and they just identified him as a Republican.
He's not a Republican.
He has no labels.
Somebody's screwed up at MSNBC.
He's trying to be a no-labels guy, and they identified him as a Republican.
Ha!
How are you?
Great to have you, Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence at Broadcasting Network.
There's a Republican debate tonight.
I don't think too many people are going to see it.
It comes, it's up against a Monday night football game.
There are two of them tonight.
And the first one starts at 7.
It's the New England Patriots and Miami Dolphins.
And that's followed by the Raidies at Denver to play the Broncos.
That's at 10.15.
But don't worry, we'll have comments.
They're going to gang up on Rick Perry on Social Security tonight, and it is a mistake.
They're going to do this to pander to the media.
They're going to do this.
It's all about the Ponzi scheme comment that was made.
I think Newt will probably pile.
I know Romney is going to pile on.
I'm even hearing that Michelle Bachman is thinking of piling on Rick Perry about this.
And it will be a mistake if they do this because remember now, this is a Republican debate, Republican primary we're talking about.
The Republican base is the audience and the Republican base.
Social Security, the entitlements, everything that has to do with excessive spending is something they want our guys to look into and do something about here.
Now, Romney himself has used the term Ponzi scheme.
He's had horrible things to say about it.
He just doesn't believe you can get elected saying so, so he won't say so.
He's put out a flyer, the Romney flyer, attacking Rick Perry on Social Security and all that.
It's a mistake.
Let me find something here.
There's a number of pieces that I read since I have been out since Thursday night that go back, chronicle all of the pundits and people who have called Social Security a Ponzi scheme, and even worse.
So it's apparently now that the way the other Republican candidates hope to beat Perry is by attacking him from the left, and that's what they're going to be doing if they go after him on saying Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.
And because the left is distorting what Perry is saying about this, and therefore the Republican critics will be doing the same thing.
And that when you deny that Social Security is what it is.
And I'm not endorsing Perry, folks.
As you know, I haven't done that yet.
So I'm just observing that I would have a question for Romney.
What major program other than issuing waivers on Obamacare would you eliminate?
There's a willingness of some people in the Republican field to burn down the entire conservative movement here with some of the comments that they are prepared to make.
Like, for example, I noticed Romney doesn't attack Perry over illegal immigration.
These guys are perfect.
I don't want to be misunderstood here.
But I just think they ought to be very careful doing this because this is going to set the tone.
Something's going to have to be done about the programs.
Even seasoned citizens realize that it is what it is.
Even Obama is talking about a payroll tax cut.
If the program can continue by cutting its only funding source in half, then it has to be something illegitimate, my friends.
And Obama's speech, his job speech, and Republicans, you know, various ones who proposed either a tax holiday on the payroll tax or cutting in half for a year or what have you.
Well, that's the only funding source for Social Security.
So if you're going to cut the funding in half, but the benefits continue, then what is the game?
How does that work?
In other words, your boss comes in and tells you your salary is being cut in half, but you're going to be able to spend the same amount of money.
Really?
Where am I going to get it?
If you're going to cut my salary in half, I keep my job, but I still can spend the same amount of money I had.
How does it work?
I'll tell you what.
If Social Security is not a Ponzi scheme, then set Bernard Madoff free.
Set him free today.
If I understand those attacking Rick Perry correctly, Madoff's crime was that he didn't find enough new investors.
Not that he defrauded anybody.
That's not the crime, right?
Madoff simply needed to reform his plan.
Recipients needed to lower their expectations.
There wasn't any fraud.
The plan simply needed tweaking.
More investors, lower expectations of the participants, right?
Isn't that what Social Security reform is going to be?
We need more taxpayers.
We're going to reduce the benefits.
Nobody's been defrauded, right?
So if Madoff would have just done what they're doing with Social Security to fix it, find it dandy.
Right?
Well, of course not.
This is my point.
Now, let's see if I can find it.
Ah, yes.
Here we go.
Stanley Kurtz National Review Online.
It's certain that Perry's Ponzi scheme claim is no way original.
Not only have a raft of conservatives called Social Security a Ponzi scheme over the years, but quite a few very respectable liberals have done so as well.
It is clearly wrong either to treat the Ponzi scheme analogy as unprecedented or to rule it altogether out of legitimate public debate.
An historical tour of the use of the Ponzi scheme metaphor will make the point.
Jonathan Last has already identified a 1967 Newsweek column by liberal economist and Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson as perhaps the earliest use of the Social Security-Ponzi scheme comparison.
Samuelson's idea that Social Security could be best understood as an enduring and rational Ponzi scheme grew out of his overlapping generations model.
Samuelson's model implied that public debt in general and Social Security in particular could be financed over successive generations without major tax increases.
In the 80s, Samuelson's overlapping generations model was seized upon by Keynesian economists to serve as a microeconomic foundation for their favored theories and plans.
But the weakness, the unfortunate weakness of Samuelson's model is its assumption that a growing economy will produce continual population increase.
In an April 1978 follow-up and newsweek to his original 67 column, Samuelson acknowledged that demographic reality was disproving the assumption.
In April 1999, LA Times op-ed titled Ponzi Game Needs Equitable Solution, for example.
Stanford University economists Victor Fuchs and John Chuvin hark back to Samuelson's column and they quote him.
Ben Wattenberg had a book called The Birth Dearth, 1987.
Wattenberg once worked for LBJ and Hubert Humphrey.
By the late 80s, he was a centrist Democrat.
In a U.S. News and World Report cover story excerting his book, Wattenberg sums up his argument by saying, in short, Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, a pyramid scheme, a chain letter.
We'll see more examples of liberals and Democrats calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme, but let's first note that from the mid-80s on, a Ponzi analogy became a staple for conservatives.
In an August 85 editorial commenting on Social Security's 50th anniversary, the Wall Street Journal says the system was designed like a Ponzi scheme.
A July 1994 Chicago Tribune column by Cato Institute head Edward Crane dubs the offices of the Social Security Administration home of the world's largest Ponzi scheme.
1995 piece by Michael Barone argues that many more voters under 50 realize that Medicare and Social Security are Ponzi schemes in which the benefits they're paying for today will be impossible to collect in the future without unthinkable tax increases.
In December 1988, Reagan's budget director James Miller III made news when he called Social Security a Ponzi scheme before an audience of the National Press Club.
Miller, however, had just left the Reagan administration and acknowledged that he would not have spoken as frankly while still in government.
In September 1994, conservative columnist Jeff Jacobi made the same point.
Not being a politician, I can say anything I like about Social Security, even the truth.
The truth is, it's an immense Ponzi scheme.
January 1997, op-ed letter, op-ed column, Washington Post, left liberal Robert Kuttner.
Critics of the system call it a giant Ponzi scheme.
As long as the economy and its tax base keep growing, there's nothing wrong with taxing current workers to finance current retirement.
Robert Shapiro, liberal, fall of 1995, published an article rethinking Social Security.
Complains that as it's currently structured, crowding out funding for young children, it's a Ponzi scheme.
William Rasbury, Washington Post, 1996, Social Security is, in important ways, like a massive Ponzi scheme.
May of 1996, liberal columnist Jonathan Alder published a piece in Newsweek suggesting that former Democrat Colorado governor and erstwhile Clinton supporter Richard Lamb might run for president as the candidate of Ross Perot's reform party.
Lamb is praised as a truth teller by Alter for being willing to say that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.
Matthew Miller.
Should I go on?
Matthew Miller, senior writer for the New Republic, published a long piece on the future of Social Security.
Miller begins his article by recounting the U.S. Senate hearing on Social Security, which he and others had just testified.
Only a Grinch could grumble about the most effective anti-poverty program in history, but only a fool would fail to ask whether the Ponzi scheme is sustainable and at what price.
We have Democrat Senator Bob Kerry and Alan Simpson of Wyoming proposing changes as mandatory savings accounts, means testing, raising the retirement age.
Senator Simpson making news at the time by garnering attention for his proposed Social Security reforms with aggressive use of the Ponzi scheme point.
August of 1996, Alan Simpson, this is a Ponzi scheme and people don't know it.
1996, liberal Michael Kinsley published a piece at Slate titled Social Security from Ponzi Scheme to Shell Game.
March of 1998, former New York Times executive editor Max Frankel turned one of his regular columns in the New York Times magazine to the subject of Social Security.
For more than 30 years, he wrote, presidents and Congresses have pretended that the Social Security Ponzi scheming, blah, the majority of voters have been misled.
So it's nothing new that people have called Social Security a Ponzi scheme.
And to harp all over Perry for doing this is to simply take the liberal side of an argument to try to curry favor with the liberal media here as though nobody has ever called it this.
You know, the left, don't forget this, folks, and I've got to take a break here real fast.
The left doesn't want to be judged on the results of anything they do.
They only want to be judged on their good intentions.
FDR and his people knew that this whole program was unsustainable.
They were banking on the fact that once it existed, the fact that it was sold to people in a fraudulent way would not matter because of the good intentions.
Ponzi scheme.
Rick Perry is having the guts to say that it is.
And to go out here and attack him here, as I say, is simply to pick up the mantle of the liberal media, or at least to try to curry favor with them.
Ought to join the chorus.
We'll be back and continue.
Grab soundbites 2930.
Let's go back to last Thursday on MSNBC Hardball.
Chris Matthews talking to a couple guys about this whole Ponzi scheme, Social Security, and Rick Perry.
And Matthews says to Steve McMahon, Democrat strategist, do you really believe that Perry can fix this Ponzi scheme, Gaff?
He could probably fix the Ponzi scheme part because the Ponzi scheme is people probably, many people would agree with that.
It is.
It's a Ponzi scheme.
Yeah, yeah.
Yet our guys are going to jump on over.
Todd Harris, Republican strategist.
Matthews said, Todd, why do Texans like this language?
Ponzi scheme language.
Oh, no, because he can say, you know what, it is a Ponzi scheme, but what I want to do now is talk about my plan to actually save it.
That's what he's doing.
Anyway, it's it.
I'm just issuing, it's going to be a warning to make a big issue out of this on the criticism side, because it is true and people isn't going to work for the critics, is the bottom line.
And look, let's remember something here.
All Perry did was call Social Security what it is.
And then he said we need to figure out how to ensure future generations are not left holding the bag and are not continually misled about their retirement.
I'm paraphrasing, but that's what he said.
It's not complicated.
You know, Newt pounced on Paul Ryan for his Medicare plan.
And that's the only plan, and Trump did too.
It's the only plan I've seen so far to try to modestly deal with that problem.
And now they're all going to jump on Perry.
I just think Michelle Bachman, who I really admire here, needs to be very careful.
If she doesn't think Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, then she needs to tell us what she thinks that it is.
Separate and apart from how you fix it or alter it.
But if it's not a Ponzi scheme, just don't get up there and say, portray yourself here as a defender of a retirement program for the elderly.
Because that's not what it is either anymore.
It's long since ceased being that.
Quick soundbite here.
Yeah, no, not enough time to do it, but it's basically Chris Matthews.
It's a montage of MSNBC people accusing Rick Perry of being me.
Basically saying that, hey, Rick Perry seems the kind of fellow who reads the journal editorials and listens to limbaugh.
Seems like he's got limbaugh on his side, Fox News and the Koch brothers and so forth.
So they're starting to get worried about Perry out there.
And the New York Times is too.
We'll finish that piece before we're through.
Okay, back to the phones.
Rush Limbaugh, a brand new week of broadcast excellence.
Let's see.
Debbie in Riverside, Alabama.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hello, Rush.
How are you today?
I'm fine.
Thank you.
Thank you for taking my call.
First, before I bring up what I actually called for, can I say something to Mr. Krugman?
By all means, isn't it?
Krugman, go right ahead, yes.
If anything is fake in this country, it is you, Mr. Krugman.
It is you and the people that you surround yourself with.
You're fake.
We know it.
And that's why you are so upset.
And thank you, Rush, for allowing them not to get away with it.
Well, you're more than welcome.
Happy to do it.
The reason I was calling today, Rush, I just feel like here we go again with the news media choosing our candidate because all I hear is Romney Perry, Perry Romney.
I'm not totally against either one of these guys.
But I feel like Newt Gingrich is being totally left out of all of this.
And here he is, I believe, a very strong candidate with a lot of great solutions to the problem we have right now.
What do you mean by left out?
I never hear his name.
I hear Romney, Perry, Perry, Romney.
And nothing is being discussed with some of the solutions that Newt has for this country, which I think Rush, they're very simple solutions, but they are solutions.
But wait a minute.
Newt is at every debate.
He gets plenty of press on what he says at those debates.
He has ample opportunity to say things and does at those debates.
And often they are quite unique.
And he has raised the hackles of the media quite a lot, and they've commented about it.
don't know where he's getting the short shrift that you describe.
Maybe I feel like...
I just think he's your candidate.
He's not doing well enough in the polls for you.
It's the way Santorum's supporters feel.
Well, maybe that's true.
And you're really upset with me.
No, I'm not.
I'm really not.
When you say you're not hearing Newt talked about, who do you want to hear talk about Newt?
Sure isn't.
No Rush.
I'm really not upset with you at all, I promise.
I think what I'm more upset about is in the news media, Fox News.
I don't listen to mainstream news media anymore, so I can't elaborate on that.
I just feel like when it comes to the polls, you know, they're really stressing who the leaders are right now, and yet the poll numbers are so small.
And so I don't know what to believe there.
Maybe it's because I really am confused.
Look, the media always talks about the frontrunners.
That's all they ever do.
And the media is talking about Obama and his failing poll numbers.
They are talking about F. Chuck Todd at NBC worried about our pollsters being concerned.
The polls are what they are.
It's just like everything else in politics.
It's one of my favorite sayings.
It is what it is.
You can wish for it to be different and you can hope for it to be different, but in the case of the media, it isn't going to be.
The tiger is a tiger.
A snake is a snake.
Media is the media.
Polls are polls.
They are used to influence and shape opinion, not reflect it, in many cases.
Now, Romney and Perry, as the frontrunners, remember, just a couple weeks ago, it was Romney.
A couple, three weeks, it was Romney, period.
And nobody else.
Then Bachman shows up and wins the Iowa Straw Poll.
And that shocked everybody.
This is by no means over.
And there's still lurking out there the decision, if there is one, to be forthcoming from Sarah Palin, which, depending on what that decision is, is going to be a tsunami if she decides to get in.
We're still 14 months away, and you can still have candidates enter this thing four months down the road.
So I understand if you're a big Newt supporter and you're unhappy he's not doing well.
It's the same way that Ron Paul's people feel and Santorum's people and Herman.
I get people emailing him.
Why not Herman Kane?
I love Herman Kane.
I love hearing Herman Kane.
Herman Kane's brilliant.
He's smart.
I can't tell you why.
He's not doing better polling-wise than he is.
No, I can't.
What?
You did.
Okay.
Well, all right.
Well, now that happens to be true, but see, As you sit here and look at the Republican field up there, you watch the stage tonight in the debate, every one of you, every one of you is going to look at every one of those people and you're going to say, don't have a chance.
Never had a chance.
No chance.
No matter what happens, it ain't going to happen.
You say that about them all.
But you don't say it about Perry and you don't say it about Romney.
And you're starting to question it about Bachman.
But you do say it about Ron Paul.
You're probably thinking about Centorum.
You're probably thinking about Newt.
You're probably thinking about Herman Kane.
They don't have a chance.
They're up there.
Be honest with yourself before calling me.
That's the fact that people like maybe don't have a chance is what upsets you about the system.
Why don't they have a chance?
It's not the system.
It's just dynamics.
You know, it's unique office.
Anyway, I want to continue briefly with the, thanks for the thanks for the call, Debbie, very much.
I want to continue here with this New York Times piece because a couple of relevant excerpts from this piece I still want to share before we move on.
The alarms have already gone off of the Democrat grassroots, says Robert Zimmerman, a member of a Democrat National Committee from New York who hopes the president's jobs plan can be a turning point.
If the regime hasn't heard them, they should check the wiring of their alarm system, meaning the alarms are going off.
So committed radical ideologues are very, very worried.
They know that it is the ideology that's on the line here.
It is now about much more than Barack Obama.
Remember, shortly after he was emaculated, and even up until just recent weeks ago, every news story.
How will this affect Obama?
How will this impact Obama's reelection in chances?
No matter what, it could be a sewer hole somewhere not being repaired.
How will this impact?
It could be a hurricane that might or might not strike when how will this impact the re-election of Obama?
This New York Times story is now saying that's no longer the dynamic.
New York Times stories, what does this say for liberalism?
The New York Times is now putting ideology before Obama, and that is the big change in this piece.
Now, they're trying to light a fire under the guy.
Anything goes.
Race baiting, union thuggery, gunionism.
New word created here today.
Gunion.
Corruption, cronyism, do whatever is necessary.
That's what this article is saying.
They're saying you're going to lose, you idiot.
Now use your office and your power to hold on.
And they're telling him it's not about you anymore.
It's not about Obama anymore.
They're trying to save themselves, and they see Obama as an obstacle.
This is a—I hate to use this word because I actually—I get mad when I hear people use the word important.
I was once in an antique shop in Paris, and the only English that the proprietor could say was very important piece.
What's important about it?
Well, this is very important.
Why is it important?
Well, this is an important piece, New York Times, because this is telling Obama, if it comes to it, comes down to it, we are going to do whatever we have to to have the ideology prevail here.
If you won't do the dirty work, we will.
They know that liberalism doesn't work.
They know that if there is another rejection of it in November 2012, like there was in November 2010, that all of this is threatened.
Now, they've got the bureaucracy seated, folks.
I mean, the liberals in virtually every level of this bureaucracy.
I don't want to be misunderstood here.
I'm talking about from their perspective.
He alone is killing their ideology in their minds.
None of this is their fault, despite advocating for all of it and for him up to now.
None of it's their fault.
I mean, they've been for everything that he did.
They were part of the cabal that fed the lies to the country about who Obama is and was.
And now that he can't pull that off anymore, now that he can't meet those expectations, now that he can't be who they told us he was.
Okay, now it's time to throw all that out, and it's just as dirty as you need to get.
This piece comes out the Sunday after the Thursday clown speech, the joint session, and this is not a pass-the-bill speech or article.
This is not something advocating for his plan here.
This is screaming red flags.
Could also be somebody in the White House ticked him off.
Don't know how or whatever, but I mean, this is a huge.
I cannot tell you, can't emphasize enough how I think big this is because it's the ideology now that matters.
And remember, the New York Times puts it on paper, and every other liberal organization picks it up.
They are the ones who set the news agenda.
For the record, ladies and gentlemen, Mitt Romney.
Mitt Romney called Social Security a fraudulent criminal enterprise in his latest book.
If it is a criminal enterprise, what's criminal about it, except insofar as it's a Ponzi scheme?
From his book, No Apology, The Case for American Greatness, Romney compares those managing Social Security to criminals.
I got the paragraph here.
That's all you need to know as we go into the debate tonight.
I'm sure Perry's ready for this.
It's just a little warning.
Martha in Glendale, California, you're next on the EIB network.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
It's an honor to speak with you.
Thank you.
By the way, your analysis of Governor Perry's Social Security Ponzi scheme statement was brilliant.
Thank you.
It was brilliant.
Thank you very much.
I'm calling about what I think is the political story will turn out to be of this coming election, Fast and Furious.
Yeah, they found another gun, by the way.
Yeah, they did.
And they also found emails.
Third gun, third gun linked to Fast and Furious identified at Border Agents Murder Scene.
It's interesting on the front page of the LA Times today is Gun Seller and Sting has doubts.
Before this, if you could even find the story, it was on page 16 for a paragraph.
Right.
Either the Attorney General Eric Holder is a complete titular incompetent, or he's complicit in allowing thousands of AK-47s to be given to the drug cartel into a sovereign nation where tens of thousands of citizens have been murdered in two border agents.
I've got to be very careful here because he's the Attorney General in terms of signaling which of your two descriptions is the more accurate.
But you're not far off there, Martha.
Well, I think obviously the New York Times story, maybe today was a little late.
Maybe this administration has already gone gangsta.
You know, at least no one was murdered in the Watergate scandal.
Yeah.
When you say they've already gone gangster, some would say they arrived gangster.
True.
That's true.
I've heard that said by people.
But, you know, Eric Holder could be both incompetent and complicit.
You know, one, it's not an either or.
Well, I think here in California, they are trying to smear Representative Darrell Issa, and he is so courageous.
Of course.
Of course, Lee is.
And so is Senator Grassley.
I'm following this, and our state is just ridiculous.
We have no rule of law here in California.
It's a shame.
I wish I didn't have to go, but I do because of the constraints of time and a hard break.
I got to go.
We'll be back.
It's in the Los Angeles Times.
California Assembly extends Hollywood tax credit.
Suddenly, they think lower taxes will help them save and create jobs in the film industry, California.
Isn't that crazy?
They're getting crazy in California.
Have a wonderful day.
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