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Sept. 19, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:33
September 19, 2011, Monday, Hour #2
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Greetings to your music lovers, thrill seekers, conversationalists all across the fruited plain.
Rush Limbaugh.
A man who did know 30 years ago what he knows today.
I wish that's something all of you could experience.
I really do.
How many of you times you heard somebody say, gee, I wish I knew back then what I knew now.
Well, I'm one of those people that did.
Does.
And I have to admit it's cool.
Great to have you here.
Telephone number 800 282-2882, the email address L Rushbull at EIB net.com.
We have a government of the people by other people.
No, we got a government of some people by some people for some people, essentially.
So I went back, I looked up the AMT, the alternative minimum tax.
The alternative minimum tax was part of the general tax reform act of 1969.
Here's a general explanation of the Tax Reform Act of 1969.
HR, 13,270.
I want you to listen to this.
Those of you who heard the Buffett rule proposed today.
The Buffett rule is what?
What are secretaries out there not paying nearly as much as their gazillionaire bosses?
Different tax rates.
Fine.
From the general explanation of the Tax Reform Act of 1969, which gave us the alternative minimum tax.
Many individuals with high incomes who could benefit from these provisions paid lower effective rates of tax than many individuals with modest incomes.
In extreme cases, individuals enjoyed large economic incomes without paying any tax at all.
This was true, for example, in the case of 154 returns in 1966 with adjusted gross incomes of 200,000 a year.
Apart from those with income exclusions, which do not show on the returns filed, but regardless, similarly, in addition to a hundred the AMT was created, folks, the bottom line here.
Because in 1966, 154 people didn't pay taxes.
And it's not that they violated the law.
They just it worked out that they didn't owe any tacked 154 people, 1966.
I was 15 years old.
So they created the alternative minimum tax to make sure that these 154 didn't get away with that again.
And no, a dead serious.
Similarly, a number of large corporations paid either no tax at all or taxes which represented very low effective rates.
The AMT was written because 154 people with incomes over 200 grand a year in 1966 didn't pay any taxes.
And Democrats back then were demagoguing the whole thing.
200,000 in 1966.
I'll run the numbers on it in a minute, find out what that is in today's dollars.
It's going to be a lot of money.
It'll stun you.
But the whole thing was written because 154 people didn't pay taxes.
Now, my point here, this is exactly why we got the alternative minimum tax.
Only back then it was just 154 people that weren't paying their taxes, or that some people were paying a lower rate with high incomes than people with moderate incomes were paying.
We're recreating the alternative minimum tax all over again here.
Without getting rid of the AMT.
We're doubling down on it.
And remember now, this is part of Obama's jobs plan.
What business is going to create jobs or expand in order for them to be able to be hit with a new or higher tax.
Now the first AMT was called the Alternative Minimum Tax Act.
This one's called the Buffett rule.
And I have to give them this.
I wouldn't want my name on a tax increase, but Buffett probably doesn't care.
He's probably honored.
But what it does is takes Obama's name off of it.
Thank you.
Warren Buffett enjoys universal respect.
Warren Buffett is considered a genius.
When Warren Buffett talks about money or investing, everybody listens because everybody thinks he never makes a mistake with money.
He is a gazillionaire, and how did he do it?
He's so smart with money, he did it investing it.
He bought companies, he sold companies.
He invested partially in companies, he got out of them.
His reputation is beyond and above reproach.
So Obama gets a tax increase with Warren Buffett's name on it.
That's meant, of course, to help sell it.
Now last week, you'll recall James Carvo went nuts.
Obama should fire people, indict people.
It was bad.
This is after they lost New York 9.
The losses continue to pile up, and they are going to continue to pile up for Obama.
What he's talking is the majority of the American people are in no way interested in.
Now, the White House today is citing a poll, and there are some confusing polls out there.
ABC and I think NBC or Washington, ABC Washington Post, NBC Wall Street Journal.
One of those or both of them, somewhere here in the stack, claim to have poll results, poll results which show major contradictions.
But they can cite one poll, 56% of the American people support the Obama plan, raising taxes on the rich.
If you look elsewhere in the poll, you find people are totally dissatisfied with their lives, dissatisfied with the direction they're going, and the poll would lead you to believe they wouldn't support Obama in one thing that he did.
But he does have that one item they can pull out of there.
56% support Obama plan to raise taxes on the rich.
Well, last week it was it was Carville.
This week it's Mark Penn.
Mark Penn has written a piece at the Huffing and Puffington Post.
He ran Hillary's campaign for a while.
He's a pollster in Washington.
And he's writing a piece, has written a piece that don't bring back class warfare.
He writes that Obama's careening down the wrong path towards re-election.
He ought to be working as a president, not as a candidate.
He should be claiming the vital center, not abandoning it.
He's already lost it.
He's shoring up the base with this thing today and all these tax increases and the class envy and the I hate the rich rhetoric.
He's got to get his base back, Mr. Penn.
You well know he's uh he's lost the independence.
If he loses the base, he's had it.
And the base not happy because we're not out of Iraq and we're not out of Afghanistan and uh all kinds of stuff they're not happy with.
George Bush is still free, Cheney isn't in jail.
There's a whole bunch of stuff that the base is still really ticked off about.
The world court hadn't indicted anybody from the Bush administration.
All they got was scooter Libyan.
They know that's not a big enough thing.
Mark Penn, he should be holding down taxes rather than raising them.
He should be mastering the global economy, not running away from it.
And most of all, he should be bringing the country together rather than dividing it through class warfare.
Now, this is actually true.
All of this is actually true.
Mark Penn is a Democrat.
And it's hard for me to separate Mark Penn from Hillary.
When Mark Penn speaks, I am naturally I naturally conclude that it's Hillary speaking.
In a test market, a floating of trial balloons.
I can't, I'm sorry, I can't help it.
I know the Clintons too well.
And Mark Penn ran her campaign for a while.
Good portion of it.
So when he speaks, it's hard for me to dissociate him with Hillary or Bill.
Bill's got the Clinton global initiative going on in Washington.
Or it's New York this week.
There are three parts to the Clinton global initiative, and one of them is setting up some sort of program for women and girls.
It must be tough for the president out there.
He's had to have him put in his foundation's official activities now, time with women and girls.
Make it official.
I can't find the actual wording of it.
I thought I had it.
I'll find it.
At any rate, Penn here is right.
Holding down taxes rather than raising them.
Bringing the country together rather than dividing it through class warfare.
It's exactly what he's doing.
He is dividing the country.
He has come to divide, has been my point all along.
I don't see how he thinks he's going to get re-elected doing this.
When you look at the election returns that have taken place since November of last year, I don't know where is the evidence that this works.
I know he's going to get his base, but we now know that that base is very, that base is tiny.
Thank you.
Okay, fine and dandy.
That's fine.
Then he is here's his task.
If he thinks he's going to rekindle young voters, and if he thinks he's going to rekindle the Hispanics, and if he thinks he's going to rekindle blacks, how's he doing it?
He's doing it by trying to tell them that their lives aren't going to improve.
But a lot of other people that they don't know are going to get soaked.
That's what class envy is.
Class envy is making you feel good when somebody doing better than you gets punished.
You're supposed to be happy about that.
Of course, it never works out.
Uh, but regardless, none of this is going to get passed anyway.
None of this is going to become law.
It's not intended to.
He's running now against Congress.
He's not even running against the presidential field, much so we don't have a nominee yet, but he could easily be running against the presidential field if he wants to, but he's not.
He's choosing to run against Congress.
So he's doing a combo FDR Harry Reed here, knowing full well this isn't going to become law.
Now, don't misunderstand if he could make it law, he would.
I mean, he don't think he doesn't really believe this stuff because he does.
Got to take a quick time out.
We'll be back.
More of your phone calls uh coming up and much more.
As always, here on the EIB network.
Sit tight.
To Indianapolis, as we head back to the phones, this is John.
Nice to have you on the program, sir.
Hello.
Hey, Rush.
Um, two quick points about taxes.
There's already tax increases in the pipeline with Obamacare and the expiration of the Bush tax cuts.
And then with regard to the millionaire tax uh increase Obama's talking about, they'll never pay it because they will move their money around and make sure they don't pay it.
And that's how they got rich in the first place.
Well, uh, let me try to tackle that.
Uh, in the first place, you are right that the Bush tax cuts will expire.
Obama is talking about tax increases above and beyond those.
So he's really talking about a massive tax increase hit.
The Bush tax rate's gonna go from uh uh 30 35 to 39.6 or 36 to 39.6 and uh it'll rise also on lower levels.
And then the tax increases on Obamacare are just uh they're killer.
Right.
And then there's this.
Then there's what he's proposed today, which is uh how he's gonna pay for his jobs bill.
So stop and think of this, folks.
Let's stop and think of this.
Here is a guy that has proposed a jobs bill so urgent he waited three weeks to present it till after his vacation.
It still, to this moment has not been introduced in the House of Representatives.
And it won't be for another two to three weeks, even though he's out there saying pass this bill now.
It has not been presented.
There still is no official Bill.
Whatever he's talking about today, last week, there's no bill.
He may be waving it around, but it has not been submitted.
And it won't be for a while.
This is all a campaign.
Let's get to the specifics.
Last week he proposes a job creation bill of $445 billion.
Today, he tells us how he's going to pay for that.
You put the two together.
Whatever plans he announced last week to create jobs has to be paid for with increases of $445 billion or more.
It's actually much, much more than that.
I just I want to know how does this work?
If Sam the Carpenter decides to hire somebody this afternoon, nobody knows about it.
Where'd Sam get the money?
Sam decided to invest it himself.
Sam decided he needs some help.
So he hired somebody to do a job.
We don't know about it.
Sam did not go to Obama to get money to hire this worker.
That Obama wants people to believe that's how it happens.
The ABC Widget Company is going to increase its jobs by 10.
How does that cost the federal government any more?
Why?
Why is there a tax increase associated with a private sector company expanding?
Well, there's not.
The relationship is if there's a tax increase, the private sector will shrink.
Because people aren't going to be hiring because the people that do, along with everybody else, is going to have much less to spend on anything.
Jobs, movie tickets, I don't know, gasoline, whatever it is.
The more of it taken out of the private sector where it's circulating and put somewhere in Washington to be redistributed, sorry, that's not the flow chart for job creation in the private sector.
So why in the world you announce a plan to create jobs because the government's got no business doing anyway.
They don't know how.
Obama's never created a job in his life.
He doesn't know what he's talking about.
Yet he's out there raising $445 billion or trillion, whatever his tax is $445 billion, what is it, billion?
$1.5.
Now this lady, the bill last week is $445 billion.
And this week is the jobs for the tax plan to pay for it.
I don't care who you are and where you live.
This is not how the ACME Widget Company hires people.
This is not how it happens.
The total tax increase by the time you end the Bush tax increases, you add what Obama talked about, or tax cuts, you add what Obama added in today.
You're up to well over a trillion dollars.
A new additional trillion dollars taken out of the collective bank accounts and pockets of everybody in the private sector.
It's going to government.
Once it's there, it's gone.
Because we don't have any money.
It's we're we're 14, now 16 trillion dollars in debt.
Well, he's done a black hole.
It'll be redistributed to people that don't work or to union people so that most of it can come back to the Democrat Party in a money laundering scheme.
The idea here that one week you announce a $445 billion jobs bill, the next week you announce tax increases to pay for it, where is the question?
How in the name of Sam Hill does this result in jobs being created?
It doesn't.
Now, about this business with millionaires and billionaires being able to evade the uh these tax increases, not all of them can, folks.
The deductions are gone.
It is a big myth.
I don't care what kind of high income you're told.
Look at Buffett.
He's arguing over a billion dollars.
He doesn't think he ought to have to pay.
If the rich don't have to pay the taxes, how come Buffett owes a billion?
This notion that the rich don't pay their taxes, that they can scheme out of it.
Some can move their companies or money offshore, but that's you just you're painting a bullseye on yourself if you do that.
There aren't any tax shelters.
They started vanishing in the 1986 tax reform in exchange for lowering the rates to 15 and 28%.
And what happened is we all knew what would happen.
In ensuing years, they would start raising the rate back up, but not adding in the deductions.
Look at Obamas wanted to take away the charitable deduction.
Folks, the even now, the charitable deduction, let's say if uh somebody who is paying the 36% tax rate gives a million dollars to a hospital or another accredited charity to have a wing named after him.
Guess what?
The deductions worth 360,000.
They don't get to deduct a whole million.
They get to deduct their their tax rate.
But all those shelters that existed when tax rates did go all the way up to 90%, 78%, 75%, no, they're gone.
The only way that you can shield yourself from income taxes is to not have income.
Somehow then what you have to do is shift all of your income to capital gains.
And some people do that.
And that rate is 15%, but there's no guarantee you're going to get it in the stock market ebb and flow.
So that the idea that everybody who earns over 200,000 or even 10 million can scheme their way out of paying taxes.
I'm telling you it isn't true.
How do you think it is that the top 1% are paying 40% of all tax revenue?
They are paying it.
There's no other way around it.
Try looking at it this way.
The reason that we are in the fiscal position that we're in in this country is that people who work in government have been irresponsible.
Totally and 100% irresponsible.
Now, being honest, you could lay a majority of this blame to the Democrat Party.
They live and breathe off the notion of ever expanding government, government running more and more of people's lives.
It is they who came up with all of these entitlement programs, most of them.
Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, I mean, you add the the the the they're not the only ones.
They're just list is on and on and on.
Why in the world should we, any of us, collectively or individually, why should it be up to us to pay for their mistakes?
Which just allows them to keep on making mistakes.
And they're not even mistakes.
They're doing all of this on purpose.
Remember, they fined BP 20 billion dollars for that oil spill.
They didn't pay it all out.
What happened to that?
All of the money that they have, and they still tell us that we're not paying enough in taxes.
When the problem with this government is not that they don't have enough revenue, is that they are the ones who refuse to live within their means.
Now, after Obama spends five trillion that we don't have, now we get to got a way to live in our means within our means speech.
As though he had nothing to do with this.
And now somehow, all of this is the result of people who are cheating, scheming, getting away with not paying their fair share, which is a crock.
There is nobody of any consequence not paying their fair share.
That is the wrong way to look at this entirely.
This is a spending problem.
It's an irresponsible management of money problem.
It is an ideological problem.
It's a lot of problems rolled into one that are not ours except for the one main mistake many of us made.
Sorry, many of you made, and that is if you've ever voted for a Democrat, you have a greater share of blame for this than those of us who never have.
I didn't say total Blame.
I said greater share.
You voted for Democrats your whole life.
You are the one that ought to be paying more taxes.
Regardless how much you, if that's how we're going to look at this, if we're going to look at this and be fair, if that's going to be the definition, who helped create this mess?
Whoever elected Democrats over and through the years.
They are the people.
Well, okay, that doesn't sound fair, Mr. Snurtley.
Why not?
Why?
Why no, wait a minute.
I'm going to try to make a point here.
Why is that unfair, but just because some people earn more than others, they ought to be paying?
How is one fair and the other is an insult to your sensibilities?
If I were to go make a speech, yep, we are in this situation.
Obama just said that the reason we're in this situation is that high income earners aren't paying their fair share.
I maintain we're in this position because too many Democrats have been elected, okay?
So I want to punish the people who elected Democrats.
Obama wants to punish people to make too much money.
Why is punishing people to make too much money fair and punishing people who voted Democrat somehow, oh no, that's that kind of makes me nervous.
Well, I'm making a point here.
Using taxes to punish people can never be fair, but it's a constant of the Democrat Party.
That's class envy is something they own exclusive.
They own class envy.
They own class warfare.
They own the rich aren't paying their fair share.
They own all of these entitlement programs that have destroyed people's lives.
You know, if If I had been, if I had been a person voting Democrat all my life, and in the last five or ten years had had a change of heart, I don't know if I'd get through the guilt of what I've done.
By electing Democrats, by electing liberals, by putting them in charge.
What it's done to the moral fabric of the country, what it's done to the social fabric of the country.
So I want to change the focus here.
I want to change the way we look at this.
Rather than it's time for the rich to pay their fair share, it's about damn time the Democrats paid their fair share.
And we're going to start assigning blame, and Obama started it.
That's what this is all about.
Okay, let's be honest about the blame.
Anybody with a capital D after the name got elected?
Guilty.
Anybody voted for them?
Responsible.
Therefore, your taxes ought to go up.
Besides, you've been voting all these years, other people's taxes to go up.
That's what the Democrats have been telling you.
They're going to raise nobody else's taxes but yours about time you found out what it's like.
Doesn't sound fair, does it?
I don't care.
It's right.
In my world, that's fair.
In my world, this is even.
In my world, this is what it takes here to fix the mess we're in.
You Democrats created it.
Our country's broke because of who you elected.
The responsibility is yours.
Time you paid your fair share of the mess.
Point is, no matter who you go after this way.
It just doesn't sound right, does it?
You hear me I know some of you are applauding, I know that.
I know I'll take the applause.
Some of you are plotting and think it's a brilliant idea.
And it frankly is.
But at the same time, something, no, right?
No, no, I don't know.
It's not fair.
Right, okay.
So why, for those of you who look at it that way, so why is it so easy to go along with the rich, not paying their fair share when I have to tell you the rich is what Obama defines them?
the only people paying anything.
Thank you.
Where's the thanks?
Where's the thanks for people who are paying for everything?
No.
Instead of gratitude And thanks, all the Democrat Party wants is for you to continue to hate these people.
They want to ratchet up your resentment, your hatred for your fellow citizens.
Okay, so let's just change the let's change who we hate.
Let's change being hating the rich to hate the Democrats.
Works for me.
And it's probably a little bit more valid.
We'll call it a jackass tax, a tax increase on Democrats.
And that's one tax.
I might put my name on that one.
You know, Buffett's got his buffet.
I'll put my name, the limbaugh tax exclusively on Democrats, and I don't care what you make, you're paying it.
I don't care if you make anything.
You're gonna come up with some way to pay it because you gotta give it back.
Well, if we're gonna start assigning blame here.
He's talking about one and a half trillion dollars in new taxes, one and a half trillion dollars in new taxes under the under the uh belief, the premise that somehow it's our fault that this country's finances are in the bad shape that they're in.
It's not Obama's fault.
It's no other politicians' fault.
Not at the end of the day, really.
It's not the Washington establishment's fault.
Ours.
We have to pay for it.
Continually wanting us feel responsible, continually wanting us feeling guilty for creating this mess.
So Obama's jobs plan is one and a half trillion dollars in new taxes.
New.
One and a half trillion dollars in new taxes.
That's the president's jobs plan.
Thank you.
Cool.
You uh support that you deserve to have your taxes raised.
There was a story uh last week.
We didn't touch on it, but I'm going to now.
Somebody in charge of managing campaign funds for a bunch of Democrats stole it.
Or lost it all.
In California.
Stole it.
Exactly right.
Uh somebody, let's see.
Uh yeah, Kendy Durkey, uh, a Democrat Party operative caught misappropriating campaign funds.
Despite numerous documented legal problems and huge fines levied by the Federal Elections Commission, Ms. Dundee, or is it Durkey?
Spelled whatever her name is, it's spelled both ways here.
Uh anyway, she kept getting hired.
She kept getting hired.
I guess thieves stick together by Democrat congressmen and senators in California to serve as the campaign treasurer in their various reelection bids.
She kept stealing.
She kept getting hired.
They had to figure here's somebody knows what she's doing.
Except you're not supposed to steal from us.
So anyway, she has been, now these campaigns are broke.
Many of these campaigns are broke, and Ms. Dundee has been arrested in a sweeping federal fraud case, sending shock waves across the Democrat Party establishment.
Now, here's what's funny.
Diane Feinstein happens to be one of the Democrats who lost everything from her campaign chest.
She uh has asked federal regulators the following question.
If my contributors gave the legal limit, and our campaign operative has stolen the money, can these contributors donate to my campaign again?
In other words, she's not worried, folks, about repaying them.
She's not worried about repaying herself.
She wants to know if she can scorch them again.
Now you tell me how these people being in charge of the federal budget makes any sense at all, because we get stolen from every day.
We get looted every day, and they blame us after we get stolen from, and our money is looted, they tell us we're not paying enough taxes.
Now, Diane Fein, imagine if you're a donor.
And you get a call for our office.
Hey, somebody stole all of our campaign funds, and including your contribution, would you give again?
Not even a thought about repaying these people or even repaying herself.
Just, okay, somebody stole it from me.
Can I can I get it replaced.
Here's uh here's Joe in Gurney, Illinois.
Joe, welcome to the EIB network.
Great to have you here.
Hey, Rush.
Listen, I was just listening to uh Obama talk about how uh he's gonna just tax the more fortunate among us, and that sounds great to me.
I'm just wondering how he's going to uh distinguish between the more fortunate and the people who have tried really hard to build up their businesses, worked hard, investigate, invested everything they own in it.
Um I wonder how he's gonna differentiate between those two uh groups.
Very simple.
It's very simple.
Um if you make 200,000 or more, uh then you are among the more fortunate, and you have a bullseye painted on your back.
Ah, so fortunate is defined as a certain income.
Yeah, it's like it's no different than yeah, it's like no different than uh than Dick Gephardt uh uh called uh successful people the winners of life's lottery.
In the liberal mind, the fact that somebody has 200 or000 or a million dollars, there that's just good luck.
That's through good fortune.
They've got to they've gotta share that.
They gotta pay that back.
That's that's it's it's why I think you know liberals have no idea where money actually comes from.
They sit around the faculty lounge and they theorize about if they ran a car company, or if they ran a solar power company.
Well, in fact, they were.
They were running Cylindra.
It costs six bucks to make a solar panel, they're selling it for three.
Now, I and by the way, the idea that they're blaming the ChICOMs for this goes out the window.
The ChICOMs are not responsible for this.
The people running this company were responsible for it.
If it costs six bucks, you better sell it for more than that.
If you don't, you're not gonna be in business.
That's simple.
They were selling the panels for free.
You know why?
That's all they could get for them.
But I'm sure these people, Obama, just to them, big business is like water in a tap.
Water in a faucet.
Turn on the tap and it's there.
Big business equals big money.
And every business is big, by the way.
No such thing as a small business.
Oh, yeah, small business, but you got money in the bank.
You got tons.
This is what liberals think.
You have a never-ending stash of it back there.
And the only reason you don't hire people is because you want it all for yourself.
Or you don't want to pay your employees' health care.
And the only reason you've really got it is because you're among the more fortunate.
You just lucked into it anyway.
So you really ought not have that much.
And I'm here, Barack Obama, I'm here to make things fair.
You shouldn't have it in the first place.
I know better what to do with it than you do.
My intentions are far more honorable than yours are with your own money, so I'm taking it.
And a process, I want to make as many people hate you as I can.
It's the fastest three hours in media.
And the most fun.
It's show prep for the rest of the media.
It is I, one and only L. Rushbow, a man who did know 30 years ago what I know today.
And I'll know it 30 years from now, too.
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