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Sept. 20, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:28
September 20, 2011, Tuesday, Hour #2
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Greetings to you.
Great to have you back, my friends.
This is the most listened-to radio talk show in America.
It has been for quite a while.
It always will be.
As long as I, El Rushbo, am behind the golden EIB microphone.
Great to have you as part of the show.
Telephone number is 800-282-2882.
Email address, El Rushbo at EIBnet.com.
Look, it's not just the AP fact check on Obama's nonsense.
They have a companion story.
And they even identify the traitor who wrote it.
Guy's name is Andrew Taylor.
It's not just millionaires who'd pay more under Obama's latest plan to combat the deficit.
Air travelers, federal workers, military retirees, wealthier Medicare beneficiaries, people taking out new mortgages are among those who would pay more than $130 billion in government fees.
Yep, they're called fees in this, not taxes.
Airline passengers would see their federal security fees double from $5 to $10 for a non-stop round-trip flight and triple to $15 by 2017.
This ostensibly would raise $25 billion over 10 years.
Federal workers would face an additional 1.2 percentage point deduction from their paychecks to contribute $21 billion more for their pensions over the same period.
Military retirees would pay a $200 fee upon turning 65 to have the government pay their out-of-pocket Medicare expenses.
They would also pay for non-generic prescription drugs.
And it'll cost corporate jet owners a new $100 fee for each flight.
Now, this one is interesting to me, as you might imagine, because it says here that this will raise a billion dollars.
Corporate jet owners, $100 fee would raise a billion dollars.
That'd mean there'd have to be 10 million corporate jet flights.
And by the way, it excludes little puddle jumper like single-engine aircraft, recreational flying.
Excludes all that.
So I don't know how you get to that level of flights, that number of flights, but well, yeah, I guess it might be okay to go back to Las Vegas, where the unemployment rate's at 15.9%, by the way.
So this piece goes on to question every aspect of this so-called jobs bill, which again isn't a jobs bill.
It cannot and will not create jobs.
Obama has never introduced a real jobs bill.
Stimulus one was not a jobs bill.
This is not a jobs bill.
You know, the person who has the biggest opinion of Obama anymore is Obama.
And that's the problem.
I think the guy is blinded by his own self-delusion.
And I really do believe, you know, this story last week, the gawker guys say that the New York Times is working on a story about whether or not Obama's clinically depressed.
They are running stories naming Democrats by name who oppose the Thursday night portion of this proposal and the proposal yesterday.
Democrats, not Republicans, Democrats by name, who oppose it.
The ABC News has become the lead source of information on Solyndra and the scandal that's brewing there.
And the rest of the drive-bys have picked it up and they're now giving us great details on not just Solyndra, but other companies where CEOs have doled out lots or bundled lots of contribution dollars for Obama in exchange for preferable treatment from the regime.
I still don't know how a company is given essentially $535 billion and goes bankrupt.
You know, I have this little tea company.
If they gave me $535 billion, I can guarantee you I would not be bankrupt in two years.
Would not happen.
I wouldn't take the money anyway, but I'm just saying, I don't know how this works.
I think Obama troubled.
I think he can't believe that his greatness is now being questioned.
I really, folks, I can't believe, or he can't believe that his greatness and his uniqueness is not being applauded by everybody around him and by all of the people.
He believes that he still waves that magic wand.
It has the same effect and impact that it had in 2008.
You can see it.
You can hear this in his speeches.
He has no idea how unhinged he has become, and he's getting worse by the day.
When I say unhinged, I mean like this.
Not long ago, Obama supported extending the current Bush income tax rates.
And for a solid reason.
In 2009, Obama said you can't raise taxes during recession.
He actually said, I saw the soundbite last night somewhere.
He actually said you can't take money out of the private sector and grow it.
This is not the right time to do it.
He actually said it.
Today, he's demanding the repeal of those rates, and nothing's changed.
The situation, in fact, has gotten worse.
This is unhinged.
I know, still, it's a campaign speech that he's making.
It's campaign time.
He's going to shore up his base.
But he thinks we're not going to see this.
He thinks we're not going to notice.
It wasn't long ago that Obama said he was deeply concerned about mounting deficits.
Well, he created $4 trillion worth of deficits in just two years.
Today, he rails against deficits while proposing trillions of dollars more in deficit spending.
This is unhinged.
It's delusional to think that people are not going to spot this.
Not going to remember what you said just two years ago.
You're president of the United States.
We are going to remember.
We do remember.
He told us that the stimulus bill, Porculus, would fund shovel-ready jobs.
Then he joked that there weren't that many shovel-ready jobs in a meeting with his jobs commissar, Jeffrey Imelt.
We were told that the stimulus bill would drive unemployment below 8%.
Now, we're told that the new normal is over 9% forever.
That's the new normal.
Obama had a housing program.
He had a mortgage relief program.
Did nothing.
Neither program did anything.
He had a green jobs and alternative energy plan.
It's now corrupt and bankrupt.
And the people that he endorsed and funded are now under investigation by his own agencies.
He rails against corporate jets and yachts, then goes to Martha's Vineyard on a vacation to golf with his millionaire, billionaire buddies, who all get there on corporate jets and ride around on yachts when they're there.
The economy is sinking under the weight of Obama's spending, its regulations, taxes.
And so Obama, Thursday night last week and yesterday, presents us with a new grand idea.
More spending, more regulations, more taxes.
While the country is sinking under the weight of his previous spending, regulations and taxes.
So he proposes more.
The only jobs bill that will succeed is when Obama is jobless.
The only jobs bill that will work is when all of his czars and cabinet members are fired by the voters.
And by the way, he just hired two new czars.
Nobody knows specifically what they're for.
However, it appears that their purpose will be to help him get around the fact that Congress won't pass his legislation.
The czars do not have to pass Senate confirmation.
Nobody knows what they are paid.
They are unaccountable.
They're not like cabinet secretaries.
Hired just a couple more czars recently.
Got the story in the stack.
I'll get to it as the program unfolds.
The only jobs bill that's going to work is when we undo all these regulations that he instituted, all the legislation passed when his party controlled Congress.
And that's going to have to happen if we are going to effectively restore this country and its previous greatness.
Obama now, the curtain has been raised.
No more is there an effort to deceive.
He's just point-blank honest about wanting to harm millionaires, billionaires, achievers.
Millionaires and billionaires defined now as families with a household income of $200,000 or more.
While Obama attacks them, attempts to punish them, we what?
We want more of them.
Obama wants to attack wealth.
We want more of it created.
Obama wants to create green jobs.
We want to create American jobs in existing, proven, dynamic American industries.
Obama wants to pass laws to strengthen unions.
We want individuals to work freely and determine for themselves whether they wish to join a union or not.
Obama is about big government.
We are about constitutional government.
And we are the majority.
And we have been the majority for a long time.
It's the same old thing, folks.
It's just that the media is not on our side.
They set the news agenda each and every day, thus creating the illusion that we are a very small minority of people and of the thinking in this country.
The opposite is true.
And now what's the media done?
Media is joining us, if only temporarily.
How is that even possible?
One of the things that makes it possible is liberals have no core.
They're not grounded in anything other than their liberalism in saving it.
Obama is destroying them.
And what's taking place now before our very eyes is the realization in all these places, liberal media, and even in the so-called conservative intelligentsia, which bought all this nonsense about Obama.
He's not what we were told.
He's not who they told us he is.
He's not and never has been what they told us he was.
And now each and every day they wake up and they look and see and cannot escape the reality that what they believe fails, what they believe destroys, does not create utopia.
It creates anger at them.
People want no part.
People, for the first time in their lives, are now realizing that the problems that exist in this country are political problems.
That, I cannot tell you how important that is.
I have had friends of mine who don't see the world the same way I do because they don't see it through a political lens at all.
They now see it for what it is.
These problems are politically caused.
These problems are politically sustained.
And it follows these problems are only repairable politically.
And more and more people are beginning to see this and realize it.
The liberals themselves see it, and they have no desire for liberalism to get the blame.
Somebody is going to have to take the blame.
That person, if he doesn't shape up, is going to be Obama.
Same thing happened to the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev, whatever you want to say about Gorbachev, he did try to institute a little capitalism while holding on to communism.
The two do not mix.
You can't do a little of both and have something that works.
The Apparatch attempted to take Gorbachev out when he was at one of his vacation dutches at some North Sea retreat or some such thing.
I'll never forget Gorbachev talking about it.
They tried to kill the president.
They tried to kill the president.
They were stunned that this would ever happen.
They were not going to let Gorbachev take communism down.
And the left in this country is not going to let Obama take liberalism down.
And now we've got Obama in a dangerous place.
He's unhinged and angry because the fact is he has been rejected by the American people.
And I don't think he's ever been rejected.
Quite the opposite in his life.
He was rejected last November where the Democrats lost the House.
He was rejected last week in the elections in New York and Nevada big time.
He was rejected in New Jersey, the gubernatorial race, rejected in Virginia, and he's going to be rejected in November of 2012.
He is rejected in virtually every public survey of merit.
His approval rating at Gallup is at 38%.
They stopped the presses to report that for George W. Bush.
So the American people have rejected not only Obama, but what he stands for.
That is why not just Obama, but his supporters are more unhinged than usual.
I just got an email.
What did I do with it?
Dear Rush, I'm confused.
You say that finally people recognize that the 60s version of America is over, that we finally, as a country, see it for what it is.
Well, I contend that we've always agreed with you for 23 years, which is one of the many reasons that you are still there despite efforts to unseat you.
We are the majority.
Liberals, moderates are leading this way because they have no core values.
The fact that I might have been misunderstood over what I said in the first hour of the program troubles me.
I didn't mean to imply that you people didn't get it.
I was talking about media.
Talking about conservative media people spreading lone wolf did not mean lone wolf citizen.
I meant lone wolf media guy.
Anyway, I want to grab a phone call here.
People have been waiting for an hour and a half.
This is Stacy in Granger, Indiana.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Great to have you here, Stacey.
Thank you, Mr. Limbaugh.
It's an honor and pleasure to speak with you.
I appreciate that.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
You are spot on with taxes.
As a middle-class citizen who pays taxes, I'm afforded the same privileges and freedoms as the so-called rich, but I do not expect the so-called rich to pay any more for those same freedoms and privileges any more than I would expect a millionaire or billionaire standing and lying next to me at a McDonald's to pay for or to pay more for an extra value meal.
That's an extra point.
It irritates me to see the rich vilified.
I mean, I admire success and wealth, and I want to earn, you know, I want to earn success and be wealthy someday.
And regarding Mr. Buffett's story, some of the questions I would like to ask Mr. Obama, you know, I mean, how would making Mr. Buffett pay more in taxes or making the so-called rich pay more in taxes help his secretary?
I mean, seriously, how would it actually help her?
How would it help me?
It wouldn't.
You're exactly right.
Also, I would ask him to specifically define what fair share is, what a fair share is for the rich versus a fair share for the non-rich.
I mean, where's the fairness in someone who pays no federal income tax for the same privileges and freedoms as the rich?
I mean, it just, to me, it's not fair at all.
I mean, those are the people that are actually getting the tax break.
Okay, so then you understand this for what it is.
This is all of this is a pack of lies to achieve what?
What do you think the purpose Obama has is?
Keep his voting base.
I mean, you have to keep these people down.
You have to.
Well, but understand, you have to make the rich an enemy.
Stacey, if he could, he would implement this stuff.
This is not just a speech.
This is dreams.
I mean, this is stuff that if he could do this, if he could do it by executive order, he would do it.
Yeah, and that's sad, sad and unfortunate.
And it just, like I said, it just irritates me that to see the rich vilified and to see so many people who are duped by this guy and who believe that, who believe this, who have these beliefs.
Well, there are some people who do, obviously, and they're the people who've been conditioned to be happy when they've been told or are told that other people are suffering.
Doesn't change their life at all, as you pointed out.
If anything, it might harm it.
There might be fewer jobs for them.
There might be less money for people to get raises if Obama gets what he wants.
Anyway, you're right on the money.
It's great to have you in the audience, and I'm glad you called.
The Lone Wolf Institute.
The EIB Lone Wolf Institute for advanced conservatives.
That is me, the Lone Wolf, or that is I, the declarative, El Rushbo, 800-282-2882.
Here is that soundbite that I heard last night.
This Obama, August 5th, 2009 on NBC News.
White House correspondent, then White House correspondent F. Chuck Todd, interviewing Obama during a visit to a factory in Indiana.
If Chuck said, Elkhart resident Scott Ferguson, he's upset about taxes.
He says, explain how raising taxes on anyone during a deep recession is going to help with the economy.
And he actually wants you to look at historical markers where this has been a helpful thing to come out of a recession.
Well, first of all, he's right.
Normally you don't raise taxes in recession, which is why we haven't.
But you don't have a case.
You might for the high for some of the wealthy.
We have not proposed a tax hike for the wealthy that would take effect in the middle of a recession.
Even the proposals that have come out of Congress, which, by the way, were different from the proposals I put forward, still wouldn't kick in until after the recession was over.
The last thing you want to do is to raise taxes in the middle of a recession because that would just suck up, take more demand out of the economy and put businesses in a further hole.
Okay, two years ago, basically August 5th of 2009, you just don't raise taxes during recession.
It just suck up money out of the economy and put businesses in a further hole.
Two years later, what's he proposed?
Sucking more demand out of the economy, i.e. money, and putting businesses in a further hole.
Who cares why?
Yeah, I know it's to shore up his base, but what sense does that make?
And what does it say about his base?
They're a bunch of crazed anti-American lunatics.
And that's who he's got to speak to.
That's who he's got to shore up.
My God, I'll tell you, I'd be depressed too if my job was to make Michael Moore and Robert Reich happy every day.
I don't know if it's possible.
Mike in San Diego, California, welcome to the EIB Network.
Hello.
Yes, sir.
Very honored to be on your program, sir.
Thank you very much, sir.
Listen, I've been a Republican since I enlisted in the early 70s in the military.
I'm actually still in the military as a reservist, mobilized several years during the latest conflict.
And I, you know, the one thing that I have agreed with our commander-in-chief on, and I know this is going to sound like a merino to you, is raising taxes on the rich.
And let me tell you why.
And by the way, let me try to say one more time.
I agree with you on every point about none of our tax money should go for illegal aliens or somebody's elective abortion or somebody's opinion of which way the climate may be going.
All of that is not where our tax money should be going.
But it should be going for the military.
It should be going for police, fire, everything that protects our life and safety.
And right now, those exact areas are being underfunded.
You're talking about actually getting rid of pensions, not just for police officers and firefighters, but for the military.
Well, but that's all local.
Firefighters and police have nothing to do with federal taxes.
Well, but the military does, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff are looking at getting rid of pensions for the military.
And it's not just that.
They're actually cutting back things that protect us.
Here's the problem, though.
I mean, you could take, you could take everything above $10 million in income, just confiscate it, and you couldn't pay for what you want paid for.
Well, but not this year.
And I agree with you that, I mean, I don't want to do anything that would actually hurt a rich person.
I think rich people, I mean, you know, Rush, you're probably a rich person yourself.
They're richer, richer than they've ever been.
They've got more money than they've ever had.
If we increase our taxes back to a reasonable tax rate like it was before George Bush, then over time, you know, that revenue would have to make a difference.
Here's the problem.
You're not talking about enough money to accomplish what you want to accomplish.
The only way to accomplish what you want to accomplish is the federal government has got to stop spending.
Yes.
The rich are not richer than they've ever been.
This country is, the percentage of millionaires in this country is down 39% the last two years.
The rich are not richer.
There's so many myths that are associated with this.
Well, because there's different articles that say completely opposite of that.
But in any case, who's writing them?
Probably liberal idiots.
But the 35% tax bracket rush, you've got to admit, is radically lower than it's been.
Like after World War II, what paid for World War II?
They raised it to 91% on the rich all the way up until John F. Kennedy lowered it.
And Reagan lowered it back to 90%.
Yeah, but nobody ever paid that.
Nobody ever paid that.
When Reagan took office, and by the way, John Kennedy had to cut those rates in order to spur economic growth, and they got the top marginal rate down to 70%.
And that's what it was when Reagan took office in 1981.
The top marginal rate in this country was 70%.
I know.
So why can't we raise it back up to what Reagan lowered it?
Because when Reagan cut the top rate from 70% to 28%, revenue to the Treasury doubled, almost went from $500 billion to almost $1 trillion by cutting rates.
We don't need more taxes on anybody.
There isn't enough revenue in the quote-unquote rich to fund pensions for military people or firemen or cops, which is a local and state issue anyway.
Federal taxes, the feds have no business meddling with cops and firemen.
They have nothing to do with it.
That's a local issue in most places, in some cases, a state issue, but that's where it ends.
What needs to happen here is more jobs.
More jobs equals more taxpayers.
Now, the way you get to more jobs is to free up capital, i.e. money in the private sector and have less of it going to government.
Government doesn't create jobs.
There can't be a pension for anybody if there's no revenue to support it.
And the government can only get revenue by taking it from somebody or printing it or borrowing it.
And none of the three produce a single job that creates or produces anything.
So what has to happen here, the government has got to stop spending what it's spending.
If you want money spent and allocated to pensions, then it's got to be stopped.
The spending has to be redirected from something else.
There isn't the revenue in the private sector to tax and make this spending possible.
We're already $16 trillion in debt.
There's not enough revenue to get us out of debt by raising taxes on anybody.
This is purely an irresponsible spending program problem.
And the way to get started on reversing this is to reduce whatever pressure there is on job creation, reduce pressure on job advancement.
The government needs to get out of the way.
People that know how to create jobs must be freed and allowed to do so.
Get the regulations off their backs, get the government out of their lives, and let them go to town.
Then when you have more people working, by definition, you're going to have more people paying taxes.
And that equals more revenue to the government, if that's what you're interested in.
Raising taxes has never increased revenue in a way that is sustainable and lasting and productive.
Money only comes from one place.
I'm talking about real money, not printed or borrowed or what have you.
That money that results from productivity or creation of jobs, creation of products, performance of services or what have you, it happens in the private sector.
That is being shrunk.
And his money is, Obama just said it, the soundbite that I just played.
He knows you suck capital out of the private sector and you're sucking lifeblood out of the private sector.
There isn't the money raising taxes on the rich.
It's not there.
And if you do it, you're just going to slow down the economy even further.
What's the well, I think when you say only one solution, the one thing that is not tried and the one thing that we have not tried in all my life is to reduce the size of the government.
I mean, Reagan tried and made it and gave it his best shot.
We haven't really, budgets don't get smaller every year.
They get bigger.
Federal budget does nothing but expand.
It's bloated.
We all know why.
The Democrats want that to be the case.
They want more and more people dependent on the federal government for their daily whatever, so they keep voting Democrat.
March 2009, Reuters' number of U.S. millionaires falls by 25%.
Churchill, a quote, I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
You can't do it.
Every bucket has a handle.
You stand in the bucket and try to lift yourself by raising, lifting up the handle and lifting it.
It's not possible.
I don't think you're a rhino.
I just think, I think, I think you've been corrupted by two things, your passionate devotion to the military and all the years of your life that you've been subjected to the disinformation campaign and propaganda of the left-wing of the media.
And those are the two things that are probably animating your belief system in this.
But the math doesn't work.
The numbers aren't there.
And it ought to be clear a day for everybody to see.
We're losing jobs.
We're losing revenue.
The spending is sky high.
We can't afford these obligations that we've assumed.
This whole pension thing is a big bugaboo with me anyway.
The military, I had a little bit more patience and understanding for that.
But still, this notion that you're going to be paid for life for something you quit doing 30 years ago, it just never was raised.
That just still is a foreign concept to me because somebody has to pay that.
And under what obligation?
Where is it written?
Now, for the military, I can make a far more.
What do you mean?
Military, I can see where there's a justification for that given what these people put on the line, but I don't know why citizens ought to be paying the pensions of union members and teachers and firemen and all that stuff.
I mean, it's when they don't have these things themselves.
I don't have a freaking pension.
I've had to create my own.
Now, where is it written that other Americans should have one paid for by their neighbors?
But Rush, but Rush, those deals were made.
Those deals have to be honored.
What if the money isn't there?
Well, I don't know.
When the money isn't there for me, I just do without whatever it is I need or want.
The last thing I was watching a commercial.
I'm perhaps not the guy to talk about this, in all candor, because I think I am on this probably a lone wolf.
But I was watching a TV commercial moments ago.
Some bank is trying to attract customers by telling them there are not going to be any fees when they use the ATM at this bank.
And the commercial is a guy standing in front of the ATM.
He's got two options.
One button says to complete this transaction, we're going to charge you a $3 fee.
The other button says skip the transaction.
There's a long line of people standing behind him, urging him to, come on, when you make up your mind, do something here.
I want to get to the machine and get on with my life.
I'm watching this, and let me take, I got to take a break here.
I'm long.
I must take a break, or I'm going to get in real trouble here by having two short segments following this, which nobody likes.
So sit tight.
I'll finish this when I get back.
Okay, the reason I might not meet a guy to talk about such things as who pays for what is this commercial reminded me of the whole controversy over ATM fees,
how when they first hit big, there was a resounding call throughout the country for the government to do something about it.
So now we've got a new bank out there, and they're running commercials to attract customers by saying there will not be any fees for use of their ATM and that there is a $3 charge at some other bank's ATM.
The other bank's not named here.
This guy's sitting there trying to figure out what to do, what to do, what to do.
And I put myself in the position of the guy at the ATM, and I think, okay, if that's what it costs, fine.
I signed up at this bank.
That's what it is.
Hit the button, get my money, and go on.
The last thing that would ever occur to me is to call my congressman to complain about an ATM fee.
I would either not pay it or pay it if I knew it existed when I signed up at the bank.
If it didn't exist when I signed up at the bank and it's something that really, really bothered me, I'd change banks.
But it would never occur to me to complain to the government about it.
Yet, that's what a lot of people do.
Not just ATM fees, but this guy that called about there's not enough taxation because military pensions are not being properly funded.
We have got a problem here of total mismanagement of government.
And raising taxes is not going to fix the mismanagement of government.
The mismanagement of government's been going on all of your life and all of my life by liberals, whether they have won elections or not.
They populate the bureaucracy.
They have career appointments in every bureaucracy from the EPA to the FCC to the Department of Justice, you name it, they're there.
Whether there's got a Democrat in the White House or not, the whole government's been corrupted and perverted.
And so it's not the fact that people aren't paying or are paying taxes that the government's mismanaged.
Mismanagement of the government, if you define that as military pensions are being unfunded or underfunded, raising taxes on somebody is not going to fix that.
Something else, too.
If you want to try to tell me that the government's money revenue problems reside in the taxes paid by 1% of the population, is that really what people want to try to convince me of?
When 47% of the people aren't paying diddly squat, people want to try to tell me that the problem exists in the 1% who are paying 40% of all taxes, the 5% who are paying 70%, that's the problem.
Sorry, I'm just not going to see it that way.
I don't know how anybody can believe the top 1% paying 40% of all taxes are not paying enough, are not paying their fair share when 47% of people aren't paying any federal income tax.
But even if you raise taxes, if you, you know, April Fool's Day back 20 years ago, I did a whole bit on taxing the rich or taxing the poor, raise taxes on the poor.
It's about time they started paying for what they get.
And it outraged people.
Now, that view actually has a wide berth of support.
What I mean by being on the cutting edge.
So I just don't, if I just, I just don't, I don't see government as the solution to anything.
So I look at myself as the solution to what my problems are.
Last place I even ponder going is any government, state, city, local, federal.
Anyway, I got to take a break here, folks.
We'll be back and continue.
One big exciting broadcast hour remains.
Top 5% are paying 70% of all taxes, and they want us to believe that the revenue shortfall is because the rich are not paying their fair share.
And we have 47% of Americans who aren't paying anything.
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