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Oct. 27, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:41
October 27, 2011, Thursday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
You students with college loans, and you parents of students with college loans.
You realize what dupes you are to the regime.
It is amazing.
This student loan reform, the student loan program reform.
It's amazing.
We got a random act of journalism here by the Atlantic Monthly that illustrates just how few people this affects, how hugely expensive it is.
It's a farce.
It's a total farce.
It misleads and it deceives students.
And it's going to end up saving students eight dollars.
This is one of the what one of the biggest jokes that come down the pike in a long time, and I'm going to set it straight.
Look it.
It's a convoluted, intricately woven web of deceit.
But that's what I do here is make the complex understandable.
I'm going to take a stab at this as we kick off the big program today.
Great to have you with us, Rush Limboard 800-282-2882, the email address.com.
All right, here's basically what we have.
We have a random act of journalism from the Atlantic Monthly of all places.
Left wing rag with a couple of faux pseudo-conservatives writing now and then for so-called balance.
And they published an article yesterday about Obama's student loan bailout, and their headline is this Obama's student loan order saves the average grad less than $10 a month.
So that's what Obama thinks it costs to buy their vote.
You students, you parents of students, your votes can be had for eight bucks.
Now, granted, you wouldn't know this if I, El Rushbow, wasn't about to tell you, because I don't think you read Atlantic Monthly, and I wouldn't blame you if you don't.
It's one of the reasons I get combat pay.
I do.
I'm going to explain it to you.
But that's what your vote is worth.
They think they can get now, obviously they think that uh you believe you're going to get much more help and much more assistance and relief in eight bucks, but you're not.
The sub-headline in the Atlantic Monthly story spells out how uh even ten dollars is overly optimistic.
Here's what it says the monthly impact of the president's new effort for most Americans paying off college debt will be between four and eight dollars.
The article goes on to talk about how outrageous the uh cost of a college education is, how outrageously it's gone up, which has caused student loans to have grown by 511% since 1999, and the most student loan debt get this now.
This is interesting.
Most student loan debt was accrued over the past ten years.
82% of all student loan from the get-go from the beginning of student loans, 82% of all debt has been accrued over the past ten years.
And uh they go on to say that Obama's proposals are basically meaningless.
Which is what we tried to say here yesterday, but it's nice to see that others are noticing it too.
So here's a here here's a uh pretty good overview of the uh of the whole situation.
And by the way, this is all being done by executive order.
And I am here to tell you that if Bush or any Republican was using the executive order process this way, there would be howling from all corners.
Bypassing Congress, executive fiat, who does he think he is?
What does he think this is?
A dictatorship?
Those kinds of headlines and questions would be out there.
Drive-by's would be filled with cries of imperial executive branch actions.
But with Obama, all you hear is the crickets chirping.
Even if you hear that.
Obama's student loan order saves the average graduate less than $10 a month.
The Monthly impact of the president's new effort for most Americans paying off college debt will be between four and eight dollars per month of the many long-term problems the U.S. economy faces.
Student loans are a big one.
Education costs are rising very quickly and incomes aren't.
As a result, students will have to borrow more and more money to get university degrees.
It'll have a tougher time paying their loans off because incomes are stagnant.
Obama seeks to respond to this with an executive order in the next part of his we can't wait unilateral stimulus effort.
And while the president's heart may be, this is this the Atlantic Monthly doing what they can't throw him a bone.
While the president's heart may be in the right place, his effort isn't likely to have much impact.
The problem is the cost of college is growing rapidly.
Now that wouldn't be a problem if incomes were growing as quickly as tuition and fees, but they aren't.
And in order to cope with the growing expense of college, more students are relying on bigger loans.
And by the way, folks, what are they getting for these loans, for these educations with these degrees?
What are they getting?
You know, Susie Cream Cheese gets into George Washington University and borrows from the government the requisite $212,000 to obtain an undergraduate degree.
And what is Suzy Cream Cheese's degree in?
She's spent it on a degree in oppressed people in the Orient.
Some meaningless degree like conflict resolution 505, whatever, some meaningless, worthless degree.
She comes out after borrowing 210, 212,000 with no marketable skills.
And the only thing she has learned at Bill Ayers University is it's all America's fault.
She comes out, she goes in and gets a stupid degree, worthless education, $210,000 in debt, and she has no marketable skills.
And it's America's fault after she's borrowed all this money.
So now here comes Obama riding to the rescue.
After his buddies in academic, i.e.
the Bill Ayers types have taken these young skulls full of mush and turned them into basically pizza.
That's a little bone thrown to Herman Cain.
They come out and they're and they have worthless degrees.
And they're profoundly in debt, and Obama's don't worry, don't worry, I'm here.
I'll make it okay.
Bigger loans, higher tuition, and by the way, nobody ever complains that the colleges are charging tuition and fees that are rising out of the realm of reasonableness.
Never happens.
Student loans have grown by 511% since 1999.
Disposable income has grown by just 73%.
And there's a chart here, accompanies this, that illustrates that most outstanding student loan debt, 82% of it was accrued by students in the last 10 years.
Now that is a stunning fact, folks.
Tallying up all of the student loan debt in history, 82% of it was accrued in the last 10 years.
So here's Obama now out promoting a fraudulent solution.
Just like everything else he does is fraudulent.
He's not going to create jobs with his tax bill.
He's not going to improve the housing market with the housing executive order.
He is not going to help students with the student loan executive order.
It's all about more lies.
It's all about more promises.
Now, Obama's executive orders.
The president seeks to make the situation a little bit easier for some of those graduates.
He's going to create an executive order that has three components.
Number one, Obama will clear the way for borrowers with direct government loans and government-backed private loans to consolidate their balances.
The White House estimates that this will cut the effective interest rate on student loans by up to 0.5%, as in big whoop.
Number two, his executive order will limit the amount of student loan payments to 10% of a graduate's income.
Currently the limit is 15%.
So the maximum payment that you would make is 10% of your income.
Well, if you're Susie cheesecake and you come out with that diversity in the Orient degree, after spending $212,000, you're probably going to get a job that might pay you $8,000 a year at some social services outfit or a nonprofit.
And so that's what your 10% repayment schedule is based on.
And another executive order, Obama will allow debt still outstanding after 20 years to be forgiven.
It's currently 25 years.
Now the question why pay anything?
Why pay off anything?
These student loans are going to end up costing the taxpayers anywhere between $8,000 and $900,000 per student.
The student on the loan repayment, if they make the payment, will save $8 to $10 maximum a month, $4 to $8 more realistically a month.
While Obama is out giving the impression that basically the student loan is going to end up being free and forgiven if you don't pay it off in 20 years.
And as the loan forgiveness section of all of these parts of Obama's executive order, the loan forgiveness aspect will have the least impact, according to the Atlantic.
By moving the timeline from 25 to 20 years, it could be significant in the long run, but it won't be felt for decades.
Remember, 82% of the current student loan debt outstanding was accrued in just the past 10 years.
So it'll be at least another 10 years before any of those borrowers have hit their 20-year mark in their student loan payments.
Why is a student loan more important than a mortgage?
The reason that a student loan is more important than a mortgage is as a campaign issue.
That's all this is.
This is all a fraud.
My point in giving you all of these numbers, the numbers we're giving you here are real and illustrate the fraudulent aspects of this.
Obama realizes.
Every time I start talking about education on this program, the phones melt.
It matters to people.
The education of their children matters to people like nothing else does.
They are very concerned about it.
Now, Obama knows it, so here he comes with this magical student loan reform.
And the point is, I've taken it over.
Don't worry about it.
It's not going to cost you anything.
The point is, don't worry about it.
I'm in charge.
Your student loans fine.
We're reforming the program.
We're going to make it easy for you to make payments.
It's a fraud.
It's, it's, it's it's not, it's the real the real shame here is by the time it's all implemented, the few number of people that will really affect is shocking.
It's like it's like the mortgage and the underwater, the uh the uh uh foreclosure program.
Yeah, mortgage modification.
Look at all the grandiose designs and promises.
Look at how many people actually participated in it, and then of that few, of that small number, look at how many people actually got any assistance.
Zilt zero nada.
Same thing here.
Campaign issue, pure and simple.
Student loan more important than a mortgage because education's a huge campaign issue to people.
It's uh it really isn't any more complicated than that.
That's right.
You have to pay your mortgage off, and then you have to pay their student loans off.
Exactly right.
That's exactly you've nailed it.
You pay your mortgage, you pay it on time, and then you're gonna pay off their student loans.
Well, that's what that's exactly what Obama stands for.
Obama's proposal was geared to getting the best headlines for the least amount of money.
It's all about optics.
It's all about compassion.
It's all about making the uh the student loan community think that he cares.
Fox News has a great interpretation of the Obama plan.
And here's the headline Obama taps taxpayers for student stimulus.
Obama looks to wring stimulus from saturated student loan market.
One trillion dollars is the estimated amount of student loan debt owed by Americans.
One trillion dollars and 82% of it accrued in the last 10 years.
In keeping with his new campaign, we can't wait.
Obama today rolled out the plan.
And uh he's seeking to use this power of the executive order to obtain a taxpayer finance stimulus that Congress won't approve.
And this is Chris Steyerwald and Fox.
He says, take this example of Susie Creamcheese gets into George Washington University, borrows from the government the uh the requisite $212,000 to obtain an undergraduate degree, her repayment schedule will be based on what she earns.
So if she opts to heed the president's call for public service, this is one of the prerequisites of getting a good student loan that after you graduate, you go into public service.
So if Susie Creamcheese opts to heed his call for public service, takes a job as a city social worker, and earns $25,000, her payments will be limited to $1,411 a year after the $10,890 of poverty level income is subtracted from her total exposure.
So you take her $25,000, subtract $10,8 from it for the poverty level.
Twenty years at that rate would have taxpayers recoup $28,000 of their $212,000 loan to Susie.
That's how all this works.
President will allow uh student debtors to refinance and consolidate loans on more favorable terms, further decreasing the payoff for uh taxpayers.
And all of this comes at a moment when a lot of economists are warning of a college debt bubble that is distorting college tuition rates and threatening to further uh uh damage credit markets.
Look, I'm up against it on time and I gotta take a break.
But the bottom line is it's a huge fraud.
It's not gonna save anybody any money on the student side, and the taxpayers get screwed royally.
It's another transfer, redistribution of wealth.
It's an optics move.
It's designed to make the recipients here think the government's taken care of, and they don't have to worry about their student loans anymore.
Democrat Party's great Obama's grades to re election issue, and it's a fraud.
And we'll be back.
Don't go away.
Talent on loan from God.
Look, it you want to understand this.
Think of it as reverse amortization.
Think of it as the subprime mortgage crisis comes to student loans.
That is how to look at this.
The subprime mortgage technique, the subprime mortgage philosophy comes to student loans.
You give money to people who will never be able to repay it on the basis that it's not fair they can't go to college, the basis that everybody should go to college.
You draw them into people's heads for generation after generation that your only ticket out of the murk and the mess that is the United States of America is a college education.
You get that drilled into every parent's head, you get it drilled in every kid's head, and you make college a mandatory life requirement, and then you put your buddies in charge of the colleges, you put your buddies in charge of the curricula at the colleges,
you put your buddies in the classrooms as professors, and you make sure that the tuition fees and all the costs associated with attending these colleges Skyrocket year after year after year.
You make sure that you never put any pressure on the university system on big education to lower their prices.
You never accuse them of gouging, like you accuse Walmart or big oil or big drug.
Big education's off limits.
As much as they want to charge as much as they can charge, you're supported, and the way you deal with it is the student loan program.
So you convince everybody and every kid the only hope, the only prayer they've got's an education.
Then you get them in these classrooms and you teach them absolutely worthless drivel.
They come out thinking America sucks, and they blame everybody else for making America suck.
In the meantime, they owe somebody hundreds of thousands of dollars that they're going to be paying the rest of their lives, meaning they are into whoever financed all this for them.
What a scam they have created here.
Rasmussen went on and asked people what they thought of the whole notion of forgiving student loans.
66% oppose forgiveness of student loans.
One of the loudest demands of the Occupy Wall Street protesters is forgiveness of the nearly one trillion dollars worth of student loans, but Erasmus, who is I say when I was surveyed, they found that 66% of Americans oppose the uh the whole thing.
There really is a uh a racket.
It is it's a interesting loop or circle for generation after.
I mean, I we've all uh been pressured.
I've told the story numbers of times.
My my father, up until the last five years of his life thought he was a failure because he was unable to convince me to go to college.
Formative experience, two of them in his life, the Great Depression, and World War II.
Great depression, it was true if you were without a college degree in and around that period of time, you really did face long odds in getting a job.
Of course, when I was growing up, there was no Great Depression, there was nothing like it.
But it was such a formative experience for people that lived through it, that it became a value system which they raised their parents.
It was a huge thing.
It always has been a huge thing.
Got to go to college.
My problem with it's always been college to me never equaled education.
Learning equaled education.
And I always had a problem learning in forced mass circumstances like schools, where everybody had to conform, and everybody was taught the same thing, and what you were interested in was of secondary importance.
College, if I could have audited classes, meaning if I could have gone and nobody was known, no I was there, just picked the courses I wanted to go to, the things I really cared about.
Go in there, learn what was being lectured or taught, not take a test, don't get any credit for just go and leave whatever would have been far more preferable to me.
But no, no, no, no, that wouldn't work because you didn't have any proof.
You didn't have a degree.
So there was social status attached with the degree, all of the all the things that were wrapped up into it.
And while this is going on, every generation is under this this uh well, it was pressure, but it was it was almost a cultural requirement, systemic norm that you had to go to college.
If you didn't go to college, you were hopeless.
Your prospects were dimmed.
You weren't going to learn anything.
I can't tell you the things I was warned about that were going to happen to me if I didn't get a college degree.
And the pressure was intense, and I continued to resist It because I wasn't interested in it.
I knew way before college what I wanted to do, and all I wanted to do was things oriented toward advancing what I had already found out that I loved.
And there wasn't one thing.
Well, not true.
There were maybe two or three areas, college, that were interesting to me, and I did excel at them.
But it wasn't enough to overshadow the F's I got in all the other classes.
I just never equated it with learning.
I still love learning to this day.
It is, it's it's one of the most exhilarating things.
And I think learning is key.
Keeping your mind active to remaining young at heart rather than than stagnating.
And if you like learning, you're going to have a much easier time of it if you have the time, the freedom, the ability to focus on what it is you want to learn, what it is you want to know.
It's impossible to know everything.
What do you mean too much truth?
I'm not, I'm just I know.
No, I'm not saying that.
Snurdley's afraid that I'm hitting you people with too much truth.
That I am setting a bad example.
For the young skulls full of mush listening to this program, they're now going to walk into their parents' house, see, see, look at Rush.
He didn't like college, he didn't go to college.
I didn't want to go to And you're going to get mad at me for undue improper influence of your young children.
Well, that's not my intention here.
I'm just, I'm I'm merely sharing my passions with him, sharing my own my own experiences.
Uh and as I always do, my own opinions.
No, I was never scared that I didn't finish college.
One thing, when I left home, um, I looked at it as a challenge.
When I left home, I left home at age 20 after two basically worthless semesters of college.
Where you know the story is now legion.
I flunked speech class twice.
I El Rushbo, El Primo Communicator in America, flunked speech class twice.
You know why?
Because it wasn't a speech class.
This is exactly my point.
It was an outline class.
I showed up, I gave every speech, but I didn't outline them.
I had already developed another technique for giving speeches.
I ad libbed them.
I gave speeches on subjects I knew about.
I didn't need notes.
Well, I flunked because I didn't follow the course.
This is the kind of stuff that I said, what this is a waste of my time.
But I understood the educators, they've got to have systems for dealing with large groups and masses of people.
You can't tailor education to individuals when you got 200 of them in a classroom.
Well, okay, so I just figured it wasn't for me.
But what happened to me when I when I finally left home at age 20, after one year of accomplishing nothing, essentially in college.
I realized, sort of like a slap to the face, I realized at that point that I was going to have to be able to demonstrate my education.
I wasn't going to have a diploma that said this is an educated person.
I was going to have to demonstrate it.
So I became an omnivorous, voluminous reader.
And that worked well with my career because show prep has always been show prep.
And I've always had a never-ending quest to keep learning, to know things.
So it was a challenge.
Challenge.
That meant demonstrating what I knew meant being able to use the language properly.
Read it, write it, spell it, all of these things.
And it became a personal challenge to me.
Yeah, my whole life has been show prep, essentially, is being prepared to have to demonstrate what I know because I don't have this magical piece of paper which says so.
I also knew that I was not going to be able to seek careers in places that required that piece of paper.
Okay, fine.
That limits the I didn't want to do it anyway.
Cool.
If I wanted to do it, I'd have stayed in college.
Now I'm I'm not suggesting that everybody punt college, as I realize for most people, college is a way station.
It's the next thing you do when you don't know what you want to do.
So you go there, society says that's where you go.
This is what happens when you go there.
You come out, you're educated, you're well-rounded, you're formed, uh, you learn the social skills, all that rot, uh, and you are prepared, and you know, all of these things that are attached to it, that equal social status.
So people go to these things, go to these colleges, universities, there's a way station, hoping that while they're there they find out their passion, they discover it and what they want to do.
Some people know it when they go there.
Again, not everybody's the same.
But I just look at it now with the student loan business run by Obama, and I see, I think I see the racket that this is.
Now, I am fully aware that there are great institutions for education in this country.
There are plenty of good universities and colleges.
It's not all a racket.
But I just find it fascinating that while price of gasoline goes up, we target a whole industry.
Big oil.
Uh the subprime loan business happens.
So what do we do?
We protest on the lawns of executives at Wall Street firms that people have been made to believe had a role in the subprime mortgage thing.
If the price of anything goes up, we protest that industry.
The Democrat Party and the American left have their enemies list, and it's basically any private sector industry that is a success.
The one institution in this country that is immune from such attack is education.
Those people can charge whatever they want.
Tuition can go up 200%, and there's never one peep about it.
The Democrat Party, the American left never make big education justify what they're doing.
They never try to drum up hate for them.
They never demonize them.
They never try to get you to despise them.
They never try to get you to distrust them.
They want people paying these exorbitant fees when it comes to college tuition.
And what's the system to make it possible?
Student loans.
It's like the subprime mortgage business.
You can't afford a house?
That's not fair.
We're going to see to it that you can get into one anyway.
You can't afford to go to college.
That's not fair.
You don't have a chance if you don't go to college.
We're going to make sure you can go there.
Here's a student loan.
You're going to go for four years.
We're going to teach you nothing that's worthwhile.
We're going to teach you nothing useful.
You're going to be indebted to us $200,000 when it's all over.
The rest of your working life is going to be spent paying us off.
You owe us, meaning the Democrat Party.
All of our friends are in higher education.
The teachers, the teachers' assistants, the professors.
They are the ones who benefit from this never-ending tuition price increase, fee increases, what have you.
It's the one American industry that is never demonized.
No matter what it does.
Price goes up.
It would be the it would be the equivalent of if the Democrat Party and the American left had an incestuous relationship with big oil.
Price of gasoline jumps up one day, a buck a gallon, let's say.
And everybody in the country's whining and moaning, how can this be?
And instead of the Democrat Party joining that chorus and bringing the big oil execs up and grilling them and accusing them of raping people and ripping them off, the government comes up with gasoline insurance.
Or gasoline loans.
Here, we'll loan you money to buy the gasoline.
And after 20 years, if you can't pay it off, we'll forgive it, and we'll make the other taxpayers pay it off for you.
And I'm just saying that the racket, and it is one, the racket works well because for all of these generations.
It is axiomatic.
Our children must go to college.
Must.
Almost as axiomatic now as everyone must have health care.
Must.
It's a constitutional right, just like the right to a lawyer.
If going to college equaled education, I'd have a lot fewer problems with it.
But it doesn't.
Too often it's an indoctrination or propagandization or what have you.
Anyway, brief timeout.
I'm not trying to get anybody irritated here.
And I'm not trying to be too honest.
Just folks, I understand liberals.
I know how they try to control.
I know how they try to limit people's freedom.
I know how they try to dumb down people in order to get them compliant and dependent.
They end up, gosh, the damage they've done to this country and the people of this country is just it's incalculable, and it just breaks my heart and ticks me off at the same time.
You know, for many people.
For many people, and I mean this, a student loan itself is one of the biggest education events in their lives.
A student loan is welcome to the real world, kid.
Getting that big a loan, being responsible for it, having to pay it off.
You know, another industry that's not demonized is Hollywood.
Hollywood can charge you whatever they want.
Box office, DVDs, uh never, ever.
I don't care what.
They are not even demonized for content.
It used to be a couple of groups now and then have congressional hearings on some of the content, but very rarely.
They also are immune.
They are approved.
And I just I think in way too many places, college, higher education, just a branch office of the Democrat National Committee.
We know that the Ivy League is used to train people to work and live in government as a career from the big government perspective.
That government's the center of the universe, that government's the center of the world, government's the center of everybody's life.
That's the purpose of the Ivy League education.
What do you think the purpose to Kennedy School is?
At Harvard, the Kennedy School of Government.
It's to train you where to go to buy the right shoes if you work in the State Department.
Where to go to buy the right suit.
On what occasion do you wear the tails?
All the social finer points and so on, all the language, all the techniques, all the, you know, how to how to they find you for the CIA there, they find you for the State Department there, they find you for any number of places there.
And we and um Yeah, at Yale, you can join the skulls.
Well, the skulls find you.
Skull and bones.
It's um it's a racket.
It's a racket.
Now, obviously, there's a benefit to it for a lot of people.
I'm not, I'm not universally panning it.
I'm just trying to make a point here that you you you check the Democrat Party, every industry they demonize the minute the price of their product goes up a penny, or the minute they get a tax break, and then you look at how silent they are when the price of an education quadruples every year, and their solution to it is for you to go into more debt to be able to have access to it.
It's All I'm saying, nothing more, nothing less.
My personal slogan.
My personal slogan when it came to going to college, resist we much.
Even before I knew that was my slogan.
That was my slogan.
Okay, folks, Paul Ryan with a great speech at the Heritage Foundation yesterday on conservatism versus Obama.
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