All Episodes
Previous Next
Dec. 20, 2011 - Rush Limbaugh Program
31:01
December 20, 2011, Tuesday, Hour #3
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Well, there he is, the Bamsters on television, ladies and gentlemen, all upset that nobody will go along with him on extending the uh payroll tax cut for the length of time that he wants it cut.
He's out there blaming the Republicans.
Of course, he thinks that's going to drive up his poll numbers.
He's sitting there, he's all excited, he's up to 50% job approval, and they're telling him this is why, so he's out there hammering the Republicans again.
Now, the House Republicans want to cut the payroll tax for a year.
Senators of both parties don't, and that's the bottom line today.
The senators of both parties only want to go two months.
Obama wants to go two months.
The House Republicans want to do this for the whole year.
So what's happened here, folks?
The House has rejected the Senate's two-month extension after the Senate rejected the House's one-year extension.
Now, everybody knows that the House plan on this is more rational and it's more economically sound, but despite that, the Republicans are going to be blamed for this.
But I want to raise another point.
By the way, welcome back, Rush Limbaugh and the EIB network and the Limbaugh Institute, and it's great to have you with us.
Obama stick with me on this.
Obama really wanted to cut the payroll tax by four percent.
Which experts say would have blown a hole of 250 billion dollars in Social Security funding.
Now, what we're talking about here, the payroll tax cut extension, the payroll tax, FICA on your pay stub, if you see it.
I need to ask a question.
Seriously, pardon my ignorance on this, I just don't know.
Are any of you on the other side of the glass there?
Don Snerdley, do you get paid with direct deposit?
Okay.
Where do you see what your deductions are?
Okay.
Okay, this the statement is sent to you in the mail or electronically.
Okay, but you get either electronically or in the mail.
And but is it just like any other piece of junk mail that shows up?
Do you have to look at it?
I mean, does it is it something you normally look at every week to see how much you got paid and how much is withheld?
I mean, do people my question is when I'm sitting here saying payroll taxes, FICA on your pay stub, do people know what I'm talking about?
Okay.
All right.
Good.
In the old days where you actually got paid with a check, you know, it had your deductions listed on there.
And that's back in the old day when I let me the Brink's truck.
That's to get paid, I get paid by Brink's truck, so I don't.
Right, you get it, I know you get a statement, but is it I you know, I get I get junk mail I don't even open because I know it's junk mail.
So I'm just well, how many people look at these statements is what I'm saying?
Because I'm sitting here.
I'm you you are you telling, yeah, you that's what you know what your net is, but you don't know what your FICA deduction is.
What I'm asking is is how many people know what that is.
I'm telling you that the vast majority, I'm guessing, do not know what the number next to FICA is.
Okay.
Well, that's why I'm spending because the FICA deduction, if you got paid by electronic deposit, next time you get your statement.
Look at FICA.
That's your payroll tax.
And that is the sole funding mechanism for Social Security.
Outside of borrowing and all the other rot gut, but I'm talking about the direct constitutional virtue of the law way that social security is paid for is with that one deduction on your paycheck.
FICA.
I don't remember what it stands for, and it doesn't matter.
Now, my point about this is here.
You have a Democrat president who wants to cut the payroll tax by four percent.
He wants that large a tax cut in the payroll tax, Which would blow a 250 billion dollar hole in Social Security funding at a time when everybody knows that we're short on being able to pay all the obligations now.
We have reached the tipping point.
People who are receiving Social Security payments are now receiving more than they contributed.
That's not a knock.
Don't, I don't want to get any phone calls.
I don't want to hear it.
And we're getting to the point now where the youngsters in America know full well that it's probably not going to even be viable by the time they retire.
And yet here is a Democrat president advocating a huge tax cut in the sole funding mechanism for Social Security.
If this were a Republican president, folks, we wouldn't be having the argument about whether to extend it for two months or a year.
The Republican president would be in the process of being destroyed as somebody who wants to kick senior citizens out of their houses, deny them health care, force them to eat dog food.
This is so damn topsy turvy.
The news media and the rest of the Democrats have managed to convince the American people that cutting Social Security funding by hundreds of billions of dollars is a good thing.
Meanwhile, when George W. Bush came along and wanted to privatize a portion of Social Security, or allow individuals to, so as to increase, maximize the returns, make their stash bigger, you remember the demagoguery.
Bush wants Social Security recipients to go broke.
Look at what happens in the stock market.
You want to turn it over to those Wall Street people.
It's not a get rich quick scheme for Wall Street people.
Now we have a Democrat president, Democrat Senate doing everything they can to blow holes and underfund Social Security under the guise of a re-election tactic for the president and putting money in people's pockets.
Mr. Limbaugh, you're leaving off something very key.
And that is the president is too thick to pay for it.
There's no paying for it.
Raising taxes on millionaires so forth.
There's no paying for this thing.
There never is any of this pay-go stuff.
Never happens, it never works.
This folks, this goes to show you two things.
The raw power of the media, but also the unrelenting power propaganda and the absolute lack of objectivity on the part of the news media covering this.
I am here to tell you that if anybody with a capital R beside their name were proposing a one-month cut, if he were a president in the payroll tax, my God, there would be an endless parade of seasoned citizens in Washington with pitchforks, and they'd be they'd be hunting down members that can remember what they did with Rostinkowski in Illinois.
They surrounded his car, and that was over a tiny little Medicare thing.
I find this bizarre.
I find this truly bizarre.
And Obama's out there saying, Well, we've got more important things to worry, uh politics right now, wouldn't by that he means his Hawaii vacation and his re-election.
Now, I'm gonna tell you something else about this two-month business and make us a little selfish.
Like some Americans, I pay my taxes every on average three months.
Quarterly estimates.
The second estimate of the county year, that's the bear.
Um, because that comes in two months.
You make one payment.
For those of us that pay our taxes this way, on April 15th, we pay whatever we owe, and we always structure so that we owe a little.
You pay what you owe for the year you're filing.
Then you have your quarterly estimate for the first quarter of the current year.
And then two months later, you have the second, and that June 15th estimate, that's a bear.
But my point is they're gonna extend this.
They want to extend this uh this payroll tax cut for two months, but it's an accounting nightmare for people who file quarterly estimates.
And there's a lot.
Self-employed entrepreneurs, contract hires, this kind of thing.
Independent contractors.
And this is what the report out yesterday said.
This is uh uh we can't implement this.
It's two months is not enough time to rewrite the software.
We just can't.
This is just nothing but a political football that's being kicked around, and the house is the only place where there is a rational belief or or policy involved here.
Senators of both parties want to cut payroll taxes for two months.
House Republicans want to cut payroll tax for the full year and just be done with it.
Now, for those of you who want to know, FICA equals the Federal Insurance Contributions Act.
And the FICA tax is 6.2%.
If you're self-employed, you pay the whole thing.
That's a mess.
I don't even want to get sidetracked on that.
But but but I really have here a Democrat president and a Democrat Senate cutting Social Security funding by 250 billion dollars with a payment mechanism that doesn't exist.
There is no paying for this.
And I people don't associate payroll tax cut with social security.
That's why I asked how many people know what the FICA number is in their pay stub or in their statement.
I find this I find this literally amazing.
At any rate, um Obama's out there, you know, you're really yapping on a Republican.
Now Boehner's taking his term.
Our our microphones are there.
If there's anything interesting being said here, we'll have it for you.
In the meantime, uh, ladies and gentlemen, brief time out, El Rushbo, cutting edge.
Don't go away.
Steve in uh Nogatis, Arizona.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Mega Christmas dittoes, Rush.
Congratulations on the new product line, the life, the whole nine yards.
Thank you very much, sir.
Since the 80s, and I really appreciate it.
By the way, at 54, because of your Hank Haney series, I took up the game of golf.
And so uh you inspired me, Rush.
But that's my whole thing.
Oh, geez, I can I tell you something.
I really I'm sorry for you.
I got oh, I didn't you realize the torment that you are now visiting upon yourself trying to learn the game at 54.
I took the game, what was how it was 1997, so it's uh I took a 46.
If you don't start playing this game in your teens or younger, the odds of getting really proficient at it are quite long.
So you best you just need an avid, you need an avitude of just loving being out there and and having a chance to smack the ball around.
I I actually enjoy it.
I even as lousy as I am, I actually enjoy it.
Good.
But that's not why I'm calling Rush.
I'm calling because I want to implore you, I want to beg you.
Uh, and you know you had a caller similar to this weeks ago that that begged you and implored you, you know, thought made it seem like it was your duty and obligation to endorse a particular candidate.
I'm not going there.
I just want to implore you and beg you, Rush, to please consider getting on more TV shows than Greta Van Sutter.
I know you turn them down all the time.
Maybe you can do it from your studio, but Rush, you're the only one who can articulate the conservative positions.
There is one candidate who who can articulate his positions, and he's real good at it, but I'm not sure he's my guy.
And so I'm just begging you as an American citizen to just please reconsider making your message broader through the television.
I know it's a pain.
I know that uh it creates all kinds of headaches for you, but Rush, your country needs you.
You know, I have heard I I've I've I've I've I must react to this uh uh honestly.
Since this Greta appearance last week, I have I I don't I don't mean to take away from what you said, but I've heard this from I can't tell you how many people that uh gee, you know you ought to do that more often.
Uh gee, you were really good.
You just uh just look like natural, you just gotta do it more often.
I've I've I've never that in the CPAC speech.
See, but even this this this last gret appearance, I've heard that more than ever before.
Even when I had my own TV show.
Why do I think what?
Oh, why why am well let me ask the Steve why?
Why now?
Why do I need to do more of it?
I mean, there's all kinds of people on television.
Uh that's why we're at a tipping point, Rush, and you know that.
We are at a tipping point where this country, if it doesn't make a right turn, we are gonna go deep left.
And you see that in the education process.
This has been in the works by the left for years and years.
I know.
And uh, you know, they've got their guy in the White House now, and they've got it, they've got the masses brainwashed, but the but the conservative position makes logical sense.
And you it's very difficult to argue with truth.
I think John Adams said, you know, facts are a stubborn thing to argue with, Rush.
It is your time, and I'm just begging you as an American citizen.
I don't care about the candidates at this point.
Let the process work its way through.
But you're the only one who can articulate the conservative position.
And I know I've said that before, Rush, but I mean it from the bottom of my heart.
I am begging you, sir, to get out there.
Because I know you turn down more offers than you take this time, right?
No idea.
Let me do you really No, I I I appreciate that, but do you really there are all kinds?
Do you think I am saying articulating conservatism better or or however you describe it than the the presidential candidates are?
Yes, sir, only because of the KISS method of selling.
And no offense to you, sir, but kiss keep it simple, stupid.
You're you're able to describe it like a working class guy like me can understand it, and not only can I understand it, but I can also reiterate it when I'm faced with with various liberal challenges from various liberal, you know, mindless robots.
And and you just you you have a way, it is a God-given talent, Rush.
You have a way of making the complex understandable, and that, sir, is your gift, and that's why for 20 plus years I've been listening to you.
But I think it's time.
I think it's time that you just at least allow your your positions to get out there because we w literally, this country is on a tipping point, man.
And and if it wasn't for guys like you, we're we're we're gonna lose.
Well, um that's pretty powerful.
Um uh that's a lot of I mean, that's a lot of pressure.
You're you're you're putting a lot of pressure on me out there, Steve.
I mean, you're putting you're basically telling me that the that possibly, possibly, the fate of the country hinges on whether I do more TV.
First off, you can handle it.
And secondly, this just may be your higher calling from God.
It's not a question.
It's not it's not cigar in my mouth, excuse me.
It's not a question of uh handling it.
I'm just not you should have seen what it took to do this, and and this was simple.
There was a crew in my studio for three hours setting that up.
Then there was the makeup, babe.
Uh it's um snerdly.
I don't know.
I the Haney show, used by the Haney that that took ten hours per episode.
Ah You know, maybe I ought to hire a couple of black buses and uh do a mini tour using only the safest bridges.
Uh and by the way, I got a note from Greta Van Susterin last night telling me that they're gonna rerun the interview.
They by the way, they edited uh a few things out to get it to fit in the previous airing of the last Wednesday the day we did it.
They're gonna run a full hour on January twenty-ninth.
That's Thursday.
That's like a week from uh a week from this is Tuesday, right?
So it's a week from uh the so nine days tonight, seven or eight days in a whatever it is.
January twenty ninth, they're gonna rerun the whole thing at uh at at ten o'clock.
Uh let's see.
David Axarod.
We mentioned this earlier in the uh in the program.
What go you have what?
Tell what consideration what?
I never uh Of course uh I d I I'm not I'm not gonna commit to doing more television right now.
I'm we just I'm I appreciate the guy's call.
I thank him very much.
Um I I probably will it's not a Chris Christie answer.
I'm sitting there, I don't know if I'm gonna do any more TV next year than I did this year.
So why should I sit there commit myself to it if I don't know?
If I if I say, okay, folks, I'll be happy to do more TV.
You realize what's gonna happen.
The first place a phone won't stop ringing.
I mean, we turn down every day we turn down every morning show.
Every day.
I think Stephanopolis has stopped calling every day now.
But is that right, H.R., but it was for the longest time it was every day.
And they didn't there were there were no preconditions.
Just show up.
What a whole half hour?
Oh I'll think about it.
I will take it, take it under advisement.
Uh Bill in Hampton, Virginia.
We go back to the phones.
Great to have you, sir on the EIB network.
Hello.
Merry Christmas, Russ.
Same to you, sir.
Hey, I want to back up a little bit back to your story about uh the high school lunches and uh your your use of the term the black market.
And uh back alley lunches.
Black market back alley lunches, yeah.
Yeah.
Um I really think there's too much negative connotation that goes with that term.
Yeah.
And uh really it's it really is the resiliency of the free market.
That no matter what the government tries to do to squash it, capitalism and free enterprise will that's an excellent point.
It actually was the free market triumphing over a command and control economy from the White House.
Absolutely.
You're exactly right.
We were having fun with the term back alley lunch.
I just love ramming liberals' terms right down their orifices.
Um, especially that one.
I just love back alley lunch.
But you're right, it wasn't a black market, it's the free market.
It's the kids saying I want bur and look at here's something else.
When they really want it, they'll find a way to pay for it.
If they really want it, here they have this free lunch of tofu garbage, whatever else Michelle Obama wants them to eat.
They don't want to eat that.
They are willing to pay free market prices for food they do want to eat.
Even though we're told that the children of America don't have any money and everybody's too poor.
That's why the government has to pay for it.
School teachers, in that article, school teachers were caught selling so-called junk food to the kids.
The junk food being a hamburger.
Or a slice of pizza.
Junk food, yeah.
But even teachers were caught getting in on the act.
But I'm told I said January 29th for the Greta Reaper.
December 29th.
It's nine days from now.
This is the 20th, and it's the 29th, so it's a week from Thursday, not January 20th.
I'm gonna replay it on um December 29th.
I want to go, I got some audio summites I want to get to.
We've we found one from oh, and I've got may not have a chance to get to this today, but there are two things in this stack that I'm gonna get to either today or tomorrow.
One, if speaking food, all of these myths.
A guy has written a book about all the myths that are out there about food, about coffee being bad for you, carbs, all the stuff that's that, and he's debunked all this stuff.
And I got that.
And then there's a website called economic collapse.com.
And uh they have 50 economic numbers that'll shock you.
You know, we always have these end-of-the-year lists, the best that, the best quote.
People who died.
Uh this is the 50 economic numbers that'll shock you, or the legacy of the Obama era.
For example, number one, a staggering 48% of all Americans are either considered to be low income or are living in poverty.
Number two, approximately 57% of all children in America are living in homes that are either considered to be low income or impoverished.
I frankly, I I that just doesn't compute, but that's on the list.
This this number three I know is true.
We've used it.
If the number of Americans that wanted jobs was the same today as it was back in 2007, the official unemployment rate put out by the government would be eleven percent, not eight point nine.
And there are fifty of these.
Number five, a recent survey found seventy-seven percent of all U.S. small businesses do not plan to hire any more workers.
77%.
There are fewer payroll jobs in America today than there were back in 2000, even though we've added 30 million extra people to the population.
30 million additional people, there are fewer payroll two million fewer jobs just since Obama was emaculated.
That's one reason why the unemployment rate can go down when more and more people are out of work.
Anyway, got a piece here.
Mitt Romney, April of 2010, talking about Obamacare.
There are some similarities, and there's some differences.
I like the Wait a minute, wait a minute.
Stop this again.
I forgot.
He's comparing Romney care to Obamacare.
He's been asked to compare Romney care to Obamacare.
That's the proper setup for this.
There are some similarities, and there's some differences.
I like some of the similarities.
I dislike most of the differences between my plan and their plan.
The similarities are that we have an incentive for people to become insured.
And the incentive works.
We have 98% of our citizens in Massachusetts that are insured, so that's working.
Another similarity is you can't be denied coverage, insurance coverage, if you have a pre existing condition.
Or if you change jobs, you don't need to worry about losing your insurance.
So our insurance is entirely portable.
Those are perhaps the most important uh or well known uh similarities.
The differences one is our plan was a state plan.
I believe in federalism.
I believe the Tenth Amendment gives to the states the right to create their own health insurance programs rather than have the federal government intrude on the rights of states.
That's number one.
So some similarities, some differences, and uh I hope we're ultimately able to uh eliminate some of the differences, repeal the bad uh, and keep the good.
Now, this is from 2010.
Uh, did you catch something important here?
See, Romney is being twisted or he's twisting himself into a pretzel in the campaign because he's saying Obamacare gotta go.
It's horrible.
And the first thing I'm gonna do is repeal it.
And they say, well, what what's bad about it?
Because it looks just like yours.
I don't need to get into them now, but it's all kinds of and we've had Romney's people that put together his health plan say it's identical to Obamacare.
In fact, Romney care was the model for Obamacare.
Romney's only people saying so.
So, as part of Republican primary contest, or people have been trying to point out wait a minute, Romney has not been really forthcoming about this.
So that this bite has been discovered, and Snerdley caught it.
The similarities in Obamacare and Romney care.
He named two that he likes, and one of them is the mandate.
He says here the similarities are that we have an incentive for people to become insured.
That's the mandate, and the incentive works.
98% of our citizens of Massachusetts are insured.
So when he's asked about that today, for example, what does he say?
Well, let's go back to September.
He is in Orlando, this Fox News channel.
It's a debate.
Chris Wallace said, Governor Romney the other day, Governor Perry called Romney care socialized medicine.
He said it's failed in Western Europe and in Massachusetts, and he warns that Republicans should not nominate his words Obama Light.
How do you respond to Governor Perry?
Obamacare intends to put someone between you and your physician.
It must be repealed.
And if I'm President of the United States, on my first day in office, I will issue an executive order which directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to provide a waiver from Obamacare to all 50 states.
That law is bad.
It's unconstitutional.
It shall not stand.
Okay.
So the reason people keep bringing this up is that you can go back to just last year, and you can hear Romney totally supportive of the mandate.
Which is what the entire question of constitutionality on this bill is all about.
That's what's going to be decided the Supreme Court.
There's Romney supporting it.
But when he's asked about it, I'm gonna get rid of Obamacare.
It's a horrible.
But 2009, there's some things I like about it.
This is it just goes to the flip flop.
Nature, or the flip flop charge.
If you will.
Now, I must also point out that it's a lib site that keeps bringing this stuff up.
Talking points memo.
Talking points memo.
But at Talking Points Memo, they said that the guy that actually digs this stuff up.
I'm having a mental block on his name.
Talking Points Memo is run by a guy, Joshua Micah Marshall.
Micah Joshua.
Josh Marshall.
Big lib.
And uh there's a guy that they're crediting for digging this stuff up that they say is a Republican operation research guy.
He's 23 years old.
And I can't, for the life of me, remember his name now.
But while this the so-called Republican opposition research guy's digging this stuff up by watching C SPAN, that's what he's doing.
He's just looking at all these C SPAN archives finding this stuff.
It gets posted at Talking Points Memo, which is a leftist uh blog.
It's the website of the Center for American Progress, which is John Podesta, and and I mean it is out there.
So Andrew Kacinski is the guy's Andrew Kaczynski, 23 years old, is the guy that they credit as a Republican opposition research guy who's finding all this Romney stuff.
This is just one Romney bite at this site.
Now ask yourself.
This isn't Newt Gingrich doing this.
This isn't Michelle Bachman doing this.
This is essentially Obama doing this.
I mean, the Center for American Progress Talking Points Memo, they are invested in Obama winning re-election.
They are the ones finding this stuff out.
They are the ones.
This is why I've always said, and the establishment thinks I'm full of it.
Conventional wisdom people think I do not know what I'm talking about, that I'm just, I'm so inexperienced in real politics, and I'm just such a novice that when I say I think the White House really wants Romney as a nominee.
You don't know what you're talking about.
You're stupid.
Romney's the only guy you can beat him.
That's good to Romney.
What they really want is Newt, or the latest non-Romney.
But I think Occupy Wall Street, and I think this, I think they're gearing up for Romney.
They have been from the uh from the get go.
Now, we're gonna be doing open line Friday on Wednesday tomorrow, because tomorrow's our last day here.
Uh so you might want to get ready for that as we look forward to the future.
The day before the day before Christmas Eve.
And look at this from CNN.
If Congress fails to pass an extension of the payroll tax holiday, it would put a serious dent into economic growth in 2012 and could even tip the U.S. back into recession.
Are you kidding me?
A 2% cut to payroll tax.
They don't do it, will throw us back and not doing a tax cut, not will throw us into a recession.
This is what CNN wants us to believe.
Unbelievable.
See you tomorrow.
Can't wait.
▲
Export Selection