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Jan. 30, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
33:39
January 30, 2012, Monday, Hour #3
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Hi folks, welcome back.
It is great to have you here, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network and the Limbo Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day.
Serving humanity simply by showing up.
The beat goes on, ladies and gentlemen.
New York Times has a story.
Democrat senators to push the Buffett rule.
Democrat senators announced today that they would introduce legislation this week codifying Obama's principle that the super rich should pay at least the tax rate of middle class workers.
This is all part of this Warren Buffett and his secretary scam.
The bill creates what would be another alternative minimum tax for the super rich.
We already have an AMT, and it is killing the middle class.
And the AMT, to refresh your memory, the alternative minimum tax came into existence because one year it was discovered that a couple of millionaires didn't pay any tax.
And literally it was less than ten people, I think.
But the Democrats raised holy heck about it.
So we got the alternative minimum tax, which meant that there were no way.
And by the way, these millionaires had not broken the law.
They had not violated tax law.
Everything they did was legal.
But because the Democrats was not right, so they came up with the alternative minimum tax.
And as you've seen, what was rich back then isn't rich anymore.
The alternative minimum tax now captures people it was never intended to capture, and they never get rid of it, do they?
And they all talk about wanting to get rid of it.
They all talk about how unfair it is.
But have you noticed what stops them from getting rid of it?
Well, how are we going to pay for it?
They all talk about how it's unfair.
They all talk about how it's collecting taxes from people that it shouldn't be.
But they like that it's collecting taxes from people it shouldn't be.
Because when you talk about eliminating the AMT, people in government say, well, how are we going to pay for the lost revenues?
We have a tax increase somewhere.
We just can't lose that revenue.
No, no.
Government can never lose the revenue.
Government can never do with less than it had previously.
That's why Newt, I love his statement.
He wants to reduce government to fit the amount of money it gets, not raise taxes in order to feed the size of government as it grows.
He's exactly right about that.
And this from the Hill.com, and I'm pretty sure that at some point in the past, we predicted this.
Here's the headline.
Republican Representative Clark asks Obama to bail out the city of Detroit.
Representative Hansen Clark, Republican mission at uh Michigan, asked President Obama on Friday to help bail out the nearly bankrupt city of Detroit, according to the Michigan News website.
That's MLive.com.
It's a Republican.
GM was not enough.
Now, I don't know.
This is Friday when this guy does this.
Obama's State of the Union show was when?
Tuesday.
And didn't he hear Obama brag he had saved Detroit in the State of the Union show?
Obama bragged that he has saved Detroit on Tuesday of last week.
Three days later, Hanson Clark of Michigan asks Obama to help bail out Detroit.
Now this Buffett rule is simply a replay of the alternative minimum tax.
The Democrats are using the same old playbook.
Back in 1970, then Treasury Secretary Joseph Barr prompted the enactment of the alternative minimum tax with an announcement that 155 high-income households had not paid a dime federal tax.
I thought it was less intense, 155.
Has anybody stopped to notice that forty-eight percent of American households now don't pay a dime of federal income tax?
Doesn't matter.
The same argument that a hundred and fifty-five high income households had not paid a dime of federal income tax.
So here came the AMT to capture those people.
Now look at how many of you the AMT captures.
And now we've got half the country not paying any federal income tax.
This is AMT number two.
It's all class envy.
It's class warfare.
It's the Buffett rule, and it's being employed for the essentially the same reason as the original AMT.
And what they're banking on is that the youths of America aren't going to remember the AMT.
They can remember how it started.
Even the people who were around it are being captured by it.
Now, will not make the association.
They think at the regime that the hatred of the rich argument will overcome anything.
So here's Obama pushing the alternative minimum tax again, called the Buffett rule.
How excited is he going to be if Romney's the nominee while pushing this?
Wall Street Journal, Grace Marie Turner.
Rick Santorum went for the jugular in Thursday night's Republican presidential debate, exposing Romney's weak and contradictory defense of his own Romney care law.
Santorum attacked Romney's claim the individual mandate affects only the 8% of people who didn't have insurance.
Romney insisted that 92% of the people in his state had insurance before our plan went in place.
Nothing changes for them.
Santorum blasted back what Governor Romney just said is factually incorrect because the mandate affects 100% of the residents who are forced to buy health insurance as a condition of breathing.
And that was a salient point.
Romney tried to say it only affected 8%.
No, it affects everybody in Massachusetts.
Everybody had to.
In an earlier debate, Newt Gingrich underscored that point when he described a Massachusetts couple fined $3,000 by Massachusetts.
Now listen to this.
I remember this, but this is true.
This this is factually correct.
Gingrich described a Massachusetts couple fined $3,000 by the state.
They had health insurance, but it did not meet the state's specifications.
Their names were Lauren and Nick Destito.
They owned a tree and landscaping business for 25 years.
Before the economy collapsed in 2008, they were forced to declare bankruptcy.
They still tried to abide by the state's health insurance mandate.
They bought a policy that cost them $750 a month while declaring bankruptcy.
They still tried to abide by state law while filing for bankruptcy.
No dice, according to a government official.
The amount of health insurance they can afford is determined not, unfortunately, from your perspective, but from the state agency's view.
You don't get to determine what policy you buy based on what you think you can afford.
You have to buy what we at the state tell you.
After garnering national attention for their plight, the couple won the case on appeal.
Governor Romney's attempt to contrast his plan with Obamacare wasn't convincing.
He said, I don't like the Obama plan.
Obama cuts Medicare by 500 billion.
We didn't do that.
We didn't touch anything like that.
Obama raises taxes by 500 billion.
We didn't do that.
Anne Marie Turner says these are bogus boasts.
States have no authority over cuts in the federal Medicare program.
So cutting Medicare never was an option with Romney care.
Massachusetts didn't raise taxes to finance its plan because it relied on previously enacted health insurance taxes and an infusion of federal Medicaid money to pay for its coverage expansion.
The state simply Passed a big share of those costs to federal taxpayers.
Romney got to pass that along to taxpayers across the whole country.
Santorum challenged Romney on his claim that Romney care is very different than Obamacare, citing a new study that lists key features the two plans have in common, including the Medicare Medicaid expansion, an employer mandate, and the individual mandate.
Study that Santorum cited is from the Liberal Families USA, which credits John McDonough and explains he was deeply involved in developing both Romney care and Obamacare.
This is one of Romney's advisors that we have mentioned to you that went to the Oval Office to help Obama put together Obamacare after helping Romney write Romney care.
John McDonough.
And among the key checkpoints, showing the similarities between Romney, Karen, Obama...
Are you sitting down for this, folks?
Are you look at me?
I want you to listen to this.
Among the key checkpoints showing the similarities between Obamacare and Romney care.
Romney care authorizes tiers of insurance coverage, which are called gold, silver, bronze, and young adult.
Again, Romney Care authorizes tiers, T-I-E-R-S, levels of insurance coverage, and they've called them gold, silver, bronze, and young adult.
Obamacare sets the following levels for policies platinum, gold, silver, bronze, and young adult.
They've even named the tiers in Obamacare after Romney care.
And they've added one called platinum.
Government will specify which benefits must be included in health plans under both reform laws.
Mr. McDonough earlier said the federal law, quote, is Massachusetts with three more zeros, unquote.
McDonough again.
Deeply involved in developing both Romney care and Obamacare.
Now, Romney repeatedly says he believes in state-level solutions, but when he says he wants to give states more discretion in implementing Obamacare, there's very little daylight between his position and Obama's.
The president has said that Congress should pass legislation to accelerate the provision in the law that would allow states more flexibility in implementing the health law starting in 2014.
Santorum was passionate in insisting that Romney's defense will collapse in a debate with Obama, and the candidate would be wide open to attack.
Santorum said, folks, we cannot give this issue away in this election.
It's about fundamental freedom.
And remember, I thought that was crucial, played that soundbite over and over again for you last week.
Romney has indeed backed himself into a corner, says Anne-Marie Turner here, by insisting on defending his health plan while attacking Obama's.
In the October 11th debate at Dartmouth College, Romney said, we all agree about repeal and replace it.
I'm proud of the fact that I put together a plan that says what I'm going to replace it with.
Didn't you hear that?
He's happy he put together a plan that says what he's going to replace Obamacare with.
Asks Anne Marie Turner, does he really mean he wants to use Massachusetts as a model for his replacement plan?
No wonder voters are worried, she says.
Unless Romney takes steps to conform his position with reality, he's going to have trouble convincing voters he's serious about repeal and will have an even harder time mapping a clear path on health reform should he be elected president.
There you have it.
She's right.
It was a basically what she's a Santorum was right in his um attack, if you will, on Romney care.
Let me take a brief break and the EIB network will resume before you know it.
I may have to offer a correction, ladies and gentlemen, Paul W. Smith.
And our affiliate in Detroit, WJR says that Hanson Clark is a Democrat who has asked makes more sense.
Hansen Clark is a Democrat asking Obama to bail out uh Detroit.
And I uh I said he was a uh a Republican.
But it looks like uh Paul W. Smith.
He is a um Democrat.
All right.
Ron in Rochester, New York.
Great to have you.
I'm glad you waited.
Welcome to the EIB network.
Thank you very much, Rush, for putting me on.
I I uh I'm not a seminar caller.
I do listen to your show.
I love it.
And uh your your comedic pieces in between putting me on hold.
I'm either laughing or crying, and it's just uh it's got me off my game.
I forgot why I called, but I had to write it down.
So nervously, the woman caller that you had on earlier, I take it she was a Mormon.
I'm not sure about that, but that she was um saying that evangelical Christians would not vote for Mitt Romney because he was a Mormon.
Right.
Just made my blood curdle.
Are we not as Republicans and conservatives?
Do we not have, as you say, half our brain tied behind a bank?
We think we can think on our feet.
We're looking at Mitt Romney's.
Now look for all that you're saying.
You know, I I find it uncomfortable and and uh and all that, but I can point you to websites that are urging people not to vote for Romney because he's a Mormon.
They're out there.
I don't know how widespread it is.
I don't think so.
My problem with it is Romney's been a Mormon for the last five years, six years, the last all of his life.
But I mean it's been an issue.
Uh absolutely.
Friends since 2008.
My what when I look at it, it's it's just black and white.
He's when he governed, he governed to the left.
It was there's no denying that.
He governed to the left.
And he just he's been campaigning now for six years in every place in every state that he's been in thus far, and still his level of uh voters that that want him hasn't changed all that much, so I highly doubt it's from him being a Mormon.
I do.
I I think that there's a the opposition to Romney such that it is, is on substance.
Is on what you said.
They think he governs to the left.
He's proudly said that he's a moderate at times.
Um the Mormon thing, by the way, the caller that you heard did not say, and then she said she was not a Mormon, that she was just um upset about it.
But I'll tell you one thing.
Obama's super PACs, the labor unions and the media are gonna bring it up.
You better, you better know that they are.
You you better, you better know that they are.
Obama's super PACs.
Remember, he's got two built-in super PACs.
He's got labor unions and he's got the media.
And they don't have to make well, no, they really don't have to raise any money.
The unions have dues and the media is in the private sector.
And but there will be legitimate super PACs above and beyond it.
You don't think they're gonna bring up the fact that Mormons uh Romney's a Mormon.
You don't think Obama will do that?
No, Mr. Lumbo, because Mr. Obama will be afraid that that will open up to the Dermot.
No, no, no, no.
The media, the media super PAC will be castigating anybody brings up Jeremiah Wright.
Why why do you have such a puzzled look on your face?
You you don't think Obama's super PACs will try to go after Romney on being a Mormon?
You don't think that'll happen.
You don't think it's it may not be between the eyes type hits.
It'll be ever so subtle.
Uh you wait.
I I I could probably dream up a typical super PAC anti-Mormon TV commercial right now.
I could I could probably do it.
I don't have any doubt uh that I mean half half of the these fringe blog democrat sites that the are are attacking Mormons now are probably fronts for the Democrats.
Of course they're gonna come up, but I don't think on the conservative side that Mormonism explains the vast opposition that exists to Romney.
I think it's as every caller that we've had here today has expressed uh dissatisfaction with what they consider to be Romney's moderate political stance.
I Don't think he's that conservative.
Back we are.
L. Rushball having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
Let's see, what is this?
Andrew Bri, yeah.
This is the American Enterprise Institute.
Uh Andrew Biggs is the author of a piece.
The average federal government employee receives a salary of around $75,000 per year.
That's the average.
With president, sorry, present and future fringe benefits equal to about 76% of salaries.
That makes the total annual compensation for your average federal government employee around 133,000.
Now, how does that match up to the private sector?
Well, CNN Money.com has a nice survey of the 25 highest paying companies in the country outlining the average total compensation per employee in each one.
According to CNN, the closest match to federal employment is Microsoft.
Average employee compensation, $132,000 per year.
That makes Microsoft the 17th highest paying company in the country.
When high federal pay is pointed out, public employee unions counter that federal employees are more productive than the average private sector worker due to their greater uh greater education and experience.
But do you think the average federal employee is more productive, the average Microsoft employee or Intel or Qualcomm, both of which pay about the same.
Federal employees now have an annual total compensation, play uh pay and benefits, and average 133 grand.
Microsoft at 132.
By 2005, Microsoft had created at least 10,000 millionaires and three billionaires.
Which you would think would skew that salary of 133,000, 132,000 quite high.
133,000.
And and they claim they're more productive because they're no, they don't create any wealth.
No, no, no.
They don't uh got to be very careful here, but the federal government doesn't create any wealth at all.
It destroys wealth.
The federal government doesn't have a dime until it takes it from people to produce it and earn it.
Pure and simple.
The federal government produces nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Here's Linda in Ridgefield, Connecticut.
I'm glad you called you're up next on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Hey Rush, how are you?
Thanks so much for taking my call to the book.
You better.
Um, hey, listen, I um have listened to you for a long time, and I've taken all your teachings and I've um chosen my candidate based upon them.
And uh my candidate's Rick Santorum.
I think that he articulates conservative like conservatism like no other.
I um switched to him when I saw him speak in his Iowa caucus win, and it was a beautiful conservative speech.
I mean, even Al Hunt's recent article uh refers to it.
And one of the things he talked about was how he stuck to his principles, and he went out to those voters in Pennsylvania, and he got them to come across to him.
He they crossed the aisle to him.
It was a 60 to 70 percent uh democratic district, and that's something you've always talked about, how Reagan did that.
Um I don't believe that uh Romney's done that at all in Massachusetts, except I think has actually done the opposite.
He talked about conservativism beautifully.
I think it was that la one of the last questions in his Thursday debate when he talked about how the Constitution was the rule book and how our um it's there to protect the Declaration of Independence, which is talks about that our rights are from um God and we're not the rights are not from government.
I think that was beautifully articulated.
Another thing he does that you're always talking about, you talk mentioned about it earlier this week.
You talked about how a family of four now that makes sixty thousand dollars a year ha has no expendable income.
And Rick's been talking about this, about the family unit and how, and this is what's so beautiful about him.
You know, people may criticize Rick about oh, he's the social conservative, and no, we don't want that.
But he takes social conservatives, that part of it, and ties it into the fiscal conservative issues, and he blends them together, and he can help and explain to people why the family is so important to the fabric of our society and why we must get back to those issues revolving around families, because it's those issues that are going to make us strong again.
I I I really think this guy is great, and I'm very disappointed in some of the people out there who haven't had the guts to come out and and support him.
I I think he's wonderful.
You know, when we talk about Reagan, a being Reagan-esque person, you know, when Reagan went to the White House, he chose two things that he wanted to accomplish.
Just two getting the economy back and defeating the Soviet Union.
He wasn't all over the place on this idea and this, you know, going to the moon and these things, he focused.
And we need a candidate who's gonna focus like a laser beam on Obamacare.
And I I think Santorum, you saw it in that debate.
He was focused.
He has done excellent in all these debates.
Okay, so tell me why he's there at 13%.
I don't know.
Help me out.
I don't know.
I think if we had somebody that could come out and just say, hey, this guy is great.
Yes, I knew that's where this was.
I knew that's where this was headed.
Rush, why don't you say you're for Santorum?
Why you could push him over the top.
All the candidates have people uh asking me to do that.
I I uh have the greatest admiration for Santorum and his um.
He had a statement of debate, somebody think tank person Brookings or whatever, somebody three things.
It might not have been Brookings, but some uh think tank, three things you could do that take care of income inequality, that take care of cultural rut, and they were all family-oriented toward type issues, and one of them was don't get married, uh don't have kids before you get married.
It's uh it's amazing when you look at the numbers um of single parent households uh out of wedlock birth, you look at that definition if you accept it as as a sign of the disintegration of of uh culture, the family breakup.
It is amazing.
It does.
I think that Santorum is right.
It does take you to there's a there's a story.
I'm not gonna mention a name here because I don't want to.
There's a story of a football player who can't get a gig.
And you read the story here, d always always been an island of sorts, brash personality, self-absorption, um, made eighty million dollars his wife's broke.
He's broke, he's got nothing, he's in a bad shape.
And if you keep reading, then you find out he's got four kids with four women.
He owes child support, he doesn't have the money.
All four are suing him.
And it just it it's uh it dovetails what what her point is and what what the point the Santorum uh talks about.
I I have uh I does the NFL give you counseling because like does the NFL tell you are a condom?
I don't know.
Um I don't know what we got a soundbite by the way from Roger Goodell, a commish, explaining that the NFL shows the greatness of socialism.
I mentioned that once long, long time.
I talked about how this the NFL is an example of of socialism, and I remember that shortly thereafter I was a guest in Green Bay, the Packers, and one of the members of the Packers Board of Directors came up to me and was seething the NFL is not socialism.
You were terribly incorrect when you pointed out.
No, you can't call the NFL socialist.
And I said, I'm simply talking about how you share the ribbon.
Everybody ends up with the same amount of TV money.
The TV money comes in and you divvy it up equally between all 32 teams.
And and uh I said that that that that's how a team like Green Bay can can stay competitive and pay people.
Uh and but good Goodell claims it's a combo of socialism and capitalism that makes the NFL what it is.
But if here let me grab the bite, it's the it's the last was number 25.
This was I did a 60 minutes profile last night on Goodell, NFL commissioner.
And uh it was Steve Croft.
He said, Look, under league rules, the teams are required to share most of the revenue with each other, which is always a sticking point with some of the most successful franchises, and the more politically conservative owners.
I mean, that's socialism, isn't it, Mr. Commissioner?
It is a form of socialism.
And it's worked quite well for us.
So we try to combine socialism and capitalism.
How can we socialize by sharing our revenue in a way that will allow every team the ability to compete?
Now, you go in and tell some of the Packers Board of Directors members that they're socialists and they will flip a wig.
Well, they did back in the 90s when I when I was in there.
I got to take a break.
I wish I could uh dig deeper, delve deeper, and expand, but I I've got to take a break.
And I got too much other stuff to do when we get back to talent on loan from God, the EIB network and Rush Limbaugh.
Want to take you back to 2008.
This is Austin, Texas, Democrat presidential debate, February 21st.
Democrat presidential debate, and this is Senator Barack Obama.
Senator Barack Obama in February 2008, during the Democrat campaign in the debate, talking about health care reform.
Senator Clinton says a mandate.
It's not a mandate on government to provide health insurance, it's a mandate on individuals to purchase it.
Massachusetts has a mandate right now.
They have exempted 20% of the uninsured.
Because they've concluded that that 20% can't afford it.
In some cases, there are people who are paying fines and still can't afford it.
So now they're worse off than they were.
They don't have health insurance, and they're paying a fine.
In order for you to force people to get health insurance, you've got to have a very harsh stiff penalty.
Now, how do you read this?
How do you hear that?
Think of the irony.
Back in 2008, during a Democrat primaries, Obama is railing against the individual mandate in Massachusetts.
While Romney and Gingrich both supported it, as did Hillary.
He was taking on Hillary, remember, and Hillary was for an individual mandate.
Here's Obama.
When Senator Clinton says a mandate's not a mandate on government to provide it, it's a mandate on individuals to buy it, and he doesn't like it.
He's telling us he opposes it.
Then he goes on to cite what's happening in Massachusetts.
They've got a mandate, they've exempted 20% of the uninsured, they've concluded that 20% can't afford it.
Um there are people paying fines, still can't afford it, so now they're worse off than they were.
And this is the guy that's going to be debating Romney.
This what what?
I mean, at the very least, the irony here.
Senator Clinton has said that we won't go after their wages.
Now, this is substantive difference, but understand both of us seek to get universal health care.
I have a substantive difference with Senator Clinton on how to get there.
He doesn't agree with the mandate, but he put one in.
You know, I don't think I uh frankly, I've always thought that health care bill was written and in somebody's drawer in Congress, and Obama never really knew specifically what was in it, and he didn't care because what he knew that it led to was national health care in five or ten years.
It was going to close the private private insurance market, it was going to force people to get their insurance in the government.
That's all he cared about.
The minutia, the details, whether it had a mandate or not, he couldn't have cared less.
Now, during the campaign, as he's trying to distinguish himself from Hillary, she's for it, therefore he's got to be against it.
He's got to rip it, cites Massachusetts how it's unfair and not working.
And four years ago.
At the same time, Gingrich was talking about the virtues of it.
And Romney was.
Because it was his idea in Massachusetts.
Santorum has never been for a mandate.
He never has.
The story last week is incorrect.
We've got audio.
He was opposed to it.
Santorum's never been for a mandate.
Everybody running in this campaign has at one time either instituted a mandate or has said they're for it.
Everybody, Democrat or Republican, except for Santorum.
Every one of them.
What do you think of that?
Can I can I say establishment to you?
Don't give me this outsider garbage.
Establishment.
Can I say that to you?
Again, every candidate running for office this year has either instituted a mandate or has been in favor of it.
I didn't say they're all dirty.
You want to conclude that.
Put it in your own words, HR.
I'm just pointing it out.
Anthony Wiener, Tony Wiener, wrote a lot of the health care bill that was in the drawer that they pulled out of there when Obama started going for it.
One year ago today, Judge Roger Vinson, who was the first to rule against Obamacare, wrote, I note that in 2008, then Senator Obama supported a health care reform proposal that did not include a mandate because he was at that time strongly opposed to the idea, stating if a mandate was the solution, then we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody by a house.
That was one year ago today, Obama was cited as opposing a mandate that is in his health care bill.
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