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April 23, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:33
April 23, 2012, Monday, Hour #2
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Woo well that was nice.
That was wonderful.
I'm filling in for the Great Rush.
Nobody can fill in for the Great Rush.
He's back tomorrow.
You can see him all the time though at Rush Limbaugh.com.
I loved when he started his new Twitter account.
Um I can read his twits tweets, whatever they are.
As I was saying before the break, uh my personal theory for me is if you're over thirty and enjoy a glass of wine at night, you shouldn't have a Twitter account and too many friends of mine have proved that to be a good philosophy.
We're at 800 28282.
We'll be joined by Congressman Paul Ryan and Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn this hour to talk about policy principles and the campaign.
We've been sort of focusing on the first virtues, the first principles before we even get to policies, and if we understand those, then we we'll have we can develop good policies.
If we don't understand those, if we're detached from our first principles from virtue, from humility, we ain't never going to get across the finishing line, and doesn't matter who we go with.
Let's take some calls while we uh before we get to Congressman Ryan and Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn.
Oh, let's go to the swingingist of the swing states, Ohio.
If you love politics, you should move to Ohio because it is the epicenter of all things, always has been.
They have a great new governor, John Kasich, who is one of the original God, he was a one of the original freedom freedom fighters way back there.
So welcome, Gary.
Say hi hi to John, Rob Portman, a great senator.
You've got you grow him great there in that in the heartland, don't you?
Oh, we grow 'em real great.
And I'll tell you, Mary, uh Rush couldn't pick the most gracious host as he has today.
Did Snerdley tell you to say that?
I think Snerdley's constraining.
No, no, no.
I'm getting right to the point.
Uh as far as virtues and American values.
You know, uh we fought a civil I'm a white guy, and I have a lot of black friends, and I love them.
I love them dearly.
But you know how Obama has played the race card to split this nation between black, white, Hispanic.
Okay, you know, we fought the Civil War uh to free the slaves, and it took the the slaves another hundred or so years to get their civil rights straightened out in this country.
Um what my black friends out there in Radio Land probably don't understand that Obama, though he's a black man, sold them back into bondage with uh over the five trillion dollar debt, which is growing even larger, and put not only every American into bondage this time to the ChICOMs, but their children, their children's children, and so on and so on.
And if we don't break these chains, Obama reminds me of this uh the blacks that would capture the villagers, villagers, and bring them to the white slave traders that ship them all over Europe and and to America.
If we don't break these chains in this election and elect uh a Christian president uh or somebody that believes in God, uh this nation is in big trouble because when he spoke to Medev.
Yeah, I know I like but before we branch off into Russia, which we know is a godless and always has been in the first way they got to their country was to eradicate faith in religion.
Let I want to make a point about what Gary said.
This is not a black issue, a white issue, a brown issue, a girl issue, a boy issue.
It is an all-American issue.
Debt is bondage.
Structural debt of the magnitude we have is deferred taxation.
It is going to for your children, for your per your current future, I mean your your present tense, your future, your children's future.
As we sit here today, every American is is uh burdened by about a hundred and forty thousand dollars of tax debt or debt goes to each person.
So magnify that.
We can't Go through any w we just cannot do four more years of this.
We cannot do one more year of this.
It's not just the debt that's burdening us.
It's the absence of growth.
We can the new norm is two point five percent growth.
That is not that applies to every American in every city in at every income group of every race, of every creed, of every religion that is or not religion.
This is has nothing to do with uh anything other than these policies that flow from I I think Gary is on to something in absence of the first principle.
The first principle our natural right which grows from freedom and freedom and and liberty require responsibility, and that that responsibility means to be living within your living within your means and providing for your own community and family, which is a perfect segue to one of my all-time favorite people, Congressman Paul Ryan, who, you know, this is why I'm confident we're gonna win.
If we can articulate the policies that to correct the breadth and the depth of the uh pro the problem that I just talked about, which is without getting sucked into distractions about dogs and cookies, and just as a happy warrior, talk about these first principles that undergird these policy.
We can get out of this.
No one has done that better and has led the way more articulately and is the path not just to prosperity but to victory in the fall, then Congressman Paul Ryan, who's in his seventh term in Wisconsin, chairman of the House Budget Committee, he's on House Ways and Means.
Really the path to prosperity is the path to victory.
Congressman, we're delighted you were able to join us today.
Thank you.
Hey Mary, how are you doing today?
I am great.
And I am I really mean what I said.
The the the attacks on you are a testament or badge and uh honor testament to your how well y you're doing.
And I just want to make this point again, if you uh and you could speak to this.
W the notion that they were s th the the Democrats are so ecstatic that you are leading the way that the path pros to prosperity is the roadmap to our policy prescriptions in the fall.
And I I just think it's the most ludicrous thing.
When you can stand and fight, when you do it as a happy warrior as you have done, t tell me where it's ever lost.
We've won every single race where your principles have been articulated properly.
So y articulate them the your way because you do it w much better.
Well, look, uh what happened this year is was pretty predictable.
It's what happened last year.
We have a debt crisis coming where we can't keep spending money we don't have.
Government's borrowing forty cents of every dollar it spends, and it's gonna end very ugly.
Um turn on the TV, look at Europe, and you'll find out what that kind of looks like.
And so what the president and his party leaders in the Senate decided to do, instead of lead and try and prevent this crisis from occurring.
Wait for the Republicans to offer their solution, then attack them.
And people see through this stuff.
And what we're showing with our budget is specifically it is not too late to get back to the American idea.
It is not too late to take those great principles that made us such an exceptional nation in the first place.
Liberty, freedom, free enterprise, self-government, government by consent of the governed, and apply them to the problems of the day to get back to the opportunity society that we've always been with the safety net.
And what we're basically saying is we want to have a safety net in this country.
But we want the safety net to be there for people who truly cannot help themselves, and then to be there for people who are able-bodied but down on their luck, so that they can get back on their feet onto lives of social efficiency, on the lives of opportunity.
And so we want a society that is more characteristic of upper mobility, of people reaching their potential and making the most of their lives, an opportunity society.
And in that kind of society, the government's role and goal is to protect our rights so we can define and pursue happiness how we see it, so that we can make the most of our lives, and to promote equal opportunity, not to promote the equality of outcome.
You know, one of the one of the Congressman, one of the things uh that it it would be amusing if it wasn't so annoying, is the uh usurpation and the distortion of language by liberals.
When you talk about those first principles, they take them and turn them on their head.
One of the most um egregious examples of this is social justice, a teaching of the church, a a a hallmark of Christianity, the Judeo Christian tradition is social justice meaning a version it meaning what you just said.
It is not social justice is not keeping people in poverty in perpetuity.
It is not going through Caesar, so Caesar can declap the unclad.
It is it is teaching people how to fish.
So these are I keep coming back to these define social justice as it as it in its true meaning.
Well everybody has their own definition and and and I have mine through my faith and that is we want to help human beings flourish on their own.
Social justice is you leave plenty of space in our communities for for individuals to join together to help advance the common good.
And that means we don't want big government to crowd out civil society, those those institutions, our churches, our charities, our civic institutions that help get people who are in difficult, despairing parts of their lives back on their feet, which is how we advance the common good at our societies.
That means there's plenty of room for those social intermediary institutions to help get people onto lives of self sufficiency to help people.
That doesn't mean big government in an egalitarian way where you redistribute the wealth and then you have some distant bureaucracy that that displaces and crowds out our our communities.
That's what we have right now.
And if we define social justice as this the more federal money we throw at programs, the more we we absolve responsibility for ourselves and for our communities and for our neighbors in our communities and just rely on big government to take care of things, we'll get more of what we've got.
And what we have right now are the highest poverty rates since we've measured poverty.
One in six Americans are in poverty today, even though we've thrown all this money, this borrowed money at these failed programs.
And so what we're saying is let's fix this problem because we don't think the goal of fighting poverty of advancing social justice is simply treating the symptoms of poverty to make poverty easier to cope with or live with we think the goal of social justice is to attack the root causes of poverty to break the cycle of poverty to get people out of poverty once and for all and so when we look at the results of the poverty fighting programs in America today,
we see more poverty, more debt, more despair, and more communities where people are not working with one another and government is making it harder for that to happen.
And so we actually in 1990s did welfare reform.
It was amazing the success child poverty rates went went from 55 percent down to 39 percent over a decade as a result of those policies.
People went from welfare to work but that program only reformed one program that reform was one program.
There is there are over seventy other welfare programs in federal law that have never been reformed and what we want to do is reform these programs along the same lines so our goal is to get people off of welfare and on to work in the lives of self-sufficiency and to me that's that's what a as a policymaker social justice is.
And that means leaving space for our communities to be good, to to be interactive in people's lives and not just sort of deferring to big government to try and paper the problem over the way I look at it is the the philosophy the President seems to be perpet perpetuating is a message to the country that look you're stuck in your current station in life and the government is here to help you cope with it.
That is not what America is.
That's not the American idea.
We want a society of upper mobility.
We're not a class based society.
Look I'm Irish and German.
My ancestors left those class based societies to form this country with every other immigrant to get rid of that so that we can make the most of our lives however we see fit.
And that's the kind of great dynamic society that has been the best we have ever seen.
There is no other system in the world that has done more to lift the poor out of poverty than the American system of free enterprise and yet we're at the we stand at a crossroads where we risk exchanging this system for more of a European decadent, you know, cradle the grave social welfare state which just ends in decline and in a in a debt crisis.
We really are at the crossroads.
It's been said so often now it sounds um hyperbolic, but it it really isn't the upshot of an extended and accumulated social safety net that really is a hammock at this point has led us to this unsustainable and untouchable structural debt.
I speak to uh the I I love the attack on your thoughts and your policies as radical.
Your s your the the principal solution in Path to Prosperity for Medicare, premium support was a Bill Clinton idea, so if you're a radical he was the first radical Medicaid your principal solution is block grants to the states which aren't only the laboratories of democracy get achieved by common sense greater efficiencies via subsidiarity as we would say or closer to the people federalism those are not radical ideas.
More importantly there are ideas that used to have bipartisan support.
They're ideas that when they've been applied it worked really well.
Block renting has worked extremely well because it allows states to customize to meet the needs of their un individual constituents.
I live in Wisconsin we have a thing called badger care.
It's a lot different than what say California or New York has and we're saying let's improve on these things to let our states customize these benefits for the unique needs of their of their people in their states.
Medicare reform our ch our program does not change the benefit for anybody 55 and above.
And our point is if we move to reform Medicare soon we won't have a debt crisis.
It's the biggest driver of our future debt.
So we can guarantee the benefit as it's currently designed to people who've already retired or who are about to retire who organize their lives around this program but in order to keep that promise a promise that is going to be quickly a broken promise if we stay in the current path we are on we propose to change it for younger people, you know, like those of us who are 54 and below so that when we retire it works more like the system that members of Congress and federal employees have where you have a list of guaranteed coverage options for Medicare including the traditional program.
You pick the plan that meets your need the best you can't be denied.
And then Medicare subsidizes your benefit based on who you are more for the poor and the sick less for the wealthy doing it that way, which is exactly what the Clinton Commission recommended, which is what lots of Democrats in the past have been in favor of saves and strengthens Medicare not only for the current generation but for the next generation and prevents the program from going bankrupt, which it's scheduled to do um in about 2024.
There you've heard it friends that's the path to prosperity that's the path to victory.
Congressman Ryan we can't thank you enough for your service for joining us today.
Don't run for VIP, don't get on the ticket, stay in the Congress.
I want you to stay in the Congress and keep your leadership role there.
Thank you, Congressman Ryan I'm here.
Thank you.
I'm filling in for Rush Limbaugh today, 800 two eight two eight eight two we'll be right back with your calls.
Hello Ditto heads fly of our country and the faithful, the fruited plane I'm Mary Madeline filling in for Rush who will be back tomorrow.
Can I just close out this half hour by before you go crazy why I really love Paul Ryan to stay in the House by elaborating on some of his ideas.
Of course he'd be a spectacular vice president we have a number of people who would make fabulous vice presidents but Ryan's work in the House has been not just critical it's been pivotal.
Could you see how in a few short minutes how he got to the root cause, the root principles and can attach all the policies to all of those one of the one of the things he referenced was the failures of policies.
People ask me all the time what's the difference between a liberal and a conservative I're many, many, many.
But a big one is emotion versus empiricism I'm emotional.
I'm a woman I cried when I saw Snerdly today.
I get all that but having good intentions is not the same as having a good result.
So if you measure success by how much you're spending and not with the money's being spent on and particularly when it's counterproductive as has been the case in these poverty programs, which when they started we had one point six children being born out of wedlock.
Today we have over forty percent the pathologies that flow from that.
So what is this president's uh response to the path to prosperity?
The Buffett rule, the Buffett rule.
If you took all of Warren Buffett's money, every bit of it, you would probably it'd take you could burn through that.
You took let's take all of the millionaires' money, not just Warren Buffett.
All their money that you could burn through maybe four and a half days of what the government is spending.
It doesn't reduce the deficit, it doesn't reform the debt, and it's not fair to anybody.
How is it fair to take money from the successful to give it to those who aren't producing, it won't create one job.
If that's the answer to the prosperity, we're on the path to victory.
I am Mary Madeline in the EIB Golden Throne.
Russia will be be back tomorrow.
800 28282 in articulation on is my favorite topic, which we're gonna talk about with Congressman Marcia Blackburn of Tennessee now.
And that is the war on women.
If anything has been more preposterous a this the attempt to to distract from the record of the Obama administration which points right to the record of the Obama administration.
It is the war on women who have suffered grievously and it and mostly in this Obama economy have lost more jobs are have a greater labor particip participation rate fall out are the ones who have to fill up their tanks, have the ones who have to do groceries, the ones who are doing the family budgets, the ones that are suffering from nine percent increase in their health care premiums.
This is what women deal with every day.
Who's waging a war on women?
One of my favorite things about Congressman Marcia Blackburn is she has always been her whole history has been about liberty and freedom which is not a a gender issue.
But if there's any bitter foxhole buddy to have in the war against the war on women it would be Marcia Blackburn.
Thank you, Congressman for joining us.
I am delighted to be with you.
Thank you.
Well one of the symbols you have been the created the symbol of the war on America, forget about war and women which which is the light bulb.
Just give me your light bulb riff Marsha I love it.
Just let's talk light bulbs.
I like to say that these newfangled compact fluorescent light bulbs are the perfect symbol for the Obama administration.
They don't work they're too expensive to afford and when they break you have to call a federal agency, which is hazmat.
And you know Mary, I talk to women all across the country.
I was up in Kentucky on Saturday and talked to a group and there were women there that said look we're stockpiling light bulbs because we've got a government now that touches every portion of your life in such an accelerated way.
And here they are now even telling you what kind of light bulb you can and cannot use and me being somebody who's for freedom, free people, free market, I am for freedom of choice in light bulbs.
You know it j I used to think I that was I I just could not believe but that they were actually going to enforce that law.
It so puts one in mind of William Buckley saying a liberal wants to stick his hand in your shower and adjust your temperature, but it's true you can hardly find a light bulb.
Pete remember the black market toilets, now there's black market light bulbs.
It it's absurd, it's obscene and and and thank you for leading on that let's talk about the Warren women because we have been forced to speak to this there's so many myths about female voters.
The first is that they're homogenous.
There's some when the the cognizante and the chattering classes talk about the gender gap, they're talking about something that doesn't exist the way they're trying to con they're trying to suggest that it does.
So talk about we get there there oh it is true that Barack Obama is favored by single urban women, but it is not true that he is favored because Republicans are women who pay the bills, married women, rural and suburban women, stay at home moms.
So talk about the non homog homogenous nursing.
And that's you know, when we look at women, I I think that the mom in the minivan, uh the one who's making decisions, single women who are trying to start a business, uh, the real war on women is coming from this administration and their economic policies and uh what they are forcing on the American people.
You know, if you just take let's just take the the business sector, there are seven point eight female owned businesses in this country, eighty-eight percent of those are small businesses.
And this administration keeps trying to increase the taxes on all of these small businesses.
Now, out of those small businesses, a third of those are owned by women.
And you know, Mary, the women that I talk to are saying, look, the uncertainty in regulation, the uncertainty in taxation, the increase in taxation and Obamacare is what is keeping us from hiring.
And then when you look at health care, women make eighty five percent of the health care decisions in this country.
And the health care sector by a majority employs women more than men.
And women don't want the federal government telling them what type of health insurance to buy or what kind of delivery system of health care they can have.
They keep wanting to have the opportunity to make those decisions themselves.
And so if you're looking at business, if you're looking at health care, women don't agree with this administration.
They agree with Republicans.
And another thing when you look at the economy, the negative jobs growth, and you were talking about this earlier in the the hour, what kind of jobs growth we need to maintain in order to have predictive jobs growth in the economy, and we don't have that.
And you know, the high gas prices, as you said, the light bulbs you can't buy.
If you're let's say you've got a child who's a teenager and they can't find a job for the summer, or someone who is a recent graduate, they can't get a job right now because of the unemployment and underemployment that exist with those recent college graduates and Mary.
Which is getting worse with every new report.
You know what I think I think that the the notion that there is a uh an advantage to the Democrats with women goes to the fact that a lot of liberals are big mouth I mean they get on TV and they say stuff.
So conservative women are working, but there is a way and they're attending to all these problems, but there is a way through the social media that they can organize and they can share their progress in different ways to push back on these policies and elect people who will continue to push back on these policies.
You're engaged in that, Marcia.
Talk about that lovely Congresswoman.
Yeah, that's that's right.
They can and I think more and more women are uh connecting through social media because it's convenient, doesn't take time.
People can find me on Twitter at Marcia Blackburn, they can find me on Facebook, they can uh go to my uh congressional website, Blackburn dot house dot gov. And uh you know, the Twitter is so easy and convenient and Mary, what they're figuring out is that the high cost of health care, look at what's happened with this administration, the accelerated spending by the federal government, look what has come from this administration.
Uh the negative jobs growth, hm.
There again, you look at what has not happened in the economy since this president um uh took office and they're figuring this out.
It's like you were saying earlier.
You know, you look at the labor force participation rate, which is very, very low right now, indeed possibly lower than it has been since World War Two.
And people are going, wait a minute.
You know, when you look at the unemployment and the unemploym underemployment and the labor force participation rate, and then on top of that, disposable income, because the average household disposable income is down about two thousand dollars per household.
This is all impacting women.
And they are you know, they've about had their feel of this.
So next time you hear the war on woman women is being lost by conservatives, think again, the war on women will be won by conservatives because it's not a war on women, it's a war on all of us.
So cease and desist with all of that although I'll say this, Congressman Blackburn, you're a good woman.
These are not gender issues.
I'm so glad you're in Congress.
I'm so glad you're waving that light bulb across the fruited plane.
We don't want your light bulbs.
Take your light bulbs.
That's exactly right.
We keep trying to save those light bulbs and uh because as I said earlier, it is just such a good metaphor for what is happening with this administration.
We know that what women want is more opportunity for their children and their grandchildren.
They want to preserve freedom and Mary, they want to preserve the American dream.
You know, the American dream is all about faith, family freedom, hope, and opportunity.
It is about working hard today so that your children and grandchildren are going to have more and better opportunities in the next generation.
And women do not want to be dependent on the federal government for education, for a home loan, for a car loan, for a student loan, for their health care.
They want to be able to make those decisions that they know are going to be best for their family, and they believe in the exceptionalism of this country, and I think it's why you're going to see women more engaged in this election cycle than than ever before.
You are right, Congresswoman.
We appreciate your thoughts on this.
This is not a woman thing, it's not a man thing.
We have we are having a war on our values.
You've just described what they are.
You represent them out there, people.
I'm gonna keep uh representing them out here and I'm I'm just so pleased to spend a few minutes talking with you about it uh today, because uh these values are the values that are under attack.
And uh when people talk about preserving the ability to get that education and to dream those big dreams and to help their children to do likewise, they are wanting to increase those opportunities and they want less government not more governments.
That's right.
They work hard enough, they don't want to have to push through a stormwall of the government in their face.
Thank you, Congresswoman, for joining us.
Go back to Saving the Country.
I'm Mary Madeline filling in for Rush.
Join us 800 282-2882.
We'll be right back with your call.
You're listening to the EIB network.
Hi Mary Madeline filling in for Rush Limbaugh, 800 28282, Rush Limbaugh dot com.
You know, Snurdley just made a good point, a logical point after listening to it.
Congresswoman Blackburn.
What president has ever won without winning the male vote?
I mean, why do we this has become one of the political canards that d soccer moms, mortgage moms, whatever, I kind of like NASCAR dates.
One of the founding reasons I became a conservative, because I grew up a liberal, had no choice, South Chicago.
Oh, Snerdley.
No, I didn't even think about it.
Well, I was a Democrat, I was a Kennedy kind of Democrat.
And the the the first reason uh among many that I became a conservative was the that era of feminism, and I was a feminist.
I wanted to work, I wanted the same opportunities and I wanted pay for if I did the same work.
And that was my focus.
The feminists back then said a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bike.
It was uh it was so hostile.
I love men.
I love them then.
I loved my mentors.
I uh it just that and feminism has gone downhill or so-called feminism has gone downhill ever since.
So we've been since that period in the early seventies and eighties uh through the eighties, we've been talking about this gender gap and how women are continue to be liberal.
They're not.
They're not.
They're just doing the hard work of living every day and taking care of their families.
You know, one of the things that uh Congresswoman talked about, taking care of your families.
Snerdley just handed me this.
Half of new graduates are jobless or underemployed.
Think about that.
You know how much it costs to go to college?
You know how much effort it takes to go to college today?
So you work hard to raise your kids and get them the kind of education that can get them into these schools from which they will graduate with no marketable skills anyway, and now they can't get a job in this economy.
I don't know how that's a gender issue.
That's just an American issue.
Let's go to my favorite place in the world, New Orleans, Louisiana.
Margaret, thank you for holding this entire time.
How are you?
Well, you know what, Mary, welcome to our fair town.
We are so happy to have you here.
So it it's great.
But listen, I the reason I'm calling, Mary, is I I listened to your radio show back in the day, and I listened to you every single day.
I would get in the car on the way home, and I would say to myself, what am I gonna learn from Mary today?
And you i and I think and uh and I'm just so happy to hear you again today.
Um and I think what it was, Mary, was that you had this really this this great ability to put forth really smart arguments.
Just smart.
You know, you do it in a nonpolarizing way, you're not flaming the fan, and it's I I I think it makes it easier when you approach it that way for the other side to listen.
And and I just wish more of the pundits, more of the talking heads would take that approach because I think walls go up otherwise.
So um I'm just so happy to hear you.
I'm glad Rush pulled you in.
I hope to hear you more on his show or on your own show moving forth, anything.
Um then one other point.
Um I feel much better about James knowing that he's close to Father Umulty.
He's a friend of our family, so he is in very good spiritual hands there.
Uh Margaret, you've hit all my soft spots.
You're a doll girlfriend.
Thank you for calling in.
Boy, that was really that was really sweet.
Um you know, m Margaret makes a really good point.
This is how we have to behave in New Orleans.
A great gift moving there was um that the the necessity of the civic associations, the breaking down the barriers between races and class that it was necessitated by Katrina,
the pulling together by Monsignor Nalty and the and our archbishop and all the the faiths to to move ahead to to not just rebuild the city, but to be a beacon for progress, urban renewal.
We had to do that in New Orleans through having faith in each other.
And when you try to work with people with whom you previously had had been suspect with their philosophy or their their politics, you quickly overcome that.
We had to do that there.
Our great mayor, Mitch Landrew won with sixty-seven percent of the white votes, sixty-seven percent of the black vote, he won in all the precincts, he ran without a runoff, and we've been running the city that way with citizens participating at every level and having an open door and his not taking this p this political polemic approach that we see so often and unfortunately at our other levels of politics.
We gotta take a break.
I'm Mary Madeline, 800-282-2882.
We'll be right back on the Rush Lindball show.
Friends, let's just close out this hour on on Margaret's point.
There we don't need to be screamers or screeters.
The reason Rush is is has such a loyal following.
The reason this show is so successful, the reason there are so many potential knockoffs, trying to knock off.
Nobody can do it.
Nobody's ever been able to do it the way Rush has done it is because he does what Margaret just said.
He does it with an open heart and a big fat brain, a big mind.
No Monsignor Nalty that Margaret just referred to.
He he makes us every day come to our our friends and our neighbors and our family with an open heart.
And that's how we need to come into this election.
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