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May 24, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:52
May 24, 2012, Thursday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of The Rush 24-7 podcast.
I had that stupid story yesterday.
In fact, I got I I saw that stupid story yesterday, and I sent it to everybody I know.
And I said, We're going to have to deal with this.
This has come out of the left field.
It's come out of blue.
We're going to have to deal with this.
And then I didn't get to it yesterday.
I put it so far down on the second, I didn't get no, it's this story about Obama's not really spending all that much money.
Obama's probably the most fiscally responsible president we've had in 25 or 30 administrations.
I mean, that's the story.
Some some guy named Nothing in U T I N G, if it had Market Watch, which I thought market watch used to be CBS.
Oh, now it's Wall Street Journal.
This guy nutting goes back and forth.
He's got this big story out there that Obama, it's a myth that Obama's a big spender.
And the way he does it, by the way, hi folks, uh L. Rushbo here at 800-282-2882.
The way he does it is to say that all the spending in 2009, which would include the stimulus, was Bush's.
Because the budget for 2009 was Bush's done in uh in September of 2008.
So Obama's first year is actually Bush's last budget.
But Bush didn't budget the porculus.
Bush didn't budget the second porcupist.
It's a trillion dollars of spending that this guy nutting lops onto Bush and doesn't give to Obama.
But that doesn't even cover what's what's going on here.
And I had, I said it all around to everybody.
I said, you better look out for this.
And what's happened now, Obama has taken the bait on this.
This is a here, Obama's running around like everybody else, knowing full well that he's the spending king.
Everybody knows it.
This was a really lame attempt.
But when I said this story around to my buddies and my friends and everybody, I said, look, this is going to get picked up today by the drive-bys, and it's going to be the narrative from now to who knows when all it takes is just this one story, this one assertion, this one opinion piece from this guy.
And lo and behold, by the middle of the afternoon, yes, after the program is over, you had the spokes kid Jay Carney citing the piece and Obama citing the piece.
And I think it's kind of hilarious.
It's almost like Obama has taken the bait now.
Not that this guy intended to bait Obama.
I think the story ends up being a bait because it isn't true.
But here's Obama, three and a half years, knowing full well how much he's spending because he intends to.
It's part of his plan.
His spending is directly tied and correlated to the shrinkage of the private sector, which he also intends.
How do you this statistic doesn't lie?
Obama has added more to the national debt in three and a half years than all the previous presidents combined.
His deficits are more than all the previous presidents combined.
How do you do that if you're not a record-setting spender?
So Obama and Carney, everybody in the regime, they know full well that they're the spending kings.
And all of a sudden this story comes out, and they point to it like first graders who've just been exonerated for not breaking the window.
See, he did it.
He did it.
I didn't do it.
He did it.
And so now they're out there defending this thing, and it can be easily refuted, honestly and truthfully, which the drive-by's not going to do.
The drive-by's are going to pick it up and run with it.
Um, and in so doing, see, this I think is is the unintended positive consequence for us, the good guys.
In picking this thing up and running with it, they are admitting that big spending is a huge problem.
In pointing to this piece, saying, hey, it isn't me, it isn't me, they are admitting they are they're accepting the premise, if you will.
The Tea Party premise, our premise that Obama's spending is reckless, that's dangerous, that it is destroying the future of your kids and grandkids.
It's why the Tea Party exists.
People know that this is happening.
They know they've never seen spending like this.
They know they've never seen indebtedness Wrecked up this fast.
They know it instinctively.
That's why the Tea Party came.
It's why it was came into existence.
So now our premise that Obama's a huge spender has been accepted, and they are now trying to defend it.
So there is a huge opportunity.
You know me, I always try to find the positive and everything.
There's plenty in this to be ticked off about.
Because the story, as I say, if you if you take a look at budgets and spending, and then attach all the spending in 2009 to George W. Bush.
By the way, not all the TARP money was spent.
The TARP money was allocated by Bush, but a lot of the TARP money was discretionary, and Obama, I think, what's the number?
$300 billion of the $700 billion was authorized by Obama, not Bush.
So if just off the top of my head here, you've got $700, whatever it was, $780 billion for the porculus.
You have $140 billion for porculus too.
So $780, $140, we're at $920.
Then you have the $2 to $300 billion.
We're over a trillion dollars of spending that this guy nutting chalks up to George W. Bush and not Obama.
And then something that very few, I haven't read everything about this, but there's another aspect to all this.
And that is what happens to the baseline when you add a trillion dollars to the federal budget.
So Bush authorizes in Congress, they authorize the budget.
Fiscal year starts October 1st, so the budget for 2009 starts actually October 1st of 2008.
Actually, before the election, the new budget kicks in.
And the baseline at that time is based on the 2009 fiscal year budget starting in 2008.
Well, then Obama comes along and essentially adds a trillion dollars.
Folks, above and beyond what Bush already budgeted, Bush and the Congress.
I know Congress does the official final budget, but for the purposes of this guy's trying to blame Bush for all this, so I'll use Bush as my in my terminology.
You add over a trillion dollars in new spending that's not in the budget.
The porculus, porculus two of 140, but you know, what do you what happens to the baseline?
The baseline is increased, and by that, the the every budget thereafter, and we haven't really had one because of all the continuing resolutions.
Democrat have Democrats have not uh proposed a budget in this in the Senate or the House for three years.
Obama's budgets have all gone down to embarrassing defeat.
I think every Obama budget's gone down with not one vote in favor.
But nevertheless, the baseline, had there been a budget, and it's if it baseline does come into play with a continuing resolution, and the baseline is increased by a trillion dollars, and so the increase in budgeted spending is automatically ratcheted up by a trillion dollars anyway,
and then the increase in spending becomes geometric in its proportions or progressions because of the random trillion dollars of Obama spending added to the budget, bamboo, the bud the budget baseline skyrockets, and so every budget item gets a proportionate increase larger than it already had in the Bush budget that went into effect in October of 2009.
Then USA Today has a story today.
Drudge just made it his lead.
Real federal deficit dwarfs official tally.
The typical American household would have paid nearly all of its income in taxes last year to balance the budget if the government used standard accounting rules to compute the deficit, according to a USA Today analysis.
Under those accounting practices, the government ran red ink last year equal to $42,000 per household.
That's nearly four times the official number reported under the unique rules set by Congress.
U.S. households' median income is $49,000.
The big difference between the official deficit and uh standard accounting is that Congress exempts itself from including the cost of promised retirement benefits, meaning they don't have to count Social Security.
No, then you know Net Social Social Security's always been off budget.
And they've been able to take money.
That's why they've been able to take money from Social Security and lop it onto the budget to reduce the deficit.
That's what this story is all about.
The real deficit, if you count Social Security that we don't have, is $5 trillion.
And this story comes out the very day after this nutting guy writes his story that Obama's spending is uh is not large at all.
In fact, this nutting guy says that Obama's the most responsible president spending wise that we've had since Eisenhower.
Oh, that's the premise of the story.
The number one, the biggest spender in the modern era is Reagan.
No, I kid you not.
That's what the story.
That's what I was sending it on yesterday, and I didn't feel like a fool.
I didn't get to it on my own program.
The federal government calculates the deficit in a way that makes the number smaller than if standard accounting rules were followed, and we're talking smaller in trillions.
But the interesting point of this story is if you confiscate all income of the typical American household, you would balance the budget for one year.
Now, put this in perspective.
Median family incomes, $49,000.
happened.
Under the proper accounting practices.
Well, forget the accounting practices.
The real deficit of $5 trillion, if every household would just send all of its income to Washington.
Every, not just the rich, every household based on this median number of 49,000.
You send every dollar every household earns to Washington, and you'd balance the budget for one year.
Just one year.
You would not reduce the national debt.
You would just balance the budget for one year if you confiscate everybody's income.
And when you do that, it's important to add this.
If that were ever to become a policy, which it wouldn't, but if it were ever to become a policy that every dollar you earn goes to Washington, nobody would continue to work.
There'd be no point.
You would end up with nothing.
No, it's not.
No, it's not impossible to have fiscal sanity.
Um it what's required is to get on the right path.
The right path is what provides confidence to everybody that proper policies are in effect, that debt is being reduced, and that there's some sense of responsibility that that is being invested in.
Followed.
Now, here's the thing about the nutting story.
I did due diligence.
Not only did I do due diligence, I diligently did due diligence.
I diligently did some show problem, and I found out where nothing got his data.
Nancy Pelosi, a year ago put out a chart.
And nutting is simply parroting a chart that Pelosi put out in May of last year.
And what Pelosi did to show that Obama's spending was not nearly, nearly what everybody says it is, was to make sure that all of 2009 spending was lopped into the Bush category because of the budget done in 2008.
It starts October 1st of 2009 of 2008 for the year 2009.
So while Obama was spending his trillion dollars porculus bills, both of them one and two, Pelosi is puts out a chart that lops that spending into Bush's budget.
And when you do that, then you're able to claim that Obama didn't spend anything in 2009.
It was all Bush's.
The game you're playing is that everything spent in 2009 is actually the 2008 budget Bush's last won.
Well, Bush didn't authorize the porculus bill.
He didn't authorize all of the TARP spending.
So nutting, Rex Nutting is his name, and Pelosi are doing the same trick.
They're cutting off the first year of Obama's spending.
They're not even they're not allocating any of the spending in 2009 to Obama.
It's all being added in the Bush column.
Now Pelosi, who knows.
She didn't do the chart.
Some staffer did the chart, and they're all little activists in there on the left side.
And you know, Pelosi might have done it accidentally.
Who who knew?
I don't believe it's accidental.
It's good, it's possible.
Now, Porculus II, the 140 billion, that happened after October 2009.
But it's it it so that would technically be thrown in if there had been a budget, that'd be thrown in the budget for 2010, but still Obama's.
And that that 140 billion stimulus two is added to Bush by Pelosi, which nothing then uh picked up.
Let me take a brief timeout.
We got lots to do here today on the E. Colin Powell, General Powell, the titular head of the Republican Party has a new book out there, and he's doing the book tour on all the TV networks.
He was on uh Morning Joe yesterday or today, not sure which, and he might have ended up giving Romney the best endorsement that he's had so far.
Because he was critical of Romney.
He said Romney's advisors are quite far to the right.
Well, you know, the problem with Romney with conservative voters is he's not really a conservative.
Here's General Powell, the titular head of the party who endorsed Obama and is gonna vote for Obama again.
Well, is there any doubt?
He hadn't said so, but is there any doubt?
He's evolving.
Uh General Powell's evolving on his presidential choice.
But he's out there claiming that Romney's advisors are these uh stark raving man, the lunatic right wingers, the best endorsement Romney's gotten yet.
I just got a note uh reminding me that Bush did not even sign the 2009 budget.
Bush didn't sign the 2009 budget, but and the Democrats held it over for Obama to sign, and then Obama refused a photo op because it was filled with earmarks.
The 2009 budget had a lot of earmarks in it.
Bush didn't sign it, Obama didn't sign it, but it still was there.
And here's the tally.
I've made one error.
The 140 billion stimulus two, they are.
The nutting guy at Market Watch is calculating as Obama spending.
So here's in fiscal year 2009, this is the tally of the big stuff.
This does not, by the way, include any of the Obamacare spell.
We created a new entitlement for crying out loud, and none of that is factored into any of this.
Anyway, in fiscal year 2009, Obama spent $825 billion on his first stimulus, the porculus bill.
He spent $200 billion on a second and unnecessary round of TARP spending, bailout spending.
Now remember TARP, the grand total of TARP, I believe was $700 billion.
Bush did not spend it all.
Some of it was discretionary.
And if you remember, that's even a little insulting, because remember the circumstances surrounding TARP.
It was an immediate crisis.
If we don't sign this in 24 hours, the entire world financial system collapses.
We don't have a choice.
And Paulson was bringing all the bankers in, making them sign uh documents, accepting bailouts, $25, $50 billion, whatever it was, and all of this crisis.
And the cane suspends the campaign to come back and deal with it.
And we had to do it now.
It's an immediate crisis.
Just subprime and everything's coming.
We don't do it now.
We don't.
And of course, Republicans didn't vote for it the first time around, and the world financial system didn't collapse, but they kept it going.
And it ended $700 billion.
But not all of it was discretionary.
Even though we had this dire worldwide emergency, not all of it was mandatory.
$200, $300 billion of it was discretionary.
Obama spent $200 of the TARP, $200 billion, and then $40 billion on a new child health care bill, the total $1.065 trillion Obama spending.
Okay, here's the deal.
Cut to the chase on this.
In fiscal year 2009, Barack Obama spent a total of $1,065 trillion that nutting at Market Watch and Pelosi produced charts saying that Bush spent.
Bush didn't spend it.
Bush didn't spend the stimulus bill.
He didn't authorize it, asked for it.
It was not even in his mind.
But because it happened in 2009, it was lopped on to the 2009 budget that Bush did not sign, as it turns out.
So they assigned this to Bush era spending.
They're saying Obama spending cannot be calculated until October of 2009, when the new fiscal year starts.
No spending before that can possibly be Obama's.
That's what they're saying, and they're, of course, they're not right about it.
Here are the totals.
$825 billion on his first stimulus.
$200 billion on a second round of TARP spending, more on that a second.
$40 billion spent on a new child health care bill, SCHIP.
Now, there's other incremental incidental spending that Obama was doing left and right, throwing money all over the place.
Cylindra was getting money, if you recall, all these green energy were getting so-called low-interest loans.
There's all kinds of Obama was printing money, borrowing it, throwing it around as fast as he could.
But those are the big ticket items.
$825 billion for porculus, $200 billion, additional TARP spending, $40 billion S chip, grand total, $1.065 trillion that Obama spent that these people are counting as Bush money.
Now the really deceitful thing that Mr. Notting and the others are doing is saying that they are counting Obama's stimulus in their tally of his spending.
In the text of the story, they say they're counting the stimulus.
And they are.
They are counting Porculus II, $140 billion, which happened after October in 2009.
They're not counting the $825 billion big ticket Porculus.
So in the text of the story, they claim they're counting the stimulus.
And it's really deceitful, because what they're counting is Porculus II, which is $140 billion.
So casual readers of the Nutting story, but it's a web story at MarketWatch, casual readers think, oh, wow.
Even with Obama's stimulus, he still spent less than Reagan and Bush.
But again, they're only counting that $140 billion second stimulus.
They're not counting the first $825 billion stimulus.
Now, more on this TARP business.
What actually happened there was Obama, as president-elect, before the Immaculation, as president-elect, Obama told Bush, or asked, depending on how you want to remember it, told Bush to release the rest of the discretionary TARP money so that Obama
Obama could use it for economic recovery as soon as he took office, and Bush did.
Bush expanded the discretionary amount of TARP, and that was I think it's going to be around 200 billion or 300 billion.
So you can add 200 billion to this year, and you still are at around just under 1.1 trillion dollars of Obama spending that's not counted as Obama spending.
And specifically, that second round of TARP that Obama asked for as president elect, not inaugurated yet, was for the auto bailout.
To buy General Motors and Chrysler and give them to the unions.
And that was 200 billion dollars.
So I wanted to arm you with the facts, and all this will be up at Rush Limbaugh.com.
You know what we did.
You know, we did.
This is fun.
As all websites and businesses have, we have private internal passwords that we only use amongst ourselves, because we have a paywall.
Ours is a subscriber-based website.
So late yesterday afternoon, without telling anybody, we killed one of the popular internal passwords as a means of flushing out everybody who had it.
To find out how many people unauthorized had been given the internal password.
And my email started going nuts last night.
Panic set in, Rush, Rush, it's not working.
People I had not given the internal password to.
So we flushed them out.
We found out, oh, this is fun.
I mean, what happens is you give employees the internal password, don't give this to anybody, and of course they always do.
You factor that is a cost of doing business.
Well, we haven't reactivated the old one yet.
So you go you try it.
See if you can get in.
You uh you let me know.
Authorities in the ChICOM capital of Beijing have set new standards for public toilets, including a stipulation that public toilets should contain no more than two flies.
Insects.
The new rules were published by the Commission of City Administration.
They also set standards on odor and cleaning the litter bins.
Toilets in such places as tourist spots must comply with the new standards.
Only two flies per public toilet permitted in Beijing and new odor restrictions.
It's not clear whether the people responsible for this will be punished, and if so, how?
You know, I ask frequently on this program, One of the things that always amazes me, and has amazed me since my first international trip to Europe.
They can't get in.
Snurdly and the gang.
He can't get into the website.
Well, we didn't lock you out.
We just want to flush out people who illegally had the private internal.
There are several private internal passwords at Rush 24-7.
We the the big one, we just made it inactive yesterday to find out who had it that shouldn't.
Because when it the people that weren't supposed to have it might not have known they weren't supposed to have it.
So when it didn't work, they panicked, they called, they wrote, that's not working.
We were able to find out who had the uh that's costs us money, snurdly.
When people start giving away the internal password, it costs us money.
Our website, the pay side, is not free By definition.
So Snerdley can't get it.
Yeah, what we've also found out is who's not using it.
Like you didn't even know till I told you.
You didn't even been into the website.
I can tell right now, snurredly, you haven't even been in the website.
You didn't go to the website, Dawn didn't go to the website.
Brian didn't, they all find out just now.
I'll tell you, this is a trick.
It works every time it's tried.
Yeah, that's right.
Well, of course, if you log out, cash can't help you then.
C-A-C-H-E, for those of you in Rhea Linda.
I don't know if we're going to reactivate that password or not now.
I love doing these tricks.
It just you learn so much.
You expose so many people.
And at any rate.
First time I traveled internationally was where did I where was my first international trip?
First international trip.
It was Italy.
It was Italy.
It was in the mid-80s.
I went, was working at KFBK Sacramento and took a bunch of listeners.
And man, did we do this on the cheap, and I didn't know we were going to do it on such cheap till we got there.
But I mean, our hotel was not a hotel, it was a university dormitory with no hot water.
And the first day we were there 14 inches of snow in Rome.
But I remember, and in subsequent trips to Europe, I also was amazed at how unmodern, if I can put it that way, basic plumbing was in Europe.
And I said, these people have been around thousands of years longer than we have.
How's this possible?
And began an entire pursuit of mine based on this curiosity of here we are as a people.
We're no different than anybody else, but at the time less than 300 years we've been a nation, and so many of these day-to-day standard of living things regarding hygiene and so forth, so far advanced beyond people who've been around thousands of years.
Nations, cultures, whatever, at least many more hundreds of years than we have.
I was stunned.
And so here we're reading about toilets in Beijing, and they have a limit of two flies.
Two flies in a public toilet is tolerable.
In um in Beijing, and I every time I travel internationally, see a socialist country or hear about the Chikom's a communist country.
What's so great about this?
What is it?
I'm kind of these people that want a socialist America, what is it?
And I think I know.
I think I figured it well, I know I know.
It's it's it's about income inequality, wealth inequality.
It's it's it's that's primarily the thing that motivates people to believe in a redistributionist policy with a central command-control government.
They're gonna make everything fair.
Victor Davis Hanson, I have to take a break.
Victor Davis Hansen has a brilliant, brilliant piece at National Review Online.
That it plays off of why do certain people get away with being rich?
Why do certain people getting away with being scumbags?
Why do certain people get away with being absolute horrible character people type type character type people and others don't?
It's a fascinating piece.
I've got to let me take a break.
And oh, and Michael J. Fox is admitting now that stem cells, uh nothing to them.
Right here I have it, life news.com.
Michael J. Fox admits embryonic stem cells likely will not cure him.
Another thing, many, many years ago, right here in this program, but on a cutting edge, told you, embryonic stem cells was not even about curing Parkinson's or Alzheimer's.
It wasn't even that's what they said it was about, but that's not what it was about.
Embryonic stem cell research, like everything else, was a uh many multifaceted.
It was a way for the researchers To get government grants, but it was also a way to promote abortion.
You need fetuses.
You need dead fetus.
You need embryo.
You need abortion for embryonic stem cell research.
And it was just a trick on the part of leftists to oppose and find reasons, medical reasons they could use to continue to promote the whole concept of abortion because so many of them make so much money off of them.
Anyway, I gotta take a brief time out.
Sit tight, back with much more after this.
How much money has been raised for stem cell research?
The premise that we're gonna cure Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and Michael J. Fox, sorry, it isn't gonna cure him.
It isn't gonna fit.
Told you.
It's a sh this is a huge C, I told you.
So I'll get more detail on this as the program unfolds.
Also, ladies gentlemen back to this budget business for a second.
There is a reason that the Democrats have not offered a budget in three years.
And this is an excellent time with this bogus report from Rex Nutting and the media picking this up to point this out.
The Democrats have refused to offer a new budget ever since 2009.
Because they want to lock all of Obama's spending into the budget and into the baseline.
You cannot cut spending with continuing resolutions.
Continuing resolutions keep spending levels at the same level.
That is why the debt ceiling deals are so big.
It's why there's a debt ceiling fight every time one goes.
There's no you don't cut spending in a continuing resolution.
You might have the pretense of cutting spending or claiming that any new spending will be offset by cuts, but you don't have any cuts.
Any real cuts, you don't have them.
Continuing resolutions keep current funding levels at the same level.
And that, by the way, the spending levels, that is another aspect of this nutting piece that is not discussed.
You can talk about the rate of spending, but the level of spending, nobody's even close to Obama on this.
So the debt ceiling deal is huge.
It's the only way.
The GOP can even try to cut spending since they can't cut the official budget, and the reason the Democrats have not done a budget is so they can lock in all of Obama's spending.
This is such a deceitful story.
It is...
It is an intricately woven web of deceit, this idea that Obama's spending is less than Reagan, less than George W. Bush, less than George H.W. Bush, which is what the story claims.
And you've got you've got people who have believed the truth about Obama's spending now scratching their heads.
Wait, did we get this wrong?
Because it's in print.
It was at market watch.
Well, market watch has some credibility with people.
Well, have we been wrong?
No, you have not been wrong.
Spending levels.
The level is what every new dollar's added to.
If you're already 16 trillion dollars in debt, if that's the level.
And your rate of spending is big, small, you're still adding to the debt, which is the bottom line.
And now if if if Obama and the White House of Democrats try to use this story to say that they are budget cutters, that they're responsible spenders.
If they want to try to make the case that the stimulus bill is George W. Bush's, then shouldn't George W. Bush get all the credit for the stimulus that Obama and Biden are claiming for it.
Bush only gets the blame for the spending, but not the credit for the supposed economic recovery Obama and Biden keep talking about.
But if all those jobs and all this new economic growth and all this recovery and the end of the recession, why isn't that Bush's achievement?
If the porculus bill actually is Bush's, doesn't Bush deserve all this credit?
I'm telling you, they have fallen for a trap here, not knowing even that one was set.
If this is played right.
And I know we on this program will play it right.
I don't have any doubt about that.
Okay, gotta take a break.
Here's the top of the hour here, folks.
So I will get to what I think is a really cool piece.
At National Review by Victor Davis Hansen called The Power of Cool.
You find it, I know you're gonna find it as fascinating and as explanatory as I did.
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