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Oct. 18, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:47
October 18, 2012, Thursday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 247 podcast.
Have you seen the new jobless numbers ladies?
They're not good, and because what happened to the state of California reported this week, and they didn't report last week.
The number of jobless claims jumps up to a total of 388,000 plus 46,000.
Unexpectedly high.
Plus 46,000 over the previous week.
And Jay Carney is on Air Force One, the White House, uh mobile White House in action, Obama campaigning and Jay Carney just said, Oh, yeah, the unemployment news today just shows a steady progress and that the economy is healing.
I I kid you not, 388,000.
New claims for unemployment last week because California reported they didn't get their data in in time last week.
They did this time, and so we've got an accurate number.
Just amazing how this stuff works.
Going into the debate on the economy last week, California just couldn't get their number in on time.
And that led to an unemployment rate of 7.8%.
How are you, folks?
Happy to have you here, L Rushbaugh at 800-282-2882, and the email address L Rushbow at EIBNet.com.
Some really depressing, striking, and at the same time enraging numbers have been released today by the Congressional Research Service.
The government spent, I want you to listen to me here.
Look at me.
The government spent approximately one point oh three trillion dollars on eighty-three means tested federal welfare programs in fiscal year 2011 alone.
This means that federal welfare is the government's largest expenditure.
It is up 32% in the four years of Barack Obama.
Federal welfare, and don't forget that it was Obama who in recent weeks ripped the work requirement out of welfare reform, which in several analyses had been working to reduce welfare roles.
It required people to either try to get a job or be looking for a job actively provably, or even be working part-time before they could receive welfare benefits.
Obama stripped that out by virtue of executive order.
The White House and the Democrats are trying to deny that he did that, but he did it.
But this is striking, and folks, there's something to put this in even greater perspective.
The data, this 1.03 trillion.
That's that's roughly the size of the annual budget deficit every year.
This 1.03 trillion dollars does not even include Social Security and Medicare and veterans benefits.
The data excludes entitlements.
This is just pure welfare.
83 welfare programs, means tested.
Means-tested means that you have to meet certain requirements before you qualify.
It's not even blanket welfare.
It's outrageous.
Some individual numbers, I I think that the Congressional Reservice Service Congressional Research Service, and it is bipartisan or nonpartisan, although the Republican side is the one are the ones who released this.
Spending on the ten largest federal welfare programs has doubled as a share of the federal budget in the last 30 years.
In inflation adjusted dollars, according to Republican staff on the Senate Budget Committee, the amount spent on these programs has increased 378% in that 30-year time frame.
And Obama's not satisfied.
He wants to expand this even more.
They're reporting that food assistance programs, the third largest welfare category behind health and cash assistance experienced the greatest increase in spending, 71% more spending in 2011 than in 2008.
Food assistance.
Food stamps.
That's why the number of people on food stamps has rocketed all the way up to forty-seven million.
And I'm sure you've seen the ads that the agriculture department runs soliciting people to join the food stamp program.
This is part of a government program designed to expand the role of government, the size of government, to create dependence.
And it puts the lie to this whole thing that Obama said in his closing comments at the debate the other night when he went on and on and on about how he believes in self-reliance and individualism and good careers, high paying jobs, no, he doesn't believe in that at all.
It's the exact opposite.
Have you wondered why, folks, Obama has not proposed any detail of a second term agenda?
He still hasn't.
Wall Street Journal has an editorial about it.
He hasn't proposed a second term agenda at all.
Do you know what he's doing?
They're out there now trying to make a big deal out of binders filled with women.
They really are.
It's the next big bird.
It is laughable.
Biden's out there talking and they're mad about it.
They are acting as though they are outraged and angry, and this is part of the Republican war on women, that women are no different or no better than just being put in a bunch of binders, and they think they can sell this.
Now the the reason that there's no second term agenda being in it is twofold, maybe even three reasons.
One reason is that he would never get elected if he were honest about what his second term is going to be.
But if you think these four years have been bad economically and in the sense of economic destruction and the retransfer or the transformation of the country from a superpower to an also ran, if you think it's been bad in these four years, you have no idea what the next for, and he doesn't dare tell you.
The second reason for not telling you what the agenda is, and this one's a little might be a little tougher to understand.
But by not announcing a second term agenda, Obama and the Democrats in the way they think are establishing a mandate for whatever they do.
What do you mean, Rush?
How in the world can you have a mandate for some you have an even announce?
It doesn't make any sense.
That doesn't make any sense in the in the world of logic you and I inhabit.
But the way Obama, the Democrats look at it, whatever they do in the second term, nobody will be able to claim they lied because they didn't say anything.
So if Obama goes on another government expansionist tear, if he starts raising taxes on the rich and he does everything he can to destroy achievers, destroy success, attack it, and level everybody off, mired in mediocrity.
Well, well, I never lied about this.
I never said I wasn't gonna do this.
That's that's how you get a mandate for doing it.
I never lied about it.
Never said this wasn't gonna happen.
Yeah, but you never said it was gonna happen.
Well, I got elected.
Uh must mean the people want more of what I was doing.
That's it's made the order.
And that's the reason why there's no detail of a second term agenda.
The second term agenda would be devastating to this country.
And believe me, they are salivating at the opportunity to do it.
I hear people, there are people talking, and it's not many, but they're, you know, Rush, Obama doesn't look like he really wants to win this thing.
It doesn't look like his heart's really in it.
That may be the outward appearance, but I I wouldn't count on that at all, folks.
If he really didn't want to lose this, there are better ways to do it than what he's doing.
Maybe not many, but but there are ways he can like not want to detail them, but you can fill in the blanks, not show up at campaign appearances, not spend a bunch of money on ads, there's any number of things.
By the way, all the negative ads are gone.
The negative ads have been pulled off TV.
Obama's firewall keeps narrowing, and it is obvious now, folks, by that debate performance and Biden's debate performance that Obama is relying on only one thing for re-election, and that's base turnout.
I think not only last November did Obama cast aside the votes of white working class Americans.
I think now he's pretty much punted on independents and moderates, and he's just he's now going for base turnout.
Pure and simple.
That's what all the um uh the the talk about women and binders gin up the divide and conquer route.
Divide this country is exactly what he's doing, and it's it's to promote his angry base and to turn them out and to keep them jazzed.
But this these welfare numbers, I I uh there's a the Heritage Foundation today has a has their own piece on this.
If converted to cash means tested welfare spending, and this is the way to look at this, folks.
If converted to cash means tested welfare spending is more than five times the amount needed to eliminate all poverty in the United States.
Let me rephrase that.
At 1.03 million dollars, if every bit of that was straight cash outlays, it would be enough to give everybody below the poverty line in this country enough money to get them out of poverty for one year.
1.03 trillion dollars.
1.03 trillion dollars, yet we have the same percentage of people in poverty today as when the war on poverty began in 1964.
The number 14, 15 percent.
The numbers, the the real numbers are different, but the percentage is the same, 14%.
But with us with an expenditure of a trillion dollars, we can wipe out poverty just for one year.
The point is that even spending 1.03 trillion on welfare, we are not making a dent in poverty.
And so what's the lesson?
The lesson is, as if we needed to learn it, welfare and government spending does not reduce poverty.
Now you and I don't need to have this established.
We know because we've been working on this with government programs since 1964, and poverty is still the same.
So you now have to ask, well, if the war on poverty isn't wiping it out, and if we're spending enough, if all this were actually cash, some of its food stamps, there's there are other benefits that don't involve straight cash, but if it was all converted to cash and divvied up among the people in poverty for one year, they'd be out of it.
So one thing that was another thing we can ascertain is that the objective really is not to lift people out of poverty.
Not after 40 plus years, 50 plus years, not after and again, this spending doesn't include Social Security and Medicare.
You realize the percentage of federal spending, the federal budget that goes to people in exchange for no production of anything.
It's just astounding.
It is literally and it's still not enough for Obama.
It still isn't enough.
He wants more.
He wants to he wants to cut taxes on the only people left.
People earning, people succeeding, people achieving.
It is really convoluted.
This stuff has to stop.
This is what this election's all about saving the country.
Saving the country versus losing it.
We're spending enough every year to see to it that there is no poverty in any year.
I mean, if we, as a society, Agreed in a democratic fashion to spend a trillion dollars a year in cash payments to people in poverty, we could not have poverty.
Every year, if we make that agreement, that's how much we're spending.
We can wipe it out definitionally.
Now we wouldn't be curing the problem because we're not teaching people to be productive.
We're not teaching people to get themselves out of poverty, which is what's been missing.
That's what was so important about the work requirement in welfare reform.
That's now been stripped.
The next time you hear Barack Obama talk about how he lugs, likes self-reliance and he wants to promote it, the exact opposite is true.
Brief timeout, El Rushbo and the EIB network off to a great start, much more straight ahead.
Obama is now taken.
Al Qaeda is on the run out of his stump speech.
It's gone.
We have audio to document it.
We have audio on the women and binders.
We have polling data.
Obama only up one in Wisconsin.
And if you get into the internals, devastating for Obama.
Obama only up one in Ohio, but if you get into the internals, issue by issue, it looks devastating for Obama.
Obama's in New Hampshire, four electoral votes.
Obama's in Iowa.
There was no way the Obama campaign intended to be in New Hampshire on this date.
New Hampshire was supposed to be the done deal.
We also have news that the campaign, it's not been established, but it looks like it has pulled out of North Carolina and Virginia.
Echoing the sentiments here of that polling unit, Suffolk University, that Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida are gone.
They are hopeless for Obama.
Colorado is now in play.
Yes, it is.
Colorado is in play.
A number, Pennsylvania is in play.
Although again, I have two real good friends from Pennsylvania.
One said there's no way I'm all my life I've heard that the Republicans are going to win Pennsylvania gonna happen.
I had another guy who lives in Pennsylvania.
We're getting close.
Look at these polls are getting close.
It's good, it could happen.
So I don't know what to think about Pencil.
Pennsylvania's three states.
If he loses, if he loses Colorado, if he loses, I I still think I still think Ohio, I I I think it's a giant myth that Ohio is owned by Obama.
Anyway, I got to take a break here, folks, because of the uh constraints of the programming format and the clock.
Okay, folks, welcome back.
El Rushbow meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day.
That one trillion dollars.
It's 1.03.
I'm gonna just round it off to one trillion, does not include Social Security or Medicare, and ladies and gentlemen, it does not include any welfare from the states.
The amount of money being spent in this country, federal and state, on welfare, is obscene.
And it is destructive.
It is ultimately not humane.
It is ultimately not helping.
It is not by definition, it isn't helping.
All that money is not reducing the poverty rolls.
All that money is not reducing the welfare roles.
All of that money is not teaching people to be productive.
All that money, we're supposedly a compassionate country.
We are not helping people realize their dreams.
We are suppressing them.
We are not helping people to realize their potential.
We are suppressing it.
We are not.
We are not being compassionate with this.
We're taking the easy way out.
But how easy is it?
Where does that million dollars come from?
That just the federal side.
Where does the million dollars come from?
Taxes.
It comes from the people who are producing.
Now I'm not trying to set up a divide, us versus them.
That's not my point here.
I want to talk about the overall economic impact of this.
That one trillion dollars has to come from somewhere.
And we know that it comes from people who work and it's being borrowed.
From wherever.
Yeah, the ChICOMs get a lot of blame for this, but we borrow from the Japanese too.
And we borrow from a lot of, you know, a lot of people buy U.S. debt.
ChICOMs just happen to buy quite a bit of it.
The point is we don't have the money.
We're taxing people.
And in the process of taxing people, we're taking money away from people who are working.
We're taking money away from people who are productive.
What is the net result of this?
The net result is production declines.
Economic output.
There simply will not be as much.
The private sector is being rated.
We're in the middle of it now.
We wonder why, after all this infusion of capital, the stimulus, why, with all of this aid, all of this federal, why isn't the economy coming back?
It can't with these policies.
It cannot.
It's not economically or mathematically possible.
We are shrinking the private sector where growth takes place.
And it's being done on purpose.
And we now know it is not productive, nor is it humane in any way.
Seriously, folks, this this can't go on.
And in truth, welfare reform has not come up in these debates.
It's not really the whole the whole notion of welfare hasn't come up.
It hasn't been part of the debates.
And I think one of the reasons is the 47% comment.
But you know, every every time that is brought up, there's a there's a comment that Obama made that we haven't used in a long time.
People have forgotten this.
But how about Obama?
You didn't build that.
You didn't make that happen.
I mean, if if they want to say that Romney's vulnerable on his 47% comment, how about Obama and telling the successful people of the world that they didn't do that?
Oh, it's taken out of context.
Everybody knows.
Well, what about Romney?
There's 47%.
There's still some things Romney could do.
Romney, and the next debate's going to be foreign policy, but I am confident that in this next and final debate, Romney's going to get his economic stats in again.
He's going to have to.
He's going to have to detail for people the economic decline and destruction, as he has done brilliantly in both previous debates.
And I I think went back and thinking about it.
I think the debate on uh on Tuesday night was an even bigger Romney slam dunk than I thought the next day.
I I think it was I think he buried Obama.
I I think the recitation and it was unanswered of these economic numbers was striking.
But what Romney needs to do, he says he's got a five-point plan, for example.
He says he's got um his tax plan.
He wants to create more taxpayers, and that creates more revenue.
The one thing Romney doesn't explain, that I know he can explain, he knows it, is how his stuff is going to work.
It's not enough now, just I mean, it's not too late.
It's not too late to get into this, and it really will help.
But I think explaining how his ideas implement, how they work, wouldn't take much time.
We do it here every day.
It's just called explaining conservatism or explaining basic basic economics, such as this trillion dollars of welfare, federal alone, again, has to come from somewhere.
Just like the stimulus bill.
The stimulus spending, let's call that a trillion dollars, because by the time it was all added up, that's what it was.
Where'd that come from?
There wasn't a trillion dollars in profit someplace.
That was the result of earnings and production.
There wasn't a trillion dollars in a stash sitting around not being used.
That trillion dollars had to come from the trillion dollars came from the private sector or from borrowing.
We didn't have it.
Well, let's say this came for the private sector.
Fine.
Trillion dollars, that's where it was put, right?
That's right.
We're gonna we're gonna jumpstart the economy.
We're gonna inject a trillion dollars.
Stimulus spending.
We didn't inject anything.
Because you first have to take the money out of the private sector before you put it back in.
It was a net wash, it's a net zero.
That's just one reason it didn't work.
Now this trillion dollars of welfare spending, where does that come from?
It comes from, and I'm again, I'm not trying to create a divide here, us versus them.
This this is strictly economics.
the one trillion dollars comes from private sector, tax revenue, people who produce.
And if that money is going to continue to be levied on people, the private sector where that money comes from, by definition is going to shrink.
It's what's happening.
It's why there are so many millions out of work.
It is why the unemployment rate is actually 14.
It is why the labor force participation rate is so low.
It is actually already happening.
We've no longer we've gotten past the point of predicting what'll happen with certain economic policies.
Now we're living it.
Thanks to Obama.
Obama is crossing the T's and dotting the I's on 50 years of liberalism and FDR New Dealism.
It's way which finally arrived now.
You cannot take a trillion dollars and spread it around where it's not going to produce anything, or it isn't going to generate anything, or it's not going to contribute to growth without reducing growth, reducing productivity.
And when that happens, everybody's standards of living declines.
And that is what is happening.
We're in the midst of it.
And that's why the election is so crucial.
We have to put the brakes on this.
That's the first thing that has to happen.
We have to stop this direction before we can turn it around.
And that's what this election's about.
It's crucial.
We've got decades now of evidence that this does not work.
And this release today, put in the proper context, that this amount of money converted to cash could wipe out poverty every year.
What more do you need?
And we don't.
We have we're we're spending it.
We are spent, we're not reducing poverty by a percentage point at all.
People in poverty are growing.
One in six Americans are now in poverty.
The number of people who've given up looking for work is increasing.
The unemployment number this week, 388,000 new claims.
There is not a single reason to perpetuate the status quo.
There's not a single reason to endorse this and vote for more of it.
All we're doing if we do that is securing our demise.
And we're going to complete the transformation of this country from great superpower to just an average round-of-the-mill country in the world.
Now it was something fascinating that came up the other night in the debate, and I wanted to mention it yesterday, and I didn't get to it.
Candy Crowley brought up the Apple example and manufacturing.
And the example was that not one Apple product is made in America, and yet they're the number one, the largest company in the country.
They sell gazillions of products, and not one of them is manufactured in the United States.
And of course, the hand wringing and oh Lord, what can we do?
Can we bring that back?
Oh my God.
There's a simple reality.
The last time Apple products were really manufactured in this country, you've got to go back to when John Scully ran the company.
What are we talking about?
The early 90s, the mid-900 Apple had two factories, and they could stamp out a million Macs a day computers.
There was no iPhone at this point in time, just the Macintosh.
Had two factories.
One was in California, I think Fremont, if I'm not mistaken, somewhere in California.
The other was Cork, Ireland.
But the iPhone, the iPod, the current iteration of the IMAC, all the Macintosh line of computers, the iPad, have never been made in America.
Those are not jobs lost.
Those are not manufacturing jobs that have somehow been squandered and lost.
Those products have never been made here.
However, they wouldn't exist without American ingenuity.
All of the industrial design, all of the software engineering, many of the components for the various products, all of them are designed here.
Every damn one of them is designed here.
Many of the components inside, the chips and a number made here.
The look at if you want to go ancillary, okay.
So Apple sold five million iPhones in the first weekend that it was on sale.
And everybody rings their hand, oh none of our manufactured in America.
We've lost our manufacturing business.
No, no, the iPhone was never made here.
But what did it take to get those iPhones in everybody's hands?
It took airplanes, FedEx, an American company.
Apple buys out FedEx roots for weeks leading up to the release of a product.
Then once the once the iPhones got here, where'd they go?
They went to Apple stores, they went to carrier stores, they went to individuals' homes, they had to be delivered by somebody.
UPS delivered some, FedEx delivered some, people go and pick themselves up.
The Apple store has its own employees.
The number of jobs that Apple creates or facilitates, despite the fact that their products are manufactured or assembled, I should say, in China, would astound people if they ever stopped and looked at it.
There are plenty of jobs in this country that are being filled and that are necessary because of Apple, even though their products are manufactured.
And by the way, I'm not speaking to you as an Apple fanboy.
I'm speaking to you once again in strictly economic terms.
Apple is not a drag on the U.S. economy, even though those products are not manufactured here.
Those are jobs that are never going to come back.
Have you ever stopped to think of the iPhone 5 right now, they can't make enough.
They are selling every iPhone they make.
They have the fastest rollout, international rollout of a product ever.
The iPhone is on sale in more countries than any phone at this stage of its release date from its release date stage as any product they've ever had.
They simply can't make enough.
And one of the reasons is, I don't think Apple was prepared to be, number one, frankly.
I can't get my arms around their manufacturing.
Their phones, their pro their computers, the iPads, the iPhones, the iPods, all these are made by one company called Han High Precision and FoxCon, and they've got factories all over China.
Factories that employ 300,000 people, a total number of employees of the manufacturing firm is over one million.
It takes five days to make an iPad.
I read.
Five days, manual labor, five days.
I don't know what it is for an iPhone.
One of the reasons the manufacturer says the iPhone's late or tough to get is because its design is so intricate.
It just takes a long time to put one of these things together.
And it is really hard because it's so miniaturized.
It's so technically advanced.
Those, I'm sorry, for the the way manufacturing and unions are in this country, those jobs would never exist here.
Nobody could afford an iPhone manufactured in this country.
But just as an aside, I I'm not capable of understanding how it's done anyway.
I don't know how a million people spread out over factories throughout China, there's even a couple in Brazil now, turn these things out in the quantity they do.
All handmade.
Now the the components are not handmade, some of those are precision made, but the assembly is all done by hand and the volume, the number of devices, and they've got a new miniature iPod or pad that they're going to be announcing in a week, and they're not going to have enough of those.
I frankly don't know how they get all these things made.
I'd I can't Conceive it.
I'd have to go to China, see one of these factories, see how it's done.
I can't conceive it.
But that's just an aside.
The bottom line is that those jobs were never here.
We didn't lose those jobs.
And the jobs that there are that are related to all those products are real and they are American jobs.
And the intellectual content, the stuff that makes those iPhones valuable is all made and designed here.
I gotta take a timeout here.
I'm a little long in this busy broadcast segment.
You sit tight.
We're coming back right after this.
Don't go away.
I don't know where to stop and talk about Apple.
Look at the people that make accessories for all their products, the cases, the external batteries, the charges.
It's just it it's it it really represents total economic ignorance to sit here, wring your hands and worry about the fact that the iPhone, the iPad, whatever is not made in the United States.
The economic activity associated with the with the assembly of those products, or whatever the Chicoms is in well, you could calculate it, but it would stun you.
Now, ladies, I want to ask you a question.
I know that you, the ladies, the women in this audience, you're informed and you're educated.
You are knowledgeable.
Some of you work, some of you are mothers, some of your wives, some of you are all of those.
You know that this nation is on the brink of disaster.
You know that this we're no longer predicting what will happen with X number of years of liberalism.
We are living it.
We are beyond the tipping point.
We are in the middle of it.
Today's welfare numbers prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
You know this.
You know, along with everybody else, that we're on the brink of disaster.
You are fully aware of the seriousness of our economic situation and our overall circumstance as a nation.
Not only do the people in the country who can find jobs, but also the economic impacts on our place in the world, how that affects our safety.
You know all this.
You are fully, you women in this audience, are fully aware of all of this.
And I'd love to know.
Because the women in this audience are as involved as the men, they are as up to speed, they are as knowledgeable, they are as passionate.
You know you are.
Maybe in some cases more so.
And I'd like to know what it feels like to be insulted every day by the president of the United States and his minions in the media.
The insult today is a small comment made by Mitt Romney to illustrate how eager he was to find qualified women when he was Governor of Massachusetts, has been blown up into a comment that they're trying to make you believe makes Romney a sexist.
This binder comment that he made, and now how the president and the vice president and the media are now running with this.
NBC News, nightly news, and the Today Show today, had a story, Romney's binder's comment shows he doesn't have any leg to stand on with women.
I'd like to know from you, what is it like to be this insulted every day?
The president of our country and the major media in this country every day insult you by telling you things that you apparently don't know, but what Republicans want to do to you and how they look at you and the things they want to make you do, and you're no different than just a loose leaf binder.
What's it like to be routinely insulted like this?
What's it like to be targeted in a way that makes you feel like they think you don't even have a brain?
And then to hear that these people, the ones who are insulting your intelligence, are the ones who really are looking out for you.
What is it like to have to put up with the infantile wording from the president of the media every day during this campaign?
The fastest three hours in media, as proof, the first one's over.
It just started.
But don't sweat it, folks.
We're back doing it all over again in mere moments.
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