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Nov. 20, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:56
November 20, 2012, Tuesday, Hour #2
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The views expressed by the host on this program make more sense than anything anybody else out there happens to be saying because the views expressed by the host on this program are rooted in a daily relentless, unstoppable pursuit of the truth.
Great to have you here, folks.
Telephone number.
If you want to be on the program, 800-28282, the email address L Rushbow at EIB net.com.
Okay, the the uh the fiscal cliff, the budget deal to save the nation and all this stuff.
I don't think it's very complicated.
Um where we're headed is very obvious.
What we have to do to fix it is very obvious.
And what's also very obvious is that nobody wants to actually deal with it.
They want to paper it over, cosmetically approach it, kick the can down the road for as long as they can with band-aids.
But the problem is very simple.
We are spending way much more money, combination spending and borrowing than we have than we are producing.
It's not even close.
It's utterly irresponsibility or irresponsible what has happened to this country.
And we are on a path of financial collapse.
We're on the path to financial ruin.
We have spending commitments that we cannot possibly pay for, no matter what we do.
There is no amount of money that can be raised via tax increases that does not destroy the economy that can solve the problem.
There simply isn't.
You can't raise taxes on people enough to fix this and still leave people with enough disposable income to live.
You just can't.
At which point Obama says that's okay with me.
I'll print more money, I'll borrow more money from the ChICOMs or whatever.
I'll be glad to provide people with a subsistence as long as they realize it's coming from me.
I'll be happy to be Santa Claus.
In fact, if you're Obama, you think the country deserves this because you think the country's been unjust and immoral from its founding days.
If you're Obama, you believe, you've been taught, that the country was founded by and for a small bunch of rich white guys, and that they have maintained control over the country for ever, ever since it was founded.
And that in order to get rich, they stole from everybody, stole from minorities in this country, they stole from poor countries around the world, they did all kinds of things, and it's time we pay the piper if you're Obama.
So all this chaos is fine.
If you're anti-capitalist, which Obama is, it's much easier to attack capitalism when you've driven the unemployment rate up to eight, nine, ten percent.
You got real pain.
Uh people can't find jobs, which means they can't find income, which means they can't support themselves, which means they can't live.
That situation is made the order for you.
You come in as Santa Claus, whatever you want to call it, and you make sure that the circumstances that exist are not that painful for people who don't have jobs.
And while you do this, you illustrate guess where your real security is.
It's not in your life.
It's not with your hard work.
Your real security and not in prosperity does not reside in you.
It's with your government.
Your government is here to save the day for you, right?
When you get in trouble, is it Mitt Romney helping you out?
Is it Rush Lindball helping you out, or is it your government led by me?
What's not stated is that you need your government's help because this administration has with policies created this circumstance where even if you want to work, there aren't any jobs.
You've seen the layoffs that are taking place, they continue.
Have you seen the unions?
The unions are not promising to disrupt Walmart, LAX, Hostess Twinkie, wherever.
They won the election and they're madder than ever.
They won the election and they're angrier than ever.
They won the election and they're still not satisfied.
They are still targeting the private sector institutions of this country that they claim have been unjust and unfair.
They're on the march.
There's no stopping them.
Rand Paul, Kentucky.
One of his stated planks, liberalizing marijuana laws.
Well, that's a way to go get the young people.
And maybe relax the border and immigration.
Well, so we're going to adopt some people want to, and not just him, by the way.
I mean, the whole Republican Party right now seems oriented toward getting in on this giveaway game.
But the game exists because policies created by actual politicians over the years have led us to where we are.
And quite simply, the rich do not have enough money to tax them and fix the problem.
In fact, you can take everything the rich have.
Let's say leave them $100,000, just to be fair.
Don't care how much this take it all.
You know how long you can run the government?
Maybe, maybe at the outside six weeks.
But you see, you can only do that once.
You take away Warren Buffett's forty billion dollars.
He's not going to have 40 billion new dollars next year to take away.
It's gone.
So that's clearly not the answer.
But the politics of that is an interesting bit of data here that has been put out by a group called Just Facts Daily.
And uh guy sent my brother this news, he passed it on to me on the website, just Facts Daily, and they're a uh I don't know exactly what they do, but they did some pre-election polling.
And one of the polls that they commissioned pre-election found the following 90% of people who were planning on voting for O believe that the middle class pays a higher federal tax rate than the upper 1% of earners.
Now, we're not talking about dollars.
We're talking rates.
You talk about losing an issue and losing an argument.
And we know exactly how this happened.
The Buffett rule.
You got Warren Buffett running around lamenting this BS that his secretary pays a higher tax rate than he does, and how unjust and unfair and immoral that is.
And then Obama cites it every day for two years.
And then you get the old reliable Bill Gates saying something similar.
And then you have a bunch of other rich guys chime in, say the same thing.
And it's not long, doesn't take long before people actually start believing that the rich are paying a lower tax rate.
Never mind the fact that the top 1% of tax earners, taxpayers, pays 40% of all federal income taxes, and climbing.
Top one percent pays 40% of everything.
The top 10% pay close to 80% of everything.
The bottom 50% pay nothing.
And the federal income tax burn.
And yet, Obama and the Democrats have succeeded in convincing 90% of the people who voted for him that the middle class are paying a higher tax rate, a percentage than the rich.
Of course, even if it were true, it's irrelevant, but it isn't true.
What it ends up really meaning to people, the middle class are paying for these rich guys.
The rich guys aren't paying anything.
That's how it manifests itself.
And when you have a president Willing to exploit this in the class envy arena, then you get an election return like we got, and you have a call for even more taxes on the rich because they still aren't paying their fair share, which Obama is actually saying.
The fact of the matter is there are fewer and fewer taxpayers in this country.
Fewer and fewer people are actually paying for whatever spending is taking place.
Fewer, the burden of this government, the burden of this nation is falling on fewer and fewer people.
And those are the people who work.
So any budget deal that calls for further tax increases on these people, sorry, like I told you I got a note earlier today.
And one of these political early morning stories where they bullet point things are going to be happening today or did happen yesterday, the agenda type stories, hotline kind of stuff.
Friend of mine sends me a note that says, look, Russia, give me some pressure brought to bear here to drive a wedge between you and Grover Norquist.
Grover Norquist, Americans for tax reform has this anti-tax increase pledge that he requires every Republican to sign, or he pressures them to sign, and many do.
And they're hoping.
They, the proverbial media Democrat complex, is hoping that I will come along and echo Bill Kristol and say, hey, you know what?
I think everybody needs to pitch.
And I think a rich shouldn't complain about a couple three additional percentage points on their and in the process, they're hoping that I can undercut Grover Norquist.
I I don't know what they're thinking or I I steadfastly oppose tax increases on just one group of Americans.
If we're going to raise taxes, we're going to do it on everybody.
That to me is fairness.
But I don't think anybody's taxes ought to be raised.
Because I'll tell you, I'm offended.
I'm offended listening to the people who are responsible for this.
Blame the American people because they're not paying enough in taxes for the problem.
That's not our problem.
Our problem is a spending problem.
First, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth on down to number 10.
We are in this mess because of a unchecked, irresponsible, undisciplined spending problem.
Now, some people might say, but Rush.
Yes, these politicians are spending, but they're spending on what people want.
And yes, which is why I said after the election, it's tough to beat Santa Claus.
So you might say, okay, some of the tax consumers are also responsible for the mess.
But I'm just gonna what we have a problem that is this egregious, this potentially destructive.
It insults my sensibilities and my intelligence to hear that the people responsible for this are taxpayers who aren't paying enough.
I don't know about you, but I don't have any control over what is spent in this country.
Zilch Zero Nada.
All I can tell you is that a bunch of irresponsible people for years and decades have been spending far more than we have.
They've been spending like it doesn't matter, and that has caused this problem.
And there's no amount.
There's no amount of revenue increasing, no amount of revenue enhancement, no amount of revenue increases that is gonna make a dent in this.
The people who want to raise taxes want to do so because they want to take away wealth, more wealth from more people and transfer it to the government.
They are only interested in the government getting bigger.
They are not interested in real revenue creation.
Raising taxes is not the way to do it, particularly in this economy.
Raising taxes is going to Lower the amount of revenue created and generated by Washington or to Washington because it's going to result in even fewer people working, which means fewer people paying taxes, whatever their income tax rate is.
Mathematics is mathematics.
The more people paying taxes, the more revenue will go to Washington.
And the people who claim that's what they want, revenue in Washington, then ought to be oriented primarily around creating jobs quickly and expansively.
The fastest way to generate revenue in Washington is create jobs, more taxpayers paying more taxes.
Not higher taxes, just more people paying taxes.
On the same token, the more people who lose their jobs, ergo, more people who are not working.
And if they're not working, they're not earning money.
And if they're not earning money, they're not paying taxes.
Now I'm walking you through this because everybody said Mitt did not explain what he meant when he was talking about.
I'm I'm doing it from the rudimentary level.
The Obama plan that's being worked on now is going to result in fewer taxpayers.
It's going to result in more unemployment.
More unemployment equals fewer taxpayers equals less revenue to Washington.
But the rich are going to have their taxes raised, so the rich are going to have money taken away from them.
It isn't going to make a dent in the deficit or the national debt or the spending projections.
All it's going to do is penalize the rich because they're the ones that happen to have the money now.
But it isn't.
It isn't going to even take a baby step towards solving the problem.
And it won't be solved, and there will not be any serious steps taken to solve this problem unless the first thing everybody's talking about is cutting spending.
And I don't care where.
There is not a way of doing this that is painless.
And the Democrats have created this impression in their voters'minds that it can be painless.
And the only people that will cause economic hardship or pain are the Republicans.
But there is not, given where we are now, there is no way to escape hardship if we fix the problem.
If we don't fix it, if we just paper it over with all this silly talk about raising taxes on the rich, we're just kicking the can down the road.
The problem explodes later.
It gets worse and worse.
No new jobs are created.
Nothing like this happens.
There isn't any newfound security.
We just delay the inevitable.
And then you get to the real moment of spending cuts.
Well, when you start cutting spending in this country, when you realize that over half the American people get a government check of some kind every week, yep, some people are going to end up with less money.
Maybe unemployment, but I don't know what.
But it's not going to be pretty.
And there will be protests.
And there will be riots.
And that's what everybody wants to avoid.
Create a picture where this need not happen.
It doesn't have to happen.
If we just raise taxes on the rich, everything will be okay.
And it won't be.
Take a break.
Sit tight.
We're coming back with much more after this.
Don't go away.
And we are back.
Great to have you here to the phones.
We go back to Wilmington, Delaware.
This is Eric.
I'm glad you waited, sir.
Great to have you on the EIB Network.
Thank you, Rush.
I hope you're having a good day and a good Thanksgiving coming up.
Yeah, thank you very much, sir.
Same to you.
Um the reason why I'm calling you is during the election.
Um family tax increase because of a bogus.
Or one of his um cronies come out with a study saying that Ronnie would have to do that to get the five trillion dollars.
Um the um Republicans need to come out with a same study or some crony to uh come out with a plan saying that they need to raise taxes.
Well, not they'll call taxes called a surcharge for health care for the 18 to 30 something, single women, the illegals on video games, on um Starbucks, on the places that they use, and they spend their money because uh you look at people, they're enjoying their lives, they have iPhones, they have everything.
It looks like nothing is really hurting anybody around.
They have the money to pay pay for all that.
So that's the pregnancy team.
Also on the internet.
They should have a um a surcharge for the Internet.
Because these people use that.
That's the new way they get around and get things, and they and they're enjoying their lives and things are going on.
And that's why they voted for Obama.
He's got them free stuff and to pay for it.
They have to do these things.
See, this is an interesting.
What?
Um it is it is an interesting point, but I I have to take a break.
Thanks, Eric, for the call.
We'll be right back, folks.
Don't go away.
Don't go away.
And we're back.
El Rushbow, half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
Eric and Wilmington, uh, Wilmington, Delaware.
I gather what he was saying, and and there is how many of you have observed, and we've got this dire economy, and there's no question that it is.
We have unemployment that is horrible.
We have underemployment.
We've got people whose home values are underwater.
People being laid off, businesses are downsizing, preparing for Obamacare.
His point is that there's a whole group of people out there just casually living their lives as though we are in the midst of the average American prosperity that you and I have all known that they're not feeling any pain at all.
They got their iPhones and they got their internet surfing and that they're watching YouTube and they're doing whatever they do, and they're not feeling any pain whatsoever.
He's he's saying that uh apparently some people aren't paying any taxes at all.
His idea was tax the ac primarily talking about young people, too.
He said, get them in the game, tax some of the activities that they engage in so that they have some way of understanding what's going on, because he's running around seeing a bunch of people, probably voting for Obama who think everything's cool because they're not feeling any pain.
So he wants to transfer some pain via taxes on some of these people.
Um it's an interesting point.
Um he thinks the internet ought to be taxed.
If it were I read these tech blogs, and they're all liberals there.
But the moment taxing the internet comes up, they start having cows.
They start screeching bloody murder.
Sales tax stuff bought on the internet, they go bonkers.
They lose it.
The internet ought to be the essence of freedom.
There ought to be no controls, no nothing, except they like net neutrality because they don't understand what it is.
Um but it is true.
It you you can you can go through the day and you can see some people who, while you hear about and maybe are living this slowdown economy, recession economy, you see people who aren't affected by it, and you just assume, well, they're earning enough money that it doesn't matter what taxes are, that they can still live their lives without it.
His point is that maybe they're not being taxed.
And depending on where they live, that could be the case.
You know, most of the tax burden in the country is at the state and local level.
The federal I'm not talking about the amount, but you you've got property, sales, gas, all these are state taxes, all these are local taxes.
And by the way, if you look, folks, if you look at the 2012 election returns and throw out the presidential race, the Republicans cleaned up in a 2010 way in state legislatures and governorships.
It's the most astounding thing when you look at the maps, the red and blue maps at state legislatures and governorships.
They're all red.
Very few blue.
They're all I mean, there were a couple of Democrat pickups, Colorado and uh uh in legislatures in Nevada, I believe, but a lot of places went red.
Not talked about much.
There's some people starting to uh cipher through this and and publish the maps and so forth.
But there was a 2010 turnout at the local and state level in many places, not everywhere, but in many places.
So, and I think one of why are Republican governors winning?
Why are Republican legislators being seated in greater numbers while Obama wins the White House?
And if you take a look at some of these states, you'll see unemployment below the national average.
You'll see other taxation lower than the national average.
Um there may be some things that uh that can be learned here.
But on this on this tax business, I've I um I I think we're beyond the semantics of this now.
I mean, we're uh that the time to make semantic points.
Uh the election is over.
And and it's it's uh now we got a real world circumstance here.
We've got like it's predictable as the Sunday, here's Bernanke, a Fed Reserve chairman.
If they don't get a deal, I don't know, we might go in different sections.
It's the same old bogus modus operandi, same old panic, the same old oh, woe as us.
Except and it is true, except that there is this singular solution, raise taxes on the rich.
That's the singular objective that everybody has.
And I'm telling you, it isn't gonna matter a heel of beans.
All it's gonna do is further expand the government and weaken the private sector.
It's gonna weaken hiring, it's gonna weaken job creation, it is gonna weaken the opportunity, create wealth in the private sector.
That's that, and that's the design of it.
What I'm telling you is that the damage to the private sector is still underway.
The assault on capitalism and the private sector is still underway.
They are not through.
Take a look at the unions and the activities they they're they're uh amassing against Walmart.
They're amassing LAX, trying to shut down travel on uh on Thanksgiving, shopping on Thanksgiving.
And you might ask, well, what are they mad at?
They won the election.
They're never happy, folks.
The left never, no matter what they win, and no matter what you give them, it's never enough.
That's why I've always been opposed to compromise with them.
There is no compromising with them.
There's no point where they're ever happy.
And by the same token, you know, all this this this silly talk now from the Republicans.
Well, we're gonna change the way we view Hispanics and the immigration issue.
Right, right.
The Democrats, the Democrats are gonna give us some of their voters, right?
They're just gonna sit idly by and watch us change our policy on immigration, and magically, some of these immigrants are gonna vote Republican when they get here because of what the Republicans' verbiage changes will be.
It's silly to think that this is the way to expand our voter base to be Democrat light.
And but the idea that the Democrats and the Democrats, you know, they're out there, you know, you Republicans.
You are so mean spirited and cold-hearted, you're going to have to change your ways with Hispanics.
Oh, really?
You want us to improve with Hispanics, right?
You you Democrats really want to help us improve with all these groups that are voting for you.
Is that right?
It's bogus.
They have no intention.
Because here's the bottom line.
The Democrats can always and will always find an extreme position to take that the Republicans will eventually draw the line, say, sorry, we can't go there.
And that will enable the Democrats to once again say, see, they're anti-Hispanics, see they're anti-Latinos, see their anti-immigration.
There is not one social issue that we can Take away from let's let's look at abortion.
I give you just an example of board.
Let's say at the Republican powers at B think, you know what?
The single women vote.
We uh we're gonna have to relax our views on uh contraceptives and abortion.
We have to do it very publicly.
So a bunch of Republicans go out and start saying this.
However they say it, they try to convey that they are moderating, and they can understand why it might make sense for the federal government to demand that employers provide birth control pills.
Yeah, we can see where this might be done.
So the Democrats, you think they're just gonna let us run in and take over that voting segment?
They'll come up with some new idea on contraception, or some new idea on abortion, like making partial birth abortion as legal as any other abortion.
Something, they'll come up with something that we will say, sorry, we can't support that, and then the claims start anew.
Anti-woman, anti-Hispanic, anti-immigration.
My point is that the Republicans are never going to succeed in having the Democrats and the media stop characterizing them the way they are characterized now.
There is nothing the Republicans can do to stop the Democrats and the media from calling us racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe.
There's nothing.
They're going to do it no matter what.
Look at this polling data.
90% of voters believe that the middle class pay a higher tax rate than the rich.
Why do they believe it?
Because Warren Buffett went out and told how crazy it was that he pays a smaller rate, lower rate than his secretary.
That's all it took.
Obama amplifying it.
Uh so my point is ultimately that the Republicans are worried about what is said about them.
And they're trying to come up with policy changes that will stop people from saying these things about them.
Because it is people saying these things that causes others to believe them and think them.
So the Republicans think we got to stop them saying this about us.
And so we'll relax what we say about abortion, and we'll relax what we say about contraception and immigration, and then the Democrats will stop saying these horrible things.
No, they won't.
So winning these voters is going to be much more than semantics.
Winning those voters, if that's what the Republicans want to do, they want to peel off some of the Hispanic voting bloc and some of the single women under 30.
They're not going to be able to do it by going on TV and say, criticizing me or others that they think are too strident.
They're not going to be able to do it by going on TV and saying we need to moderate our tone.
We need to moderate our views.
And they're not going to be able to do it by proposing legislation.
Ronald Reagan, re-elected, landslide.
37% of the Hispanic vote.
Two years later, Reagan signs amnesty, Simpson Mazzoli, 1986.
Two more years, 1988, two years after signing amnesty to get the Hispanic vote.
George Bush runs for re-election as a Republican as an open borders guy, got 30% of the Hispanic vote.
We lost Hispanic votes after being the impetus for amnesty.
How does that work?
Why didn't we just show all those Hispanics we want them here?
Why we we granted them all amnesty?
Why didn't they all vote for us?
Not only did they not all vote for us, fewer of them voted for us after amnesty than before.
Why?
Well, go back to what the Democrats were saying.
And they were saying that even after amnesty, the Republicans really didn't mean it, that it was just a token move, that they're still anti-immigrant, they're still racist, sexist, all of this stuff.
You cannot, as a Republican or conservative, adopt liberal policy or liberal light policy and peel off some of their voters.
You're gonna have to get to these people before they become Democrat voters, or we're gonna have to come up with ways to peel them off using other tactics.
Now I know what the other tactic is.
And it's something the Republican Party is reticent to use.
It's called conservatism.
And for some reason, they don't like it.
You know the Republican Party.
Since Ronald Reagan has nominated one candidate who was pro-Reagan since 1980.
You know who it was?
McCain.
Every Republican nominated since Reagan was not a Reaganite.
Did not espouse Reaganism, distanced themselves from Reagan, in fact.
Kinder, gentler America.
Compassionate conservatism.
McCain was the only genuine Reaganite, but he had other problems.
But conservatism is the answer to this.
It always has been.
It's not liberalism light.
It's not sounding like them.
It's not uh acting like them.
It's not doing what they tell us we should do.
I gotta take a break.
I'm way long.
We'll be back after this.
Don't go away.
Back to Eric in Wilmington, Delaware.
Let's say the Republicans enact his idea.
We are going to raise taxes on iPhone consumption, smartphone consumption.
We're going to raise taxes on the internet.
We're going to implement them.
We're going to raise taxes on uh marijuana.
We're going to raise what.
The fur would fly.
And do you know what the media would say?
The media would say Republicans raising taxes on the backs of the poor and middle class who've already been creamed by the Bush economy.
All this guy was doing was talking about spreading the burden.
Hey, let's spread the tax burden out a little bit.
And a lot of people agree with that.
But you try it, and the media might the media is always going to say these things, and the Democrats always gonna say these things.
And until the Republicans come up with a way around or not caring about it, are coming up with ways to refute it by way of policy, not other words, then there's they're always gonna be in this in this fix.
Here's uh here's Matt in Houston.
Matt, welcome, sir, to the EIB network.
Hello.
Hi, Rush, mega red state ditto from deep in Sheila Jackson Lee's district.
Um I'm a uh excise tax, the fuel tax, and sales tax expert in the oil and gas business, and there's a uh direct correlation between the sophistication of a state's tax code and how dysfunctional a state's budget is, and in particular Illinois, New York, and California, and Illinois to borrow a movie, the Blues Brothers, the Cook County tax collector.
Um, where is our president from?
Cook County.
And so I think uh probably something that maybe your listeners probably haven't thought about is is the paradigm that he comes from in that they just tax anything that moves.
And so he's trying to basically take that tax philosophy of Cook County, Illinois, and just spread it across the United States.
Right.
And also, yeah, and also I kind of I think there might be kind of a subliminal uh, I don't know, maybe a new Marxism going on through the tax code, controlling consumption, controlling behavior through taxation.
And it's it's it's just it's incredulous.
They're gonna use health care for that.
Okay.
Health care, health care death panels, uh, health care taxes, the actually the uh the apportionment of actual health care, not coverage or insurance, but but they will control behavior by virtue of who gets health care and who uh pays what for insurance and all that.
But anyway, I'm gonna take a break here.
I'm sorry for the for the for the uh lack of time you had, Matt, but I'm pretty sure I'm glad you called.
We'll be back, folks.
See, now don't get mad at me.
I go longer than I should in some of these segments, which time is time, money's money.
It makes the next segment shorter.
You're not, we're not adding commercials.
We're we're we're it's just my lack of discipline with the programming format.
That's all it is.
Just to illustrate, just to illustrate what I'm talking, how the Republicans can never make inroads against the Democrats doing what the Democrats do.
I'm gonna take you back to something that we learned yesterday that I still, on day two, I am stunned and shocked that this is not being discussed.
Actually, I'm not.
I'll explain.
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