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Nov. 29, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
35:29
November 29, 2012, Thursday, Hour #2
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And greetings once again, ladies and gentlemen, great to have you here.
It's El Rushbow, the all-knowing, all-caring, all-sensing, all-feeling, all-concerned, maha Rushi, here at the one and only excellence in broadcasting network of the distinguished and prestigious Limbo Institute for advanced conservative studies.
The telephone number if you want to be on the program, 800-282-2882, the email address LRushbow at EIBnet.com.
In the first busy broadcast hour, I laid out the case for wanting Obama to succeed.
I laid out the case.
I made the case, I thought, rather well, that I don't believe that Obama is concerned about a legacy in the way it is being said.
He's concerned about a legacy.
I hope he succeeds.
My point is, look, I don't want to repeat the first hour, and I know most of you heard it, but my basic point is that I just hear everybody say that the Republicans have leverage because Obama doesn't want a second recession in his second term because that would not lead to a positive legacy.
And I need somebody to explain to me why Obama cares about not having a recession in his second term.
If his objective is totally transform this country, and he's in the middle of successfully doing that, why be worried about something like a recession when a recession will further advance the transformation of the country?
He wants a redistributionist welfare state.
He wants a government continuing to grow.
If we go into a recession, what are people going to call for?
More government spending to get us out of.
A recession is made to order.
He has a legacy.
Yeah, he has a legacy concern.
He wants to be written about in the future.
He's a great socialist, a guy who finally, finally corralled the United States and defeated the entire capitalist structure and turned it into a burgeoning Western European socialist democracy, some such thing as that.
Can somebody show any evidence that Obama cares about growth in the same sense that you and I do?
Private sector economic growth?
Don't tell me what he says.
What has he done?
Where's the evidence?
It's just the opposite.
He wants government growing.
And so the only leverage the Republicans have is to walk away and let Obama own whatever's going to happen.
And if, find out if I'm wrong, if Obama believes, if the analysts are correct that Obama does not want a second-term recession, that he's very concerned about his legacy in that regard, then he won't drive this country over the cliff.
Because the cliff, I believe, is his agenda.
The cliff's already written.
The agenda is already written.
This whole second term agenda going over to Cliff, it's already on the books.
It's going to happen.
All that has to happen for that to happen is for nobody to do anything.
So if that's, I'm just saying that if the analysts are right and Obama's worried about a legacy and he does not want a recession in the second term, he does not want renewed unemployment, then stop talking to him.
Let him own the disaster that is going over the cliff and find out if that's indeed what he wants.
Now, if you don't like that, I have some other alternatives.
If you would rather see the Republicans stay at the negotiating table, if you'd rather see the Republicans hanging there trying to put together a deal, I have some ideas for the Republicans.
One of the ideas I have would be to tie all federal pensions to any income tax increase, specifically eliminate federal pens.
My point is, why should we have our taxes raised so that federal employees' pensions are fully funded and not threatened?
We are the ones paying these people.
Why are their incomes and why are their pensions so much more important than ours?
If we're really serious about this, call a press conference, inform America that while the Republicans may have lost the election, they're still going to try to win the hearts of all Americans who don't have pensions.
They're going to be for fairness.
Give people something to cheer for.
Give Obama something else to talk about while selling his plan to America.
Congress right now is one of the most hated institutions in the country.
Polling data shows that.
If the Republicans are really interested in getting a little love from the voters, insist that in this financial crisis, all federal pensions are dropped cold.
There is no reason for the taxpayers of this country to be experiencing the destruction they're already experiencing and then be told they have to pay even more taxes so that federal employees' pensions are protected and that federal employees' wages are protected.
No, I'm not trying to create a war.
I'm trying to create some negotiating points.
You're trying to win the hearts and minds of the American people here.
I thought the Democrats want love from the American people by demanding higher taxes and by demanding more of our private property to solve their budget problems, they can go screw themselves as far as I'm concerned.
Because this budget deal, this fiscal cliff stuff, all that's being talked about here is our private property.
And if we're not careful, what's going to end up here is we are going to have less of it again.
And where's it going to go?
Our private property in the form of tax increases is going to end up being redistributed in the form of Santa Claus gifts to people that vote for Democrats.
It's going to be redistributed to people to maintain their pensions and their wages.
All the while we in the private sector are being blamed for the problem.
And we're not responsible for the problem.
Under taxation is not a problem.
This is strictly a spending problem.
This debt problem is strictly due to federal spending.
Now, there are some groups of people who have some culpability.
They demand the spending because they know that leads to their goodies.
I'm not saying every American's innocent in this.
Don't misunderstand.
But if our social security is going down the drain, then so should federal employee pensions.
Isn't Social Security out there on the brink of going over to Cliff itself and Medicare, Medicaid, all these entitlements?
And we're here to Democrats.
Nope, nope, nope, not going to talk about that.
Well, not talking about it puts it all at risk down the road.
You want to go after rich people?
Go after yourselves, Democrats.
Start with your own perks.
Show us you've got some skin in the game instead of blaming everybody else.
How gutless is it to blame the taxpayers?
How gutless is it to blame the people who are still working in this country?
How gutless is it to blame them for the problems that exist in this country?
And to say they're still not paying their fair share.
The people working have to pay even more in order to cover the incompetent errors committed by the spenders over all these years.
I'm giving you an option.
If you're going to negotiate, negotiate this way.
You're really going to take it to Obama?
Take it to Obama.
He keeps telling us that we can afford any damn tax cut he dreams up.
Sky's the limit.
He can afford it too.
He keeps, he and the Clintons, hey, I don't care.
People like me, we ought not be complaining about it.
Yeah, we ought to pay more tax.
Fine.
Come up with a plan where you pay more taxes too.
Get yourselves some skin in the game.
You know what I saw yesterday?
I did this in the stack yesterday.
I didn't get to it.
You know what the Brits spend supporting the entire royal family in the course of a year?
Something like $58 million, folks.
$58 million is what the British government spends in propping up, supporting the royal family, keeping them in the style to which they become accustomed.
You know what we spent on Obama and his family last year is like $1.4 billion.
One plus the number I saw in the story.
I thought I kept it in the stack, but I did.
$1.4 billion.
All the vacations, all the entertaining, all the parties, all the trips, all the Air Force One trips, all the Air Force Two trips.
Maybe we don't feel like paying for pensions for millionaires.
Get in on the class war, Republicans.
The governing class isn't paying their fair share is what's happening here.
The governing class getting away with blaming the working class.
Anyway, there's just a number of different ways that the Republicans can go here, and I'm just trying to present some options.
Here's the story, Investors Business Daily.
Does government want to drain Americans' 401k plans?
I mentioned this yesterday, rather in the first hour, as Washington debates what to do about the fiscal cliff that it created.
And that's true.
This fiscal cliff, our beloved elected officials put this deal together the last time they came up with a way to raise the debt limit.
And they came up with this cliff idea, the details of which are supposed to be so scary, so horrendous, so horrible, nobody would ever want any of it to happen.
Right.
Uh-huh.
The only people I see being told to moderate anything of theirs in it are the Republicans.
Well, as Washington debates what to do about the fiscal cliff it created, many potential sources of new revenue will be thrown on the table, and one of them likely to be 401k plans.
Retirement is an American's reasonable expectation.
We put money into investment plans so that our work today funds our hard-earned leisure of tomorrow.
But many in Washington see our investment accounts not as the expressions of well-planned, disciplined decisions, but as untapped reservoirs of wealth that they can drain to fix the problems they caused.
And it won't stop at 401ks.
Then they'll figure out a way to get into your pension plan.
A lot of cash there, folks.
Despite all the unfunded pensions, those are largely private or public sector pensions, government.
Private sector pensions, not unfunded.
People own them.
Large reservoir of cash there.
In fact, I could take you back early 90s.
First public official I ever heard target private sector pensions, none other than the Reverend Dax.
The tax protection that 401ks have now can be wiped out by grasping politicians who refuse to do what's right, which is to severely cut spending.
The war on retirement, particularly on 401ks, is quiet now, but that's because it's a Cold War.
And like the post-war tensions between the East and the West, it could erupt at any time into a hot war.
One group of retirement plan professionals is warning that the hostilities might be closer than many of us think.
The American Society of Pension Professionals and Actuaries launched on Monday, according to Reuters, a media campaign intended to educate U.S. employers and workers that the federal government might consider changing the tax benefits of retirement savings accounts.
We've talked about this.
Do you remember when we some some guy had an idea of buying your 401k in exchange for some guaranteed amount that will not change with you on the losing end of the deal?
Some academic, I forget who, but it's already been proposed.
We mentioned it when it first came up.
But we have to keep in mind another harsh cold reality.
The election results are what they were.
And it could well be, and don't be surprised, if a majority of Americans who voted think that it would be perfectly fine for the government to raid your 401k.
Because it's not fair that you have one in the first place.
It's not right.
Your 401k exists on the backs of the poor, who at one time had all the money.
The poor had a whole lot of money, and the rich came along and took it from them.
And they came up with these retirement plans.
I'm telling you, a majority of the people that voted in this country to re-elect Barack Obama will not have a problem with Obama claiming ownership of your 401k.
It's only fair.
It's only redistributionist.
And we are back, El Rushbo here on the cutting edge of societal evolution.
By the way, Time magazine headline, Snoodley, listen to this.
Man, when I'm prescient, I am prescient.
I did not know this, six hours ago, Time Magazine headline, Fiscal Cliff, Why Congress Might Have to Mess with the 401k.
Now, I want to take you back.
It was October 28th of 2008.
It was before the 2008 election on this program.
It was an economist from the new screw, Teresa Gillarducci, who first suggested the idea going after 401ks to Congress.
George Miller, who used to head the House committee that deals with 401ks, said we have to eliminate the 401k tax subsidy back in 2008.
George Miller, I'm reading from the transcript of this program on October 28, 2008.
George Miller, Democrat California, runs the Committee on 401ks, came out with the first notion of just getting rid of you being able to deduct your income you contribute to your 401k because the government is losing $80 billion because of this promise they've made to you.
You get to deduct off the top of your income whatever you contribute to your 401k, right?
Government wants to take that away.
It was first proposed four years ago by an economist named Teresa Gillarducci or Gillarducci.
It's G-H always gets confused whether these are hard or soft G's.
Like I used to think it was Jake Gillenhall because it sounds better than Gillenhall, but it's pronounced Gillenhall.
If it was my name, I'd say Gillenhall, but it's not.
So I don't know how this babe pronounces it.
But George Miller was told by this babe the government's losing $80 billion by allowing you to deduct from your gross income, your taxable income, whatever you contribute to your 401k.
They wanted to take that away.
They had a hearing.
They actually had a hearing on this back in 2008 where they heard from this professor.
She appeared.
She said, I've got a better plan.
What we want to do, we want to take your 401k at its August level before the crash in 2008.
We will give you that equivalent and put that in your Social Security account, essentially.
And we're going to invest that money that we take from your retirement account, your 401k, at its August level.
And we're going to buy a government bond with it, which will guarantee you 3%.
And then we will require that you put 5% of your pay into your 401k, although it's not yours anymore.
It's the government's.
The government will manage it.
They will take care of it.
And then when you retire, you'll get your Social Security check, and part of your check will be whatever your 401k monthly payout is after 3% of growth every year under the stewardship of the government.
That was the deal.
People went nuts over it.
They went nuts over it just as they went nuts over losing the deductibility of their credit card interest back in 86.
And just as they're going to go nuts when they lose the deductibility of their mortgage.
Well, that's going to happen.
You mark my word, that's already being floated out there as being on the table as part of the Cliff deal.
Not this year, not this year.
There'll be a second part of the Cliff deal in the first quarter of 2013.
They're floating the idea of reducing the mortgage interest deduction for just the very poor, eliminating it for everybody but just the very poor.
But this 401k plan, Time magazine's out now with a headline six hours ago saying, oh, it's just such a shame.
It's just such a shame.
But because the Cliff Congress, the government might have to look at your 401k.
They might have to mess with it.
And it's this plan that was introduced four years ago.
I'll go through it in more detail.
We'll get back.
And we're back.
El Rushbo, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
In a nutshell, ladies and gentlemen, and if you're on hold, hang in.
Coming to you here, El El Quico.
Here's the lead of the Time magazine story.
One of the earliest fears about tax-favored savings accounts like IRAs and 401k plans was that when this pool of savings grew large enough, Congress would not be able to resist tapping it to help solve the nation's debt problems.
We're about to find out if those fears have been justified.
In a nutshell, Time magazine's reporting, several studies suggest that 401ks just aren't a very good deal, and they aren't very fair either.
For instance, the Tax Policy Center in Washington has found that about 80% of retirement savings benefits flow to the top 20% of earners.
Did you know that, folks?
Yes.
401ks only benefit the top 20%.
The rest of the country's getting the royal shaft.
The rest of the country is getting screwed just like it always has with capitalism.
And it's about time that that unfairness was fixed.
And so those of you who bought the 401k and IRA line when they gave it to you, that you get to deduct off the top of your earnings, whatever you contribute for your later retirement, bye-bye.
Not officially yet, but it's on the table, which means it will eventually happen.
On the basis that it's not fair.
Not everybody has a 401k, and eliminating the deduction for retirement savings would hit the well-off disproportionately, a condition with a lot of appeal in the current political climate.
Yeah, anything that hurts the well-off more than anybody else is perfectly fine to do.
So all you need is a statistic that says the bulk of retirement income is held by the top 20%.
And then you say that isn't fair.
And then you have natural majority support for taking it away from people.
And there you go.
And did you know, by the way, one of the studies that Time magazine cites says that these tax incentives, the tax breaks you get for your 401k, they're meaningless anyway.
Only 15% of people really care about it.
So you won't even care.
Only 15% of you will care that the government takes your 401k money away from.
That's no big deal.
It's right there in Time Magazine.
And all this got started four years ago with a economics professor from the new school, Teresa Gilarducci.
And here it is again.
Whatever you have in your 401k now, you will keep.
Everybody who has their 401k plan will be grandfathered in.
But what I proposed, instead of getting a tax deduction, like a decrease in your taxes by whatever your tax rate is, what will happen is we will just buy your 401k from you and invest it in a bond at 3%, and that's what you get.
Because the government needs the money, folks.
You don't.
The government does.
And especially now with Obama.
Here is Mike Inchino, California.
Hi, Mike.
I'm glad you waited, sir.
Hello.
Wow, what a pleasure, Rush, to talk to you.
You've, Rush, you there?
Yeah, yeah, right here.
Good, good.
You'll have to forgive me.
I'm so used to people telling me what a pleasure to speak to me that I really don't acknowledge it enough.
So thank you.
Yeah.
So I do appreciate it.
Well, I've got to tell you, too, because if I don't, my mom listens to you religiously every day.
And I know she's listening now.
I don't even need to call her.
Anyway.
Well, I'll wait if you want to call her and tell her you're on.
Oh, no, I know she's listening.
Okay.
Unless she's either dead or she's listening.
That's the two possibilities.
Well, would you like to check on that?
I'll wait while you do that.
It's all right.
All right.
All right.
Rush, you've been down for the last couple days because you're convinced that the American people knew what they were voting for.
And that is just not true.
People voted against Romney because of the constant barrage of horrible negative ads.
Honestly, I think Romney should have refused to go to the White House.
I guess he's there right now, but he should have refused to go there.
Well, I think Obama's probably demanding all of his tax returns today from him.
You may appoint him Secretary of Business.
Well, he shouldn't work for him either.
What he and the rest of the Republicans need to do is show the negative ads, call press conferences.
Let's talk about this negative ad business.
I'm glad you brought this up, actually.
I'm glad you brought it up because it really kind of makes my point in a roundabout way.
Okay.
The fact of the matter was, you're right, that Obama's running all of these really mean, spirited, lying, negative ads at a point Romney could not respond because he was not allowed to spend any of the funds that he had raised.
He couldn't do that until after the election, after the convention, by law.
So his only option at that point was to pay out of his own pocket to fund advertising to refute the Obama negative ads.
He made a decision not to spend his own money.
Now, you can argue whether he should have done that or not.
But here's my point.
You say that the American people didn't really vote for what they wanted.
They were fooled.
They were lied to about Romney.
They have constantly been lied to.
Let me ask you a question.
Yeah.
I'm waiting.
I'm formulating the question.
If you, Mike Inchino, if you're watching television and you see a political ad that has a picture of a station wagon and a dog on the roof in a cage, and you're told that Mitt Romney hates dogs, do you believe it?
I do not.
Well, thank you.
But the fact that a lot of Americans did is what?
Well, it proves that they get their beliefs from TV.
And why is that unusual?
No, Mike, it's not my point.
You claim the American people didn't know what they were voting for, and I think they did.
I'm telling you that we're not dealing if you can be made to believe that Romney hates dogs.
You don't have to believe he hates dogs.
You just have to have the negative feelings with it.
I've talked to so many people, and that's exactly what they saw.
They mimic exactly what they're told about.
The point is, if we had a properly educated electorate, if we had people who were critical thinkers who had been educated rather than indoctrinated, our problems go deep in this country.
You're right.
You got another ad.
Mitt Romney, let my wife die.
Right.
I submit the problem is with the person who believes that as much as it is with Obama for running the ad.
But Rush, they believed that George Bush was stupid because he drank alcohol too much before he was.
No, they believed Bush was stupid because he couldn't talk on TV.
All right.
That probably helps.
But reality is this has been happening in Republican.
But even that is, even that's absurd because they voted for Bush twice.
And he barely won the first time.
And he should have won by a landslide.
Well, but the should of would is, we're dealing with the dids.
Okay.
Now you're introducing a whole new shoulda-wood context to this.
But rather than go there, let me make my point real quick, okay?
I know what your point is.
Your point is that the American people were fooled because Obama ran a bunch of lying, stinking, negative character assassination ads on Romney, and people had no choice to believe it because nobody ever said that those ads were lies.
No, even if they said the ads were lies, what the Republicans can do now, if they really want to do something, like you mentioned a few minutes ago, that they could get on the air and say this or say that, call their press conferences, what they need to do is call their press conferences and flood the airways with playing these negative ads against all Republicans.
Play them back.
Play them all.
And then right after the ad is played, then just simply say, would you work with somebody who treated you like this?
And then not work with him.
Just say, forget it.
We're tired of being kicked-like dogs.
How much longer are the Republicans going to be like kicked dogs and let this go on?
Well, there's a risk in your strategy.
If you replay the ads and then put Republicans on right after the ads, you run the risk of confirming the ad.
Okay, Mr. Broadcast Engineer, grab audio soundbites.
Let's see.
Well, I need to study these.
We've got Teresa Gillarducci here that we had back in October 27th.
I've got the sound bites, but I want to study the transcripts here.
So we'll play them in the next hour.
This is the babe that wants to basically get rid of the 401k by having the government buy yours from you in exchange for a bond that you get 3% and they're supposed to add your 401k at its value before the crash in 2008, August, that's the total you're going to get thrown into your Social Security account plus 3% on a bond, and that's your retirement, no matter what happens.
And the whole point of a 401k is to be able to invest it, have it grow like crazy, and have an even bigger retirement than what the government has planned for you.
But the government needs the money.
And remember, where's it going?
And don't forget now Time magazine, folks, this is classic.
Only 20% of people have 401ks.
It's not fair.
And of the people that have 401ks, only 15% really care about it, so they wouldn't mind if anybody took it away from them.
And it would be fair to take away 401ks from people because not everybody has them anyway.
And that's the basis on which Obama was re-elected anyway to make everything fair.
So, and then there's the fiscal cliff.
Remember last week and yesterday talked about the coming alternative minimum tax that's going to be applied to more people?
It's part of the cliff.
I shouldn't laugh because all this stuff is destructive as hell.
But the American people voted for it.
A majority of the people who voted voted for it.
This 401k plan that Teresa Gilarducci has and the other people, it is just a way to suck the last of the capital out of capitalism.
Gilarducci's plan, the way to understand it, is to suck the last of the capital out of capitalism.
Making a play on your savings now.
Here is Randall in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
The Republicans, they really have an easy out with this physical cliff thing.
At the Democratic convention, we were told over and over and over that under the Clinton years with the Clinton taxes, that we were in utopia, meaning that everything was hunky-dory.
So all the Democrats or all the Republicans really have to do is say, look, we're going to go back to the Clinton tax years for everybody, and everybody is going to get to pay their fair share.
And how are they going to be able to argue with the Clinton saying that everything was during his actually?
That's not the way to go about this.
Because you're right.
They did.
They characterized the Clinton tax increases as the source of prosperity in the 90s.
It really wasn't, but they say it is.
At the Democratic convention, though, they harped and harped on that and at least got 90% of the Democrats receiving that.
Yes.
So the way to complete that is to say, okay, Mr. Democrat friend, then let's go back to the Clinton-era spending levels, too.
How about that?
If we had prosperity at the Clinton-era tax rates and the Clinton era spending, then let's cut spending.
Let's get rid of the $6 trillion that Obama has added to the national debt.
Let's get rid of these four years of trillion-dollar excess annual budget deficits.
Let's just cut that out of the budget.
Let's go back to what it was in the 90s and let's really have utopia.
It should be easy to sell since they sold it to us at the convention.
No, they didn't mention the spending side.
They mentioned only the tax rates of the Clinton years.
And yeah, they kept talking about the surplus.
This mythical.
If anybody really believes that the government ever really ran a surplus, then you need to be sent to a re-education camp.
Ain't no way, Jose.
But anyway, take it back to the spending levels of Clinton.
If the tax rates are fine, and they kind of be caught because, well, if we had prosperity with the spending levels that they were, then why not go back to them?
Well, things have changed, Mr. Limbaugh.
I really can't remember.
So many more people in poverty now.
So many more social concerns.
Yeah, how did that happen?
Anyway, Randall, I appreciate the call.
It is the fastest three hours in media, and two of them are already down.
Now, when we get back, we're going to go back to this program on October 27th of 2008.
We have a couple of sound bites from the new screw professor of economics, the new school for social research professor of economics, Teresa Gillarducci, who explains the theft, the purchase of your 401k by the government, which Time magazine now has got a big story on must happen.
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