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Nov. 30, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:34
November 30, 2012, Friday, Hour #2
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Time Text
The views expressed by the host on this program documented to me almost always right 99.7% of the time.
It is Friday.
It is time.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's Open Line Friday.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Telephone number 800-282-2882, your golden opportunity.
They talk about anything.
Not just what's at the top of the news stacks each and every day.
It's up to you.
Again, 800-282-2882, the number of you want to be on the program.
Great to have you here.
Snerdley just said to me, you know, you're missing the point on Time magazine putting Sandra Fluck as a potential person of the year on the short list.
I said, what do you mean I'm missing a point?
Because what I said was that nobody'd know who she is if it weren't for me.
If you're going to make her person of the year, you've got to make me co-person of the year for making her person of the year.
It's not a proud moment.
Don't misunderstand.
Snerdley said, you don't understand.
She's not on this list because they care about what she did and what she says and what she believes or any of that.
That's not why.
She's only on that short list, Snerdley says, because that's the closest they think they've ever gotten to taking you out.
And whoever, if somebody ever comes along and takes you out, Time magazine is going to make them the person of all time, not just a year.
And I have to confess, folks, and I don't think about myself very often, but I have to confess that Snerdley may have a point there.
He may be exactly right.
Okay, back to the fiscal cliff.
I want to reiterate what I said yesterday.
I haven't changed.
And this proposal that Obama put forth, which Boehner has rejected and basically said he's not even serious.
It's time for some adult leadership here.
Obama wants to go over the cliff.
I was watching Fox during the break and the guy that runs Real Clear Politics was on.
And he said something that a lot of people in Washington are saying.
He said, I just, it's hard to believe that Obama would want to go over the cliff and start his second term with a new recession and massive unemployment.
Look at the problems that that would present him in accomplishing everything he wants to.
I understand people thinking this way, but I really have thought all along.
You cannot look at Barack Obama as a standard typical American or Washington politician.
He doesn't have the same concerns.
You got all these analysts who naturally think that presidents care about reducing the debt, care about their legacy, care about making sure that the economy grows.
Where's the evidence that Obama cares about any of this?
If this were his first term and people were talking about this kind of, I could understand it.
We got four years of evidence that he doesn't care about any of that.
We have four years of evidence to suggest that it is entirely proper.
And in fact, it may be wise.
It may be intelligent to look at Obama through the prism of cynicism.
So he said, okay, well, why would he want to go over the cliff?
Well, what happens when we go over the cliff?
A Democrat orgasm happens.
Taxes go up for everybody.
That is, I can't, that's nirvana to these people.
Taxes go up on everybody on January 1st in all kinds of ways.
Income, payroll, Obamacare.
Taxes go up for everybody.
And then after that, guess what Obama gets to do?
He gets to call a national speech to the nation and blame the Republicans for it and then come out for tax cuts.
And he knows as well as you do that the inside-the-beltway traditional analysts will look at that and say, brilliant move.
All presidents want to cut taxes.
All presidents want more disposable income.
It's a crock, but he knows that they're going to look at him, and he's going to get the benefit, by the way, of being looked at and analyzed as a traditional politician while he's out there doing everything he can to, in the back door, nationalize American businesses and transform this country from capitalism to socialism.
So what better way could he do that?
Let's go over the cliff.
Everybody's taxes go.
And there's an added bonus.
The second most orgasmic thing can happen for Democrats is the defense budget gets cut.
Well, that would happen too.
So you've got uncontrolled joy.
You have limitless joy for the Democrat Party going over the cliff.
You've got tax increases for everybody automatically without anybody signing anything.
It's already done.
And then you've got massive defense cuts.
Oh, folks, they can barely contain themselves.
Why propose something like this that has no prayer?
And how many working days do we have left in this?
We had seven weeks to come to terms on this.
Three of those weeks have passed.
We're down to four weeks, but that's not even true because they're not full weeks and we're not working to the end of the, what was it, 16 days or 15 days, maybe 13 now, where everybody is going to still be in Washington?
So I think it's only common sense to realize Obama wants to go over the cliff.
My God, on the other side is Nirvana.
On the other side, we're miles down the road to utopia as they define it.
We're miles down the road to transforming the country out of capitalism into socialism.
And we have an instant crisis.
He has massive tax increases on small businesses.
That means fewer people get hired.
I mean, unemployment goes up.
That's going to call for a massive, immediate fix.
Here comes President Obama in a white horse saying, I'm going to cut taxes for the middle class.
And the Republicans are not going to be able to oppose that.
I mean, I think it's made to order.
I think going over the fact that he makes this ridiculous proposal is all the proof anybody needs.
They just have to have the courage to see it for what it is.
But I cannot emphasize enough how excited they are at the prospect of taxes going up on everybody and the defense budget being cut.
And nobody has to do anything.
There's no political price to be.
It's already signed.
It's part of the raising the debt limit last time.
Sequestration, all that.
So Obama gets emaculated again on January 21st, three weeks of utter horror.
I mean, this is theoretical.
Some people think going over the cliffing is going to be that bad.
I think that it would be in every which way you and I as traditionalists could conceive.
But it's made to order for what he wants to do.
I'm still struck.
And I'm not trying to single myself out for anything special here.
I've got four years of experience watching the guy.
I don't see where the evidence is that he cares about cutting spending.
I don't see where the evidence is that he worries about lowering taxes.
I don't see where the evidence is he's concerned about job creation.
Here is a guy who wants to nash.
He wants to nationalize your 401k, folks.
He wants to just take it from you, pay you what it was worth on August of 2008, plus 600 bucks.
He wants to take your IRA.
He wants to eliminate the home mortgage interest deduction.
He wants to eliminate charitable deductions, thereby eliminating much private charitable donations.
He wants to take it all over.
Where is the evidence he is anything traditional in the sense of being a politician or a president or what have you?
It's just the exact opposite.
Now, the last two days I have promised to delve into some details on this AMT business that I have, I've run across three different stories on the AMT being,
you know, expanding the alternative minimum tax as a way of further raising taxes and in so doing give politicians of both parties a pass for any culpability.
Let me take a break here and I'll come back and I'll get into the latest iteration of this.
I asked Senator McConnell, I talked to him this morning on phone, and I asked him about it, and he said he had no clue.
He's not aware of anything involving the AMT.
So know that going in.
But we'll still tell you what is potentially on the table.
Well, we know, we know this 401k stuff, nationalizing your 401k is on the table.
Student loans have been nationalized.
And by the way, about that, student loan debt is now, it's to the point it'll never be paid back.
Student loan debt, aggregate, the cumulative total now, it'll never be repaid.
I mean, because it's made up of individuals who are never going to earn enough money, given Obama's policies, to get close to paying it back, which is just fine with Obama.
It's another thing he can forgive for political pleasure or use it to control political loyalty.
This whole push, this whole incessant push telling people everywhere, you've got to go to college.
You can't get anywhere in American college degree.
You must.
Well, most people have to take out a lot of loans to go to college.
Most people have to go into real debt to go to college.
And that's just four years undergrad.
You stay in college longer, that's more loans.
Money you'll never pay back.
Money you'll never get out from under.
And that's fine with typical progressive Democrats of the day.
It keeps you attached to them.
Your future is in their hands.
Your financial future, literally in their hands.
So all this stuff is happening.
It's not theory anymore.
This is not 25 years ago where I was sitting here warning you about what would happen if Democrats keep winning.
We've gotten there now.
And we'll be back and continue after this.
Sit tight, my friends.
And we're back in the cutting edge of societal evolution.
By the way, speaking of a student loan program, folks, a bunch of liberals in Congress have already proposed forgiving all student loans, and they actually have an act, a bill, the Student Loan Forgiveness Act of 2012.
And it would only cost a trillion dollars.
That's what student loan debt has become.
They just want to wipe it out, which they can do.
If they get the votes for it, they can clearly do that.
What a great way to reward colleges for indoctrinating more Democrats.
And what a great way to guarantee the student vote for years to come.
The number of the bill, it's H.R. 4170.
It would forgive student loan debt for those who have paid 10% of their discretionary income toward their loans for 10 years.
It would cap interest on federal student loans at the current rate of 3.4%.
Individuals who go into teaching, public service, or practice medicine in underserved areas would have their debt forgiven after only five years.
Now, this is not a new piece of legislation.
It's been out there for a long time.
And it would basically promise anybody, just make payments for a couple, three years, and it will forgive the loan once you reach 10%.
It's just a trillion bucks, folks.
I mean, what the hell?
There's all kinds of value in that for the Democrats.
Now, the AMT.
This latest story from CNBC, one of the key questions lurking in the fiscal cliff talks, though, well below the public's radar.
In fact, again, I asked Senator McConnell about it on the phone today.
He didn't know a thing about it.
He said, I'm not hearing any talk about the alternative minimum tax, but it is out there.
It's in too many places.
It is on somebody's drawing board.
And one of the questions about the fiscal cliff talks of what happens to the AMT.
The AMT, just to refresh your memory, was implemented in 1969 to make sure that upper-income Americans paid their taxes.
There were, I forget what the number is, but it was so small.
There were, I want to say, 50 exceedingly rich people who didn't pay any income tax.
And this, of course, was outrageous.
This was unacceptable.
So they came up with the alternative minimum tax, made sure that everybody paid something.
And what's happened over the years, more and more middle-income Americans have been caught by the AMT because it was never indexed for inflation.
You were able to grow your income into being subject to it.
And so, well, it was an oversight, but now it raises so much money they can't get rid of it.
All the talk that they're going to get rid of it or modify, they can't.
It raises too much money precisely because it captures people it was never intended to capture.
And whether it was an oversight or not, and it probably was, although that's not guaranteed, it still is what it is today.
Now, during the 2011 tax year, for example, the higher tax hits single taxpayers with incomes as low as $48,000.
Now, remember, it was originally intended to snare millionaires.
Now, single filers with incomes as low as $48,000 and joint filers making only $74,000 have been snared, have been caught by the AMT.
However, millions more could be subject to it on your 2012 return if Congress fails to reach a deal on the fiscal cliff.
And that's because the AMT currently scheduled to hit individuals making as little as 33,000 a year, joint filers making 45,000.
Now, normally, 4 million people pay the AMT every year.
And that's according to a guy named Dick Hoey, who is the chief economist at BNY Mellon.
But if we don't fix this on the 2012 income, what's due in 2013 will be additional taxes by an extra 28 million households.
So if you're in the $75,000 to $300,000 income tax bracket, you can forget about a refund if they don't fix this because the AMT is going to snare you.
The bite on American households would be huge.
It could have a big impact on U.S. consumer spending, of course, the economic recovery.
It would average out to $3,700 additional tax owed by people who are caught by the AMT.
Now, here is the real insidious part of this.
There are some people on the Democrat side who are looking at this as a golden opportunity.
Sort of like, you know, the Buffett rule has a minimum rate of 30% for a million to $10 million of income and 35% minimum rate for all income $10 million and above.
So some wizards of SMART have gotten against us.
You know what?
Let's incorporate the Buffett rule and just make it part of the AMT.
What's the top marginal rate?
Top marginal rate right now, 35.9%.
The Buffett rule wants a minimum 30%.
The AMT, the AMT thing that I've heard about would have a minimum 30% rate on income below a million, not a million or above.
This would minimum 30% on whatever, a couple hundred thousand and above.
And could sign off on that, minimum 30%, realizing now, folks, that people in the 35.9% bracket do not pay that on every dollar that they earn.
The first 50,000 is taxed at 15%.
The next $100,000 taxed at 25% and so forth until you get to 250.
Then everything above that is taxed at $35.9.
It's not every dollar.
And that means that the 35.9% rate is really not 35.9.
It can be as low as 2425.
It can be, depending on the kind of income you have, it could end up being 17 or 18% if you have a lot of unearned income, like clipping coupons on bonds, stocks, that kind of thing.
So keep that in mind.
I got to take a break here, but I'll conclude this very, very simply when we get back.
Okay, back we are.
Now let me wrap this up.
The 35.9% tax rate, the current high tax rate.
The thing to understand in this AMT discussion is that nobody really ever pays 35.9% on everything that they earn.
Oftentimes it's lower than that.
Using numbers on the radio is very difficult, but there are different tax brackets.
And depending, I think some millionaires do pay $35.9 on every dollar they earn.
You've got to start at a relatively high income level for that to happen.
But many don't.
And you hear all the time, you look at Obama.
He's in the 35.9% bracket.
Look at his tax return.
What was his effective rate?
He paid what?
22% on it.
And that's because of deductions.
It's because being able to deduct dollars off the top from the gross.
So the 35.9% rate, without getting into all the whys and wherefores, and it's not because it's unfair.
It's the law.
Don't misunderstand.
I'm not saying anybody's skating.
The marginal rate means the last dollars you earn, the rate on the final dollars you earn.
So you got the top rate of 35.9.
Obama wants to raise taxes on the rich.
The Republicans don't.
Over here is the AMT and Warren Buffett.
And Buffett wants a minimum 30% tax rate, much less than 35.9.
But 30% is higher than almost everybody in the 35.9% bracket is paying.
My point is that if you install a 30% minimum rate on income over $250,000, you are jacking people's taxes up like hell, like crazy.
An unbelievably high amount of tax increase.
But it's still lower than 35.9.
So as far as anybody is concerned, it's not a tax rate increase.
It's the application of the AMT to all income starting, let's say, 250 grand up.
30% on everything is a lot more than the current 35.9 because as part of tax reform, buy-buy deductibility on charities, buy-by-deductibility on the home mortgage interest, all these things that are going to be taken away.
And notice it's the Republicans who are proposing.
It was Romney proposed, closing loopholes without raising the rates.
Democrats went along with this.
They like it too.
You close loopholes, i.e., you eliminate deductions.
You leave the rates where they are.
Hello, AMT at 30%.
And you have massively increased taxes.
And nobody's rate has gone up.
That's the trick.
And that's what I've heard is lurking out there as a possibility.
And the reason that it's being looked at is that to every politician, left, right, Democrat, Republican, it's attractive.
The Democrats get to say they're raising taxes on people.
The Republicans get to say that they're not raising taxes on the rich.
The 35.9% bracket stays where it is.
It's being replaced by a 30% bracket in reality that none of them are paying.
It'd be a massive tax increase on everybody at $250,000 up.
And it would have the corresponding horrible impact on the economy.
This would impact every small business.
You put a minimum 30% tax bracket or rate on small businesses.
You take away deductions.
Many of these people file their sub-S business on their personal 1040 tax form.
Folks, it would be devastating.
It would be right up Obama's alley.
But the problem with it is it looks on paper entirely palatable because not while there is a minimum rate being established, it's well below the 35.9.
Even the top rate in Buffett's plan, where you make $10 million or more, you pay a 35% rate, even that is lower than the current top bracket of 35.9.
Not by much, but it's still lower.
It still allows everybody in Washington to say they're not raising tax rates.
When in fact they are.
They're not raising tax rates per se.
They're attaching a minimum.
And they're taking more money from people is the bottom line, without it looking like that's happening.
That is the value of the AMT.
And it's floating around out there.
The stuff that I mentioned moments ago about how it's going to hit more and more Americans, that's going to happen regardless.
That's going to happen because it's just more and more people are going to get snared by it because it's not indexed to inflation, and more and more Americans are going to find themselves subject to it if something isn't done about it in the fiscal cliff deal.
And Obama's proposal on the fiscal cliff is such he doesn't want a deal.
Make no mistake about it.
Nobody is going to get off the dime with an original proposal of $1.6 trillion in new taxes.
But he wants it.
Don't think for a minute he doesn't want it.
He wants $1.6 trillion in new taxes.
And however he can get it, he'll do it.
And if he can get it with keeping the top rate 35.9, he'd do it.
So I don't know what the likelihood is.
It's, like I say, Senator McConnell says you're annoying about it.
But it's being floated.
I know that it's being talked about.
It's one of those things that you need to keep an eye on.
May never happen.
It would be devastating to the economy.
It would be one of the greatest transfers of wealth from the private sector to the public that we've seen.
All while marginal income tax rates aren't going up.
That's the attraction of it to everybody in Washington who wants more money to spend.
Okay, now to the phones.
People have been patiently waiting.
We go back to Flint, Michigan.
And Pat, thank you for waiting.
Great to have you here.
Hi.
Hey, thank you, Rush.
This is Squad Manor.
Rush, to the best of my knowledge, it has been almost eight years since you did a show with all classical music as your bumper music.
I remember it because I was driving to Washington, D.C. for the inauguration.
I think it was Inauguration Day in 2003 when you did your last or 2005, your last classical music show.
And when do you plan on doing another one?
You know, that's a good idea.
I think it was much farther back than that.
You could be right.
But there were things going on in the culture at the time.
I thought we needed to step up people's appreciation for refined culture.
And every bumper tune for either that day or maybe the week was all classical.
It was my effort to elevate cultural appreciation among this audience.
It's a great idea.
Yeah, we're getting close to the Christmas bumps.
That's true.
So it's possible.
That's a great memory you've got there.
I appreciate that, Pat.
Thanks very much, Roy, in Cordella, California.
Hi.
Hello, Rush.
It's an honor to speak with you this morning.
Thank you.
I'd like to start by saying first, I would love nothing better in my life than to sit down and buy you a fine steak and a fine cigar.
Well, and I would take it.
I'd be happy to pay for it.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
I'm doing better here on receiving.
A couple of things.
Number one, the way that the liberals have played, let's just isolate the second half of this year by stonewalling on Fast and Furious, stonewalling on Benghazi until after the election, I think has served two purposes.
Most obvious, of course, is that it didn't come out before the election.
But second of all, it has pushed everything into this last two-week session of this lame duck Congress that's going on.
And it just has scattered everything from hell to breakfast.
I like that.
I'm in total agreement about Obama wanting to go over the cliffer.
I think it fits right in with his agenda that you're going to be doing.
That's exactly right.
I'm glad you see that.
My question is, what do you think is going to be the outcome of this after the beginning of the year?
Well, that the outcome, the first four years multiplied.
That's what's on tap.
That's what the election was about, as far as I'm concerned.
More of the same.
Now, to your point, Fast and Furious Benghazi, all this stuff crammed into the remaining days.
He's got a point about this, folks.
We're trying to get to the bottom of Benghazi in a week or two.
We're trying to solve the fiscal cliff process, and we got 10 days left on that.
Ain't no way.
Not going to happen.
And the reason is the regime knows that once we get to next year, go through the Christmas break, get to the Obama immaculation, the theory is the Republicans will just have grown tired of trying to get to the bottom of Benghazi, and that'll be it.
There won't be any further investigation.
The theory that the Democrats have is that the Republicans will realize that the country doesn't want that.
The country doesn't want to waste time getting the bottom of Benghazi.
They didn't care before the election.
They don't care now.
So Obama can throw Susan Rice up there as a distraction and keep everybody from getting to the real question, which is where the hell was he?
That's the real question.
The only question about Benghazi is everybody knew at the time it was happening what was happening.
They couldn't find Obama.
It appears that way.
There was no official reaction at the time.
Now we're talking about Susan Rice and why'd she go say what she said and so forth and stonewalling her attempt to get on the Secretary of State and all this kind of stuff.
And it's just, it's clearly a stonewall just to get to the end of the year with nothing learned and nothing resolved.
But I think, you know, you say what's down the road, we're down the road.
That's my whole point.
I said 25 years ago, this program was largely about warning people what was on tap if liberalism wasn't stopped.
Well, we're there.
It's no longer theoretical what's going to happen if liberalism is unchecked and is in power.
We're in the middle of it now.
It is the reality.
It's no longer a theory.
So when you say what's going to happen down the road, we're on the road.
We are down the road.
And there's nothing on this road in the last four years that suggests anything different is going to happen in the next four.
There's nothing that says there's a new road.
There's nothing that says there's a new route.
I don't even see any stop signs on the road.
And we will be back.
Back to the phones on Open Line Friday.
And Linda in Edgewater, Florida.
Hi, great to have you here.
Hey, Mega Dittos, Rush.
I love you.
Thank you.
Well, I hope our elected officials listen to your show.
They might learn something.
Anyway, I don't understand why the Republicans just don't take the middle class off the table.
They can cut the middle class taxes by, say, 7% or 10%, keep the tax rates the same for the wealthier, 2%, and submit the debt reduction bill and get rid of a lot of those bogus government-funded programs.
The Democrats can't use the middle class against them.
Instead of Boehner crying, he can grow a pair and tell the media that we lowered the taxes on the middle class by, say, 10%.
Look, I'm not trying to defend these guys, but I don't know what, if anything, the Republicans have proposed because it's all being done in private.
It's all being done in secret.
Boehner and Obama are talking in private, and we only know what's being discussed by virtue of what either of them says.
So I don't know what Obama, I mean, I don't know what, as far as the news is concerned, Boehner hadn't proposed anything.
It's Obama doing the proposing and us doing the sorry that doesn't fly.
I would assume Boehner's making some proposal.
He's insisting that there must be spending cuts, but the specifics that you detail, I have no clue whether he's proposing anything like that or not.
Well, the Republicans need to realize that 49% of the people voted Republican, and they pay attention to what's going on in government.
Most of the people who voted for Obama did so for one or two specific reasons.
They wanted free stuff or because he's a black man, they wanted to keep him in.
They don't pay attention to the politics.
Yeah, I know you say that, but the problem is the low-information voters happen to be determining the outcome.
Now, what you're seeing, your proposal, it sounds good.
So Boehner goes out and proposes that.
What you have to understand is that Obama can and would veto any middle-class tax cut that the Republicans try to do.
He's reserving that for himself.
So what you want is for the Republicans to at least propose it so that it's out there and people understand they want that, right?
Yeah, why not?
I mean, they can take that off the table for the Democrats.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
You got to hear me.
Obama will veto it because he's reserving the middle-class tax cut for himself next year.
But then that's what the Republicans can come out and tell the people.
Say, hey, he vetoed it.
We wanted to lower your taxes by 10%.
Look, he says he's for the middle class.
It's a lie.
Yeah.
Yeah, I hear you.
I hear you.
The problem is that nobody hears it when the Republicans say it, or if they hear it, they don't believe it because it's going to end up being demagogued and who knows whatever else.
This is a vicious cycle on this.
I'm not arguing with you that the Republicans shouldn't do it, shouldn't stand for this, shouldn't stand for things.
I think the opportunity to contrast ourselves continues to be awesome.
We just do it.
But it goes back to something I look, I've been saying this 25 years.
I get a real trouble here.
I asked it earlier.
Can somebody name for me some charismatic, brilliant, clever, tough conservative?
It all comes down to we've got plenty of people who can articulate it.
Do they really believe it?
I think in the Republican Party, there's still a large segment that wants no part of conservatism.
That hasn't changed.
So you're not trying to be the spoil sport here.
I wish I saw more evidence that there were people who believe this, like you and I believe it.
Amongst our elected ties.
We know some do.
Ted Cruz is the latest who's making Marco Rubio.
We have plenty who do, but they're not doing the negotiation.
Senate's not involved in all this.
I got to run.
I'm way over time here.
Okay, folks.
We have to take a brief time out here to the top of the busy broadcast hour, Open Line Friday.
We'll resume when we come back, and that'll be quicker than you can believe, back before you know it.
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