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Dec. 7, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:36
December 7, 2012, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
And greetings to you, music lovers, thrill seekers, conversationalists all across the fruited plain.
I am the award-winning, thrill-packed, ever-exciting, increasingly popular, growing my leaps and bounds, Rush Limbaugh.
This is my program.
And the thing that you need to know about me more than anything else is that I am non-threatening.
I don't threaten you.
I don't threaten anybody.
And I don't make anybody nervous, or I shouldn't anyway.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's Open Line Friday.
That's right.
They call me the most dangerous man in radio, and I'm the least threatening guy around.
Anyway, it's a delight to have you here, folks, as we get closer and closer to Christmas, deeper and deeper into the Christmas season.
By the way, the old folks at the happy home in Tarzana got their Christmas tree back.
Yes, all kinds of public pressure brought to bear, and a happy home out there gets to keep the tree.
Still can't find out if anybody complained, which caused the management to threaten to take it out, but they get to keep the tree.
It's a small victory for tradition and a national holiday.
Great to have you here, folks.
It's Open Line Friday, and on Open Line Friday, we do things a little differently than we do Monday through Thursday.
Monday through Thursday, if you're a caller, you have to talk about what I'm interested in.
Not because I'm a mean guy, but because I've got a job here.
A job is to make the program interesting, and therefore I talk about things I care about.
Because when you talk about things you care about, you're more passionate, and passion is the magnet.
I can talk about anything.
If I'm really passionate about it, you will not be able to tune out.
But if I get bored, it's over.
When's the last time, for example, you ever heard any fan of Talk Radio say, I love that show.
They got the best callers anywhere.
It never is said.
Nothing against callers.
Don't misunderstand.
That's what makes Open Line Friday what it is.
On Friday, I throw all that out.
I have greatest career risk taken by any major media figure.
And that is, I don't care.
Whatever you talk about, if I don't care about it, we'll make do anyway.
It's your chance to talk about what you want to talk about to a totally non-threatening, friendly guy like me.
Telephone number, again, 800-282-2882.
And we try to take a few more calls than normal on Friday.
What do you mean, except those who cave in?
Are you still, you still, Snerdly can't let go of the fact that I threatened to fire him.
Promised, actually.
Well, that's good.
I don't want you to take any more of those people.
For 25 years, I've been hearing, let's let disaster happen so people find out how bad the Democrats are and we'll kill them.
Politically, I mean, well, for 25 years, it's essentially been happening.
We're in the disaster and the architect won.
So that's, it's just, it's not a new idea.
It's not unique.
It's not particularly special, been done, been thought of.
So yeah, I kind of blew my gasket at that for a host of reasons.
But I was having a bad 10 minutes.
Most people have bad days.
I was having a bad 10 minutes.
Okay, so what's up first today?
An apartment manager in Colorado Springs, Colorado is threatening to raise the rent of tenants who voted for Obama.
According to a radio station out there, the manager of the apartment complex sent a letter to his tenants on Wednesday regarding staff and maintenance issues, but it included a postscript that said, by the way, if you voted Democrat on November 6th, please notify me ASAP so I can raise your rent first to help pay for what you ask for.
Reminds me there was another, by the way, the letter began by decrying the stupidity of an electorate that would back the Obama administration's continued assault on small business.
It's a memo to people that live in the place about their staff and maintenance costs.
Reminds me there was a letter to the editor.
It might have been the New York Times.
I forget where it was.
Doesn't matter, but it was from a baby boomer, a guy about my age, who was writing to thank young Obama voters for voting the way they did because now he can sit back and relax and do nothing and they're going to pay for his retirement with everything they're going to earn for the rest of their lives.
I want to thank all you Obama voters because I can quit.
I can retire.
You're going to pay for everything for me.
And it gave him a little smooch, and it was actually run.
Now, remember when we were told, ladies and gentlemen, by the regime that the economy added 148,000 jobs in September?
And do you remember we were told that the economy added 171,000 jobs in October and the unemployment rate was going below 8%?
And you also remember that I said at that time, I don't believe this.
And you remember also that Jack Welch came out and said he didn't believe it and thought they were fudging the numbers and they lit into Jack Welch.
Well, now, even back then, the chief economist at Gallup didn't believe it, if you recall.
They had entirely different numbers.
But at the same time, do you remember how we were more than mocked in the news media?
We were lied about.
We were impugned.
I was as a conspiracy theorist for believing that the regime would doctor the numbers in their favor prior to the election.
Well, it turns out we got the new numbers today.
Guess what?
Turns out that the regime's estimates were a little off after all.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, by about 49,000 jobs on the plus side, they were wrong.
October's jobless number, which was announced right before Election Day, was off by 33,000.
Now, the revisions are in.
And there were 33,000 fewer jobs created than we were told in the days immediately before the election.
And you can be sure that's just an innocent mistake.
I mean, anybody can make a mistake, especially if your bureaucratic job depended on it.
The Labor Department says in its report today, Hurricane Sandy had no significant effect on unemployment, which, if I recall, calls into question all of the reports from the drive-bys over the last few weeks, which did blame Hurricane Sandy for a huge uptick in unemployment claims.
Look at all of the lies that we were told are now being revised.
There are just two words to greet the unemployment news today, and they are, of course.
Of course.
More than a third of the new jobs in November, we're told 146,000 new jobs created in November, more than a third of those were due to retail stores hiring for the holidays, i.e., they are temporary jobs.
So how come that number is not seasonally adjusted?
Why do they give us the raw number on that instead of seasonally adjusting that?
I mean, if they're not going to seasonally adjust for Christmas hiring, why do they seasonally adjust for anything?
These are just innocent questions that I have.
Not trying to be threatening here.
Not trying to make anybody nervous.
As you probably have figured out by now, the unemployment rate went down to 7.7% because another, this is just stunning, folks, another 540,000 Americans have dropped out of the labor market.
Half million Americans are no longer calculated what's called a labor force participation rate.
540,000 people dropped out of the labor force.
That's more than a half million people.
So for every according to these numbers, every one person hired, 1.7 people gave up looking for work.
And we're on the right track.
Obama said just this week, we're poised to roar back.
We're poised for our comeback.
Got to build on this.
Exactly right.
Of course, it's not all bad news out there.
The unemployment rate for government workers plunged from an already low 4.2% in October.
The unemployment rate now for government workers is 3.8%.
In fact, federal, state, and local governments added 35,000 employees to their payrolls.
Guess who's paying for them?
You are.
Government hiring swelled in October and in November, and now 3.8% unemployment.
Federal, state, local governments added 35,000 employees to their payrolls in November.
In fact, all told, governments have managed to add five.
This is a stunning number.
Now, keep in mind, we have lost 540,000 people from the labor force.
Since July, all governments, state, local, federal, have added 544,000 people to their payrolls.
Half a million Americans have left the private sector job market.
Thus, the private sector job market universe has shrunk.
And that's why the unemployment number goes down.
544,000 people hired at the government level in whatever state, all states, cities, local governments, what have you.
And the exclamation point is 73% of the new civilian jobs created in the U.S. over the last five months are in government.
73% of new jobs created in the last five months are in government.
And this is according to the regime's own numbers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
So it's clear to see exactly what's happening.
The transformation the country is taking place, money and people are being taken out of the private sector and transferred to the public sector, to the government.
Now, Obama, let's go to the top of the audio sound bites.
Remember, yesterday, a long dissertation in the first hour about what really is going on with the fiscal cliff and that the real target here is the Republicans, particularly the Republicans in the House, but the Republican Party writ large.
Obama is simply trying to decimate it.
He is desperate.
He is desperate to get Boehner to sign off on raising taxes on the rich.
That's ballgame for Obama.
If he can get that, he gets a confession.
What Obama wants is a confession, an admission from the Republicans that it was tax cuts that led to all the problems that we're having.
That's what he wants.
From now till the end of time, he wants that to be economic and political science history that is taught to every young skull full of mush.
The Reagan tax cuts, the Bush tax cuts in 2001, 2003, that's why you don't have a house.
That's why you don't have a job.
That's why your savings are depleted.
That's why we are in an economic mess is because the rich haven't been paying everything they should.
It had nothing to do with spending.
It has nothing to do with entitlements.
It has nothing to do with anything government's doing.
It's the rich have been given an unfair shake by virtue of being allowed to keep much more than they need, much more than they want, much more than they deserve.
And so that is the focus.
And here is Obama yesterday in Falls Church, Virginia.
He's still campaigning.
He was at the home of a middle-class family who responded to his call for my 2K stories about how the end of the Bush tax cuts would affect them.
And here's a portion of what he said.
Everybody's going to have to share in some sacrifice, but it starts with folks who are in the best position to sacrifice, who are in the best position to do a little bit more, to step up.
And that's what my plan does.
So just to be clear, I'm not going to sign any package that somehow prevents the top rate from going up for the folks at the top 2%.
Now, again, Boehner has offered $800 billion from these people.
That was Obama's original ask.
It was $800 billion before the election.
When he won, he doubled down, made it $1.6 trillion.
And Boehner, earlier this week, conceded, okay, well, we'll put some revenue on the table, $800 billion, and we'll get it by eliminating loopholes.
By the way, that's not good.
There are legitimate, lawful deductions that have been written into the tax code for the express purpose of promoting economic activity.
And they are under assault.
Every legitimate tax deduction, now called a loophole, a loophole.
Low information voters hear a loophole.
They think somebody getting away with not paying taxes.
A loophole is a special carve-out for privileged people, usually white, so that they don't have to pay what everybody else has to pay.
And they got that special deal because other powerful people are taking care of them.
So Obama's coming along, and he's going to end that.
Now, you got any special deals to these filthy rich people anymore.
Are you going to get rid of loopholes?
And Boehner says, okay, we can generate $800 million by eliminating loopholes, adopting Obama's language and deductions and exemptions.
Oh, well, nope, nope, sorry, it doesn't work.
Math doesn't work.
Wait a minute.
A year ago, you said exactly.
You can get over a trillion dollars doing it.
Well, math doesn't work anymore.
What this means is, again, I say in a non-threatening way, is that the well, no, a friend of mine told me her daughter can't listen to me anymore because I sound too threatening.
She's 24 and it'd make her nervous.
So I'm just trying to tell people.
I'm not threatening anybody.
Anyway, anyway, Obama says, no, nope, nope, nope, nope.
Got to have the rates go up.
So what he's saying is he doesn't care about the money.
Boehner just said, I'll give you $800 billion.
I'll eliminate deductions, loopholes.
Nope, I want those rates up.
It isn't about the money, folks.
Whatever you think, as far as Obama's concerned, it isn't about the money.
If the Republicans cave on raising rates on the rich, then they are admitting that that's the problem as far as every other voter outside the 2% in this country is concerned.
Here is Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday.
He was on Fox this morning with Martha McCallum, who said to him, for all intents and purposes, John Boehner continues to say that he will not raise taxes on the top 2%.
He wants the revenue to come in the form of changing deductions and loopholes.
The president says exactly the opposite.
So one side is going to have to give any bet which side it's likely to be.
It's unsustainable for Boehner and the Republicans to be in a position where they are blocking a tax cut for 98% of Americans because they want to protect the tax rates of the top 2%.
That may be right or wrong on its merits, but politically it seems pretty clear.
And you see more and more conservatives and Republican office holders who are caving on that.
In return, Boehner is going to demand something in return, and that's got to be serious spending cuts, serious entitlement reforms.
You're not going to get any of that.
There is no – she said one side is going to have to – one side is going to have to give.
There's no giving or caving.
There's ceding.
But here's the thing.
Did you hear Chris Wallace say here, and this is, by the way, politically, this is correct, but it's not correct in reality, that the Republicans are blocking a tax cut for 98% of the American people.
There is no tax cut that's on the table, ladies and gentlemen.
There is not a tax cut.
What we face is the expiration of the current tax rates on December 31st.
If they go up, then it's a tax increase on everybody.
That tax increase in Washington speak has now become a tax cut if nothing changes it.
It's absurd.
There is no tax cut anywhere yet.
Okay, got a little bit more time to spend on this.
The Chris Wallace comment, nothing, I mean, everybody in Washington is talking this way.
It's not media, Republicans, Democrats.
There is no tax cut on the table.
And another thing to keep in mind is that only 50% of the people are paying income taxes.
Not 98% of the people.
You know, they talk about the top 2% and then everybody else supposedly getting a tax cut.
50% of this country don't pay income taxes.
That may be 48% and a percentage pointers, but we'll round it up.
Half the country doesn't pay income taxes.
But I want to talk about this notion that there's a tax cut out there that the Republicans are opposing.
There isn't, folks.
Here's where we are.
2001, 2003, George W. Bush succeeded in lowering marginal rates for everybody, not just the rich.
And the top marginal rate right now is 35.9%.
He made a deal.
The Republicans made a deal, Boehner, Obama, to raise the debt limit some time ago.
And as part of that deal, they agreed they're going to have to do it again at the end of the year.
And they put in some what they thought very punitive results if they didn't get a deal.
And the very punitive results are that the Bush tax rates end and that defense spending is cut dramatically.
And those two items were included because it was said that neither party would allow either one to happen, and so we're guaranteed to get an agreement down the road.
We're down the road, and we're nowhere near an agreement because Obama, the idea that Republicans can hold out for spending cuts, there aren't any spending cuts.
Obama is proposing spending increases, folks.
He wants a new stimulus.
He is demanding a stimulus and he is demanding more government spending, all of which dwarfs even his pretend spending cuts.
And even his pretend spending cuts are 10 to 20 years down the road.
But how is it?
Why are these people so wrong?
Why are they discussing a tax cut that doesn't exist?
Because it gives Obama political advantage.
Remember, we're dealing with low-information voters, and there are a lot of low-information voters.
I mean, there are a lot of people who think they're informed who don't understand this.
There are no tax cuts.
Not one tax cut has been proposed here.
But Rush, but Rush, why do they keep talking?
Because it hurts the Republicans.
It is said the Republicans are in a bind here because they are opposing a tax cut for the middle class to defend a tax cut for the rich.
That's not what's going on.
The Republicans are holding out for no tax increase on everybody who pays income taxes.
That is the Republican position.
They do their best to articulate it.
Somehow it doesn't penetrate to the noise.
The way that they arrive by playing with the language, calling this a tax cut, is this.
On December 31st, the current income rates, income tax rates, expire and they go up to what they were when Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky were in the Oval Office.
And for the top rate, that would be 35.9 or 39.6%, almost 40%, as opposed to the 35.9 that it is now.
And everybody else that pays taxes, income tax, their rates would go up as well.
So what's on the table, the Republicans are trying.
In fact, they've already agreed to $800 billion in tax increases by eliminating loopholes.
It's a mistake to have even done that.
Loopholes are itemized deductions that are legal and lawful, put in the tax code by Congress.
Not a bunch of rich lobbyists and lawbreakers and so forth sitting around deciding to corrupt it.
They are there as a matter of law.
The mortgage interest deduction is now a loophole, for example.
So every one of you deducting your mortgage interest in the current parlance, you are exercising a loophole.
You are a tax cheat.
That's what the word loophole has come to mean.
Somebody cheating, getting away with not paying their fair share.
So Obama demanding at first $800 billion to a trillion dollars procured this way.
Boehner says, okay, here it is.
Then Obama, you know what?
I have to change my mind.
Math doesn't work on it.
You're going to raise the rates.
So when the discussion of raising the rates happens, you get the opportunity to talk about a tax cut.
What they want you to believe, and this is how stupid Washington believes you to be.
They want you to believe that you are getting a tax cut if your tax rate doesn't change.
The same bunch of people who call a 5% increase in spending a cut because the baseline says it should go up 8%.
That is called a cut in Washington.
When the expectation that a line item will be increased by 8% and it's only increased by 5, then Democrats running around talk about a draconian 3% cut in spending when there hasn't been a cut.
There's going to be a 5% increase.
Well, by the same token, the same people insulting your intelligence are telling you that you will receive a tax cut if your tax rates stay the same.
Mr. Limbaugh, that absolutely makes no sense whatsoever.
I know guys like you, Mr. New Castrati, but let me try to explain it to you the way they think.
On December 31st, if the Republicans don't just give up, everybody's tax rates are going up.
People who pay income taxes, about half the country, their tax rates are going up.
Tax increase.
Okay?
Hasn't happened yet.
It's on the books.
Now, if there's a deal and tax rates stay the same, then it's magic.
They've just cut your taxes.
Except they haven't.
Your taxes aren't going to change if there's a deal.
The rates aren't going to change.
You're not going to get a tax cut.
The only way you get a tax cut is assuming the rate goes up.
And then our wizards of SMART and our wonderful guardians and protectors at the last moment will rush in and prevent that increase from taking place and say that they cut our taxes when all they did was leave them the same.
So there is no tax cut.
The Republicans have not proposed a tax cut for the rich.
What the Republicans are trying to do, God bless them in their inability to explain it.
What the Republicans are trying to do is maintain current marginal tax rates so that there will not be further punitive tax rate changes on people who earn a living.
Be they small business owners, be they employees, be they moderately successful, wildly successful, nothing special successful.
They don't want tax rates to go up on anybody.
This is being called holding out for tax cuts for the rich.
But again, the only way, and it's perverting the language to even try to make sense of this, the only way anybody could ever say that there's a tax cut is if these rates go up.
Now, let's go to January 1st and let's say there isn't a deal, and January 1st, the rates go up.
What Barack Hussein Obama wants to do is immediately propose a tax cut for 98% of the American people.
People, low-information voters especially, have no clue what's going on, are being lied to about what's going on, have a total misconception about what's going on.
When they see their first paycheck, they're going to see a smaller take-home pay.
They're going to be mad, be outraged.
The media and Obama waiting, strategic moment, it's the Republicans' fault.
They had a chance to stop this, but they were protecting the rich.
They didn't want the rich paychecks to get smaller, and so everybody's are.
But I don't worry, Obama says.
I'm here.
I'm proposing a tax cut to do away with this tax increase.
I'm proposing a tax cut at this moment that'll roll back your tax rates to what they were on December 31st.
And the country is supposed to go, yay, Obama, saving us.
Sorry if this makes you nervous.
Sorry if this sounds threatening.
I'm just trying to be explanatory.
So if this plays out exactly as I've said, what's going to happen is nothing, nothing will effectively change, but you will be made to believe the Republicans allowed your taxes to go up and Obama came along and cut them.
And at the end of that, your tax rate's going to be no, if that's what happens, your tax rate will be no different then than it is today.
But you will be told you just got a tax cut.
Today, you're being told your tax cut is being blocked by the Republicans because they also want the rich to get a tax cut.
There isn't a tax cut on the table.
And if this goes to the brink and there's no deal, there will not be a tax cut next year either.
Oh, it'll be called that.
It'll be labeled a tax cut for the middle class, authored by Obama, who cares about growing the economy, who cares about people getting a fair shake.
And when it's all over, nobody's tax rates are going to change, except the rich, whose tax rates will go up.
The top 2%, no matter what happens here, will see their rates go up to 39.6.
Back to the Clinton.
The odds of that are so strong.
If the Republicans hold out on that, then they're going to get killed politically and they don't know how to stop it.
They don't know how to talk around it.
They don't know how to swat that insect away.
They're going to be accused of denying a tax cut for you, defending the rich.
Obama has set this up.
It's exactly what he wants.
This is exactly what he wants the Republicans isolated as appearing to be in opposition to 98% of the country and in favor and supporting 2% who already have enough, who already have more than they need.
And if you listen to Bill Clinton, who aren't even asking for a tax cut.
Well, guess what?
Nobody is going to get one.
I don't care who you are.
I don't care where you live.
I don't care who you voted for.
Nobody is getting a tax cut with Obamacare alone.
The new rules that have just been introduced this week, nobody is getting a tax cut.
It isn't happening.
But the low-information voters are being told that there's a tax cut that's on the table, waiting.
So Republicans are standing in the way.
None of it's true.
The Republicans have been lassoed by a series of lies, mischaracterizations, misstatements.
And God bless, they're trying to hold out for the right thing.
They just don't know how to explain it.
And I have done the best I can in the time I've got, but now I've got a seed because we have an obscene profit breaker.
We'll be back and continue in just a moment.
A couple of more soundbites, and then to the phone calls, Rand Paul, a new senator from Kentucky.
By the way, the New York Times just tweeted, Boehner doesn't rule out raising tax rates.
So there you go.
Boehner's negotiating with himself is what's happening.
If that happens, I guarantee you, tax cuts, the whole premise of tax cuts, is going to be blamed for all of this economic mess.
It's going to be written in history books, any book, anything taught, Saturday morning cartoons, tax cuts, not government spending, not irresponsible entitlements, not the welfare state, none of that.
That gets a pass.
It will be tax cuts.
Obama's premise that this country's first 220 years were fraudulent and that he's now fixing it.
He's now correcting all those founding mistakes will be etched in stone.
Tax cuts lead to economic disaster.
Tax cuts lead to economic unfairness.
Tax cuts lead to people who shouldn't be rich becoming rich.
Tax cuts lead to people who shouldn't be rich staying rich.
Tax cuts mean rich people do not pay their fair share.
That'll become economics 101.
Tax cuts is what caused the fall of the United States from superpower status.
So that for 25 years, a generation, tax cuts are evil.
Low-information voters, they've already, they're already more than, they're rounding third base on this premise, almost home.
Just need Boehner to go along with raising the rates, and that's it.
Republican Party's finished.
Their number one identifier is gone.
Party of low taxes and economic growth.
Nope.
Party of tax cuts and economic disaster.
That's what they will become.
Media and Obama will see to it.
Rand Paul on the Kudlow report, CNBC last night.
What do you think of Boehner's idea?
Cap deductions, get $800 billion in revenues.
Make any sense to you?
Why don't we let the Democrats pass whatever they want?
If they are the party of higher taxes, all the Republicans in the House vote present and let the Democrats raise taxes as high as they want to raise them.
Let Democrats in the Senate raise taxes.
Let the president sign it and then they can own a tax increase.
And when the economy stalls, when the economy sputters, when people lose their jobs, they know which party to blame, the party of high taxes.
Here we go again, except the problem is the economy has stalled.
It is sputtering and Obama was re-elected.
People have lost their jobs in record numbers and Obama was re-elected.
And who says the Republicans are not going to get the blame?
Who says people, low-information voters, are going to blaming the Democrats for this?
January 1st, Obama's New Year's message to the country is, hey, your tax increase is the Republicans' fault.
Tried.
Here's one more rand Paul.
Yes, I don't think we have to in the Senate.
In the House, they have to because the Democrats don't have a majority.
In the Senate, I'm happy not to filibuster it, and I will announce tonight on your show that I will work with Harry Reid to let him pass his big old tax hike with a simple majority if that's what Harry Reid wants, because then they will be the party of high taxes and they can own it.
That's the question.
If these rates go up on January 1st, if there's not a single Republican vote for it, will the Democrats get blamed?
Would somebody explain to me how that's going to work?
When Obama has escaped blame for everything up to now, how's it automatically going to be that he's going to get blamed for it?
It's not likely, I don't think.
Boehner was asked about a top rate increase, a top tax rate increase that would be short of 39.6%.
He said, well, there are a lot of things possible to come from revenue if the president seizes the opportunity.
A rumor being that Boehner might settle for 37%.
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