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Feb. 26, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:46
February 26, 2013, Tuesday, Hour #2
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And welcome back.
Great to have you with us, my friends, as always.
This is Rush Limbaugh, this is the EIB Network.
And the Limboy Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, our telephone number if you want to be on the program today.
800-282-2882, the email address, L Rushbow at EIB net.com.
President Obama is getting ready to speak at the Newport News shipbuilding yards.
Gonna complain about how the sequester will hurt shipbuilding for the Navy.
Now remember it was Obama who made fun of and mocked Mitt Romney during the last debate for mentioning that Obama is cutting the Navy to the bone.
And for pointing out that it has fewer ships than since back in World War I, Obama said the Navy ships are like horses and bayonets.
We don't need any we got a newer modern Navy, we don't need all that many ships anymore.
And now look at how things are different.
I mean, the idea that we with this sequester are going to somehow a mothbald Navy, this is just insulting.
It is it is it is absurd.
And I'll tell you what's really happening out there, uh ladies and gentlemen, the Washington Post had this story back three days ago.
This is over the weekend.
The big sequester gamble.
How badly will the cuts hurt.
The Democrats are worried that after all of this crisis and fear mongering, after all of these threats, cops staying at home, first responders staying, you know the list.
If that stuff doesn't happen, the Democrats are worried that they're not going to have any credibility anymore in this.
The Democrats are actually worried that what they're predicting will not happen.
In other words, they would feel more comfortable if all of this mess did occur.
Because it's all about winning the political point.
It's all about campaigning.
It isn't about governing.
So it's shifting the blame for everything to the Republicans who are essentially powerless.
With the X set to fall on federal spending in five days, the question in Washington is not whether the sequester will hit, but how much it'll hurt.
Over the past week, President Obama has painted a picture of impending disaster.
Warning of travel delays, laid-off firefighters and pre-screwlers tossed out a head start.
Conservatives accuse Obama of exaggerating the impact, and some White House allies worry the slow-moving sequester may fail to live up to the hype.
This Washington Healthcare lobbyist by the name of Emily Haluboich said the good news is the world does not end on March the second.
The bad news is the world doesn't end on March the second.
Again, Emily Holubowicz, a Washington healthcare lobbyist, who by the way leads a coalition of 3,000 nonprofit groups fighting the cuts, says the good news is the world won't end on March 2nd.
The bad news is the world won't end on March the 2nd.
The worst case scenario for us, she says, is the sequester hits and nothing bad really happens.
And Republicans say, see, that wasn't so bad.
That's what they're worried about.
Why would they be worried about that?
I mean, on the one hand, here you've got Obama, promising disaster.
I mean, he is assuring us that life as you know it's over if this happens.
And yet, here we have some Democrats, eh, you know what?
We better hope that happens, because if it doesn't, Republicans are gonna say, see, that wasn't, and they're what they're really worried about is that if we cut the government as much as they've been saying, and it isn't much at all, we're still gonna spend more.
But that's the reality.
The fake is what everybody's living with here, the optics.
What Obama, the Democrats are saying, and that is we're slashing the government practically in half.
We're cutting it to the point that it doesn't even exist.
And what they're really worried about is after all of these cuts take place via the sequester.
If the birds are still chirping and if the sky is still blue, if the flowers are still blooming, then people are going to say that wasn't so bad.
And their reaction to government cuts will not be strident.
They won't care.
That's what the Democrats are worried about.
Now why would they be worried about that?
Well, no, it's yeah, they're worried the Tea Party would be right, but the reason they're worried about that is because they know that what they've been saying about these cuts is a lie.
If they were really certain that they were telling the truth, forget that.
If they were telling the truth about these cuts, there wouldn't be any doubt like this.
There wouldn't be any concern that people wouldn't notice.
And that's what they're worried about.
They're worried about the sequester's going to happen and nobody's going to notice.
They're worried it's going to be like a Y2K.
Everything was supposed to come to a screeching halt, but it didn't.
You look back on it, and all those Y2K people are now looked at as a bunch of panic-filled kooks, right?
Well, that's what they're afraid of here.
So the Democrats are in a position where they almost they're hoping for disasters to occur here and there so that they will be vilified.
Not vilified, but but uh uh validated.
The worst thing that can happen is for this sequester to happen after Obama's made all these disaster predictions and everything ends up fine and nobody even notices.
Because then the conclusion is, well, we can cut government and there's no harm.
It's like I said in the in the last hour.
The equivalent of what we're doing here, we're cutting the equivalent of one cent on the dollar.
And actually, that's misleading too, because we're actually going to be spending more this year than last year, even with the sequester.
This is so ridiculous, folks, that I'm I'm even mad at myself here for getting caught up in all this and talking about it under the premise that they've set forth.
This is just all of it absurd.
Because I'll tell you what, the bottom line is what Obama is predicting someday is going to happen if his policies are not reversed.
No cops, no firefighters, no first, we're not going to be able to afford anything in a few short years.
We are going to have a collapse.
Everything Obama is warning that will happen starting Friday is going to happen at some point if we don't reverse current government policy.
But it's not going to happen this Friday.
But again, I just want to try to put this in perspective.
Let's let's go with this easily understood example.
We are going to cut government spending by one cent on the dollar.
So for every dollar that we spent last year, let's say we're going to spend 99 cents this year.
It's not even true, but it's the best analogy I come up with.
It's because we're not spending less, we're spending more.
But if this will bring the country to its knees, shouldn't that tell us that there's way too much government?
That government has become way too important in people's lives, that there is too much control that government has over everybody, that they have seriously overreached.
If a few dimes are not spent, and this is the result, isn't it obvious we've got way too much government.
We're way too dependent on this, and we need to become a lot more self-reliant.
I think about the way this is all being presented and the insulting technique that's being used, everybody's intelligence.
It reminds me of the 1995 budget battle when the battle cry of the day is Republicans want to starve your kids by cutting the school lunch program.
Republicans want to take food out of your children's mouths.
And one of my reactions back then was, well, okay, if that happens, I will prepare lunch for my kid that day.
But somehow the idea was that if government didn't provide lunch, your kid will starve.
What kind of parent does that make you?
Are you so distant from your own kids now?
Is the government such in such control over your kids that if they don't feed your kid at school, your kid starves?
What do your children do at dinner?
The government doesn't do dinner.
They weren't doing dinner in 1995 anyway.
Did your kids not eat dinner?
Kids not eat if the government didn't do it.
Of course not.
That's why this is absurd.
I just why this kind this stuff ashamed makes me ashamed.
What makes me ashamed is that this approach works.
I'm not ashamed that a country is founded.
I'm not ashamed to be an American.
I'm ashamed at what's being done to this country.
I'm ashamed that there doesn't seem to be any resistance to it.
I'm ashamed that such shallow untrue false lying, intellectual arguments prevail.
It embarrasses me that the American people can be this easily controlled and bamboozled.
That's what makes me ashamed.
That we're going to spend $15 million more this year than last year, and people's lives will end as they know it.
But again, real concern here.
Washington Post story, it's worth noting.
Because in this story, the mask really slips.
The Washington Post quotes a White House ally, this healthcare lobbyist Emily Halubowich.
Good news is the world doesn't end March 2nd.
Bad news is the world doesn't end March 2nd.
Worst case scenario for us, sequester hits and nothing bad happens.
And Republicans say, see, that wasn't so bad.
That's pretty telling.
How can there be spending reductions without the world collapsing?
In fact, the Post goes on to reiterate this.
If voters react to the sequester cuts with a shrug, congressional Republicans will have won a major victory in their campaign to shrink the size of government.
Instead of canceling the sequester, the GOP will likely push for more, which is to say, some Republicans might even push for real cuts.
Oh.
Oh, so the Washington Post really lets the mask slip.
There aren't any real cuts in this sequester.
And if this sequester happens and there aren't any real cuts, and therefore the world doesn't end on March 2nd, then the Republicans might be emboldened and actually try to really cut some spending.
So they have totally taken the mask off in this story.
And we know what they're really worried about.
They have built this thing up into genuine Armageddon.
It's like the National Weather Service telling you that there is a 125% chance that a hurricane is going to strike where you live and destroy everything.
And the day comes and it's just maybe some clouds and a few sprinkles.
The Post says the Republicans might even push For real cuts and not just reductions in the rate of growth.
Real cuts, and that would be a nightmare that the Democrats don't want to deal with it.
That's right.
If voters react with a shrug, Congressional Republicans.
In fact, I don't think the Democrats can afford that happening.
I think what's going to happen is that Obama will get what Democrat mayors, Democrat town councilman.
He'll try to get this as local as he can make it.
And people in towns and cities all over America run by Democrats will actually lay some cops off.
Just to make sure.
I wouldn't be surprised if that happens.
I wouldn't put anything past these people because the optic is everything.
The greatest enemy, greatest threat the Democrat Party and the Obama administration face is reality.
The truth.
Because they're creating scenarios not based on any of that.
AP.
Story from today by Calvin Woodward.
Spin meter.
In budget fight, sky is falling again.
The AP is dialing it back now.
It's probably more than a CYA gesture than an attempt at honest journalism.
But if Obama is losing AP on this, it'd be like Lyndon Johnson losing Cronkite in a war in Vietnam.
Here's how Calvin Woodward at AP begins the story.
President Barack Obama, his officials are doing their best to drum up public concern over the shockwave of spending cuts that could strike the government in just days.
So it's a good time to be alert for sky is falling hype.
Hype.
It means the AP is a bit skeptical here.
Even now, writes the AP, for now there is a whiff of the familiar in all the foreboding Harking back to the mid-90s partial government shutdown when officials said old people would go hungry.
Illegal immigrants would have the run of the land and veterans would go without drugs.
It didn't happen.
AP, it didn't happen.
The children didn't starve in 1995.
The borders were not inundated with illegals.
Old people didn't go hungry.
The homeless did not commit suicide.
None of it happened, AP reminds us.
And none of it should happen March 2nd.
There aren't any cuts when you get right down to it.
There are shifts in departmental spending.
There are agencies that have to prepare for the possibility of cuts.
But we're not going to be spending any less money this year than we did last, just the opposite.
And welcome back, Rush Linbaugh.
As always, half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
If you're on hold on the phone, I appreciate it, and I want to ask you to be patient just a little while longer.
Get to your call soon.
Two things here.
The General Government Accountability Office released a report today saying that Obamacare will increase the long-term federal deficit by $6.2 trillion.
Another six thousand two hundred billion dollars.
Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican Alabama, quoted the requested the report, revealed the findings this morning in a Senate budget committee hearing.
He said the report confirms everything critics and Republicans were saying about the faults of this bill and dramatically proves that the promises made, assuring the nation the largest new entitlement program would not add one dime to the deficit was false.
So the latest.
This is not the CBO.
This is the government accountability office.
Obamacare adds $8.2 trillion to the long-term to the national debt.
$6.2 trillion.
It's not saving anybody any money.
It's not reducing your premiums by $2,500.
It's not balancing the budget.
It's not reducing the deficit.
Obamacare, another way to put this, Obamacare will result in this country spending $6.2 trillion it otherwise would not spend.
See only way to look at this.
If we had not made any changes in our health care system, we wouldn't be spending this $6.2 trillion.
Not saying we wouldn't be spending money, but Obamacare adds brand new, $6.2 trillion in brand new spending that wasn't occurring.
That's just obscene.
And the Obama White House has released details on how sequestration cuts are now going to affect disabled children, clean air, and abused women.
The sequester will now harm disabled children and abused women.
Washington Post reports that this is a last ditch effort to pressure Republicans into compromising.
What Obama actually wants is for Boehner and the Republicans to agree to additional tax increases.
So now disabled children and abused women.
And I'm ashamed.
I'm ashamed that this is what we have permitted to occur in our politics, is try to manage our affairs.
Hi, welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, fastest three hours in media.
Time now to add phone calls to the mix.
And we start in Littleton, Colorado.
This is Anne.
Welcome.
Great to have you here.
Hi.
Hey, Rush.
It's great to talk to you.
Thank you very much.
Hey, um, if I understand the way the budgeting works, the last time the U.S. had a budget was in 2009, and it was about $1.8 trillion.
That's uh pretty close.
Okay.
And now, I again, I think we're spending over $3 trillion annually.
3.6, $3.7 if you have the dimes.
Okay, so almost or double.
Yeah.
Okay.
So it seems like those one-time things like TARP and bailouts, and I don't know what all, somehow got added into the annual spending, and I don't understand that.
Well, it's a great question.
It really is.
And the answer, I I I, you know, I shouldn't say it's it's complicated because it makes it sound intimidating.
It's really isn't.
But the reason why those one-time expenditures seem to build on themselves is because of the budget process that's known as baseline budgeting, which was begun in the uh 1970s, I believe.
And the the simplest way to explain the baseline budget is when you the federal budget's not like your household budget.
In your household budget, you look, if you do one, let's hypothetically say you do.
You look at what you spent last year, you look at this current year, and you estimate as close as you can what your income is going to be, and then you budget what your spending is going to be.
And every year you do that starting from zero.
That's not how the federal government does it.
There is a thing in the federal government called the current services baseline.
And that is the starting point every year, not zero.
There is not one government department or agency that every year looks at what it was given to spend and then what it did spend and is then budgeted accordingly.
So let's say that agriculture was budgeted, I'm just going to make up some numbers here.
Let's say the agriculture department was budgeted a hundred billion dollars and they spent 70.
You would think, okay, next year they'll be budgeted 70 billion dollars.
No.
They would be they would be because of baseline budgeting, the more they spend, the more they will be allowed to spend or budgeted to spend the next year.
The current services baseline essentially, and I'm gonna cut through a bunch of legalese to explain this to you.
The current services baseline requires mandates, whatever, that every line item in the federal budget be increased by anywhere from three to ten percent every year, no matter what is spent on that line item.
But the the more that is spent, the better.
The more that is spent, the more that will be budgeted the next year.
And this is this was done purposefully to make sure the government would never shrink and never get smaller.
The current services baseline is what it is it's built on current services.
Now, for example, you add TARP.
Now that's let's say that the stimulus.
The stimulus, by the time it was all said and done, will round the figure off to a trillion dollars.
Well, the stimulus was not a trillion dollars thrown at one thing.
It was divided up into a bunch of different parts of the budget.
And in the process, every one of those items thus saw an increase in that particular year in what it was given to spend.
And that created the baseline for the next year's budget.
But there wasn't a budget.
Doesn't matter.
The continuing resolution takes all of this into account.
The continuing resolutions, how we're funding the government, makes it even worse, precisely because they can even go beyond the baseline budget targets.
Okay, well, and I okay, so I see how they got to the baseline for the stimulus.
But how about for TARP?
That got added in too, but but it was a completely, I mean, it was a it didn't go to different departments, did it?
Well, the thing about TARP is there's still 200 billion, or that was last year at this time, there was still 200 billion of it unspent.
Right.
Uh TARP was essentially bailed out.
Who knows who?
One of the things about TARP is that we don't really know where all it went.
And in addition to TARP, people forget this.
The Federal Reserve, before TARP, which was not even one trillion dollars, the Federal Reserve had on its own, independent of the Federal Bud, the Federal Reserve had loaned or granted over one and a half trillion dollars to somebody, a series of somebody.
We still don't know who.
Now there was an effort made for the Federal Reserve to have to admit to whom they gave this money.
Same year as TARP, 2008.
But I don't think that they have ever had to be forthcoming with who got that money.
Now they can just print it.
The Fed's independent.
They can print the money that they want to give and add it to the money supply, they can do with it whatever they want.
Uh but the the baseline is it simply exists for the government to bake in automatic increases regardless what's spent to cover inflation, population increases, and to give themselves.
Look at spending money is a member of Congress's job.
Spending money is a senator's job.
That's after getting re-elected, that's the job.
And that's how you stay in office, is spending the money.
That's how you buy votes, that's how you buy loyalty, that's a it's a vicious, vicious cycle.
Uh, but uh you your your your look, your question's a good one because you're you're wondering where did the money come from?
There hasn't been a budget allocating it.
I know what you're asking.
So where do we get the authority to spend it?
Continuing resolutions.
And and is it a continuing resolution that okay?
So there's the um fiscal cliff that the um limited.
That's the debt limit.
That's a whole different thing.
Okay, and that's coming up.
But is there another continuing resolution that has to be signed pretty soon?
End of March.
And it's gonna make the sequester look like romper room.
Because when we get the continuing resolution authorizes all government spending.
The sequester is only ostensibly over ten years, a trillion and a half dollars in cuts in two areas defense and Medicare Medicaid.
The continuing resolution, absent a budget as we are, is entire entire government spending.
And can the Republicans do anything in the continuing resolution to slow spending down, to take out some of that stick.
All they can do, all they can do is negotiate with a guy who doesn't want to negotiate.
All they can do is basically disagree with what he and the Democrats want to do.
And the only way they can ultimately disagree is to not sign on to it, which representatives signing on to you need the Senate agreeing to it, the House agreeing to it, and then Obama signs it.
If the House run by the Republicans doesn't agree to it, then you get a government shutdown.
Okay, and if there's a government shutdown, I mean people talk as if the government shut down, I think twice or three times under Newt Gingrich, and that that was a bad thing, but I I don't see that it was a bad thing back then.
Well, in r it it depends on how you look at it.
Politically for the Republicans it ended up being very bad.
Because as you can understand, they were accused of not caring about people.
Remember now, the government is seen by many people as the single source of not just prosperity, but of income of lifestyle, survival.
And if the Republicans are seen as shutting it down, they're seen as starving children, denying social security to old people, kicking people out of their houses, polluting the air, all of this stuff is what they are accused of because all of these great wonderful things is what the government does.
The government feeds people, it clothes people.
The government does roads and bridges, the government you didn't build that, the government did.
You didn't do anything.
The government does everything, and if the Republicans shut it down, then politically they're gonna be destroyed by the media and by the Democrats.
See the what you instinctively know is that we are so out of control on this spending side.
If we don't start making really serious cuts of major size in in areas where we're wasting money, uh redundant spending.
If we don't do this, then every prediction Obama's making today about sequester is going to happen for real.
We are gonna become Greece someday.
We're gonna become Greece and Spain, we're gonna become Europe someday.
Soon, within twenty years, if this stuff isn't reversed.
All of these things Obama's saying are gonna happen next week will happen for because of his policies if they're not reversed.
Well So the Republicans, what you the Republicans are faced with the usual dilemma.
Do they agree with Obama and the Democrats and be seen as compassionate, big hearted, understanding, and loving of people?
Or do they in in their effort to try to save this country from destruction, are they seen as the equivalent of heartless killers?
Because that's how they're portrayed.
Yeah.
Well, I thank you for um your your answers.
Well, did it help?
Well, I don't know.
See, when you know you're not satisfied on the on the how the government the budget can expand when there's not a budget.
Yeah, probably I have a real hard time understanding how those one time items, you know, like a new roof on my house.
How does that get in into the annual spending, especially when we don't have a budget?
And I understand the continuing resolution.
No, no, because if th that's that's why it's hard to understand.
You couldn't budget your life this way.
There is no bank that would ever give you a loan.
There was you you you you you'd be put in jail if you ran a business this way.
Once they spend something at the government, it is considered an annual expenditure the next year.
So we had we had the the uh the stimulus, not a one year thing.
That's a as far as the way the government budgets, that money's now going to be spent every year.
Whether there's a budget or not, they're gonna spine, they're gonna find a way to spend it.
Have you ever seen a budget get smaller?
Not their budget.
No, you haven't.
It always gets bigger.
Even when there isn't a budget, they find a way to spend.
They're spending money they don't have.
Yeah.
They're borrowing, they're printing.
This is irresponsible.
As uh any business ran itself this way, the people in charge would be in jail.
They'd be brought up on charges so fast they'd be in jail multiple terms, life sentences, no parole.
Because the people they'd be ripping off in the process.
Using your example, let's say you repair your roof this year.
Yep.
And it costs you, let's say a thousand dollars to fix your roof, just picking a number.
If you're the government, you are gonna spend that thousand dollars next year no matter what, it's on.
You spent it once, it's available next year.
Maybe maybe not for your for your roof, but a new car or what have it, just the way they do things.
That's the baseline.
And then, and that's how they're adding all these new people to the government roles.
I mean, to the um I mean, you know, this the simple explanation, there's nobody to stop them.
They can do it, there's nobody to stop them.
And you ask how they can do it, there's nobody to stop them.
And that's what that's what concerned me.
And that's what I don't think.
There's no morality.
They're not stopping themselves.
There's no self-restraint, there's no discipline whatsoever.
Yeah.
It's not their money.
They're spending yours and mine and everybody else's.
They're not spending their own.
They don't run their own lives this way.
You remember the House even had at one time its own bank.
Right the members could write checks for money they didn't have until we blew the whistle on it.
So it didn't matter what their salaries were.
They could write checks for thousands of dollars that they didn't have.
Well, they could take a $10,000 donation check to the House Post Office and buy a 25 cent stamp and get the change in cash.
Now you can't do that.
Nope.
There's nobody to stop them.
And they don't have the discipline to stop themselves.
Either party.
Gotta take a break.
I'm way long here.
Don't go away.
Okay, we're back.
And I know you're still out there listening.
Folks, Ann is a high information voter.
And she's having trouble getting her arms around those.
And anybody would.
And understanding baseline budgeting the first time you hear it is difficult because it doesn't make sense in the way you understand the way you spend money and earn money in your own life.
So it's very, it's hard to grasp and get your arms around the first time you hear it.
Let me just one more aspect of baseline budgeting.
The current services baseline is every year's final amount of money spent.
So the current services baseline next year, next budget year starting in October it's going to be 3.7 trillion.
Whether all that money mattered, whether it made sense to spend, whether doesn't matter.
We spent 3.7 last year or this year, that becomes the current services baseline on which we budget the next year.
And of course, every item must be expanded.
Why there are there are more needs.
There are more people.
There are more people, compassionate needs and so forth.
So we up it from there.
So we don't look at what we spent and how much we didn't need to spend and then reduce it the next year.
The current services baseline is what was spent every year and then increases are automatic the next year.
So the current services baseline says that let's say Department of Health and Human Services, their percentage of the $3.7 trillion budget is X, and they are budgeted for an 8% increase next year.
And let's say that as the final budget is agreed to, they get a 4% increase instead of the 8%.
Because that's what's agreed to.
It's possible.
That is when you hear Democrats say Draconian cuts.
Because if you'll notice, no budget ever gets smaller in Washington.
There is never a budget that's really cut.
When you hear budget cuts, what you're really hearing is exactly that example.
A line item expected to get an 8% increase, and they only got a 4% increase, they had a 4% cut.
They had a 4% cut.
When in truth, they're getting 4% more than they got the last year.
But since they wanted eight, they look at it as having gotten a budget cut.
I'm telling you, it I gotta take a break.
I wish I didn't have to, but I got to.
We'll be back in just a second.
By the way, you do, by the way, most of you, at one point or another in your life, you have engaged in a modified form of baseline budgeting in your own life.
And I will explain how, with a lot of other stuff, too.
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