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May 28, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:30
May 28, 2013, Tuesday, Hour #2
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Greetings, welcome back.
Great to have you, Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, a thrill and a delight to have you with us.
800-282-2882, if you want to be on the program.
So I'm being deluged with emails from people giving me the Bush economic data to refute that caller, that lying independent sack of whatever that called here from Rotchester about the reason we have debt being the Bush tax cuts in three wars.
And I got all these numbers.
The Bush deficit, by the way, in 2007, you know what the annual deficit was 2007?
This is in the middle of the three wars and after the Bush tax cuts, which were 2001, 2002, the federal budget deficit 2007 was $1,67 billion or some such thing.
The idea that the debt situation we have is because of Bush.
Now, look, there was spending there, there's no question, but the utter denial of any responsibility by Obama the last five years is exactly the folks, low-information voter, this is exactly who the guy was.
That's what we're up against.
And there's no way I could have kept the guy in the phone, told him the truth about the numbers, it wouldn't have mattered.
That was quintessential, classic illustration of a low-information voter.
And a partisan to boot, a partisan low-information voter.
Those people, it wouldn't have mattered.
They're not to be reasoned with.
You can't persuade them, even I. Greatness, as a next caller said, I wouldn't have had the chance to persuade them.
Couldn't have succeeded.
The thing that has to be done is those people have to be defeated.
And that's what's wrong with the Republican trying to reach out to those people.
It's a losing proposition.
It isn't going to happen.
They have to be defeated.
They're in a minority anyway.
The percentage of the American people, I've got it here in a stack some percentage of the American people that identify themselves as conservative, the latest numbers at 26%, which you may think is low, but the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as liberal was like 13%.
Even if you don't believe those numbers, I guarantee you it's no higher than 30% that are liberal.
We're being governed by a genuine minority, made to look like a majority because of the media and everything else.
Now, I wasn't making it up.
Hollywood's thinking about doing a movie entitled Rodham.
And the movie will focus on Hillary Rodham's time as a lawyer for the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate investigation.
That's really where Hillary Rodham got her start.
And she was kicked off of that committee.
Hillary was kicked off.
She was an intern-type advisory counsel to the Democrats on the committee.
And she was kicked off of that committee because she was a partisan hack, and she did not think Nixon should have a lawyer.
She was opposed to Nixon having a lawyer, and they got rid of her.
Now, this is before she was Hillary Rodham Clinton.
This was before anything.
This was, folks, it's not pretty.
Now, the director of this movie said, regardless of people's political affiliation or how they feel about Hillary Clinton, you don't find people who question the quality of her intelligence or her drive.
I want a wonderful actress who could embody that.
That's one of the biggest, one of the biggest myths in American politics today is Hillary Clinton's brilliance.
I don't know what her IQ is, but her political instincts, folks, this woman is, I mean, in the real world, she's incompetent.
Benghazi, look at the Secretary of State, the Department of State during her tenure.
I mean, Hillary Carr, I mean, utter disaster.
It was her strategy for dealing with the bimbo eruptions of her husband.
But it doesn't matter because the conventional wisdom about Hillary is smartest woman in the world, smartest lawyer.
But it's more than that.
I've told you what it is.
I feel like I'm, if I repeat it again, I feel like I'm kind of phoning it in because I've told you this so many times.
But she's who she is.
She holds this lofty perch because the party feels indebted to her.
She sacrificed what could have been, in their view, her own triumphant individual life and career in order to marry the hillbilly from Arkansas.
And then she went to Arkansas.
Folks, to these people that go to Harvard, Yale, Wellesley, moving to Arkansas for any reason, that's like agreeing to go to prison.
I mean, that's just Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, it doesn't matter.
She went, and then she suffered humiliation after humiliation after humiliation.
She hung in and she enabled Bill Clinton's career to be maximized all the way to President of the United States.
That's why she's owed, and that's why this attitude about her.
And they circle the wagons, and they're going to protect her no matter what.
Now, the actresses, you ought to, gee, I can't win here.
I was going to tell you to go look up some things from that era, but I'm not even going to go there.
You're on your own.
The actresses that are being considered to play 26-year-old Hillary Rodham, Scarlett Johansson, Rhys Witherspoon, Amanda Seyfried, or Seyfried, or S-E-Y-F-R-I-E-D.
She was, I don't know, she's in Le Miz or Rob.
I don't know who Amanda Fried is, and Jessica Chastain from Zero Dark 30.
So, Scarlett Johansson, Rhys Witherspoon, the actress from Les Miz, and Jessica Chastain.
So, whoever gets this role, I'm just telling you, the Oscar for best makeup artist of the year will go to whoever does the makeup for this movie.
There's no question about that.
David Rodham Gergen, by the way, speaking of the Clintons, all upset here.
And here's the Limbaugh Theorem on display.
This Face the Nation yesterday morning, somebody number three here.
Bob Schieffer speaking with David Rodham Gergen about the various scandals facing Obama.
And Schieffer said, David, you've seen a lot of controversies in your time in Washington as the dean of conventional wisdom.
We have this IRS thing.
We've got the leaks investigation, all this stuff going on.
How do you think the White House has been handling all this, David?
Not well.
I must say, it's been a real surprise.
We all think that the Obama people do a superb job running a campaign.
But when it comes to running the government, they can be so ham-fisted.
It really sort of boggles the mind sometimes.
No, no, no, David, it's on purpose.
It's by design.
You might Google it by now, the Limbaugh Theorem.
Google that, David, and you'll find exactly campaigning, constantly campaigning.
That's the way they govern.
Obama will never be seen governing.
That's why it looks ham-fisted.
That's why you can't believe Obama has successfully constructed this scenario where all this stuff happens, and he's opposing it all.
He's against what the IRS did.
He's against what happened in Benghazi.
He's against all these leaks.
He's against criminalizing the reporter James Reed.
He's against all of it.
He's mad about it.
He's doing everything he can to find out how it happened and to make sure it doesn't happen again.
And low-information crowd like that dim wit from Rochester fall right in line and believe it.
54% of Americans oppose Obamacare, according to a CNN poll released yesterday.
Only 43% support it.
These numbers, 54, 55, sometimes up to 58, have been this way for four years on this.
Obamacare has never had the support of a majority of the American people.
Never.
And even the CNN says, it's a political story, but majorities have consistently opposed the law.
35% of the country opposes the law because it's too liberal.
16% argue it isn't liberal enough.
But it doesn't matter.
54% still remain against Obamacare.
Sally Pipes, a contributor at Forbes, has an interesting story.
The Obamacare insurance exchange train is already coming off the rails.
It is a train wreck.
Obamacare is going to implode.
It simply is too big.
It's too intricate.
Not only is it much too large for one person to be able to grasp it, understand it, and even delegate the implementation, a whole bunch of committees will never understand this.
This bill, this piece of legislation is literally going to be a train wreck.
And I think the cynic in me says that that is part of the design to have it be so chaotic and such a mess, so inefficient that the solution to it all will be single payer.
That will be the simplification.
And this is classic.
The government devises a program to fix something that is broken because government broke it in the first place.
The healthcare system in this country broke it because government got involved in it way back in the 60s.
And it's gotten worse and worse and worse.
So what's next?
Well, government's got to do something to fix it.
So, yep, government broke it.
People say government has to fix it.
Government goes in and fixes it, makes it worse.
People, you know what?
Government's got to fix this.
Never-ending cycle.
The government's the only institution that profits from its mistakes.
The government's the only institution that grows because of its mistakes.
To the point that the mistakes may be purposeful in many instances.
You go anywhere in the private sector, and this is not permitted.
The latest train wreck of many here is these exchanges.
The magic date for the exchanges is October 1st.
All of the exchanges in the states where people will go to get their mandated insurance will not be open and up for operation up and running.
And those that are are going to be a disaster.
And nobody running them is going to fully understand what they are, what their purpose is, and how to make them work.
Now, Sally Pipe's point here is that an Obamacare train wreck isn't a distant possibility.
It's already happening.
Delays, wasteful spending, cost overruns have already popped up, and it's becoming increasingly likely that the exchanges won't be ready by October 1st when they are supposed to open for enrollment.
Mass confusion, excessive costs will result.
Here's a pull quote: Health and Human Services can't even account for all the grant money that it's throwing at the states since the money comes with little or no restrictions or guidelines or accountability.
They're throwing money at the states here.
Do an exchange to the states that have agreed to do it.
But there's no owner's manual, there's no instruction manual.
Here, here's the money, set up the exchange.
Okay, what do we do?
Well, just set up the exchange.
Well, what the hell is one?
Well, it's an office of people going to come get their health insurance.
Oh, okay, so we just open an office.
Yep, here's the money.
Well, what do we do after we open the office?
Well, people are going to come in and get insurance.
Oh, well, who's providing it?
Well, that'll be taken care of.
You just make sure you get the office opened up.
That's about what's happening.
And the low-information crowds are going to be lining up.
They'll be there.
They'll be there as though it's a new iPhone being released.
They'll be standing to be lined up around the corner to get because they think it's free.
I'm telling you, you can laugh, but it's exactly what's going to happen.
Even the states the administration has paraded around as pioneers in the exchange business are having trouble creating government-run insurance marketplaces out of whole cloth.
Connecticut, the first state approved to set up an exchange, is now struggling to get it up and running.
Colorado is stripping its opening day goals to a minimum.
By the way, these are two states that have banned guns.
Is it a coincidence that they have no clue what they're doing?
Federal officials have struggled to come up with a comprehensible application form.
Their first effort was 15 pages.
This is the form that we're going to have to fill out at the exchange.
The first was 15 pages, and people looked at it.
What the hell is this?
This is worse than a tax form.
So after that round of criticism, it came back with a form that was three pages for individuals and seven pages for families.
And I'm just here to tell you that the low-information crowd that's going to be lining up What they think is free health care is going to, they're going to see that three or seven page application form, and there could be riots.
Now, the cynic in me says some of this is by design because single payer is what Obama's always wanted.
Government-run health care is what he's always wanted.
The more chaos there is, the more confusion there is, the more people that don't get insurance, the more people that don't have insurance and then can't get treatment, you've got a recipe for all kinds of unrest out there.
You know how important health care is to people, and if they can't get it, or if it's if it's reminiscent of any trip to any government window, after a while, somebody's going to pop.
You know what?
We just ought to get rid of these.
It's just the government's going to do it.
Everybody get their insurance to government.
The government will pay for everything.
Okay, cool.
Just like Amnesty: 13 years before they can vote, but after six months, Schumer's, you know what?
This is just unconstitutional.
This is just unfair.
We tell them we can be a citizen here.
We let them in.
We've got a pathway decision.
We tell them we have to wait 13 years to vote.
No way.
They can vote tomorrow.
The way it's going to happen.
You watch.
Hi.
How are you?
Welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network from the New York Times.
High-end health plans scaled back to avoid Cadillac tax.
Oh, you've heard about the Cadillac health care plans.
Well, the unions have, but the 1% have them.
They're being scaled back to avoid the high tax on them.
Say goodbye to that $500 deductible insurance plan and a $20 co-payment for a doctor's office visit.
They're likely to become luxuries of the past.
Get ready to enroll in a program to manage your diabetes or prepare for a health screening to determine your odds of developing a costly health condition.
Expect to have your blood pressure checked or a prescription filled at a clinic at your office rather than by your private doctor, and then blame the so-called Cadillac tax, which penalizes companies that offer high-end health care plans to their employees.
While most of the attention on the Obama administration's health care law has been on providing coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans by next year, workers with employer-paid health insurance are also beginning to feel the effects.
Companies hoping to avoid the tax on high-end health care plans.
Stop it.
Why would companies offer a really cool high-end health care plan?
That's right.
Get the best employees.
Get them and keep them.
There's a competition for the best employees.
Companies come up with creative ways of compensating them.
So the regime comes along and says, Well, you're going to do that.
We're going to tax the heck out of you.
Because it isn't fair that some should have better treatment than others.
It isn't fair that others should have better coverage.
It just isn't fair.
So the changes, as you write in New York Times, write into line with the regime's plan to encourage employers to move away from plans that insulate workers from the cost of care and often lead to excessive procedures and tests.
Don't want really high-quality health care available.
Because it, well, they're liberals.
They think it's unfair, number one.
It's the way they do.
They don't, you know, here you've got health care.
They don't want to make the best available to the most.
The other way around.
Make the mediocre available to everybody.
Meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day.
Rush Limbaugh, as usual, half my brain tied behind my back just to be fair.
I guess fairness is everything.
That's why socialism, by the way, works in people's minds.
They think it's fair.
I actually think, I've been working on this.
The object is to change people's minds, starting as young as feasible.
And the reason socialism is attractive to people is because I think it's fair.
Like this last healthcare story we had.
We're going to get rid of Cadillac health care plans because it's not fair that some employees ought to have better insurance than anybody else has and better coverage.
It isn't fair.
So we're going to tax those things out of existence.
That's what we're going to do.
And that's considered fair.
Now, it's anti-free market, it's anti-freedom, and it destroys choice and all these things.
And it also eliminates something that people could aspire to and work toward.
But people fall for it and say, okay, because that's fair.
Socialism is fair.
And fairness, I've often thought the concept or the word that gives us as conservatives the biggest obstacle to overcome is that whole concept of fairness and that word fair as it's utilized politically.
Nobody's opposed to fairness, but what is it?
Is fairness everybody being equal?
Is fairness everybody by equal, I mean having the same equality of outcome?
What's fair?
Who gets to define that?
It's such an time political ideologues get involved, the whole concept of fair gets turned upside down.
And it ends up meaning something that's actually destructive.
That's not going to drop his plan.
That's the whole point.
The elites are not going to have to get rid of theirs.
You think Obama's going to get rid of his Cadillac health insurance plan or the two Obama daughters?
That isn't going to happen.
You know that.
I mean, the liberals are always going to insulate themselves from the fairness they impose on everybody else.
Here's Sheila.
Sheila's in Savannah, Georgia.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
Thanks.
I just wanted to share with you my experience in Annapolis.
My stepson graduated from the Naval Academy, and Obama gave the commencement speech, and it was like a campaign speech.
It was disgusting.
He was saying, oh, isn't it a shame how the actions of a few can bring down the reputation of an entire agency.
Wait, wait, wait.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Hold it.
Hold it.
What was he talking about?
He was talking about character.
But no, the actions of a few.
No, wait, wait.
The actions of a few bring down the reputation of an entire agency.
What agency?
He was talking about the IRS.
IRS, okay.
Yep.
And what place did that have to do with, you know, giving his commencement speech and talking to his graduates?
I just wanted to hold up a sign saying, I'm a rush babe.
I couldn't even stand the sight of him, actually.
But then he went on about how job creation has been occurring, that the economy is growing, and that he's going to make sure that everyone there is going to get all the tools that they need to do their job in the military.
Right?
Yeah, yeah.
And meanwhile, there was no flyover because the sequestration, but he flew in on, you know, did he say, or did they, did somebody say the reason there wasn't a flyover was sequestration?
Yes.
The Nigel Academy said that.
Look, Obama runs the naval occasion, commander-in-chief.
What do you expect when Obama's doing a commencement speech anywhere?
What do you expect?
Yep.
Yep.
And I emailed the White House prior to the event saying how disgusting it is that these boys can't even, you know, have a flyover, yet he can fly over God's, you know, everywhere and they can go to the Bahamas on vacation and everything, and they can't get a flyover.
Really?
Well, in fairness, the women didn't get one either.
True.
There are cadet eds.
There are.
There are.
There are midship ladies, but they didn't get a flyover either.
Right, correct.
All 1,046 of them did not get one.
But he did shake everyone's hand, I must say.
He stood there in the rain and shook hands with every single graduate.
So I'll give him that, and that's about it.
Well, that's cool.
So, yeah, that would have made my day.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
I just look, I hate to tell you, but Obama doesn't have a non-partisan mode.
He doesn't have an apolitical mode.
And he doesn't have a mode that is about anything other than him.
So I'm sorry it happened, but it should have been expected.
I don't know what you think about a commencement speech.
Yeah, you can't have a flyover, but Obama took a helicopter from D.C. to Annapolis.
The flyover, they should have just made everybody wait while Obama leaves.
And his departure on the Rein 1 could have been the flyover with everybody saluting.
Sheila, thank you.
Jim in Chicago, you're next.
Great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Mr. Limbaugh, it is a pleasure to speak to you, sir.
I've been listening to you since 1990.
I was turned on to you from a guy in a shipping dock, and I've been a faithful listener ever since.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
No, thank you for the education, sir.
Hey, it drives me nuts when these liberals call your show, and they say that we're not paying our fair share.
I'm a truck driver.
I do okay, okay, but my taxes have gone up.
They take about $500 a week out of my check and taxes.
Okay, now I pay for my insurance, too, and that's about $636 a month.
Now, when these people call and they say that we have a deficit because we're not paying our taxes, our fair share, you know, I swear to God, Rush, I want to choke these people because I talk to my friends, and there are a lot of liberals here in Chicago.
They're firemen and stuff.
And I always tell them they talk bad about rich people.
I said, have you ever got a check from a poor person?
You know, and it just drives me nuts.
And it's just, you know, I mean, we're struggling.
My wife's laid off.
You know, I'm working my tail off as much as I can because the government regulates driving a truck.
Curious, what do they say when you ask them if they've ever gotten a check or a job is what you mean from a rich person?
What do they say?
They just laugh.
That fits nothing.
And I tell them, you've got to be out your mind, man.
Rich people are the savior.
I love rich people, man.
They're the best.
I swear to God.
I love them.
I walk in every day and shake my owner's hand.
The owner of the Tokyo Drive Port, I shake his hand.
Because if it wasn't for him, I could put food on the table for my family.
And these people that talk are destroying this place.
It just drives me nuts.
Wait a minute.
You're not sitting out there thinking that that rich guy has the money you used to have.
No, not at all.
Because, hey, I could have been rich if I went to college.
But, you know, I got married at a young age, had kids, and we sent our kids to private schools.
We would not send them to these liberal government-run education camps.
You know, we didn't have these cars.
We didn't live beyond our means like the Joneses.
We just did what we had to do.
We save a couple pennies here and there.
We're saving right now because our computer took the crap about three months ago, and we're saving our pennies and our dimes and our quarters to buy a new computer.
And I think about another two, three months to save in, I'll be able to buy my family a new computer.
You know, it just drives me nuts, man.
I don't know what's going on in this country.
The Republican Party, some of these guys, the way they talk, they make me sick.
I like to say that.
Well, the reason you're frustrated is there's no pushback.
I mean, you have to sit there and you listen to the Democrats get away with impugning the rich, blaming the rich for all the problems.
Your fireman buddies agree.
They never hear any alternative.
Republicans are afraid to oppose any like that.
The rich are never going to be defended.
They're never going to be spoken for.
I mean, half the rich even criticize themselves.
Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, you name it.
But they're all in there hoping they're number one on the Forbes list every year.
They all have that private little competition.
Anyway, Jim, don't change.
Your values are solid, and your kids are going to be great.
You've made decisions with what you have that you thought were the best for your family and for your kids based on a set of rules that you've always believed in.
And I wouldn't change.
I think you're solid.
I'm glad you're out there, and I appreciate your call.
Quick timeout.
We'll be back.
Don't go away.
You know, this whole subject of taxes.
This is one of those days where I'm just, I'm worn out on it.
I have, for 25 years, told everybody the truth about taxes, lower taxes, high revenue, over and over and over again.
And I frankly, at times, I just get exhausted with it.
Sometimes it feels like it's pointless.
I'm going to try one more time in this low-tax business.
There's a reason that it's in the news.
There's a reason why we're getting calls from these wackos that the deficit and the national debt are so high because of taxes.
And you know what it can be traced to?
What got it all started, the recent incarnation of this, was an AP story back in 2011.
Was it Washington Post?
Washington Post story.
AP, whatever.
They both ran the story.
February 2011, AP reported that the federal tax rate was the lowest since the 1950s.
By one measure, it said.
Federal taxes, lowest since the 1950s.
This was a purposeful in conjunction with the regime story to support Obama's tax increases.
And the intention was to tell the low-information crowd that Americans are paying the least in taxes than they ever have since the 1950s.
The trick was they were not talking about rates.
They were talking about revenue generated.
And the reason why they could say that was half the country isn't paying income taxes anymore.
And this was in the middle of a recession when more people were being laid off and not paying taxes.
And when people were being downsized to part-time and not paying as much.
So the federal take from income taxes was down.
But it was because of a rotten economy and tax law, which exempts 47, 48% of Americans from paying any income tax.
But the AP and the Washington Post joined forces to try to make it look like taxes were low because the tax rate, i.e. percentage, was the lowest it had been since the 50s, which was a crock.
At the time, the top marginal tax rate was, I get either 35 or 36%.
It's now 39.6%.
But at the time they wrote the story, the top marginal rate was 35%.
Now, under Rinaldus Magnus, the top marginal rate plummeted to 28%.
So tax rates have been lower than they are today since the 50s.
Their whole story was a lie.
But that's all it takes.
One story in the AP, ballot amplified to the Washington Post.
It shows up in all the blogs and all the social media, and it balloons, becomes a little snowball.
It gets bigger and bigger and bigger.
And the low information crowd thinks the rich aren't paying their fair share.
Bamo.
And that's why we got a national debt.
That's the record high, and that's why we got a deficit.
That's the most modern, the latest incarnation of this bogus theory can be traced back, I think, to that.
How can they ignore the Obama spending?
Because he's not doing it.
Do you see?
Limboff, even Snerdley, who is as immersed in news and politics day to day as anybody I've ever known, just asked me, how can people not factor Obama's spending?
He's not doing it.
He's opposed to it, Mr. Snerdley.
Obama is upset at the spending.
He's upset at the debt.
That's why Obamacare is going to lower the deficit.
That's why everything he's been doing has been to lower the deficit and to shrink the national debt.
He's opposed to it.
He's not causing it to happen.
Bush did that with his three wars.
We have this national debt.
This is the mess that Obama inherited.
He didn't do any of it.
So you couple that with that story on the Washington Post, which is an AP story February of 2011, that the American people are paying their lowest taxes since the 50s.
That's none of it's true.
No matter how you slice, but they were looking at revenue collected, not the tax rate.
But they were trying to make everybody believe that the tax rate that the rich were paying was the lowest it had been since the 50s.
And we've got this big debt, and that's why.
And to the low information crowd just ate it up.
And that's why we get nitwits like this guy Rochester call today talking about essentially just repeating all of this.
Ronald Reagan took office in 1981.
Top marginal tax rate was 70%, folks.
Eight years later, Ronald Reagan leaves office.
Top marginal tax rate, 28%.
So in eight years, went 70% to 28%.
Do you know what happened to revenue?
Almost doubled.
When Reagan took office, revenue generated by the tax code at 70% was $500 billion.
The amount of revenue collected after the rate plunge from 70 to 28% was about $968 billion, almost doubled with a tax rate plunging because it created more jobs and more taxpayers.
And more taxpayers paying taxes equals higher tax revenue, but lower tax rates is what caused it.
Now, this February 2011 story tries to turn that on its head, and it worked with the low-information crowd, as most every trick will work by definition with the low-information crowd, including the fact that Obama hasn't done anything in six years or five years.
None of what's happened, he's against it all.
He's opposed it all.
Oh, the AP never mentioned tax rates.
That's the key to it.
They just said by one measure, federal taxes lowest since 1950.
They knew low information crowd would assume rates and percentages because that's what Obama was talking about.
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