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Oct. 7, 2013 - Rush Limbaugh Program
31:56
October 7, 2013, Monday, Hour #3
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And greetings to you, music lovers, thrill seekers, conversationalists all across the fruited plane.
It's Rush Limbaugh.
We're back.
Happy to have you here.
The telephone number is 800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program, the AP had a story back on September 27th, and they were ecstatic.
The AP was as joyous and happy as they could be.
Obama's no negotiation stance setting new tone.
September 27th.
So he's out there today saying, I'll negotiate any day.
I'll negotiate any day, anytime, anywhere, as long as they're going to agree with me.
If they're not going to agree with me, why should I negotiate?
And that's, in essence, his position.
And I'm telling you, folks, look, I don't want to make too much of it because it could all change overnight.
But as we sit here now, with this confluence of events, the unrolling of the, well, the rolling out of Obamacare, the disaster that's happening at the exchanges, people sign up, finding out what their premium expenses are skyrocketing to, and the government shut down because the Republicans appear to be on people's side for the first time in their minds.
And Republicans appear eagle to talk.
Somehow the news has gotten out that Republicans are offering to fund efforts to help kids get cancer treatment, and the Democrats aren't.
And one of the ways that happened was Harry Reid said, why should I care about those kids?
And it is all about, the polling data is all about the fact that it's the Democrats.
You've got to remember how Obama got elected.
You have to remember what people thought his election would mean.
No more partisanship.
No more bickering.
Obama was going to end that.
Obama was magic.
Obama was something that had never before graced American politics.
Obama was going to end all this chump change infantile stuff.
And all it's done has gotten worse.
And so Jay Carney today and Obama himself today have, oh, we're willing to negotiate every day.
We've said that.
No, you didn't.
Back on September 27th, AP, Obama's no negotiation stance setting new tone.
And they were happy about it.
Let me read to you from the article.
This time, President Obama says he's not budging.
This is the confrontational Obama, the make-my day president, betting Republicans blink to avoid a government shutdown or a first-ever default on the nation's debts.
The entire world looks to us to make sure the world economy is stable.
You don't mess with that, Obama said Thursday.
And that's why I will not negotiate on anything when it comes to the full faith and credit of the United States.
And the AP was ecstatic reporting this, I will not negotiate on anything.
Mike, if you would grab the last audio sound by number 21, Obama, September 27th, AP, I will not negotiate on anything.
I heard a lot of talk over the weekend that the real problem is, is that the president will not negotiate.
Well, let me tell you something.
I have said from the start of the year that I'm happy to talk to Republicans about anything related to the budget.
There's not a subject that I am not willing to engage in, work on, negotiate, and come up with common sense compromises on.
What I've said is that I cannot do that under the threat that if Republicans don't get 100% of their way, they're going to either shut down the government or they are going to default on America's debt so that America, for the first time in history, does not pay its bills.
That is not something I will do.
So what he's saying, I'll negotiate as long as they come to the table ready to agree with me.
And again, there's no way we won't pay the bills, even if we don't raise the debt ceiling.
There's enough tax revenue coming in every month to more than pay our bills.
Shared that with you last Friday, Thomas Sullivan, the piece, but it's been widely known.
Again, I don't want to make too big a deal because any of this stuff can change on a dime.
But their polling data must be pretty bad for Obama and Jay Carney to both go out there within minutes of each other.
Oh, yeah, we're willing to talk any day.
All year we've been ready to talk.
Except we're only going to talk when they let us have what we want.
But we'll talk to them if that's what they want.
But back on September 27th, I'm not going to talk to them.
What the hell?
And just last week, he reiterated it.
What Obama wants is a GOP default, and that's when he'll talk to them.
That's what he's trying to engender.
And so's the drive-bys.
Let's go back.
Audio Soundbite 7.
We've got a couple of soundbites here.
First up is Jim VanDehye, the executive editor of the Politico.
This is on Slay the Nation on CBS Sunday during the roundtable.
And it's a conversation here between VanDe Hai and Dana Milbank, and I think Gwen Eiffel's even part of this.
What's different this time around?
If you think back to that 96 debate, there were actually moderates in Washington.
Even today, when you talk about a Republican moderate in the House, we need to find a new word.
They're not moderates.
They're not pro-life.
They're not pro-environment.
They're not pro-labor.
That's what a Republican moderate used to be.
You could say slightly less conservative Republican who might be willing to wheel in deal, but it's just a different world in Washington.
Yeah, damn it.
There aren't any liberal Republicans.
There aren't enough of them that'll cave with us anymore.
It's not like in 1995 when we could scare their pants off.
Now they won't cave.
Now they won't agree with us.
Not enough squeamish, linguini-spined Republicans left.
That's what they're saying.
And Helen Thomas, if she were alive, would know I'm right about this.
Just like I was right about JFK.
JFK tried, I'm telling you.
Don't doubt me on this stuff.
I don't know what she did, but I'm telling you, there wasn't any dating JFK.
Now, it was get in, get it, and get out, folks.
Come on, what are we talking about here?
And I know you're thinking Russia's not possible, Helen Thomas.
Media, folks, media.
It's called influence, buying, whatever you want to call it.
I mean, blindfolds, I don't know.
Eyes wide shut, there's any number of ways this can happen.
So anyway, they're bemoaning the fact there just aren't enough Republicans we can scare.
There just aren't enough moderate liberal Republicans.
And then there weren't enough reasonable Republicans willing to lose for the good of the Democrats.
That's really what they mean.
There aren't enough reasonable Republicans willing to lose for the good of the Democrats.
Here's Dana Milbank.
I think that's the dynamic, and that's the difference from 95 and 96, is you're not necessarily dealing with reasonable people.
They're rational because they're following their political self-interest.
But you've got maybe 50 die-hard conservatives in the House, and you've got 150 Republicans who are terrified of being primaried by one of those.
And they have no reason to budge, even if it's doing something bad to their own party and to the country.
This is, folks, I can't tell you how perfect this is to illustrate the way this town thinks.
There aren't any good Republicans anymore.
And what is a good Republican?
One who will compromise and give away his own side to help the Democrats.
That's a reasonable Republican.
A reasonable Republican is one who agrees with the Democrats at the moment of truth.
And there just aren't enough of those anymore.
And these 50 Republicans, these holdouts, these Tea Party people, and they're extremists.
They're nutcases or wackos.
And the real reasonable Republicans are afraid of being primaried by these people.
So most Republicans are cowards.
The 50 other Republicans holding him hostage are raving lunatics.
And in that group of 200, there isn't any of them willing to compromise to make the Democrats look good.
And so Congress and Washington suck as far as these people are concerned.
Moving on, Dana Milbank, again, we're still on FaceTime.
And Bob Schieffer's moderating this.
You haven't heard him here yet.
But he said, well, talk to me about Ted Cruz.
This is really unusual in this town.
It's built on seniority.
Here you have a freshman senator not only emerged as a leader of this in the Senate, but is actually leading the House Republicans, sometimes against their own leader.
He's a complete phony.
I met Ted Cruz 15 years ago.
He wasn't some Tea Party guy.
He was an ambitious kid working for the Bush campaign, Ivy League debater.
And basically what he saw is, hey, Sarah Palin can do that in 2010.
I can ride this Tea Party.
I can take it to town and I can get really famous really fast.
He's absolutely right.
He's a real smart guy.
He's playing this game very well.
He's a phony.
It's Dana Milbank of the Washington Post.
Ted Cruz is a phony.
He doesn't really mean it.
He's using us.
He's using us.
All he wants to do is be famous like everybody on Facebook and Twitter.
You know what really bugs him about Ted Cruz?
He is one of them.
He went to Harvard.
He went to Yale.
He did win the debate contest.
His grades are better than theirs.
He is.
He has their pedigree and he's not one of them.
And they can't stand him.
They literally can't stand him.
Sort of the same way they hated Bush.
You know, Bush for the Harvard NBA, Yale, and all this, skull and bones, but he wasn't one of them.
It just couldn't handle it.
So now Cruz, yeah, he's just an ambition, complete phony.
He saw what Sarah Palin did.
You know, we've all heard of Ted Cruz's father, too.
I guess Ted Cruz's father's a phony.
You know, Ted sounds just like his father, if you ask me.
His father's a great orator as well.
Anyway, these are great illustrations.
They can't handle this.
They don't know how to absorb this.
And so it's time for the personal destruction to begin.
He's a phony.
He doesn't believe any of this.
He's just, he's a smart guy.
He's just trying to get famous.
Here's Jim Van De Huy from the politico reacting to that.
Cruz is a political genius to some extent.
Like he is one of the few people who's recognized that politics today is so different than it was 10 years ago.
Nobody cares what leadership has to say.
We have lots of weak leaders and the grassroots.
If you're clever about intervening in primaries, if you're clever about exploiting campaign finance laws, which very much work to the favor of outside groups at the expense of the establishment, you can have awesome power.
We don't know what Gwen's question is.
The guys interrupted her and didn't let her finish.
She was, well, then the question is, and we never heard from her anymore.
The guys didn't care, apparently, what her question was.
So Van der Hai, oh, he's a genius.
He's a political genius.
And Milbanks, oh, yeah, absolutely.
He's a phony, but he's a genius.
He's like one of the few people who's recognized that politics today is so different than it was 10 years ago.
Anyway, I know they fawned over Obama, who had done nothing.
But you know why they fawned over Obama?
Come on.
Why did they fawn over Obama?
You tell me.
Well, so is Cruz.
They said he was clean and articulate.
Cruz is every bit as clean and every bit as articulate as Obama is.
Why'd they fawn over Obama?
Gave a speech.
He gave a speech.
He had Mario Cuomo Itis.
They fawned over Cuomo in the same way.
Cuomo never was able to capitalize or parlay it, but Obama did.
He gave a speech at, what was it, 2004 convention.
And then somebody came along.
The Democrats hadn't realized, you know, this guy is immune to criticism.
We can't lose if this guy gets the nomination because nobody can ever criticize anything he does.
We can destroy anybody who tries and call them racists.
No, but Cruz, they can't do the same with Cruz, even though he's Hispanic because Cruz is Canadian.
And the rap on Cruz says he really isn't even qualified.
He really isn't Hispanic.
He's not a minority.
He's a conservative.
There's no such thing as a conservative minority.
It's just not possible.
Here's Cruz.
This is Sunday morning, the State of the Union on CNN.
Candy Crowley said, you think that some facet of the president's health care plan should be attached to an increase in the debt ceiling?
The debt ceiling historically has been among the best leverage that Congress has to rein in the executive.
So yes.
Yes.
Yes.
There's great historical precedent.
Since 1978, we've raised the debt ceiling 55 times.
A majority of those times, 28 times, Congress has attached very specific and stringent requirements.
Many of the most significant spending restraints, things like Graham Rudman, things like sequestration, came through the debt ceiling.
And so the president's demand jack up the nation's credit card with no limits, no constraints.
It's not a reasonable demand.
This is why he ticks them off.
He knows what Graham Rudman is.
He can talk about Graham Rudman in a sentence as though he was there.
And the guys like Van de High and Milbank, he's not supposed to be able to do that.
He's an idiot.
He's a phony.
However, I got to tell you something, I'm not so sure I agree with combining these two things.
Now, Ted Cruz knows far more what he's doing in this than I do because he's there and this is his job.
And I'm but a mere pawn commentator in the game of life.
But the debt limit thing, if not done right, we could squander all of the positives we have picked up on Obamacare.
Because this business of Republicans refused to pay the debts, people care about that as much as they do about negotiation.
Now, if Cruz can find a way to combine these two and make both of them pay a fine, I would love for that to be the case.
But I would just as soon kick this debt ceiling thing down the road a month or two.
Just give a little spending bill, pay the bills, here, Obama, here's your bill, and make him veto it as piecemeal, just like they've made him veto every other little so-called piecemeal thing.
I keep the pressure on myself.
But again, I don't know what I'm doing.
I'm so pathetic anyway.
You just wouldn't know what Grabs now by 23, John Boehner.
John Boehner, Speaker of the House, went right to the House floor right after Obama said, hey, I'll negotiate anytime, anywhere, anywhere, any day, as long as you agree with me.
Boehner went right to the House floor, and it looks like he responded to Obama by ignoring what he said.
I'm going to say this again.
A senior White House staffer this morning said that the president would rather default on our debt than to sit down and negotiate.
Now, the American people expect when their leaders have differences and we're in a time of crisis that we'll sit down and at least have a conversation.
Really, Mr. President, it's time to have that conversation before our economy is put further at risk.
And I yield back.
Wow, that's Boehner.
Yeah, I want to say this again.
Senior White House staffer this morning said the president would rather default on the debt than to sit down and negotiate.
Yeah, but then this afternoon, Obama said, I'll negotiate.
I'm just not going to negotiate on the debt.
I'm not going to negotiate on Obamacare.
I'll negotiate.
They're playing this the right way.
They're playing this the right way.
They look like the ones willing to talk.
You know, folks, if you are a regular listener, you probably are at Rush.
Why are you, you know, you don't believe in negotiation.
You believe in beating them.
I know.
That's true.
But sometimes that's how you do it.
We'll see how this plays out.
Back to the phones we go.
Who's next?
Atlanta.
This is Chris.
Great to have you on the EI.
Are you going to the football game tonight, Chris?
The Jets and the.
I'm not Rush.
I'm working.
I'm not.
Too bad.
You're going to miss the pink penalty flags that they are using in the NFL this month.
Yes, they are.
I kid you not, folks.
Pink penalty flags.
You have to look twice to make sure they're penalty flags.
Anyway, what was it, Chris, that you dialed us about?
Well, Rush, I wanted to talk to you about two things.
One was about the 60 Minutes piece yesterday about the Social Security disability fraud that's going on that 60 Minutes did.
And the second was I wanted to give you something.
But I don't know if you saw the Social Security piece, but basically it speaks right to your gap between rich and poor because people are running out of unemployment insurance.
They're getting on the Social Security disability, Social Security disability payments, and they're taking advantage of the system.
And at no point in the piece was that talked about.
It was just about how destitute these people were and how they had no other options.
You know, this is amazing to me.
Did they make any connection here to who's president?
No, of course not.
And they didn't make any connection to who's been president for almost five years?
Not at all.
Not at all.
So on whom did they blame this?
Just the country at large?
The lawyers that are taking advantage of the system.
Lawyers?
Oh, it's the fault of lawyers.
Yes.
Otherwise known as Democrat donors.
Right.
Really?
They were blaming this on lawyers gaming the system for clients?
It was the Steve Croft piece, and he tried to interview a couple lawyers, and yes, they were blaming it on a couple of the lawyers.
I thought the Steve Croft piece was some Republican businessman being destroyed.
That must have been a different 60 Minutes.
No, it had Senator Coburn on there talking about his investigation into Social Security disability fraud.
Yeah, well, and then you have judges that approve it.
Correct.
So basically what was going on, they were alarmed at the financial state of the federal disability program.
And the cost that it was going to be on the American taxpayers for years to come because all these people were automatically getting rubber stamp approval.
Well, see, that raises another question.
Let's take a look at all this debt.
Depending on who you listen to, the national debt is either $17 trillion or $83 trillion.
If you add up all the unfunded liabilities on pensions and Social Security, Medicare, and any number, last week I saw it, that somebody's claiming that the real debt, I wish I could remember who, is $83 trillion in terms of if you add what the Fed's printed and done with QE, whatever, and all this, it's just added up with the interest payments and everything.
But once you get to $17 trillion, $83 trillion is, we're not going to pay back $17 trillion.
How are we going to do that?
How are we ever going to pay back $17 trillion?
So these guys on 60 Minutes all worried about the system and the strain on taxpayers.
What's going to happen here is the claim of the necessity to reduce this debt will be used to justify massive tax increases on people.
But that money is just going to be recycled and respent.
We don't have any debt reduction plans in process.
We're talking again about raising the debt limit on October 17th.
So just off top of your head, and I don't mean to put you on the spot.
If you'd rather not take a stab at it, feel free.
I'm just speaking off the top of my head here.
How are we going to retire any of this debt?
Be disability or any otherwise.
There's no way, is there?
Nobody in Washington is getting serious about that.
There's no discussion about that.
Even if they were, what would we do?
That's a good question, Rush.
There's no trigger.
I like to call it the trigger that propelled the American economy forward.
In the 40s, it was World War II.
In the 80s, it was the Cold War.
What's the trigger this time?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I just, you know, they can't zero it out.
I mean, there's all kinds of scare talk about, well, let's just zero it out.
Let's just wipe it out.
Let's just say we've paid it.
Well, but it ain't going to happen.
Snurdley is saying cut entitlements in half.
Okay, let's do that.
Let's actually say we propose it.
Members of Congress talk about it.
They debate it.
Half of them get shot.
There are assassinations left and right of the people who are talking about doing this.
I'm speaking euphemistically here.
I mean, if a bunch of old people are going to drag Dan Rostenkowski out of his car over $100, then eliminating half of the entitlement benefits that are out there who, okay, means test it.
There aren't enough rich people to exempt from it to make a dent in it.
Now, the budget deficit is a different thing.
You could freeze the budget for five years and maybe balance it in seven or eight if you just spending increases of no more than inflation.
But it's a vexing question because there's no way to pay it back.
However, there is a lot of value in making it look like you're trying for other investors in the debt credit markets.
If you make it look like you're trying to, the optics, if it appears to be a policy objective to reduce the debt, then oftentimes that would be enough.
But the idea of actually retiring $17 trillion, stop and think about that and say how in the world, you know, when you could look, let's, waste and fraud.
How about identifying all the fraud, which 60 Minutes Piece last night was focused on that, and just eliminate that?
You have the same reaction.
We've created such dependency.
There are so many people literally living off of a government check that if you take it away from them, you have.
Do you even want to think what you would have?
Do you think, El Snerdbow, that the recipients are just going to sit there and say, we are happy to help.
We'll gladly only accept half of what we have been getting.
No.
Some will work, but what if there aren't any jobs in the economy to absorb them?
What if there's no place for them to go work because Obamacare policies are in effect?
You take their menies away, forcing them into the job market, but there aren't any jobs to be had, and there aren't any careers anymore because everybody's downsizing to part-time to handle Obamacare.
What are we going to do?
How would we absorb these people who are going to, if they're eating because they're getting government check and the government check stops and they then starve without committing crime, what are they going to do?
You're still going to have economic growth.
You might have economic growth because of the lack of entitlement spending, but if you've not raised a couple generations of people who understand work and appreciate work and patient hard work that pays off, you'd have a panic.
You would have an abject panic if you announced this is going to happen.
Even if you just gradually implement this, I'm not saying that would stop me.
Nine, nine.
You've got 90 million Americans not working.
90 million not working.
Some of them are lying about disability, which is what this guy's talking about.
They're faking a disability because they've run through their unemployment.
We have made it profitable and productive to not work.
The Democrat Party has.
Now, all of a sudden, on a dime, you turn around and say to these people, guess what?
Your only hope is to go get a job.
Well, I just wonder if it can be done.
If the debt can ever be repaid, I don't think it can.
But I don't think there's any, I don't think there's one person, responsible position, who would ever tell you, oh, yeah, we can repay this debt.
Here's how we do it.
But making it look like we're trying might accomplish much of the same thing.
Anyway, I appreciate the call.
I got to take a quick time out here, folks, but sit tight, be patient.
We'll be back.
Don't go away.
Okay, here's next.
This is Tom in Glan Blanc, Michigan.
Great to have you on the EIB Network.
Hello.
Thanks, Rush.
I'm glad to talk to you.
Thank you for having me.
And I'm surrounded by Democrats, and I just want to say that the only way I can combat this is to try to give facts.
And I'm sorry to see that the Republicans are losing because they're not spending enough time educating the population.
And to give you an example, Obama said that this was the worst recession since the Great Depression.
Now, that's a lie.
It's the worst recession since the Carter administration.
We've had 20 recessions over the last hundred years.
And they last about a year and a half.
The only two that didn't last a year and a half were the Great Recession and now.
What happened amongst those two?
Both had money thrown at them.
Does it make sense what I'm trying to say, Rush?
Yeah, you think the Republicans are losing because they're not telling people that the recession is bad.
Well, the facts, not just the recession, all the facts.
Being around a bunch of Democrats, I have to load myself with facts.
And so we're being lied to.
Detroit hasn't had a Republican since 1983 or 1954, I should say.
But it's all the Republicans' fault that Detroit has gone downhill.
These facts.
That's why I'm trying to say that we need to re-educate the population.
Well, I don't disagree with that.
Can I give you one more, real quick?
Yeah, you're on a roll.
Firewall.
The Democrats pushed Grandma over the cliff and then said the Republicans don't care about the seniors.
Prior to that, about six months prior to that, the Democrats had a bill in the House wanting to take money from Social Security and give it to the illegal immigrants for their health care.
Did you ever hear anybody talk about what was the truth?
But you asked my neighbors, and they said, oh, yeah, the Republicans don't care about Granny.
They're pushing her over the cliff.
So we're not getting the facts, the truth.
Well, you need to call Boehner and tell him this because I'm not in charge of the Republicans.
I've tried calling everybody.
I've written everybody.
I'm just saying that's only a couple things.
I actually think to tell you the truth, I actually think right now that it's the Democrats who are seen pushing Granny over the cliff.
I know you don't want to hear that, but I think that's the perception is out there right now that it's the Democrats causing this problem on the shutdown.
And Obama care.
And look, they told us that the country is going to come to a screeching halt and end with Y2K.
It didn't.
They told us the sequester was going to be the end of Medicare and close down the Defense Department.
They're going to be ripe for military takeover.
None of the disaster predictions take place.
And right now, it is the Democrats who are seen as intractable and unwilling to compromise and negotiate.
So whether it's been the result of strategy or just grand good luck, the Republicans are winning this one.
Now, I know that doesn't satisfy you because they're not satisfying you on a PR issue, Democrat commercial by Democrat commercial.
And I understand people being frustrated at that.
For 25 years, people have been calling here.
Why don't the Republicans do X?
I don't know.
I'm not one of them.
Maybe you should apply for a job with them to help them get the facts out if that's what needs to happen.
They think they do get the facts out, but they'll tell you the media just won't cover it.
So they've got their built-in excuses.
Well here we are folks making our mark each and every day.
The distinguished Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
And we gotta go.
Thanks so much for being with us.
Back tomorrow in 21 hours to do it all over again.
And as always, really appreciate you being here folks.
See you tomorrow.
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