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Feb. 19, 2014 - Rush Limbaugh Program
30:13
February 19, 2014, Wednesday, Hour #3
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Meeting and surpassing all audience expectations every day.
That is no mean feat, by the way.
You should try it sometime.
Rush Limbaugh, the EIB network, and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
Great to have you here, folks.
The phone number, if you want to join us, 800-282-2882, and the email address, lrushbo at EIBnet.com.
This is really getting funny now.
We got audio soundbite support coming up here.
It's getting very soap opera-like, which is what it is.
Anyway, I mean, the reason that I have delayed this minimum wage garbage to the third hour is so that I don't fall prey to the DC media-inspired soap opera every day, which is the media isn't news anymore.
You might, why is the minimum wage?
There's no big story about the minimum wage today.
I mean, they're making one.
It's part of the agenda.
And there were other things that I thought more important I wanted to talk about.
So we'll get to it, but I'm not going to be dominated or driven by the DC-New York corridor axis media soap opera.
But nevertheless, it is getting funny.
The CBO has come out and said, essentially, Doug Elmendorf, that if you guys in the regime start raising a minimum wage, you're going to cause people to lose their jobs.
And the regime got mad.
Obama and his regime members are now mad at Elmendorf.
And they're out there saying the CBO doesn't know what it's talking about.
CBO is nonpartisan.
See, the Democrats and the regime are used to the CBO being an echo.
And they know how to manipulate the CBO.
The CBO can only analyze data that's given.
So if the regime wants you to think that healthcare is going to cost less than a trillion dollars, the regime will give them planned legislation with the numbers they want.
The only analysis possible is it's going to cost less than a trillion.
Now, Elmendorf and the gang at the CBO know this, but there's nothing they can do.
It's not part of their job to come out and say, we think the data we've been given are incomplete or incorrect.
They just have to deal with it.
But that's why, in this case, the regime's ticked, because the regime is demanding this minimum wage increase.
And Elmendorf said, oh, you can go right ahead, but you're going to cause a lot of people to lose their jobs in the region.
So what are you talking?
You don't.
No.
And Elmendorf was now saying, you do not get to challenge my professionalism.
Elmendorf said, he told reporters today, I want to make clear that our analysis is completely consistent with the latest thinking in the economic profession.
Now, that, you may not realize this, but that is a huge swipe at Obama because that's Obama's line.
Obama is the guy that goes out and justifies everything by saying economists from both sides of the aisle agree.
Respected economists from all points of view all agree.
So Elmendorf, Doug Elmendorf CBO, is stealing Obama's line when he says, I want to make clear our analysis that what they're doing is going to cost jobs is completely consistent with the latest thinking in the economic profession.
They cut him off at the past.
Meanwhile, for what it's worth, Obama has just this moment arrived in Mexico for a summit with Mexican and Canadian leaders on trade and energy.
Obama is going to explain to them how the U.S. needs more illegal immigration to boost our economy.
What, you don't think that's what he's going to do?
Well, what else is he going to do?
The Mexican president says we need to open our borders.
That's not news, is it?
Every, be it Felipe Coleron or whoever runs the cartels, all say the same thing.
U.S. must open its borders.
And I'm sure Obama is going to say, yeah, when the Democrats need their continuing permanent underclass, where are they going to get it?
But Elmendorf, this is U.S. News and World Reports.
CBO chief says some people just don't get it.
And here from the article, CBO Director Doug Elmendorf has heard the Democrat criticism of his report Tuesday on minimum wage jobs.
That means the White House's response, by the way.
That criticism, White House response to Elmendorf's report, Elmendorf says, that criticism doesn't surprise us, nor does it have any effect on what we do, he told reporters today at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor.
I mean, this, folks, this is an in-your-face back at the regime because Elmendorf issued his nonpartisan report.
The regime trashed him.
And so Elmendorf, rather than taking it and going away, is fighting back.
Elmendorf said the CBO tries to write as clearly as possible.
The work we do is technically complicated.
People who read it might misunderstand it.
So he's doubling down on the insults of the regime.
Elmendorf, in effect, said, yeah, look, what we do is very technical.
It's very complicated.
And it's entirely possible that people who read it will misunderstand it.
And he's talking about the regime.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said that the CBO report's conclusions about job losses contradict the consensus among hundreds of America's top economists.
See, Elmendorf took that line away from him earlier when Elmendorf says, I want to make clear that our analysis is completely consistent with the latest thinking in the economic profession.
The Democrats own that line.
So here's Pelosi.
The consensus among hundreds of economic America's top economists is that there will not be any job loss because they're raising a minimum.
Well, they're full of it then, because there always is.
We always lose jobs.
It's no surprise.
It happens.
You raise the minimum wage.
You are forcing people out of the job market because the companies are not sitting there with unused piles of money.
So if you tell a company that its minimum wage now is going to go, I don't know what, $7 to $10, they're going to have to fire some people because they've got to keep the labor costs the same.
And that's what happens.
And the regime is out.
They're really ticked.
This CBO doesn't do this.
They don't fight back.
So let's go to the audio soundbites.
This is this morning at the Christian Science Monitor breakfast.
This is Doug Elmendorf.
We did an exhaustive review of the literature in this area up through reports that were released last month.
A balanced reading of the set of research studies in this area led us to conclude that an increase in the minimum wage would probably have a small negative effect on employment, but there was substantial uncertainty around that estimate as we reported.
So he even tried, as you heard there, he tried to cushion this by saying probably have a small negative effect on employment.
But there's substantial uncertainty around the estimates, as we reported.
The estimates, by the way, are what they were fed by the regime, which is all they can deal with.
And so even though he tried to soften the blow, the regime is just out trying to destroy the guy now.
I mean, the last thing anybody is supposed to say is that anything Obama's doing is going to cost jobs.
Remember now that conventional wisdom, the standard operating procedure is Obama is creating jobs.
Why, we're creating jobs so fast we can't keep up with it.
Economy's growing.
We've got new job creation, housing, all this rig-amaro lying through their teeth crap.
And the CBO went out today and just blew a big hole in it.
Second time recently, the last time they did this, of course, was about Obamacare.
So the regime, I'm telling you, they're beside them.
So this Elmendorf guy, I hope he has security.
I mean, this may all be dry ball inside baseball, but I'm telling you, this is not done what this guy has done here.
You don't go up against this regime like this.
They look at the CBO as a branch of the regime.
The Democrats do too.
The CBO is theirs, just like the IRS is theirs.
And Elmendorf is not playing ball.
Here's Kathleen Sebelius.
This was Monday in Orlando, where she says that there's no evidence that Obamacare causes unemployment.
There is absolutely no evidence, and every economist will tell you this, that there is any job loss related to the Affordable Care Act.
Part-time positions are actually down since 2010, not up.
Their number of full-time workers continues to increase.
So I know that that's a popular myth that continues to be repeated, but it just is not accurate.
It certainly is accurate, and you know you're the ones losing your jobs.
You're the ones being downsized to 29 and a half hours or less.
It is costing jobs.
Everybody knows it's costing jobs.
And this is the woman that told us there'd be no problem to healthcare rollout, that everything was fine.
She's an idiot.
But did you hear this again here?
She said here that every economist will tell you that's their line.
Pelosi.
Consensus among hundreds of economists.
Obama.
Economists from both sides of the aisle.
All agree.
And here comes Sebelius with her, every economist will tell you.
So Elmendorf saying today, I want to make clear that our analysis is completely consistent with the latest thinking in the economic profession.
I mean, he's throwing down, he's just, he's firing right back at them.
I don't know what has prompted this.
But I mean, he's just going, He's going when he says this, his reports are too nuanced for some to understand.
He's calling he's calling Sebelius an idiot.
He's calling Obama's economic advisors idiots.
He's insulting them.
He's telling me they don't know what they're reading.
It's above their pay grade.
They don't know how to analyze this.
The last time the minimum wage was raised was 2009.
What's happened since then?
We've got massive new job creation out there, folks.
We raised the minimum wage four years ago.
What's the unemployment period?
92 million Americans not working.
Here's Josh Elliott.
This is a news anchor.
I thought he was an Obama economic advisor.
It may as well be.
He's a good morning, America, ABC, talking about the minimum wage hike hitting a speed bump.
President Obama's drive to increase the minimum wage may have hit something of a speed bump.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says boosting the federal minimum wage to more than $10 an hour would result in the loss of some 500,000 low-wage jobs.
The White House, though, fired back, saying most experts disagree with that assessment.
See, there you go.
Most experts disagree.
Olmendorf's commandeered the line and throwing it right back.
He's thrown down the gauntlet to him.
Here's Nora O'Donnell.
See, the media is now circling the wagons to protect and defend the regime.
Here's Nora O'Donnell on CBS this morning.
The guest is the Wall Street Journal chief economics correspondent John Hilson Rath.
And they're talking about the CBO report and a minimum wage.
There's a lot at stake politically with this report because the president and Democrats are pushing this raise in minimum wage to run against Republicans in this election year.
Yesterday, the White House came out and said, look, this does not reflect the consensus view of economists that the minimum wage has been studied for years.
You know, the minimum wage costs jobs.
The only reason the Democrats are doing this is purely political.
The only reason they're doing it is so they can occupy the high ground of saying we think people should earn more.
Who could oppose that?
Who is opposed to people earning more?
Nobody is.
And that's all they're trying to accomplish with this.
That is it.
They just want the low-information crowd to associate the Obama administration with high wages and the desire for it.
That's all it is.
And Elmendorf's, okay, well, there's a problem here with what's going to happen because you're actually going to cost jobs.
And they're throwing a monkey wrench in to the political agenda that the regime has.
This is not about, it really isn't about improving lifestyles or standards of living because the minimum wage does, you know what percentage of the people who work make the minimum wage?
1.6%.
This is not about raising the American standard of living.
It's not about anything other than the regime trying to associate themselves with the idea that people should get a raise and also at the same time positioning the Republicans as opposing people getting a rage.
That's a way a raise.
That's all this is.
That's why I didn't start the show with this.
This is soap opera.
It's just Democrat politics as usual.
They're in trouble.
Looks like they're going to not win the House at all and maybe lose the Senate.
So it's time to go back to fundamentals.
Democrat Playbook 101, raise the minimum wage, make it look like we care about the little guy.
That's all this is.
And the CBO has come along and just burst their bubble.
Now, anyway, here's what the Wall Street Journal guy said about what Nora O'Donnell just said.
I think you have to look at the back of the report.
I counted up 61 references to different outside studies that were done on the minimum wage and its effects on employment and income.
It looks to me like the CBO did its best job of coming up with a down-the-middle point of view.
I think the White House response in part reflects the nature of debate in Washington.
Republicans are only going to emphasize the negatives.
Democrats are only going to emphasize the positives.
But in truth, they're trade-offs, and that's what the public has to understand.
You see, you see, he says the CBO's right, but the Democrats get to sound positive.
The Republicans, they get to make them look like they don't want people to get a raise.
That's all this is.
That's all it is.
Dr. Krauthammer is up next.
And I think this is a brilliant way of putting it.
But this is a transfer of wealth from some low-income earners to other low-income earners.
Some, of course, this is so obvious now, rocket science.
Some will be better off, will make more, but others are going to lose everything.
They're going to lose all of their income, and they're going to lose the first step on the ladder into employment, which is the hope for the future.
So it's a high price.
You can make your choice, but there isn't a free lunch.
They are running ads saying give America a raise as if it's no cost.
It is a cost, and it's other low-income people who will be the ones who pay it.
That's exactly right.
Obama is transferring money from one low-income group to another.
And the people losing the money are losing the job and are losing everything.
It's Obama's redistribution of wealth among the poor.
We'll be back.
Don't go away.
You know what?
What Dr. Karatema?
What he just said is right in the CBO report.
Let me read you the CBO report.
Overall, income would be transferred from the wealthy to the poor.
Actually, Dr. Karanhema said that we transfer the poor to the poor, and that's true.
Some poor are going to lose their jobs because others are going to get a raise.
Money has to come from somewhere, and it comes from people losing their jobs.
It's not rocket science.
Whatever happened to being liberated from having to work, why does the regime want to raise the minimum wage?
I thought what was cool in HIP now was not working, you know, being freed up from job lock so you could be a poet or an artist and still have your freaking health care.
So why all of a sudden, now they care about the minimum wage being raised?
And it's only because they want to be thought of as the people that think you should get a raise, and they can position the Republicans as the guys who don't want you to have one.
That's all this is.
By the way, here's Elmendorf, Christian Science Monitor.
This is where he stole their line about all these economists agreeing with him.
I love this.
I want to be clear that our analysis of the effects of an increase in the minimum wage is completely consistent with the latest thinking in the economics profession.
Now, what is the average consumer supposed to do?
Because Pelosi says there's a consensus of economists that agree with them.
And the regime is saying that there's a consensus of economists that agree with them that raising a minimum wage isn't going to hurt anybody.
And Elmendorf says, wait a minute.
Our analysis that raising a minimum wage is going to cost jobs is completely consistent with the latest thinking in the economics profession.
I think it's about time for people in the economics profession to stand up and say, we want to be excused from all of this political claptrap.
Problem is, most of them are partisan, too.
I got to take a break.
We got a half hour left.
We're going to cram other stuff into it right after we get back.
I just have a couple of more soundbites in this minimum wage business, and it's fascinating because it happens on a business network, CNBC, where the hosts and the, they don't even get it.
They're talking to a CEO from Shark Tank, the ABC show.
And these guys don't even get the business network journalists don't even get the minimum wage.
Now, here's the CNBC stuff.
The guest is Kevin O'Leary, who is O'Leary Fund's chairman.
And he's co-host, I think, on Shark Tank on the ABC.
You know what that show is?
You know what Shark Tank is?
I sort of do, but I can't remember the top of my head.
Right.
People go to these entrepreneurs and pitch their ideas.
And they have a product that they want to sell.
And the sharks basically tell them, you're stupid.
That thing doesn't have a prayer.
That's why it's a shark tank.
Or they buy it.
These people either buy it or send you packing.
That's up to you.
Yeah, Mark Cuban is one of the sharks.
Okay, it's a good show.
I'm hearing.
Anyway, one of the co-hosts was on CNBC explaining the minimum wage to them.
They don't get it, and they're a business network.
Andrew Ross Sorkin, who's a co-host of this particular show at Squawk Box, said you called it and you said it, and we had you on maybe three weeks ago.
We were talking about the minimum wage.
And you said that raising the minimum wage does not mean more jobs.
It means less.
So given the CBO report, do you have any quick views on the minimum wage debate?
It's evidence positive, Andrew.
That's the whole point.
You know, I keep saying that the litmus test for America is not large corporations.
It's the six million plus businesses out there that want to create more jobs every day and fight all kinds of problems.
I've never been an advocate for any minimum wage.
I've always felt that at the end of the day, the market would determine a person's value per hour.
Oh, no, we can't have that because the market isn't fair.
The market pays people differently.
The market pays some people more, and that's not fair and equitable.
That is an equality.
We can't let the market's a bunch of cheats.
But here's a guy.
If you leave it up to the market, people are going to earn what they're worth.
That's why I always laugh when people start saying of anybody, actor, athlete, anybody.
Nobody's worth that.
Well, they are to the person paying them.
You are worth what somebody will pay you.
And that is up to you.
Now, if you're going to turn over what you make to somebody like Barack Obama, you're going to be stuck at $7 to $10 an hour max.
And you're going to get to hear the Democrats talk about how fair they are and how much they care about you.
But people have to lose their jobs in order for others to get that raise.
It's just, it's simple mathematics.
I don't know why it's so hard for people to understand.
It isn't if it's explained properly.
The problem is that most people think that there is no such thing as a small business.
They think they're all big and they think that the people that own those businesses are all rich.
And they think that the people that own those businesses, because they're all rich, all have a stash of money over here to not use them.
They're saving it for themselves because they're greedy.
And so it takes somebody who cares like Obama to come along and separate those rich guys from their money and give it to the workers.
And that's the only way that the boss is ever going to be made to be fair is if somebody like Obama comes in and does it.
What people don't understand is the fragility of most small businesses.
They're fragile.
They are not owned by rich people universally.
And they do not have a stash of money not being used.
If they have a stash of money, it's allocated for something.
They're saving it for expansion or whatever, but there is no stash unused.
The owner of the small business pays himself last, not first.
But most people, and this is because, A, of what they're taught, the institutional bias against capitalism that's part of the Democratic Party, people from a young age are taught that everybody in small business and big business is a bunch of crooks, and they're the rich, and they don't share, and they don't pay people fairly, and all of that.
And so then when they don't understand that, or when they believe that, you come along and say the minimum wage is going to lose jobs.
They don't understand.
How can giving people a raise from $7 to $10 cause them to lose jobs?
Russia doesn't make any sense.
The people that have no idea, do not have a proper foundational understanding of this.
You'll never convince them.
But it stands to reason.
Company A allocates 50% of its operating budget to labor, just picking a number.
That's it.
It's not 55% one day and 44% the next day.
It's 50%.
It's budgeted.
They've got 50% to pay labor.
So here comes Obama raising the cost of labor arbitrarily.
If he's got 10 people making 50% of his budget and the budget is arbitrarily raised, he's not changed.
He's not going to raise what he's paying labor.
He can't and stay in business.
So somebody has to get fired with this arbitrary raise thrown in.
It's just the way it works because businesses do not change their labor costs day to day, hour to hour, month to month.
They budget these things as much as they can in advance because it's the highest cost of doing business usually.
So if there's an outside force like the regime that comes in and says you're paying every this example, all these people are making minimum.
They aren't, but let's just say they are seven bucks.
And everybody working seven bucks an hour equals 50% of the, now here comes Obama and say, you got to pay them 10 bucks.
Well, the amount of money you're going to spend on labor isn't going to change.
They're going to have to get by with fewer people working if they've got to give arbitrary rent.
And that's how people lose their jobs when the minimum wage goes up.
And here's the second sound bite.
Kevin O'Leary is then asked by Andrew Ross Sorkin, well, what do you think would have happened if we wouldn't have had no minimum wage?
What kind of wages do you think we'd have today?
More importantly, what kind of economy do you think we'd have?
I think we'd have a very vibrant economy based on demand.
In other words, people would go seek.
Think about if you never had a minimum wage.
People would go seek the highest opportunity at the lowest risk all the time.
Companies would do the same thing.
Let the market determine what labor should be.
And we'd have a much more vibrant economy.
I'm just going to tell you right now that your average low-information voter is not going to understand that at all.
Sadly.
Mr. Shark Tank here is exactly right, though.
And all he's saying is when he says, let the market determine what labor should be, that means in a competitive market where a business owner has work to be done and he needs to be done and he wants it done as well as it can be done, he is going to find the best person he can.
And the person who shows the most ambition, shows up on time, is going to be more valuable.
It's just that simple.
It's competition.
Brings out the best in everybody.
Some people don't want to compete.
It's not fair because some people end up with more than others.
It's not equitable.
It's not equality.
Blah, blah, blah.
Here comes Obama to level the playing field and always doing it by focusing on the lowest common denominator.
Okay, so I'm being told here that Kevin O'Leary is the most hated shark because he has no emotion.
Total numbers guy.
Doesn't care.
Just like the market.
He's the Simon Cole or Cowell.
How does he pronounce it?
Cole?
Cowell, he's the Simon Cowell of this show.
I've never seen American Idol and I've not seen Shark Tank.
You know, I watch other stuff.
True Detective, Game of Thrones.
I don't, Bachelor.
I don't watch The Bet.
I don't watch The Bachelorette.
What are you talking?
You haven't watched that.
No way.
But I may check out Shark Tank.
Hey, look, look, look.
I watched I don't know which one it was, Bachelor or Bachelorette for one or two episodes.
And after that, I feared for my IQ, so I didn't watch anymore.
But I don't watch the show.
You people have great memories.
Yeah, I saw an episode of five years ago, whatever it was.
But that's it.
Look, those of you on hold, we got your phone numbers.
They're going to call you back tomorrow because I didn't get to any calls in this hour.
That's my bad.
See you tomorrow.
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