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RUSH: According to the White House: “1:35, President speaks about balanced approach to reduce the deficit and win the future.” So it’s gonna be another campaign speech just like all of his other speeches really are: “Winning the future” through tax increases. Now, this little program note, both to you the audience and to our beloved affiliate stations along the EIB Network: We are going to JIP this. We are going to carry it from the beginning.

A number of our stations called us, the EIB offices this morning and inquired as to what my plans were regarding carrying the speech because they want to. It’s considered to be very important. There’s been a big buildup to it, the budget. It’s like I told you — and if they’d be honest with you, these program directors at stations all across the country would tell you: 20 years ago they would fire somebody who wanted to make the budget the subject of a talk show. It’d be boring as anything you could talk about and it’d be death. Now, Republicans and Democrats want to make speeches about it and stations want to carry it.

So I understand that. We love our affiliate stations here but I just want to say this to the affiliates: It is a campaign speech. This is not a head-of-state speech. The Republicans are gonna have their response to it at four o’clock. Now, we, of course, will be long gone. I, in fact, will be on my way to Washington. I have a secret dinner in DC tonight. So it’s gonna be a late night tonight, and there’s not gonna be a whole lot of sleep tonight. So tomorrow, Thursday, I’m gonna be giddy. So I… (interruption)

It’s not a meeting. It’s a dinner. It’s a big difference. I don’t do meetings at dinner. It’s a super-secret dinner that I’m attending tonight. I’ll be able to watch on the way up there the Republican response, but I will, of course, not be on the radio because the program will be over. So I just want to say to all of you affiliate program directors: I may not stick with the whole thing so you may want to carry it on your own separate feed so that when we bump out of it here, you stay with it. Because in all likelihood — I just want to tell you this, a little inside baseball — we are not gonna blow a commercial break for it, okay?

We’ll take a commercial break. We might rejoin it after the break, but we’re not gonna lose money here. I have made that decision. That if you want to run through the break, then have your own raw feed. But I of course will be offering insightful, immediate analysis and commentary while the president is making his campaign speech.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We are one minute away, one minute away from President Obama and his campaign speech: “Winning the future” through tax increases. Stop and think, seriously, now. For a moment, stop and think what a golden opportunity Obama has right now to do something truly historic, something actually good for the country — and I want to say this to really be a contrast to what he’s actually going to say. Try to imagine what a shot in the arm to the economy it would be if Barack Obama announced that he and the Democrats were going to cut the deficit dramatically, not by raising taxes, but by slashing government spending to the bone.

Folks, the economy would take off like a rocket. Businesses would actually start to hire again, like crazy. Now, the fact that Obama will never do such a simple and obvious thing (that he will do, in fact, the polar opposite) only shows that he is not at all serious about wanting to create or save jobs. He’s not at all serious about wanting to grow the United States’ private sector economy. He is not serious about anything. We now have two years of failure. We have two years of policies that have given the exact opposite of what he’s promising. He’s gonna double down now and promise more intense applications of the same policies, and this time add real tax increases to the mix which is gonna kill jobs.

It is going to ensure that whatever job creation might (I say that very loosely) be happening is going to be short-circuited because President Obama, and you will hear it in mere moments, is not serious about growing the private sector economy or creating jobs or any of that. If it looks like he really wants to destroy the private sector US economy, it’s because he either wants to or not, but it is happening. Now, he’s only moments away. Wolf Blitzer, I’m sure, is panicked by now ’cause he’s a minute late.

But, debt limit, back to that for just a second. In fact, aren’t we demanding that it be lowered? Isn’t our side demanding that it be lowered? Isn’t that what we’re talking about? Isn’t that what November was all about, lowering this, reducing the debt, reversing the direction of government spending? But, no, it’s a crisis! It’s a calamity! It’s Armageddon! It’s the apocalypse! We’re gonna reach our debt limit! The projected date is May the 14th or May 16th, and if we don’t do something about it by then they don’t even want to think about it. Why, the government might shut down.

Oh? Really?

Ladies and gentlemen, we have just been given a brief by the White House that there is a ten-minute delay in the start of President Obama’s campaign speech. He doesn’t want us to miss a commercial break, either. Okay, ten-minute delay. That means eight minutes from now, President Obama will speak.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The leader of the regime has found the podium. Our microphones are on, is that right? He’s at George Washington University by the way.

OBAMA: — reasons that I worked so hard with Democrats and Republicans to keep the government open was that so I could show up here today. I want to make sure that all of you had one more excuse to skip class. You’re welcome. I want to give a special thanks to Steven Knapp, the president of GW. I just saw him. Where is he? There he is, right here. We’ve got a lot of distinguished guests here, a couple of people I want to acknowledge. First of all, my outstanding vice president, Joe Biden is here. Our secretary of the Treasury, Tim Geithner, is in the house.

RUSH: Oh, wow, aren’t you excited?

OBAMA: Jack Lew, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.

RUSH: Oh, yeah! Yeah!

OBAMA: Gene Sperling, chair of the National Economic Council is here.

RUSH: Right on! Ho-ho. It’s bigger than ever, folks.

OBAMA: Members of our bipartisan fiscal commission are here, including the two outstanding chairs, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson are here.

RUSH: Ha-ha, right on, all right!

OBAMA: We have a number of members of Congress here today. I’m grateful for all of you taking the time to attend. What we’ve been debating here in Washington over the last few weeks will affect the lives of the students here and families all across America in potentially profound ways. This debate over budgets and deficits is about more than just numbers on a page.

RUSH: Really?

OBAMA: It’s about more than just cutting and spending. It’s about the kind of future that we want.

RUSH: He wants.

OBAMA: It’s about the kind of country that we believe in.

RUSH: You believe in.

OBAMA: And that’s what I want to spend some time talking about today.

RUSH: Good.

OBAMA: From our first days as a nation, we have put our faith in free markets and free enterprise as the engine of America’s wealth and prosperity.

RUSH: It hadn’t worked, has it?

OBAMA: More than citizens of any other country, we are rugged individualists —

RUSH: Oh, come on. I can’t stomach —

OBAMA: — a self-reliant people —

RUSH: He doesn’t believe this.

OBAMA: — with a healthy skepticism of too much government.

RUSH: He doesn’t believe this.

OBAMA: But there’s always been another thread running through our history.

RUSH: Yeah, here we go.

OBAMA: A belief that we’re all connected.

RUSH: Yeah.

OBAMA: And that there are some things we can only do together as a nation.

RUSH: Government.

OBAMA: We believe in the words of the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, that through government we should do together what we cannot do as well for ourselves. And so we’ve built a strong military to keep us secure.

RUSH: Constitutionally required.

OBAMA: And public schools and universities to educate our citizens. We’ve laid down railroads and highways to facilitate travel and commerce.

RUSH: Recycled arguments.

OBAMA: We supported the work of scientists and researchers whose discoveries have saved lives and —

RUSH: Okay, folks, what you’re hearing here, ’cause we’ve got a commercial break and we’re gonna take it. You’re hearing a sales job for the expansion of government. That’s what you’re getting here.

OBAMA: Each of us has benefited from these investments and we’re a more prosperous country as a result.

RUSH: Nope. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.

OBAMA: A part of this American belief that we’re all connected also expresses itself in a conviction that each one of us deserves some basic measure of security and dignity. We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, hard times, or bad luck, a crippling illness or a layoff may strike any one of us.

RUSH: This stuff is right out of his book, folks.

OBAMA: There but for the grace of God go I.

RUSH: This is right out of The Audacity of Hope is where this is from.

OBAMA: — programs like Medicare —

RUSH: Right.

OBAMA: — and Social Security.

RUSH: Yeah.

OBAMA: — which guarantee us health care and a measure of basic income after a lifetime of hard work. Unemployment insurance which protects us against unexpected job loss, and Medicaid, which provides care for millions of seniors in nursing homes, poor children, those with disabilities.

RUSH: I can’t take much more.

OBAMA: We’re a better country because of these commitments. I’ll go further. We would not be a great country without those commitments. For much of the last century, our nation found a way to afford —

RUSH: Okay. All right, that’s it. Take it out. That’s not what has made us a great country. Social Security, Medicare, that’s not what has defined our greatness, everybody knows it. We know what’s coming: More government, more taxes, higher taxes, more togetherness, more interconnectedness, more whatever. This is the buildup, this is the sales pitch for more government, the buildup for more of what has brought us to the brink of financial disaster.

Time now for our promised and pledged EIB obscene profit time-out.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: He just said it. Our problem is trillions of dollars in unpaid-for tax cuts. Trillions of dollars in unpaid-for tax cuts. The Bush tax cuts, he’s back on that. That’s why we are where we are today. He’s blaming this deficit and this debt on George W. Bush.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: He’s still going. I got the feeling, Snerdley, this could be a Khadafy type speech length-wise, maybe even Castro, the way this is going. Typically he’s chosen an audience of students once again, rather than adults to speak to. He’s at George Washington University, President Obama. Greetings, welcome back. Rush Limbaugh and the EIB Network. We are at 800-282-2882. E-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.

Are you sitting down? If you’re just joining us, everything I thought this was gonna be, it turned out in the first five minutes. This is a sales pitch for growing expanding ever larger government. The definition of America’s greatness, in his view, began with the expansion of government: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, transfer payments. The redistribution of wealth, in other words, is when this country began its first steps of greatness. That’s what he’s saying. And I can tell you by the tone of this speech he does not think he got snookered on this budget deal. He is confident as he can be. He is almost arrogantly, condescendingly confident here. He knows he’s got the Republicans wrapped around his little fingers. He knows that the Republicans in Washington are not on the same page as their voters. And, frankly, that has always been one of my fears, that the Republican leadership is stuck back in the year 2000 while our voters — you, me, Tea Party, the rest of the public — is in “the now.” The leadership isn’t.

So this big election last November resulted in empowering Republicans who I don’t think have the stomach for this. Not bad people. They’re not sellouts or any of that. If you’d met them, I know many of them, you’d like them. They’re not bad people. They don’t have the stomach for what this is gonna take. Some of them do, some of them do, not a blanket statement that I’m making. But, ladies and gentlemen, he just said, this deficit, our economic circumstance is all because of George W. Bush. George Bush started two wars and cut taxes, and that’s why we are where we are today, and that’s why we’re paying the price. He referred to the Bush tax cuts as trillions of dollars in unpaid-for tax cuts. Now, only a Stalinist type central planner could look at tax revenue that way. Imagine the kind of mind-set you must have that sees tax cuts, i.e., people keeping more of their own money, as a net cost to government.

I always think of a cost as something that is an outflow, and they really look at it this way. They think all money is Washington’s, it is originated there, printed there. And in their convoluted view all money is Washington’s. That’s where it’s printed, that’s where it started, and what you end up with is because of their good graces. And so high income earners via tax rates ends up being unpaid-for tax cuts. It’s delusional and convoluted. He said, “We don’t begrudge those who have done well.” We don’t begrudge those who have done well. But he does begrudge those who have done well, and they’re gonna pay the price for doing well, because he doesn’t think they’re paying a high enough price now. You people who have achieved, you who are in the upper income brackets, all of this is your fault because you accepted George W. Bush’s tax cuts.

Here’s a story from CNNMoney.com, headline: “Tax the rich! OK, but then what, Mr. President?” Even this story says there aren’t enough rich people to come anywhere near close to paying for the mess that we’re in. There just aren’t enough rich people to generate the kind of revenue needed to substantially reduce deficits. That’s right here from Jeanne Sahadi, senior writer, CNN money. There never have been enough rich people. Thirty years ago, 25 years, there was a saying that had developed by our guys to counter the notion that the rich weren’t paying their fair share of taxes and if you could raise their tax rates that you’d wipe out deficits, and it went like this. And it was accurate numerically, mathematically as recently as the mid-seventies, maybe even early eighties. You could confiscate all the wealth, you could confiscate every dollar over I think it was $200,000 a year, confiscate it all and you could run the federal government for a week. That was true at the time, we’d run the numbers. It was true at the time. I don’t know what you could do now. It would be far less now. But if you confiscated, if you took it all, then where would you be? It wouldn’t be there anymore. You’ve taken it all. And so clearly raising taxes is not the answer. Raising taxes is gonna kill further job creation. It’s just that simple.

He also said it’s important for us to be honest about what’s driving up the deficit. I heard him say that. It was during a commercial break and I’m shouting at the TV, “You! You are driving up the deficit!” He said, “We don’t begrudge those doing well.” He said, “If our creditors start worrying that we can’t pay our debts that will drive up interest rates even more.” So that’s the debt ceiling, don’t mess with that, he said, we’ve gotta raise the debt ceiling. He said, “Politicians think that we can close our deficit by eliminating fraud and abuse.” He used to say that, too. In fact, he used to say that that’s how we could fund Obamacare is just by eliminating fraud and abuse. After Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, everything else is only 12% of our budget, leaving out the Department of Defense. And he said cuts to that 12% won’t solve the problem. Everything has to be on the table. Economists think we don’t need to balance our economy overnight.

This is so condescending. He was talking about Paul Ryan, he said, “To their credit, one vision has been presented by the Republicans.” He said the Ryan plan would lead to a fundamentally different America than what we have known throughout our history. He said the Ryan plan paints the kind of America that he doesn’t believe in, the rest of America doesn’t believe in. He’s talking about how brutal the Medicare cost increases will be under Ryan’s plan. So basically what we’re getting from the regime is a sales pitch and history revision. We are hearing that America’s greatness only began with the redistribution of wealth, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid,we’re all interconnected, and a sales pitch to have this government get even bigger because he’s now defining economic prosperity as more and more government involvement in everybody’s lives.

Folks, if we don’t succeed in stopping this — and the next real opportunity to stop it is obviously the 2012 election — if we don’t succeed, the country’s going to unravel anyway. I don’t see the need to play along with these people. See, I don’t look at this as the politics of same old same old. Back in the days when the Democrats ran the House for 40 years, the Republicans had 135 to 160 members, Bob Michel was the House minority leader, and the Republicans were nonfactors. They didn’t even bother going to committee meetings. It didn’t matter. And everybody was happy. It was just the way it was. It was just accepted that that was the way it was going to be. And every now and then at the White House level the presidency would be won by the Republicans and we’d shift power, we’d trade, we’d share, we’d go back and forth. But it’s different now. The contrast between what we believe and what Obama and his people believe is so stark that if they ultimately prevail, America as founded and as we know it won’t exist anymore. It will unravel.

There’s no need to play along with these people and trickle around the margins on these policies. There’s no reason. There’s no reason to pretend it’s like it was 30, 50 years ago where, oh, the old bromide about Tip O’Neill and Reagan going out and having a beer after work. That was largely exaggerated anyway. But the meaning of that was, you know, we’re all the same people here, we differ marginally just a little bit. Some days you guys are gonna have power, some days we will, and at night we’re all trying to find Fanne Foxe at the fountain. Well, no. It’s not that way anymore. The future is too crucial.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The top 2% — the top 2% of income earners in America — if Obama gets his way, no more itemized deductions — including the home mortgage interest deduction. You might be surprised at the income level that is the floor at the top 2%. You might be surprised. He’s talking about 250 to $300,000 a year. He’s not talking about millionaires here, folks. So, look, we knew he was gonna say this. There was a Reuters story out today: “Obama to Lay Out Deficit Plan, Would Focus on Taxes and Spending.” We knew he was gonna take the mortgage interest deduction away from certain people, and all itemized deductions. He was gonna make a play for it.

Basically wants to jack up taxes, he wants to cut military spending and continue to impose Obamacare. Now, we’re supposed to think this is something new. We’re supposed to think that this is something revolutionary. The president has been working hard and has really thought about this. There’s nothing new here! These are the same old, destructive policies that he has already been implementing and fighting for. Taking away the mortgage deduction from the top 2%? Well, yeah, the fact that he’s proposed it is new. The fact that he has been thinking about it isn’t. Putting the final nail in the housing market’s already nail-studded coffin: Take away the home mortgage interest deduction for the top 2% of wage earners.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay, so Obama basically spends 45 minutes vilifying the Ryan plan and then the last five minutes telling us how eager he is for us all to work together, ’cause the guy doesn’t even present his own budget. He goes out and gives a disgraceful speech like that.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s really all you need to know about the Obama speech, folks: If you are productive, if you work, if you are successful, if you create wealth, if you earn wealth, if you create jobs, then you are Obama’s target. Because he cannot pay for what he’s done. You can’t pay for what he’s doing, unless he steals more from you. What you heard today (if you haven’t heard it, you will) is like a Labor Party leader in Europe. That’s what we’ve got.

END TRANSCRIPT

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