RUSH: We’re gonna have to get to this unemployment business ’cause Pelosi’s back now saying that unemployment benefits grow the economy. She’s back repeating this, and there were some other people saying this yesterday that we spent a lot of time on dissecting, and that was based on a story. There was this most idiotic AP story yesterday on how if unemployment benefits weren’t extended, Christmas would be over, the country would end. It was all about how unemployment compensation benefits grow the economy. It was the most idiotic piece I have read written by a leading wire service.
It reported such silly things as tax cuts actually hurt the economy because those are just gifts from the government to people. I went through this long monologue. In fact, in the next issue of the Limbaugh Letter we are going to illustrate my little monologue on this yesterday with how all of this works, unemployment benefits, how they don’t grow the economy. I was stunned reading this yesterday, and now Pelosi’s back, and we’ve got a whole audio segment on this with other sound bites, people weighing in on it.
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RUSH: Let’s move on to this unemployment benefits compensation, day two. This is from the Associated Press, Tom Breen: ‘Two Million Lose Jobless Benefits as Holidays Arrive.’ You know, I remember back to yesterday, it’s amazing I was able to keep my composure. I only had to bleep myself once yesterday, and thinking back on it I’m amazed I didn’t have to bleep myself a number of times during this discussion of unemployment benefit extensions. When I read that AP piece and these people trying to intellectually explain how unemployment benefits boost economic activity and how tax cuts are a gift, the government gives tax cuts, I don’t want to go through the whole thing. If you missed it, it would be worth going to RushLimbaugh.com to revisit that whole segment yesterday in that monologue because it was so good we’re gonna put it in graphic display in the next issue of the Limbaugh Letter. I just ordered that today. We’re gonna have Obama’s stash over here, the stash, where does Obama get his stash, where does it come from. This idea that somebody has an income of a million dollars has it because Obama’s given it to ’em or the government’s given it to ’em and if they get a tax cut it’s because the government gives them a tax cut, writes them a check every month for $5,000 for a tax cut, is silly, and that’s what this AP story essentially said.
So now here’s today’s installment: ‘Extended unemployment benefits for nearly 2 million Americans begin to run out Wednesday, cutting off a steady stream of income and guaranteeing a dismal holiday season for people already struggling with bills they cannot pay. Unless Congress changes its mind, benefits that had been extended up to 99 weeks will end this month. That means Christmas is out of the question for Wayne Pittman, 46, of Lawrenceville, Ga., and his wife and 9-year-old son. The carpenter was working up to 80 hours a week at the beginning of the decade, but saw that gradually drop to 15 hours before it dried up completely. His last $297 check will go to necessities, not presents. ‘I have a little boy, and that’s kind of hard to explain to him,’ Pittman said.’
Isn’t it funny now here in the AP how important Christmas is all of a sudden? In fact, when’s the last time AP used the word in a story? Normally it’s the winter holidays or the holidays or whatever. Now all of a sudden they’ve got no compunction about using the word Christmas. Christmas is usually a forbidden word in the AP Stylebook. It’s gotta be ‘holidays.’ You can’t say Merry Christmas ’cause it’s gonna offend people. But the word Christmas appears seven times in this article. So the AP Stylebook says it’s okay to mention Christmas when you’re trying to tug at readers’ heartstrings.
‘Congressional opponents of extending the benefits beyond this month say fiscal responsibility should come first. Republicans in the House and Senate, along with a handful of conservative Democrats, say they’re open to extending benefits, but not if it means adding to the $13.8 trillion national debt.’ Now, notice here again the opposition to extending benefits for a fifth time this year without paying for ’em is actually bipartisan. There are some Democrats who don’t want to do this, either. Just like the support for extending the Bush tax rates for everybody is bipartisan. What happened to the importance of being bipartisan? It seems to me that if it was bipartisan, everybody ought to accept it. That’s what we want, right? We want bipartisanship. Well, we’ve got it here. We got Republicans and Democrats who say if you’re gonna extend unemployment benefits, then pay for it. Shouldn’t that make it automatic, bipartisanship being what the media and everybody else says we should be aspiring to?
Back to the story: ‘Forget Christmas presents. What the so-called ’99ers’ want most of all is what remains elusive in the worst economy in generations: a job. … Ninety-nine weeks may seem like a long time to find a job. But even as the economy grows,’ it isn’t growing. I got a story in the stack to illustrate. They’ve done a survey of employers and the number of people they’re gonna fire and lay off in January versus last January is almost 50% more. The number of employee layoffs starting next month versus January of this year is almost 50% additional, and yet these jerks say we have an economy that’s growing. ‘The private sector added about 159,000 jobs in October — half as many as needed to reduce the unemployment rate of 9.6 percent.’ This is journalistic malpractice. Mr. Breen, you ought to be ashamed. Well, you’re probably not. You’re doing the bidding of your bosses, the administration.
Now, a carpenter, Mr. Pittman, 46, of Lawrenceville, Georgia, he’s probably a listener. The odds are that most people are. Mr. Pittman, you have skills. You can make things. You can sell things. People buy handmade things all the time, handmade Christmas ornaments, they buy all sorts of things. It’s not as though there’s nothing for you to do, Mr. Pittman. I know if I go any further it’s gonna be heartless Rush attacks carpenter out of work, I can see the headline. When we come back audio sound bites on unemployment extension, benefits extension, how it grows the economy and all that rotgut, a continuation of the sham that was reported yesterday.
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RUSH: All right. Let’s go back to yesterday’s AP story before we get to today’s audio sound bites, because yesterday’s AP story was a fax. It was a fax from Pelosi’s office or a fax from the Oval Office or somewhere. Here’s how it began: ‘If Congress lets unemployment benefits expire this week for the long-term unemployed, they won’t be the only ones to feel the pain. The overall economy would suffer, too. Unemployment benefits help drive the economy…’ ‘Unemployment benefits help drive the economy…’ Now, just stop and think of that alone. If ‘unemployment benefits help drive the economy,’ we need more of them and an extension here is just not nearly enough. If they help drive the economy, doesn’t that say that unemployment drives the economy?
Doesn’t it? I mean, you don’t have unemployment benefits without unemployment. So unemployment drives the economy. Let’s continue. ‘Unemployment benefits help drive the economy because the jobless tend to spend every dollar they get, pumping cash into businesses. A cut-off of aid for millions of people unemployed for more than six months could squeeze a fragile economy, analysts say. Among the consequences they envision: Annual economic growth could fall by one half to nearly 1 percentage point. Up to 1 million more people could lose their jobs. Hundreds of thousands would fall into poverty. ‘Look for homelessness to rise and food lines to get longer as we approach Christmas if the situation can’t be resolved,’ says Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial.
‘That money ripples through the economy, into supermarkets, gasoline stations, utilities, convenience stores. That allows those businesses to hire more people…’ Then why aren’t they? Here are the numbers. This is a Reuters story. ‘The number of planned layoffs by U.S. employers rose in November…’ This is planned. ‘The number of planned layoffs by U.S. employers rose in November to the highest level since March, with the government and non-profit sector leading the rise… Employers announced 48,711 planned job cuts last month, up 28 percent from 37,986 in October,’ and as they look forward to they’re planning on even more layoffs in January. Now, how does that happen?
How can that possibly happen if these people are right about unemployment driving economy via unemployment benefits? Shouldn’t the economy be growing left and right as people lose their jobs? I mean that’s how stupid that thinking is. It is embarrassingly stupid, this piece. That money ripples through the economy into supermarkets. So why do we all just quit our jobs and everybody go on unemployment? If benefits were the way to stimulate economic growth, why would anybody work? Now, the story goes on and on and on to talk about how this all happens, which led me to ask a question: Where do these ‘benefits’ come from? You’re outta work, and you get your $300 — what is it, a week? — check.
Where does it come from? It’s not yours. It’s not yours. If it were yours you’d go to the bank and get it so whose is it? Where is it coming from? The point is that money has been taken out of the economy first. There’s not a single new dollar added to the economy with unemployment benefits. It’s just a transfer payment. It’s going from one pocket to another. But there aren’t any new dollars circulating. That’s why I said yesterday, this is economics 101. This is irresponsible for a leading wire service to be writing such pap. That’s why I said it’s a fax. It came from some Democrat office. Let’s go to the audio sound bites to prove it. Here’s a montage of journalists from Headline News, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CNN, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, about unemployment benefits, the checks, and what will happen…
ROBIN MEADE: (music) The last check is in the mail for about two million Americans unless something changes.
WOLF BLITZER: Two million people are expected to stop receiving checks.
POPPY HARLOW: Two million Americans losing those unemployment checks…
TONY HARRIS: Two million people are expected to stop receiving checks.
SHARYN ALFONSI: Two million people who will stop getting unemployment checks…
RICHARD LUI: Those checks will stop.
RACHEL MADDOW: About two million people are going to stop getting checks.
CHRISTINE ROMANS: People today very, very concerned this morning about where their next check will come from.
RUSH: Right. Okay. So it’s all part of a plan to action. They run the story, then they get all the media talking about all this horror. Now we move to Hardball last night with Chris Matthews interviewing Sherrod Brown, Democrat Senator, Ohio. Matthews says, ‘The American people gonna have their taxes go up in January if the Republicans hold out for the rich. That will happen, but you’re saying that they’re gonna buckle?’
BROWN: These tax cuts for the rich — that Bush did twice, Chris, in ’01 and ’03 as you know — resulted in very little economic growth. We saw only one million jobs created in the Bush years, 22 million created in the — in the Clinton years when we reached a balanced budget with a fairer tax system. And there’s no real history illustrating that these tax cuts for the rich result in jobs. It’s extending unemployment benefits that creates economic activity, that creates jobs, not giving a millionaire an extra 10 or 20 or $30,000 in tax cuts that they likely won’t spend ’cause they’re already buying what they’re gonna buy anyway.
RUSH: (laughing) That’s exactly what the AP story said yesterday. It’s exactly. So it is not rich people — forget even the rich. It’s not tax cuts that propel an economy, it’s unemployment benefits! Now, this is pure sophistry. This is embarrassing, but here’s a Democrat Senator actually saying it. Tax cuts don’t cause economic growth, unemployment benefits do! Unemployment benefits create economic activity that creates jobs. Somebody explain this to me. How does…? Well, you can’t explain it. I’m not even gonna ask for it. There’s no way unemployment benefits create jobs, but this is what the Democrats are saying. (interruption) The unemployed can’t hire people, exactly. They… (interruption) No. The unemployed can’t hire people, otherwise they’d hire themselves and we wouldn’t have any unemployment, but they don’t. No, it’s just… It is depressingly stupid.
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RUSH: Notice something else, ladies and gentlemen, this whole thing is a giant scam, the whole thing is an orchestrated political movement. Notice unemployment benefits were scheduled to expire after the elections and right before Christmas, thereby making this debate necessary. This is how the left always does things. Everything is political, nothing is compassionate, nothing is oriented around humanity or any of the things that they say they care about. Every bit of it is manipulatively political.