RUSH: There are really two despicable AP stories today. Quote: “Among the things the government can do to bring relief to drivers is reduce gasoline taxes or push to get more fuel-efficient cars on the road. The first new fuel standards since 1990 are just now going into effect, and the US auto fleet is more efficient than ever.” So why is the price still going up? I want you to think about something. We have, as required by federal law, had more and more stringent fuel efficiency standards for 20 years. We had the catalytic converter. We’ve had all kinds of limits on emissions.

We’ve had cars produced. We’ve had little puddle jumpers out there that get a lot of gas mileage but no power. We’ve been doing this for a long, long time is my point. It’s not just… This idea that fuel efficiency standards that were implemented in 1990 are just now going into effect is a crock! I’m sitting here and I’m recalling during the Clinton years we did parodies on them. On Clinton and all of the new CAFE standards. Now, that’s in the nineties. Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency, the CAFE standards. And they were raised, and they’re raised every three or four years, meaning that every manufacturer of automobiles (when they combine the whole fleet of cars and trucks they manufacture) the average miles per gallon’s gotta be X. It goes up, and it’s been going on for 25 years.

And it’s all been under the pretext conservation and reducing dependence on foreign oil.

None of that’s happened, has it? We still depend on foreign oil. Despite manufacturers being told they gotta build crap cars, we still have the price of gasoline going up. Don’t we? Despite 25 years of fuel efficiency standards being mandated by the federal government onto manufacturers. “The US auto fleet is now more efficient than ever,” and yet the price of gas is still going up, and we still depend on foreign oil as much as ever. So what has it all been worth? “Well, Mr. Limbaugh,” the New Castrati interrupting, “at least you can say, Mr. Limbaugh, that pollution has reduced.” Oh, it has? Then how come we saw the global warming threat, Mr. New Castrati?

If we’ve reduced emissions and we have made the air cleaner, then what’s the threat? If every one of these cockeyed liberal ideas worked, then why do we still have the same exact problem only worse in every respect? And the answer is because their ideas don’t work. They result in crappier stuff, underperforming stuff, stuff that people really don’t want. Stuff that manufacturers, if left to their own devices, would not make. That’s where we end up, and despite all that, we still have higher gas prices, and despite all that we still have global warming, and despite all of that we still have a huge dependency on foreign oil.

So where, I ask, is the magic of all these liberal solutions to these problems?

And the answer is: Every solution liberals come up with for a problem makes that problem worse, directly and also via unintended consequences like the breakup of the black family, which nobody wanted to happen, but it did.

Liberalism doesn’t work, and it makes me mad.

That’s the bottom line.

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RUSH: CAFE standards. That’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy. And remember we had these cheap, tiny cars? We had to have these cheap, tiny cars because we weren’t gonna have “blood for oil.” The free flow of oil at market prices was never a reason for the US to engage its military anywhere. Remember the first Iraq war, Gulf War One, all the criticism of George H. W. Bush? Blood for oil! He was simply going to get hold of Iraq’s oil fields as some kind of crime, when it was never the purpose. Heck, we didn’t take any of the oil the second time around in Iraq; and, by all rights, it was ours. But we didn’t take it ’cause we’re being big people about it.

We’re the world’s big kid on the block, and we’ve got enough, and so we’re gonna go and we’ll do the dirty work of liberating Iraq and getting rid of Saddam Hussein. And then we’ll give the ChiComs the oil to show what big people we are! Yet the American left rips this country to shreds ’cause everything we do is for oil, like it’s some kind of the poison. So we built these cheap, tiny cars. Then we built dangerous tiny cars ’cause of blood for oil. Can’t have blood for oil, can’t do that. And all this conservation, all these CAFE standards and all of these steps to reduce air pollution, and yet the Democrats are running commercials with kids wearing inhalers walking through the Capitol.

Because now global warming is so bad they’re getting asthma attacks from CO2 that they exhale. So I’m just telling you, folks: It’s a giant teachable moment. The last 20 years, 25 years of liberal solutions to all these problems, and we’ve still got the problems. We have the same old problems, the same villains. Yes, the same old problems, only worse. Meanwhile, we’re told the government can fix everything. Just turn everything over to them, every aspect of your life. But then the gasoline price comes along and, “Oh, no, no! That’s Big Oil, you know? ‘Big, greedy oil companies,’ those rotten SOBs!” I’m just saying: If producing more domestic oil cannot impact world prices, then guess what? Conserving can’t, either.

And this is an argument, if you’ve been here for the entire 23-plus years, you know that we’ve made.

All this talk about conservation, yeah, it’s wonderful. Everybody’s against waste. But conservation is not a policy that leads to growth, and growth is what prosperity is about in this country! Growth is where people’s dreams reside. Growth is where opportunity exists. And without it, you have stagnation. Conservation does not lead to growth. It just doesn’t. But, according to Obama, neither does domestic production of oil. If domestic production of oil can’t lower prices, then why and how in the heck does conservation do it? There’s not one thing Obama has said today that could stand up to even the most cursory logic examination or application. Not one thing, folks. Not one thing he has said stands up to the slightest application of logic.