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RUSH: Here is Chris, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. It’s an honor to talk to you, man. I really appreciate everything that you do for our country. I just think you’re a great American.

RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.

CALLER: Got a question for you. I know you’re talking about football, but this is a tax-related question. I really don’t understand something, and maybe you could help clear this up for me. I don’t understand how anybody comes to the conclusion that taxing the wealthy, the people that have earned their money, hard-earned money — and, you know, these wealthy people that pay me who are down on the lower rung… I’m not, you know, I’m not a corporate business owner or anything like that.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: I don’t understand how anybody comes to the conclusion that taxing them more to where they won’t be able to afford to pay me would further our economy.

RUSH: It’s not about that to them.

Your question is dynamite. It’s right on the money. But the whole debate is about “fairness.” I think it was Charlie Gibson interviewing Obama in the 2008 campaign on this. Charlie Gibson read Obama some statistics in the capital gains rate. (paraphrased exchange) He said, “Are you aware that when Bush 43 lowered the capital gains rate, an unexpected amount of new revenue flowed into the Treasury?”

Obama said, “Yeah, but that’s not what it’s about. It’s about fairness, Charlie.” He said, “I don’t think a 15% tax rate’s fair on people who make investments and have enough money to buy stocks. I don’t think 15% is fair.” Gibson said, “But lowering the capital gains rate from 25% to 15% caused more money to come to Washington. It reduced the deficit. It gave Washington more money to do things.”

It wasn’t about that, Obama said. “It’s about fairness to me.” So is taxing the rich. He’s playing the classy-envy game. Obama wants Americans at war with each other. What President Obama wants — and I’m not exaggerating at all here, Chris. What Obama and the Democrats want is for middle-income Americans to think that the only reason they’re not rich is that the rich have taken from them. They are being made to believe that higher taxes on the rich will mean more money comes to them.

That’s the lie that’s being peddled. The lie that’s being peddled is, “The rich only got rich by taking it from other people.” There’s no talk about them earning it. There isn’t any talk about hard work. There is only the talk about how unfair it is that the rich have what they have. It’s immoral. So Obama is gonna go level the playing field. He’s gonna take it away from these people who have it unfairly, and implicit in that is the inference he wants people to draw that the only reason they’re not rich is that other people are.

CALLER: So in order to peddle this lie, we’re just willing to penalize people that have worked their butts off to get what they have?

RUSH: Damn straight. Exactly. It is a punishment. It is a penalty.

CALLER: (groans)

RUSH: That’s exactly the way Obama looks at it, exactly the way the Democrat Party looks at it. You nailed it. That’s exactly it. It is a punishment. They have more than they need! You’ve heard him say this. You even hear Clinton say it. (impression) “Hey, you know, Hillary and I, we’re rich! We don’t need this tax cut. We got more than we need.” You see other rich people like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates say, “Well, we got more than we need.” You don’t see them giving it away other than to each other’s charities, but that’s the argument. “They got more than they need. They got more than their fair share. It’s unfair,” all that stuff, “and so it’s time to punish them.”

Damn straight. You nailed it.

You understand perfectly.

CALLER: That makes me feel a little better. Thanks.

RUSH: Well, I’m glad it makes sense. You’ve been puzzled by it, ’cause it hasn’t made sense to you in a strict economic sense. These people ought to be role models, you’re thinking. They ought to be: “Here’s how you do it, and this is the country where it can be done.” That’s the way it used to be, by the way. But now success is under attack. Success is said to be illegitimate in America, because the deck has been stacked.

The successful have been unfairly allowed to be successful. It’s as though Obama wants you to believe that some powerful person somewhere decides who gets to be rich and who doesn’t, and that person’s been unfair in who he’s been allowing to get rich. So Obama’s gonna make it right. He gonna make it right. He’s gonna take that money away from people, and even if the money doesn’t come back to people in the middle class or people who are poor, it doesn’t matter. Because they’re still happy the rich are getting screwed.

‘Cause that’s what Obama’s selling.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: RUSH: Wilmington, North Carolina, is our next stop on the phones. Hi, Jeff. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hi.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. Thanks for taking my call.

RUSH: Yes, sir.

CALLER: I wanted to make the case I think the conservatives need to make, whether it be the senators or whoever, that the whole economy is being held up by federal deficit spending, which is either money printed or money borrowed. If you go through the whole — and everybody up there knows that. They know if they cut the deficit, that the economy is gonna go into a tailspin. And it’s gonna have to happen at some point, but if you go through the list, and I wanted to play off something you were speaking about earlier, which was that the local cities and the state governments are all being held up by this money. That’s where this whole thing comes down, because all that money, whether it be school teachers, state workers, even doctors and nurses and hospitals, all that money goes away. I’m a private guy, I have a couple small businesses, and all that money isn’t gonna be spent. We’re in real trouble. I hope that people can understand this. I don’t understand why the Republicans, when they say — or when the other side said we had a growth rate of 2.7%, they don’t say, “No, we didn’t. We had probably a growth rate of negative 10%, it’s all borrowed money.” I don’t understand why they don’t continuously make that case.

RUSH: I don’t think either party has the temerity, the guts right now to actually deal with where we are, out of fear of the fallout if people were told the truth. Right now we’re trucking right along. We’ve got a little recovery going on here, unemployment rate’s coming down. The rich are gonna be paying their fair share. Everybody’s gonna have health care. You got your phone. You got your plasma, your food stamp debit card. What the hell is there to complain about?

CALLER: Except that it’s all based on borrowed money or —

RUSH: Shhhh. No, no, no, no, no, no. Don’t say that. Most people’s lives are borrowed money when you get right down to it.

CALLER: Very true. However, if you look at it, if they ever cut back — and I know that they know this — all those at a municipalities, all those votes that they’re looking for that are coming through, like I said, school teachers, it even goes into colleges. You think professors are gonna be making 90 grand a year teaching two or three times classes a week? All that money starts to go away, then they start screaming, you know, how are my kids gonna make it, go to school?

RUSH: I know. Folks, what he’s saying is, if we ever did engage in serious deficit reduction, a lot of it is money that’s being used to provide jobs for people. And if that money’s cut and they either lose their jobs or some of their income, then they join the welfare rolls. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle, and then where do they go to get new jobs in an economy like this? That’s why, before you start doing any of that, as part of doing that, you’ve got to have policies for economic growth. It is the only salvation that we’ve got. If we’re gonna hold onto this country as founded, there has to be economic growth. Because part of economic growth is job opportunity, career opportunity, entrepreneurial opportunity. Bad word. Entrepreneur doesn’t sell well. Sorry. It just doesn’t. I’m sorry. I wish it did, but it’s a negative word now. It is. Didn’t help Romney. So it is a conundrum. So many people are being propped up by the tax payments of others.

(interruption)

Oh, I don’t want to get on Romney’s loss. It’s overdone. Snerdley said, “How much of his loss was his fault?” Hell, I don’t know. Doesn’t matter right now. That analysis is being done, will be done, has been done, doesn’t matter at this moment in time. Anyway, I appreciate the call, Jeff. Thanks very much.

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