{"id":16221,"date":"2012-03-20T16:31:24","date_gmt":"2012-03-20T16:31:24","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2012-03-20T16:31:24","modified_gmt":"2012-03-20T16:31:24","slug":"the_architects_of_our_debt_disaster_have_no_right_to_attack_paul_ryan_s_budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2012\/03\/20\/the_architects_of_our_debt_disaster_have_no_right_to_attack_paul_ryan_s_budget\/","title":{"rendered":"The Architects of Our Debt Disaster Have No Right to Attack Paul Ryan\u2019s Budget"},"content":{"rendered":"

RUSH: I\u2019ve been here 24 years. We\u2019re into our 24th year now, is that right? Yeah, we\u2019re in our 24th year because we\u2019re 23 plus. Our 24th anniversary is August 1st. And there were three-and-a-half years doing this program pretty much the same way in Sacramento before it started nationally. (sniffs) So that\u2019s 27, 28 years. (interruption) No, it\u2019s the cigars that are causing the sniffles here. Cigar smoke is one of the best decongestants that I have run into. Anyway, I can remember when this program started back in Sacramento and even moving forward in the early nineties. It was death — it was talk show death; it was guaranteed tune-out — to start talking about the federal budget. That was so minutia-like. It was such boring drivel. It was numbers; it was inside baseball congressional stuff. <\/p>\n

And today it\u2019s pretty much the lead item that we\u2019re going to talk about, and I think it\u2019s interesting to note that because of that we have a clear illustration of just how much the American people have become concerned about such things as federal spending, the debt, the deficit, and what it means to \u2019em. It really is striking as the host of a program profoundly concerned with tune-out. It\u2019s the last thing you want. You want people to listen. And I can tell you, it wasn\u2019t that long ago — 20, 23, 24 years — that you start talking about the budget and there go the buttons being pushed in the car going to a different station. <\/line><\/p>\n

Today Paul Ryan\u2019s <\/a>new budget is out. He\u2019s the budget expert the Republican side in the House of Representatives. It\u2019s a budget that deals with the problems that we have. The really shocking thing about Paul Ryan\u2019s budget, which is the Republican budget, is that it does many of the things that voters sent the Republican Congress to do back in 2010. And that really ticks off the news media. The one-party news media is reporting the news of the Ryan budget, with AP calling it “an election year budget.” These venal Republicans never do anything except for political advantage! Yes, it\u2019s an election year budget by Paul Ryan!<\/p>\n

You never hear Obama and his “election year budget,” or Obama and his “election year” whatever. We\u2019ve never heard from the AP or anybody else in the State-Controlled Media how the Democrats have refused to come up with any kind of budget for three years \u2019cause they\u2019re afraid it will hurt \u2019em in the elections. The Democrats haven\u2019t submitted a real budget! Obama has, but it\u2019s one the past two-to-three years that\u2019s never had a prayer. The last Obama budget that was voted on lost 97 to nothing. So he\u2019s not even serious about it. Speaking of budgets, Mark Knoller of CBS News has committed another random act of journalism. <\/p>\n

Mark Knoller of CBS News is reporting today that the national debt has now increased more during Obama\u2019s three years and two months in office than it did during eight years of the George Bush presidency. The national debt has increased more during Obama\u2019s first term than in all of Bush\u2019s two terms, and we\u2019re not even through Obama\u2019s first term. In the real world, in a world of sanity, there\u2019s not a soul — there\u2019s not a single person, there is not one individual in the Obama administration — who can attack the Ryan budget with any credibility whatsoever. Not in a sane world. The Obama budget team are the architects of an abysmal failure. The Obama budget team are the architects of a debt crisis that threatens the very foundation of our country. <\/p>\n

And yet they are all over the place (because it\u2019s an “election year,” don\u2019t you know) responding to Ryan\u2019s budget and belittling it and pooh-poohing it and talking about how it doesn\u2019t do enough for the poor and how it\u2019s going to take away benefits from the poor. The architects of an absolute, literal disaster are the first out of the box to rip Paul Ryan and a studious, responsible budget effort. It\u2019s just laughable. The whole thing is virtually laughable. These people do not know how ridiculous they\u2019ve become. I\u2019m talking about the Obama people. They don\u2019t know how ridiculous they sound. They don\u2019t know how incompetent people know they are. So this Ryan budget… Let\u2019s listen to Paul Ryan. Let\u2019s go to the audio sound bites here. We\u2019ll start here at the very top. This is this morning in Washington up on Capitol Hill. Paul Ryan, Republican from Wisconsin, held a press conference to introduce the Republican budget. It\u2019s called “A Path to Prosperity.”<\/p>\n

RYAN: We propose that we repeal the president\u2019s disastrous health care law. We propose to save and strengthen Medicare by taking power away from government bureaucrats. We believe competition and choice should be the way forward versus price controls that lead to rationing. We also propose, as one of our hallmark issues to get to economic growth and job creation, to reform the tax system. We propose to collapse the six different tax brackets into two rates: A 10% bracket and a 25% bracket for individuals — and a 25% bracket for corporations, which is at the international average and going to a territorial system.<\/line><\/p>\n

RUSH: Right: $5.7 trillion in cuts, two tax rates of 10% and 25% … $5.7 trillion in tax cuts. I ran across something the other day. There\u2019s a little controversy swirling around not so much Apple (I guess it is Apple) but some guy who does a stage show, some theoretical performer named Mike Daisy who… Ah, I\u2019ll get into it in just a minute. But there have been a lot of blog references to this, and in the process of keeping up with this I saw a little blog post about Apple\u2019s announcement yesterday of what they\u2019re gonna do with their nearly $100 billion in cash. One hundred billion dollars. One company, Apple, Inc., has a $100 billion in cash just sitting around, and they\u2019ve had it for a while.<\/p>\n

It keeps growing. Investors, a lot of people say, “What are we gonna do with this? Should we pay dividends? Should we do stock buyback? Should we do nothing?” Steve Jobs didn\u2019t want to do anything with it; Steve Jobs wanted to keep it; it was security for him. It gave him all kinds of flexibility running the business, being able to prepay shipping, for example, being able to lock up every airplane shipping cargo from China to the United States for a new product introduction like the iPad so that no other competitor could ship their stuff at the same time and use it for that. Anyway, I want you to listen to this little post about that aspect of this. <\/p>\n

“Tim Cook, Apple\u00c2\u2019s CEO, and Peter Oppenheimer, Apple\u00c2\u2019s CFO, will host a conference call” (they did it yesterday) “to announce the outcome of the company\u00c2\u2019s discussions concerning its cash balance” of $100 billion. That is $100,000 million.<\/a> That\u2019s what I wanted to get to: $100 billion is $100,000 million. They could buy Walmart with just their cash reserve. But my point here is finding a way to illustrate, in understandable terms, the kind of money we\u2019re talking about here: $17 trillion or $18-whatever trillion national debt. An annual budget of over $3 trillion dollars. There was just done a survey of spending in the UK. They found that one-third of all tax revenue goes to the welfare state. One-third goes to people on welfare. <\/p>\n

The way these things are presented is the way you get people\u2019s attention with it and the way you then are able to start persuading them. So here\u2019s a company with a $100 billion cash hoard. They\u2019re trying to figure out what to do with it, and it\u2019s described here as $100,000 million. Now, the richest guy in the world view has $50, $60, $70 billion. Apple has a hundred billion. That is $100,000 million in cash. Now, you think what would a lot of money be to me, “What would you say if you had it would make you rich?” And that answer differs from person to person. What I\u2019m trying to convey here is, Apple\u2019s $100,000 million — $100,000 million! — would not even show up as an accounting error in the federal budget. <\/p>\n

And yet they tell us we\u2019re not spending enough money and we\u2019re not taxed enough. And every year this country\u2019s government spends over $3 trillion — and of that $3 trillion, close to $2 trillion we don\u2019t have. That\u2019s above and beyond what\u2019s collected from tax revenues and other income sources for the government. Folks, it literally is insulting for us to be told that this country can\u2019t be run on $2 trillion. That $100,000 million is just $100 billion. That\u2019s considered part of the largest market cap company in the country, and it\u2019s nothing! It\u2019s nothing compared to the government. What do you think you could do with $100,000 million dollars? In addition to never having to work, what do you think you could do with it? <\/p>\n

Could you possibly spend it all? Go ahead and buy ten Boeing 747s. Go ahead and buy ten of the biggest yachts in the world. Go ahead and buy Walmart. You\u2019re still going to have money left over and you\u2019re still being told by your government that we can\u2019t get by as a nation on $2 trillion a year! This debt is out of control. It\u2019s out of sight. It\u2019s incomprehensible, except in one way: It\u2019s destructive. It is so large, it cannot be understood, the debt. It is so massive, it cannot be quantified. It\u2019s like the universe. Have you ever tried to picture the universe? We humans are not capable of that. We don\u2019t have enough data. And then if you want to get really tied up, ask yourself: Where is the universe?<\/line>