RUSH: This bipartisan stimulus package. Here you go, on the tax rebate side. ‘Checks of at least $300 for all people earning a paycheck.’ What about those who don’t earn their paychecks? A lot of people get paid but don’t earn it, a lot of slackers out there, Mr. Snerdley. You know what I’m talking about. Strange wording. ‘Checks of at least $300 for all people earning a paycheck, including low-income earners who make too little to pay income taxes. Families with children would receive an additional $300 per child, while those paying income taxes could receive higher rebates. Rebates may be capped at $1,200 for couples with children.’ Wait a minute. Does this mean that I am going to get a check for $300? There’s a cap in this, isn’t there, like $150 grand for couples and $75,000 for singles. Yeah, there’s a cap in it, so nobody on the EIB staff is going to benefit from this. Nobody.
Let’s see. ‘Business tax write-offs: Spurring business investments with so-called bonus depreciation, more generous expensing rules and a change to allow businesses suffering losses now to reclaim taxes previously paid. Housing rescue: Allowing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy loans larger than $417,000.’ Here’s what’s out. This did not make the stimulus package: Permanent tax cuts. Unemployment insurance. Food stamps did not make the cut. Medicaid did not make the cut. The Democrats gave up on including Medicaid payments to the states. Low-income heating subsidies: Democrats are surrendering the fight to include them. Infrastructure spending: Spending on transportation or repair projects already under way is off the table. Well, the Democrats, they wanted all these public works projects, and they didn’t get as much as they wanted. It doesn’t appear to be the case. The government’s handing out money, but according to what I’m seeing, there’s a ceiling that if you earn 75 big ones, that’s the ceiling, if you’re single. If you earn more than that, then none of this applies to you on a tax rebate, and if you’re married and your joint income is $150 grand, the theory has been advanced here you can’t stimulate the economy unless you give the big spenders the loot.
Let me just get to the point. This is all such rigamarole, folks. It’s an election year and everybody is just going crazy about bipartisanship. The left and the right, the media, they’re dancing in the streets to the siren song of bipartisanship. ‘Isn’t that nice, Mr. Limbaugh? Aren’t we caring? See, we can all get along for a common purpose, Mr. Limbaugh, to save America.’ Right. Let me give you a quick pop quiz, ladies and gentlemen. When was the last time the left and the administration and some on the right got together and were cheered by the media? When was the last time that happened? It was not campaign finance reform. It was not homeland security. It’s not the education bill. This is disappointing to me. My own staff, the answer, the answer is three feet in front of your face. It’s that close. The last time the administration and the left and a lot of Republicans got together and were cheered by the media for doing so was the celebration of bipartisanship that brought us the amnesty bill! Which is my point. Kennedy and McCain, the New York Times and the Washington Post, Congress and the White House, bipartisan with themselves.
Our leaders have not learned from that, and they’re now on the sequel. The son of amnesty, $150 billion, for what? Another scheme, another short-term fix that doesn’t think through the consequences of its actions. Democrats love to spread street money around to buy votes. The administration is terrified of being tarred with another Katrina, getting blamed for political gain. The Drive-Bys like bipartisan story lines. So they can get along, and we’re all better for it, right? They can get along when they need to protect themselves. At any rate, that’s the last time we got bipartisan, and I always cringe when we’re talking about bipartisanship, and you know why, because the primary thing that happens when we get bipartisan is that conservatives in power tend to cave on the premise of whatever is on tap to be discussed, and that’s not good.
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RUSH: Here’s a perfect stimulus package, and this perfect stimulus package… (interruption) Yes, we’re going to get to the Clintons and the race. A whole bunch of See, I Told You So’s, folks, the Clinton southern strategy, they’re even admitting to it now. They’re even voicing it. I know these people like every square inch of my glorious naked body. I’m going to get to all that in due course. It’s a three-hour program. Sit tight, be cool, and be patient. A question on these rebate checks. Question: Brian, you’re the expert here on these payday places. These check cashing places, can you take your government rebate check? Not before you get it. Can you take your government rebate check in there and cash that? I would think anything with US Treasury on it they would cash, right, at the payday places. I’m trying to serve the ‘unbanked,’ here. All right, so we have a $14 trillion economy. What the hell is $150 billion more going to do? It’s not going to do diddly-squat. It might help people’s perceptions and attitudes that the government cares, and this will stimulate the economy, blah, blah, blah, blah. Perceptions, sadly in politics, are sometimes reality. If you want to lower oil costs, you drill for more oil! This is what’s missing in all this. It’s elementary, basic conservatism 101. You want to lower the price of energy, find more! Not new kinds that are not abundant and don’t work: find more existing energy, and it’s there. Just go get it. You want to lower housing costs? You cut property taxes. You want to create more jobs, you cut corporate taxes! You want to reduce inflation, you cut government spending. It’s no more complicated than that.
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RUSH: Lebanon, Texas. Cecil, you’re next on the EIB Network. Hello, sir.
CALLER: This is Cecil from Lebanon, Kansas, close enough.
RUSH: Lebanon, Kansas. I didn’t think there was a Lebanon, Texas.
CALLER: Probably not. The news media, they keep saying you’re irrelevant, right?
RUSH: Yeah, off-and-on for 20 years out there, Cecil.
CALLER: Yeah, whose viewership, leadership, followers, leaders, whatever is going up and whose is going down? Your audience is increasing, and theirs is decreasing. Who’s really irrelevant?
RUSH: Yeah, I know. Newspaper circulation is down; newspaper stock prices are down; newspaper advertising is down. Ours isn’t. And there are some cable networks who are floundering out there as well. I didn’t want to say that myself, Cecil, because I’m not prone to braggadocios behavior. For you to say it, that’s instant credibility. I appreciate it.
CALLER: You’re welcome.
RUSH: All right. Roger in Jacksonville, Florida, welcome, sir, to the EIB Network. Nice to have you here.
CALLER: Thanks, Rush. Blue sky dittos from Jacksonville.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Rush, I’m kind of surprised because when you listen to the Democrats, the number-one problem with the economy in the country is the tax cuts that Bush gave to the evil rich. So today we have an announcement that those very same Democrats, to stimulate the economy, are going to give tax rebates to citizens and tax incentives to businesses who, indeed, are those evil rich that they talk about.
RUSH: That is an excellent point, except, you think that you’ve come up with a way to nail the Democrats on this because you think that in this stimulus package they are agreeing conceptually with the notion essentially of a tax cut. If you’re going to give people 800 bucks or $300, whatever, $600, or $15, depending on the number of kids and so forth, if you’re going to do that, then the Democrats are essentially admitting letting people keep more of their money or have more of their money will stimulate the economy, correct?
CALLER: Correct.
RUSH: And that’s exactly right. But the Democrat argument on tax cuts is all based on class envy. They say, ‘Yeah, we need middle class tax relief. We don’t need tax cuts for the rich.’ They play the class envy card. They’re not even talking about economic stimulus. If you listen to what they really want to do, Chuck Rangel and the others, what they really want to do is raise taxes across the board, when you get right down to it. This is an election year, and in an election year you can always get bipartisanship on giving money away, which is essentially what’s happened here. It’s cheap, it is inconsequential, it is unprofessional, it is disingenuous, it’s ineffective, it is perfect politics for an election year. The truth of the Reagan tax cuts and Bush tax cuts both, do you know that those are really not tax cuts, they were rate reductions, but the so-called rich, the evil rich, are paying more in taxes every year as a group, than they were before the tax rate reductions. They are paying a bigger bite, they are paying more. It was a tax increase. It was a tax revenue increase.
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RUSH: Paul in Clemmons, North Carolina, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, it’s a pleasure to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I’ve been listening to you for, gosh, I guess about 20 years.
RUSH: Wow. I appreciate that. Well, that’s from the get-go.
CALLER: It’s just about from the get-go, yeah. Anyway now, I just had a little comment to make. You know, I was looking forward to getting my tax — I mean my economic stimulus rebate, and it doesn’t look like I’m going to get one.
RUSH: Why.
CALLER: I guess I’ll have to dig into my pockets and spend some of my hard-earned money to support the economy.
RUSH: Why are you not going to qualify for your rebate?
CALLER: Well, I believe I’m in the economic group that is deemed too well-heeled to get a rebate.
RUSH: Are you married?
CALLER: I am.
RUSH: Okay so your household income is over $150,000 a year?
CALLER: It is.
RUSH: Well.
CALLER: (laughter) You know, but they’re going to need to recalculate the amount of taxes that each economic group pays because here once again, here’s another deal that we’re not getting in on as being people that earn over $150,000, you know, no IRAs, there’s just a number of things that don’t get calculated into the tax rate that are benefits that we don’t get.
RUSH: Hey, I know. Welcome to the club. It’s called class envy. This is an election year, they’re passing out money, and they’re passing out money to the middle class and the poor, and it’s bipartisan. White House, Republicans, Democrats, they’re all together on this. Can you tell me — I had a pop quiz in the first hour — I’ll run it by you — can you tell me the last time we had this kind of bipartisanship, from the White House, to Republicans and Democrats in the Senate, Republicans and Democrats in the House, can you tell me the last time we had it?
RUSH: Well, gosh, I was pulling into my garage when you were talking about it and I missed it.
RUSH: It shouldn’t be hard. When is the last time we had this kind of bipartisanship. It was hailed and it was said that this is the kind of thing we can do when we all roll up our sleeves and work together. It was the amnesty bill that 72% of the American people opposed and subsequently stopped.
CALLER: Well, and I think that was a good thing. I think we need to, you know, take care of the inflow —
RUSH: Exactly. My only point here is, everybody heralds and praises bipartisanship. ‘It is wonderful, Mr. Limbaugh, because it shows that people can put aside their differences and get along and live together for the common good of the American citizen.’ It doesn’t illustrate that at all. When you have bipartisanship on something fundamental like this, somebody’s caved somewhere along the line. If you want to grow the economy, it’s very simple. There are conservative elements here that you adhere to. If you want more oil, what do you do? You drill for it! You want more energy, you produce it. It’s the old adage: The more you tax an activity, the less of that activity you’re going to get. It’s like this idiot that had this op-ed piece in the New York Times yesterday whose solution to the economic downturn, that hasn’t happened, a recession is negative GDP for two quarters, we’re nowhere near it! Everybody thinks recession. ‘That’s right, Mr. Limbaugh, because it matters what people think and what they feel, and if we feel there’s a recession, there is, and you should relate to us on that basis.’ No, I deal with reality, clod. This guy’s idea was, you get rid of the tax cuts, which will cost people a lot of money, and they’ll work even harder to make up the money they lost by losing a tax cut. Well, the more you tax an activity, the less of it you get, including work. The less you tax, the more you get. The stimulus is just an election-year giveaway to people. You should be honored you’re not getting any money, sir. I’d give it back if they gave it to me.