RUSH: Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, we talked about the state of New York, how they’re out of money. Their deficit is ballooning. They’ve got a combined tax rate, New Yorkers who own property and produce in New York State and New York City pay a combined tax rate higher than the tax rate in the European Union. They pay a higher tax rate than Europeans, and the state’s broke, and it still isn’t enough! They want more! I said, ‘One of the problems with New York is it’s a welfare state within a welfare state.’ Well, yesterday the governor, David Paterson appeared at the National Press Club. I want you to listen to this. I have been invited to go to the National Press Club a number of times and I’ve always turned it down, and you’ll hear why. There would be no point in me going there. The National Press Club is the press, the Drive-Bys. It’s their club. So here’s Paterson in his press conference. The president of the club, Sylvia Smith, asks him, ‘If New York is in such fiscal crisis, why does it continue to offer the Cadillac of Medicaid programs — or as Rush Limbaugh said yesterday, ‘New York’s welfare state is to blame for the state’s recession’?’
PATERSON: Well, if Rush Limbaugh said it, then I know it’s wrong. (laughter)
RUSH: That’s the Drive-Bys that’s applauding it.
PATERSON: In my continuing view that we can try to educate even in a financial crisis, we’ll send Rush a copy of how the Medicaid formula is reimbursed.
RUSH: You can send me whatever you want, Governor. You can’t hide the fact you’ve got the highest tax rates in the nation, and your state’s bankrupt because you can’t stop spending. You’ve got your own welfare state there and still the tax rates aren’t enough. But do you hear the Drive-Bys laughing and applauding over the fact that he says, well, when Rush says it, you know it’s wrong? But listen to this next bite. The governor continued. One of the problems in New York is that when your manufacturing jobs leave, you do — uh, to give Rush a little credit — have a social service-based economy because now you have individuals who have gotten older and their tax dollars provided the broad revenue base from which there can be derived some claim on to them and their retirement —
RUSH: Stop the tape.
PATERSON: — but we don’t have a young —
RUSH: He just said I was right! He just, in his own words, said I’m right. He just said I was right: ‘a social services-based economy.’ A welfare state, and ‘we got give Rush his due, a little credit here.’ There was no Drive-By applause on that sound bite. The Drive-Bys did not clap. They did not laugh. They did not erupt in happiness.