RUSH: Listen to former Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h, who was on DNCTV yesterday. He was on with Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, and she said, ‘Do you really think that either of these energy plans, Obama’s or McCain’s, will do anything in the short term to fix America’s reliance on foreign oil?’
REICH: In the short term the only thing we can do with regard to our reliance on foreign oil, Andrea, is help American consumers who are getting clobbered with four dollar a gallon prices. I mean, what Obama is saying is you gotta tap the energy companies’ gigantic profits — ExxonMobil got $12 billion in the first quarter; we’ve never seen profits like this — and return it to consumers in the form of rebates.
RUSH: (laughing) There’s a word for this, Andrea, it’s called socialism. Pure, unadulterated socialism. Secretary Reich, the federal government gets half of those profits. It’s called taxes. Man, I’ll tell you, this is just mind-boggling, and it gets worse. Last night, Fox News Channel’s Your World With Neil Cavuto, he spoke with Frank Pallone, a Democrat member of Congress from New Jersey, about Obama’s windfall profits tax. Cavuto said to him, ‘Are you for or against Obama’s windfall profits tax plan? I mean, that is, in other words, to take some of the profits from the oil companies and use it to fund other things?’
PALLONE: Absolutely.
CAVUTO: A rebate for Americans.
PALLONE: And they should be used for renewables. I think that’s a very good idea, and again we’ve — we’ve had that on the floor, and the Republicans opposed it.
CAVUTO: Well, maybe they opposed it because it was a stupid idea, right? I mean is it possible —
PALLONE: No, it’s a good idea because it means that you can take that money for renewables.
CAVUTO: All right, now how long have you been in Congress?
PALLONE: Twenty years.
CAVUTO: All right, so you just missed the wonderful Carter experience with the windfall profits tax, right?
RUSH: This is unbelievable. Take the profits from Big Oil and use them for renewables. They just throw these words out, alternative energy. You know, if you’re in a bar, you guys, if you’re in a bar anywhere, and you see an attractive woman, you think she’s a liberal, and you want to get to first base, or maybe further, just go up and start talking about alternative energy or renewables, and you will not be able to get rid of her. They just lap this stuff up, ‘Renewables, oh yeah, alternatives, we gotta do it!’ So then Cavuto, who was just dumbfounded here, says, ‘So this whole thing, Congressman, will go away by taxing the oil companies, tapping the excess profits they have, never mind they pay a ton in taxes as it is, but your argument, ‘Look, they’re making money hand over fist, let’s take more of that money,’ but you weren’t around for the Carter years. I looked at a little bit of history here. That experience did not seem to go gangbusters. You’re willing to try that again?’
PALLONE: You give that to renewables like solar and wind power.
CAVUTO: You’re Robin Hood now. So you are going to take from one group, assume that it will work better with another group, and you’re going to pick and choose the industries you think will benefit?
PALLONE: Well, what I want to do is give incentives to homeowners and commercial properties to put in renewables, whether it be solar or wind power, whatever, use that excess profit for that to give them, you know, some kind of subsidy or tax break if they put solar panels on their home.
RUSH: That’s already happening. It’s already happening, but take any company, go to the drug companies, having excess profits, windfall profits, ‘Your profits are too big according to us Democrats and us liberals, so we’re going to take those profits and we’re going to apply it to something that has nothing to do with your business.’ Zowie. I’m telling you folks, write this down, August 7th, 2008, the Democrat Party is not going to win this year. This cannot happen. If they keep this up, if they keep talking this way, they are going to lose the White House. I don’t know about congressional races and Senate races, they have a different dynamic going on there because those races are not going to be nationalized. Unfortunately. They should be if there was any kind of strategery, but there isn’t. But this stuff that these people are talking about, they’re on the wrong side of this energy business. The American people full well understand that taxing anybody is not going to lower the price of gasoline and it’s not going to produce any more oil. They know that. This is not complex. This is more of this arrogance that I talked about earlier, the Democrats saying every American agrees with them. Meanwhile, the number-one book coming up on the New York Times best-seller list is going to be an anti-Obama book while Nancy Pelosi’s big book has sold 2,700 copies or what have you.