RUSH: President Obama should apologize. This is getting out of hand. Remember yesterday I was talking about I guess all week long, the immorality of this so-called stimulus bill, the Porkulus bill; the fact that so many elements of this — from the contents of the bill to the way it’s being sold to the way it’s not being reported by the media — is just morally wrong. You know, I watched again today. An MSNBC infobabe interviewed Tony Blankley. She had no clue what he was trying to say, no clue what he was talking about. She was a total Obama apologist, total anti-Bush. She doesn’t have any idea what is in this debacle! She doesn’t care.
Other Drive-Bys are trying to make it seem as though they do know what’s in it. Let’s take a look at the GDP number that came out today. The GDP number shows that the fourth quarter was down 3.8%, right? Now, for the longest time, we’ve been hearing that we’re in ‘the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.’ The Great Depression was 1930s. So that’s 70 years ago. Now all of a sudden, Obama said this morning that the economy in the fourth quarter GDP number was as bad as it’s been in three decades. Now, he said that to confuse his own voters. He shoulda said 30 years. Wait a minute! Thirty years and 70 years is a big difference.
Do you know what the GDP, you know what happened to it in 1982? That was Ronald Reagan’s second year in office. The GDP for 1982 was minus six-point-something percent, almost twice what the fourth quarter was in 2008. Not only is this economy right now nowhere near as bad as the Great Depression, it’s nowhere near as bad as the recession of 1982 when we were coming out of Obama One, also known as Jimmy Carter. I’ll tell you what our gross domestic predict is going to be minus 6.8 or seven or whatever, and I’ll tell you when the misery index is going to get back up to 21% — and that’s two years after Obama is out of office in 2012.
You give him four years with nobody to stop him, and we’re going to end up like 1982. We are not there now, and this is a lie that is being perpetrated. It is a myth that is being sold. It happened on CNN last night on Campbell Brown’s show: No Bias, No Bull. Campbell Brown had as a guest a CNN business correspondent by the name of Ali Velshi. Campbell Brown said: ‘This quote from, Rush Limbaugh today that’s getting a lot of attention, The Wall Street Journal: ‘Tax cuts are the surest and quickest way to create permanent jobs. We know that when tax rates are cut in a recession, it brings an economy back.” Now, listen to the business correspondent of CNN in full-fledged ignorance mode.
VELSHI: This is not the economy that Ronald Reagan ever saw! We have not seen anything like this in our lifetime. Anybody who tells you this is how it works, is lying. We don’t know how it works. We have never seen anything like this before.
RUSH: Mr. Velshi, you are incompetent. You are a disservice to your business, except you fit right in at CNN. Disinformation, character assaults. This economy is nowhere near as bad as it was in 1982. In fact, Mr. Velshi, the entire economy, the GDP rose 1.3% for all of 2008! It was down 3.8% in the fourth quarter, but it grew 1.8% the whole year. Now, Mr. Velshi, after calling me a liar — and I’m not even a business reporter, but you pretend to be — in 1986, GDP was down over 6%. We were in a recession. What was the centerpiece of Mr. Reagan’s economic recovery plan, Mr. Velshi? Let me spell it for you: T-A-X [space] C-U-T-S. In fact, Mr. Velshi, you may not have seen anything like this before, but I have. I’ve seen worse. I lived through worse!
When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, the top marginal tax rate, Mr. Velshi, was 70%. When Ronald Reagan left office in 1989, the top marginal tax rate was 28%. The only way you can say the tax cuts didn’t lift us out of a recession is if you want to lie like Bill Clinton did and claim that the eighties were the worst economy in the last 50 years, but you go back and you look at the prosperity that was created by these tax cuts throughout this country, look at the prosperity that was created through the nineties that Bill Clinton got to claim the credit for. But aside from all that, to go on a cable news network and call me a liar while you are as factually incorrect as you could possibly be?
If somebody was trying to get Ali Velshi fired at CNN, this is the kind of script that they would write for him to say. The problem is that nobody at CNN knows that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I wonder what Mr. Velshi thought when he got up today and saw the story. He probably didn’t see it. He probably didn’t see the story that the whole economy was up 1.8% in 2008, and he probably didn’t see the news that 1982 GDP was minus 6.8%. We’ve never seen anything like this, not even the Great Depression? Never seen anything like this? Make a mistake, Mr. Velshi, feel free. Don’t call me a liar. Here’s Obama at the White House this morning. Big Labor audience is announcing Joe Biden as the middle class czar, or some such thing. (interruption) What? What are you saying to me? You’re not saying anything to me. My staff is livid. They’re in there mouthing their disgust, and I think they’re talking to me. Here is Barack Obama speaking to a group of union leaders about his new White House Task Force on Middle Class Working Families.
OBAMA: I’m pleased that the House has acted with the urgency necessary in passing this plan. I hope we can strengthen it further in the Senate. What we can’t do is drag our feet or delay much longer. The American people expect us to act, and that’s exactly what I intend to do as president of the United States.
RUSH: Mr. Obama —
OBAMA: But passing my plan is not the end.
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait. Hold it! Hold it!
OBAMA: It’s just the beginning of what we have to do.
RUSH: Oh, he stopped. I thought it was the end of the bite. I’m sorry. My mistake. I was too eager to put this in context. As Peggy Noonan wrote today: There’s no sense of euphoria in this country after this thing was passed by the House, is there? In fact, the Democrats are mad. The Democrats are mad they couldn’t get any Republicans to go along. Why do they care? Some Democrats are suggesting, ‘Well, just cut the Republicans loose. Just cut ’em loose.’ Exactly right! You don’t need the Republicans to get any of this shambles done. Cut ’em loose. Why do you care that no Republicans are on board? I’m just fascinated to read all these Democrats and all these media people worried about the future of the Republican Party, ’cause they don’t get it and they’re not on board. The future of the Republican Party is in resisting this destructive debacle, this Porkulus bill. That’s the strength of the Republican Party. Now, let’s see, let’s see, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We have more from Obama. I forgot the main point I was going to make when I interrupted him when I thought the bite was over. Oh, ‘Passing my plan is not the end. It’s just the beginning of what we have to do.’ Exactly right! I told you yesterday, they didn’t think FDR spent enough in the early years of the Great Depression. Here’s more Obama from the same setting.
OBAMA: We have to reverse many of the policies towards organized labor that we’ve seen these last eight years, policies with which I’ve sharply disagreed. I do not view the labor movement as part of the problem. To me, it’s part of the solution. We need — (applause) We need to level the playing field for workers and the unions that represents their interests, because we know that you cannot have a strong middle class without a strong labor movement.
RUSH: All right. Let me address this before we go to the break here, because this is more just flat-out BS. ‘Over the last 100 years, ladies and gentlemen, the middle class…’ This is what Obama said today. ‘Over the last 100 years, the middle class was…’ Actually, this is Biden too. They’re going back and forth, but they’re on the same message, but this quote actually comes from Biden: ‘Over the last 100 years the middle class was built on the back of organized labor. Without their weight, heft, and their insistence starting in the early 1900s we wouldn’t have the middle class we have now, in my view.’ This is Biden on CNBC yesterday.
Does anybody know what’s factually wrong with that? Union membership is 12% and plummeting, until this election. The middle class is not Big Labor! The middle class is not organized labor. Their numbers are dwindling, membership numbers. Then Biden went on to say, ‘So I think labor getting a fair share of the pie is part of it.’ So the stimulus plan’s going to go to labor? It is, and it’s going to do it in punitive ways. Now, since organized labor represents a small fraction of the workforce in this nation and much of it is in government jobs… Do you know how many organized labor jobs there are in government? How can it be said that they represent the middle class? They may be part of it, but they are not the middle class.
What’s happening here is more Obama dumbing down the English language, dumbing down what it means to be in the middle class — and people like Ali Velshi at CNN fall for this kind of stuff hook, line, and sinker. What Obama is talking about with his organized labor, ‘Middle Class Task Force,’ is nothing more than his constituent groups: Big Labor, wacko environmentalists, the poor, the slackers, the demanding, the people who aren’t accomplishing anything the people who don’t have any ‘skin in the game’ who are demanding benefits galore, health care and all of that. There’s no middle-class tax cut in his bill, after promising 95% of Americans a tax cut.
There is no middle-class tax cut in his bill. He can say there is but there’s not, ’cause he doesn’t cut the personal income tax rate! He’s giving welfare checks, but he’s not cutting the personal income tax rate. Meanwhile, small businesses not only are ignored. Small businesses once again are portrayed as the enemy, and they are going to be the fertile hunting grounds for further unionization when Obama keeps going. This is all smoke and mirrors trying to redefine the middle class. The middle class today is nothing more than the constituency groups: the ACORNs, the community organizers, the Code Pinks. The unhappy, miserable rabble-rousers that make up the core constituency groups — angry women, the feminazis — that’s what middle class is now: traditional Democrat voters.
And that is what the White House Task Force on Middle Class Working Families is all about: buying votes continually from this group of people while claiming that we care about the middle class and the people that are being so left out of all of this, because these evil Wall Street titans and their bonuses and their jets and their redecorated bathrooms! Then he’s got his army of dumbed-down, ignorant reporters and so-called experts all over the Drive-By Media reporting every lie, every bit of misinformation he can –and then when people point out the truth in the lies of what Obama is saying, then these people then go out and attack those of us who are the agents of truth.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here is President Obama today lying about the United States economy. This is this morning in the White House and his new White House Task Force on Middle Class Working Families.
OBAMA: Today we’ve learned that our economy shrank in the last three months of 2008 by 3.8%. Uh, that’s the worst contraction in close to three decades. This isn’t just an economic concept; this is a continuing disaster for America’s working families. The recession is deepening, and the urgency of our economic crisis is growing.
RUSH: Now, three decades is 30 years, is 1978. ‘The 3.8% annualized drop in the fourth quarter of 2008 marked the weakest quarterly showing since a 6.4% annualized plunge in the first quarter of 1982 when the country was suffering through a severe recession.’ GDP shrinkage worse than since 1982. They’ve been telling us we have the worst economy in the last 50 years, the worst economy since the Great Depression. It was worse in 1982! And it was precisely a program of tax cuts — and you know what else that was demonstrated? We were able to cut taxes, reduce the deficit starting a couple years after the tax cuts went into play, about 1985 when the deficit started — and, in addition to that, we did this without inflation, which stunned all the Keynesians, by the way.
John Maynard Keynes and Keynesian is simply: Just spend as much federal money as you can print if you’ve got a problem, on roads and bridges and whatever. Supply side is Reaganism. So Obama is out there with 3.8%, and he’s now saying it’s — the exact quote — ‘the worst contraction in close to three decades.’ Regardless, ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States is trash-talking the United States economy, for his own benefit, for the benefit of his party. As I wrote my Wall Street Journal op-ed yesterday: We don’t have to trash talk the economy. We don’t have to depress the hopes and the dreams of the American people. We don’t have to get up and tell ’em, ‘My God, it’s going to be worse than we even knew,’ even though the only upside is I predicted this all during the campaign and all during the last couple months of the year. ‘You watch,’ I said. ‘They’re going to get in power, and they’re going to discover, ‘Why, it’s worse than we even knew! Look what was held back from us. Look what we didn’t know,’ blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.’ So there you have it — and there is no sense of euphoria. The American people are not buying this, are they? You have any sense that they’re all revved up about the Porkulus bill?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Anyway, I want to revisit this economic news because it’s crucial. The president is lying to the American people about the status of our economy. He is trash-talking it. It is a disservice to the American people, to depress them. He was elected on ‘hope.’ He’s depressing their hopes. I’m going to repeat this for those of you who need it. For 2008, the economy was up 1.3%. Economic growth was 1.3% throughout 2008. The figure today everybody is harping on is the fourth quarter GDP, which was down 3.8%. But they’ve been telling us that this economy is the worst since the Great Depression. However, in 1982 the first quarter, the first three months of 1982 the GDP was minus 6.8% — much worse than it is today.
And here’s another little interesting tidbit. In 2001, the year George Bush took office, the economy expanded at less than 1%, 0.8%, total economic growth, 2001. Last year, 2008, the economy grew 1.3%. You could say, looking at the whole year, that last year, 2008 was better economically than 2001. That’s not 30 years. It’s not Great Depression. Stop trash-talking the economy, Obama! Stop using people’s emotions to further your political ambitions. This administration is telling you that you are — we are all — worse off than we are, for their own personal political gain.