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Rush Limbaugh

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RUSH: ‘President Barack Obama’s new fuel and emission standards for cars and trucks…’ This is AP now, and this is not me, so don’t confuse this. ‘President Barack Obama’s new fuel and emission standards for cars and trucks will save billions of barrels of oil but are expected to cost consumers an extra $1,300 per vehicle by the time the plan is complete in 2016.’ Obama’s going to make this announcement today. He’s doing it right now, always in the middle of this program.

‘Obama on Tuesday planned to announce the first-ever national emissions limits for vehicles, as well as require an overall or industry average fuel efficiency standard at 35.5 miles per gallon. Carol Browner, the White House energy and climate director, publicly confirmed the new initiative in appearances on morning network news shows…’ We’ve got sound bites of that coming up in just a second. Global warming, if you look at any poll of the American public, on the issues that matter most to them, global warming is at the bottom. Global warming is at the bottom — or ‘climate change.’ Whatever you want to call it, it’s at the bottom of issues that most Americans consider urgent and important. Yet we’re going to do this, and we’re going to wreck the US economy in the process.

They’re going to add $1,300 per vehicle. Double that. Make it $2,600 per vehicle by the time the plan is complete 2016. I play golf. I told you yesterday that I played golf over the weekend. Now, admittedly, mostly I run around with people who are simpatico with me. I run around with people who think and live life the same way I do, think about issues and all that. I actually had a guy who’s a lot older than I am, over the weekend say to me — we were talking about all of these economic changes and all of the destruction and all of the things that are happening to the banks and the automobile industry; Obama, with his fuel standards; and so forth and the general wrecking ball that has been taken to capitalism here by the Obama administration. The guy actually said to me — I thought it was joking at first, but he wasn’t.

He said he’s actually happy he’s going to die before all of this crap finally settles in. He actually said he’s glad he’s reaching life expectancy before he doesn’t want to live with this kind of misery. He doesn’t want to have everything he’s lived for taken away from him. He doesn’t want to lose this kind of freedom and he doesn’t think there’s anything he can do about it in the remaining years that he has. Well, I don’t share your attitude about that. If I did, I’d retire (laughing) and I’d go ahead and try to have as much fun as I could until I hit the life expectancy. But it is incredible, these things that are happening here. Let’s go to the audio sound bites. Carol Browner was on Good Morning America today, for example, and Diane Sawyer was not happy. She’s happy about the new fuel standards, but she still thinks energy is going to be too cheap, and she wants Browner and Obama to raise taxes. Here’s the first of four sound bites. The question she had is this: ‘If you want to reduce dependence on foreign oil — not by 2015 or 2016, but right now — there’s one way to do. It’s the way Europe’s been doing it and that is a gasoline tax.’

BROWNER: Well, what we’re doing is we’re using the laws on the books today, which allow us to set fuel efficiency standards and we’re setting the first ever greenhouse gas pollution standards. And what this means is we’re going to be able to reduce our dependence on oil by 1.8 billion barrels over the life of the program.

RUSH: Life of the — 1.8 billion barrels between when and now and when? What’s the life of the program? 2016? 1.8 billion barrels? Anybody want to bet we don’t reduce our import of oil by 1.8 billion barrels? And even if we do, so what? There is no global warming; there’s no manmade global warming. All we’re doing is reducing our lifestyle. All we’re doing is rolling back the advancements in life and living standards that capitalism has made in this country from the get-go. All we’re doing is rolling back a standard of living that is the envy of the world — and all of it under the guise of ‘saving the planet’ or whatever. And that’s not why it’s being done.

Why it’s being done is not to save the planet. That’s just what they’re saying. That’s what Obama is saying right now. There’s always this great cause. This is a great reason to do all this, but the real reason… When you look at people who are power hungry and who also happen to be liberals, it’s a combination of limiting your freedom and limiting the ability of you to have and drive the car you want to drive — and being able to raise taxes and the cost of living that you have to spend, with most of the money going to Washington for these people to use to control ever more of the private sector in this country. It’s a devious plan, but that’s what this is, all dressed up as somehow avoiding the evil of importing oil. We don’t need to raise gasoline taxes, Diane.

We don’t need to drive around in little buggies in order to save oil. All we’ve gotta do is drill our own! If we want to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, then we go get our own. We’ve got tons of it. The environmentalist wackos won’t let us do this because of the so-called damage that will happen, but that’s not the real reason, even, for not doing it. The real reason is, they don’t want us to be dependent. This is, like I said yesterday, Doublespeak, Newspeak. We’re trying to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. It’s just the opposite. We’re trying to make the American people more dependent on government. We’re going to transfer our dependency from so-called foreign oil to Washington, DC. That’s what this is all about. Now, Diane Sawyer’s next question was this: ‘Do you think the gas tax approach is right or wrong or just politically unacceptable?’

BROWNER: I think what we’re doing today is right. I, uh, think putting these standards, uh, proposing these standards, uh, moving forward, working with car companies, uh, working in partnership is what we need to be doing.

RUSH: She’s avoiding the question of raising the gas tax. That’s going to happen, too. There isn’t a tax out there that’s not going to go up! San Francisco is gonna raise taxes on a pack of cigarettes 33¢ or 33%, whatever, on the basis that smokers pollute the city by throwing their butts on the ground. It’s a cigarette butt tax that they’re planning out in California with an additional tax on cigarettes out there, based on the fact that they pollute. So the gas tax is going to go up at some point. Every tax is going to go up because they don’t have the money that they’re spending to do any of this. Sawyer, though, kept begging Carol Browner to raise our gas taxes and make us more like Europe. They had this exchange.

SAWYER: So no gas tax ever, as far as you’re concerned?

BROWNER: We’re doing what we think is right today —

SAWYER: (haughty laugh)

BROWNER: — which is setting fuel efficiency greenhouse gas standards. We work, obviously, within the laws on the books.

RUSH: Ahhhh, you know, this push from a member of the media to raise gasoline taxes and Carol Browner saying, ‘We work within the laws on the books…’ That’s code, too. That is designed for you to not be suspicious. This is so that you do not realize that they’re working outside the laws on the books and that they are wresting control of as much of the private sector as they can. Working with the automobile companies? Before it’s all said and done, they’re going to own the automobile companies! There is no working with them, as you will hear in just a moment. Neil Cavuto had a great interview with a Dodge or Chrysler dealer yesterday at the Fox Business Channel. If you want to hear how this administration is ‘working with the auto companies,’ wait ’til you hear that. Sawyer still won’t give up, though. Final exchange on raising the gas tax with Carol Browner.

SAWYER: I’m asking one more time here. (cackling) If the gas tax reduces dependence on foreign oil and changes the foreign political dependency immediately, why not be for it, right now?

BROWNER: Well, what the president is, uh, announcing today, these proposed national standards will achieve the greatest reduction in oil use, uh, that we’ve seen in — in a very, very long time, 1.8 billion barrels of oil will, uhhh, be reduced over the life of the program.

RUSH: Now, Carol Browner is not somebody who’s ever been afraid of a tax increase. She was part of the Clinton EPA; she’s been brought back now to be part of the Obama EPA. Why do you think she’s so steadfastly opposing talking about a tax increase, a gasoline tax increase? (interruption) ‘Cause they want to get this done first. That’s exactly right, H.R. They want to get this done first so that when this gets done it can’t be undone. They want to get these new standards in of 35-1/2 miles a gallon per car, an additional cost. You think you’re going to be saving money driving a small car, right? You think you’ll be saving money on gasoline and all these other things.

Wait ’til they find out how much tax revenue they lose at the states with you buying less gasoline when you’re driving around in a little putt-putt that gets 35-1/2 miles a gallon, guess what tax is going to go up? The gasoline tax! But they don’t want to kill this right now by suggesting that the gas tax is going to happen after this on top of it, because they want everybody buying into this. They want the blind sheep that make up the support for Obama to buy into this under the umbrella of the ‘good works’ and the goodwill, limiting our dependence on those evil Arabs and those oil kingdoms and making ourselves independent of all these evil things that have them in our clutches!

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