RUSH: To Sarasota, Florida, Kevin, great to have you on the program, sir. Hi.
CALLER: Oh, what an honor to speak with you, sir. This is truly amazing. Mega dittos from sunny Sarasota.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I’ve been listening to you for a long time. First-time caller and I actually watched you in the early nineties on the television show. I also have a couple Rush Babies, my sons Jared and Josiah that have been listening to you and starting to understand the real truth of things.
RUSH: God bless you, sir. God bless you.
CALLER: Well, God bless you. A couple of questions. We all know how the economy is in shambles, and I’m just curious if you agree with me that I think the economy’s going to take a turn for way worse than we could even possibly imagine, and the second question, and I’ll hang up and listen to your response, is, have you and your amazing staff actually checked out the website USDebtClock.org and can you comment on that? Thank you.
RUSH: Well, I’m familiar with USDebtClock.org. There are so many of these things out there, so many of these clocks that add up the debt by the second. Yeah, I’ve seen them all. The answer to your first question, the American economy is very resilient, and it is going to have upticks despite this assault on it. And I think you better prepare yourselves. I don’t know when, but it’s going to have an uptick. It hasn’t happened yet, this 5.7% GDP, they’re going to revise it down, it’s all government spending. After a while people are going to get fed up with not having jobs and not having things, and they’re going to go out and take matters into their own hands, and they’re gonna take on these obstacles. So you might see a brief economic uptick. I don’t think as long as these policies are in play you’re going to see anything like a revival of our economy to sustained growth that can be predicted and investments made on that basis. But you’re going to see some upticks.
The problem is long term. The problem is that this kind of debt that this man has run up cannot be supported. At some point whatever economic uptick there is — and I only say this because I’ve studied the American people, I know how resilient they are, and I know how they’re just not going to sit down and bend over and take this. They want to work, and they want to eat, and they want to be able to provide for their own families, and at some point they’re going to take matters into their own hands and stop waiting. Now, some are gonna continue to be serfs of the state and rely on unemployment benefits. I don’t know to what degree, but when it does happen, you’re going to see this bunch start singing the praises of it like they made it happen, which will be a pure lie. But long-term we’re in deep, deep, deep trouble because this debt that he’s run up cannot be sustained, and down the road, if these people are still in office after 2012, we’re going to have tax increases out the wazoo. Everybody. And we’re going to have inflation from all this debt at some point.
Once those two things happen — and the tax increases, by the way, I can tell you right now, are slated for January of 2011. That’s when the Bush tax cuts perspire, and when that starts happening, everybody’s tax rates go up, folks, even if you make less than $250,000. That’s gonna impact your disposable income and it’s your disposable income that determines the economic strength of the country. And if you don’t have as much, there’s not going to be a whole lot of consuming going on out there and there isn’t going to be a whole lot of commerce going on out there. There will be pockets of it someplace, there will be pockets of it going up, but overall, no.