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Rush Limbaugh

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RUSH: ‘Obama is sending Congress $3.73 trillion budget blueprint that promises $1.1 trillion in deficit savings over the next –‘ how in the world can this be printed? One-point-one trillion in deficit savings? From what baseline, for crying out loud? This is journalistic malpractice. It’s presidential malpractice to talk about $1.1 trillion in savings. Savings from what? Let’s say that you go buy a car, you’re in the market to buy a car. And you have budgeted for your new car no more than $50,000. So you start going around, you start kicking the tires, you go to various dealerships. And you find a car that costs $70,000. You really, really like it. But you don’t buy it. You stick with your original budget of $50,000 and at the end of the day you tell yourself you saved 20,000, when in fact you haven’t saved a dime. You spent 50! Well, that’s exactly what this is, $1.1 trillion in deficit savings over the next ten years? There isn’t gonna be a reduction in the deficit of $1.1 trillion because of this budget. At the very best they could say the deficit will not grow by $1.1 trillion because of what we were gonna spend that we’re not gonna spend. That’s even bogus as well. There are no real savings here.

Here’s the next line: ‘The $1.1 trillion deficit savings over the next decade through spending cuts and tax increases,’ which is a laugh. There are no real savings if there are tax increases. The money is still being spent. The real scandal about the budget shouldn’t be the size of the deficit. It ought to be the size of the budget itself, because that’s what leads to the deficit. This is simply irresponsible. Obama’s new budget ‘projects that the deficit for the current year will surge to an all-time high of $1.65 trillion this year.’ Fine. That’s paragraph two. Paragraph one talks about a $1.1 trillion deficit savings, and in the next paragraph we have an acknowledgment that the largest deficit ever is part of the budget. It’s going up. The budget deficit is going up. But who is it? The AP, Obama want us to believe we’re cutting the budget, the deficit. ‘That reflects a sizable tax cut agreement reached with Republicans in December for –‘ oh, that’s why. I forgot. Do you know why the deficit’s gonna be higher than ever before? Because of the tax cut deal with the Republicans in December. What was that tax cut deal with the Republicans in December? There wasn’t a tax cut deal with the Republicans in December, and the reason is that there wasn’t a tax cut deal period in December. All there was in December was an extension of current income tax rates. Didn’t go up, didn’t go down.

So how in the world can somebody talk about a deficit going up because of tax cuts, when no taxes were cut? Revenues are going up? Not in this economy they’re not. Revenues aren’t going up. They may be projected to be but they’re not going up in this economy, the revenues aren’t going up. They might want to say so. But my point is how in the world do you even calculate that a nontax cut is cutting revenues, revenues to the Treasury? ‘Well, we were gonna have this big tax increase, Mr. Limbaugh. You remember that Obama wanted to raise those rates back to 39.6%, and then he agreed with the Republicans to keep ’em at 36%.’ So the rates never got up to 39.6% so you never had that money yet now you’re gonna count it as a loss, which is what they’re doing. This is just cockeyed.

‘For 2012, the administration sees the imbalance declining to $1.1 trillion, giving the country a record four straight years of $1 trillion-plus deficits.’ But it’s coming down, folks, we’re going to cut the deficit by $1.1 trillion over ten years. All four of these one trillion plus deficits will have occurred on Obama’s watch. When Obama introduced his new era of fiscal responsibility in 2009, he promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. Whatever happened to that? ‘Senior administration officials say Obama would achieve two-thirds of his projected savings through spending cuts that include a five-year freeze on many domestic programs. The other one-third of the savings would come from tax increases, including limits on tax deductions for high-income taxpayers.’

Needless to say, these spending cuts, freezes, will never happen, but the tax increases will. ‘In addition to cutting deficits, Obama’s new budget would increase spending in selected areas such as education, infrastructure spending and research –‘ I thought we’d already done that, folks? I’m sorry, but I thought that the Porkulus bill had already spent money on infrastructure and schools, education, research and development. These are ‘areas where the administration believes spending must be boosted for the country to remain competitive in the global economy.’ So we’re just gonna double down and spend at all again.

Let me ask a question, very quickly. Has anything that Obama said he was going to do or has anything he has done worked? Is there more economic prosperity today than when he took office? Are there more jobs in the country today than when he took office? Is the standard of living increasing or not? Is there any element of the US consumer economy which is showing a positive direction or result right now? I said consumer economy. That’s why I left Wall Street out. Obama was all about the consumer, Wall Street was the big enemy. We’ve had now two years of promises, we’re into our third, we got this new budget, all this magical, wonderful stuff, health care premiums were supposed to come way down, keep your doctor, keep your insurance coverage, your policy. Is anything better? Anything? Did the stimulus bill give us new infrastructure?

Did it repair infrastructure?

Did anything that was said to be a positive result from Obama policy materialize, has it eventuated?

Contrary to that, everything’s gotten worse! Everything’s got worse.

What is Obama doing in this new budget? Doubling down on everything that has made it worse, increasing, expanding. How many homes are unoccupied? What are the number of mortgages underwater? (interruption) I said consumer, Snerdley. You can try all you want. I know the GM guys got bonuses. They work for the government. General Motors employees got bonuses and big raises, yes, I’ve got the story. They work for the government. Obama Motors owns ’em. I’m talking about the country at large. Is the oil business any healthier? We still got this drilling moratorium. We have a health care bill that has been deemed unconstitutional. It has been vacated. It’s still being implemented. Is there any area of American economic life that is improved based on what Obama said his policies would do? Are there more jobs or fewer? Unemployment going up. In other words, to keep the unemployment rate at nine, 9.4% we’re having to play games with the overall number of jobs. We reduced them, on which the unemployment rate is computed. Nothing is getting better. And yet here comes a budget that doubles down on the exact policies that have already been tried and failed. What is going on?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT


RUSH: It’s one of our famous EIB flashbacks: Obama promising to cut the deficit in half today just as he promised he would do two years ago. Why should we believe him now? That, to me, is the intelligent response. This is Jackie Calmes of the New York Times February 22nd, 2009. This was shortly after the regime was immaculated. This was barely a month into the regime and we’re getting close to the stimulus bill, or on the verge. ‘After a string of costly bailout and stimulus measures, President Obama will set a goal this week to cut the annual deficit at least in half by the end of his term, administration officials said. The reduction would come in large part through Iraq troop withdrawals and higher taxes on the wealthy.’

What about those Iraq troop withdrawals? What about closing Club Gitmo? What about those higher taxes on the wealthy? Why, folks, none of it’s happened. His budget today gives us a budget deficit of $1.6 trillion two years after Obama said he was gonna cut the deficit in half. Deficit, $1.6 trillion. The budget is $3.7 trillion. The deficit is $1.6 trillion. In other words, we’re going to spend $3.7 trillion we don’t have. We don’t have any of it. But the deficit is $1.6 trillion. He was gonna cut the deficit in half two years ago. This is my point. ‘After a string of costly bailout and stimulus measures, Obama will –‘ February 22nd, 2009, this is almost to the day. It’s a week short of two weeks to the day. Cut the annual deficit at least in half by the end of his term. We got a long way to go ’cause the deficit’s gone up.

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