×

Rush Limbaugh

For a better experience,
download and use our app!

The Rush Limbaugh Show Main Menu

RUSH: All the news shows, ladies and gentlemen, are in a tizzy over the latest news here that a shutdown is coming. They’re going completely hysterical over this government shutdown. They’re all saying it looks inevitable now. And in listening to who will get hurt by the shutdown, CNN, for example, keeps putting nonessential government employees in scare quotes. Why the quotes? These workers are either nonessential or they aren’t. And it’s what the government is calling them. The government’s calling them nonessential. CNN and the news media have all of this concern for people that work for government, who might be out of a paycheck for a while. But yet the government themselves, or itself, describes these people as nonessential. It’s like newsrooms. You know, the media has taken a hard hit in the economic times that we’ve had. They’ve laid off a bunch of people but they’ve always said, “Don’t worry, our journalism will not be affected. Only nonessential people have been cut.” Well, that means they weren’t needed in the first place. The product continues to be put out. The daily newspaper, the magazine, fewer people buying and reading them, but they’re still putting them out.

The effort here on the part of the Democrats with all this so-called compassion is destructive. It’s destroying people’s lives. It’s taking away parts of their humanity and their dignity. It’s denying people the opportunity to be the best they can be. It’s robbing them by creating dependency. It takes advantage of what the Democrats believe is a natural human characteristic, laziness, and exploiting that all for their own political gain. And now to talk about all these poor people are gonna die because health care coverage will be cut back, and all the sick people and the old people are gonna starve because of this, and yet we’re just going back to 2008 spending levels, 2008 spending levels, by the way, authored by Democrats. They had it all. They wrote the budgets those years. CNN’s also concerned that the Army might not get paid, concerned that people might have to wait longer to get their tax refund checks. When has CNN ever been concerned about the military being paid or people getting their money back from government? And, by the way, I think the military will get paid during a shutdown, and Social Security checks will go out during a shutdown.

You can go back to our archives and get the story detailing just exactly what continues to happen during a shutdown. Social Security checks will be mailed. They’re working now on a stopgap measure to make sure the military gets paid during a government shutdown. The whole government shutdown is an intellectual exercise for the most part. We’re simply talking about there not being exact amounts of dollars on hand to fund the government. The dirty, rotten truth is that we don’t have the money to fund the government now. We’re either printing it or borrowing it. And this is what Paul Ryan is trying to get his arms around and deal with seriously now.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Ryan this morning, part of his statement releasing the budget in Washington.

PAUL RYAN: For too long Washington has not been honest with the American people. Washington has been making empty promises to Americans from a government that is going broke. The nation’s fiscal trajectory is simply not sustainable. The debt is projected to grow to truly catastrophic levels in the near future, leading to an economic collapse and a diminished future. We don’t need clever politicians in Washington. We need real leadership and that is what we intend to provide. The president’s recent budget proposal that he gave is worse than just a commitment to the status quo. The president actually accelerates our descent into a debt crisis. He doubles the debt by the end of his first term and triples the debt by the end of his budget.

RUSH: Exactly right. And of course this then makes people ask, “On purpose? Why would anybody do this knowingly? How could anybody do it knowingly?” And then you ask, how could anybody be this dumb? How could anybody be this incompetent? And so the question becomes, is it on purpose or is it just due to incompetence? It’s tough because you don’t think anybody could be this dumb and you don’t think anybody we’ve elected president could be this incompetent, so then you say, “Well, okay, if it’s on purpose, what is the purpose?” And that’s where a lot of people don’t want to go. They just don’t want to go there. That’s scary. If this doubling of the debt, if the destruction of the American economic engine, if it is being done on purpose, it’s natural to say, “Why?” and people just don’t want to go there ’cause they don’t want to contemplate what it means because after you figure out what it means it’s a call to action. You have to stop it. Remember it was Obama who promised a new era of fiscal responsibility. Look what we’ve gotten instead. One more from Ryan. This is, again, from his announcement. Here he is getting ahead of the conspiracy theorists.

PAUL RYAN: Let me ask anybody who is listening this, what if your congressman, your president saw it coming? What if they knew it was gonna happen, what if they knew why it was gonna happen, when it was gonna happen, what nature, and more importantly, what if they knew what could be done to prevent it from happening, and if they had time to prevent it, but they decided not to because it wasn’t good politics? What would you think of your president, your member of Congress? Well, that is where we are right now. This is the most predictable economic crisis in our history, and what are we doing playing politics?

RUSH: Damn right. Great question . If you’re president and saw it coming, you know it’s coming, you know it’s unsustainable, everybody involved, Harry Reid, Pelosi, Bernie Sanders, all of these people with the cliched 30-year-old objections, they all know where we’re headed. They don’t want to do anything about it. We are there right now. I love the way he puts this: The most predictable economic crisis in our history. There’s no mystery about where we are headed. Even the socialists in Europe have figured it out. The socialists in Europe have learned that their way is unsustainable. It can’t go on. How come Obama’s not doing what they’re doing in Europe? We’re in the same boat. In Europe they’re dialing it back. We’re heading down the same tracks they have already been down. They’re trying to reverse course.

Obama has to know, in answering Paul Ryan’s question, what if they knew it was gonna happen, what if they knew why, when, what nature, what if they knew what could be done to prevent it? That’s the question. Obama knows what needs to be done to prevent it. So does Bernie Sanders, so does Obama, so does Pelosi, so does Reid, so do all of them. They’re not willing to do one thing to stop it. So the question, why? Flashes strobe light, big in front of your face. Why? What are we doing? Why do they not want to stop with what we are inexorably faced? That’s the question people really do not want to hear the answer to.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I went back to the archives. It’s an AP story, February 25th. It was a Friday. “Psst. No Shutdown During a ‘Government Shutdown.'” I have details coming up. There’s also polling data here, Washington Post poll: “Voters still split on blame for possible shutdown.” Thirty-seven to 34%, Republican-Democrat. In ’95, Clinton had a clear lead in the blame game. It’s pretty close. It’s within the margin of error here. And, of course, doesn’t matter to me, but this is the difference between being on the radio and acquiring and holding an audience and being an elected official trying to get votes. They have to be concerned about people who don’t like ’em. I don’t. People that don’t like you will not vote for you. People that don’t like you on the radio will listen to you. In fact, you gotta keep giving them reasons to hate you. That doesn’t work in politics. But nevertheless, to hell with the poll, we gotta do what’s right here. Heck with it. Leadership. Ryan’s talking about it.

You know, some of the Tea Party freshmen — I’m not gonna mention any names — but I’m hearing from ’em. It’s the same thing that happened in 1994. Snerdley, you remember Dick Chrysler? Dick Chrysler was a member of the freshman class of 1994. He came to my television show, and I remember when I went to the freshman orientation, he was gung-ho, from Michigan, and he was gung-ho. He was one of the 54 freshmen and they were stoked. They couldn’t wait to get there. I said, “What are you gonna do?” He said, “This is what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna do X, Y, Z, A, B, and C,” and it took about six months that he figured out it was his own leadership — these are the Newt days, by the way, and that leadership back then was cool. The leadership of the ’94-95 freshman class and the whole Republican conference, they were gung-ho. But even the freshmen that year learned that the Republican leadership was not as gung-ho as they were, and I forget what period of time, Chrysler and some of the other freshmen just went back home, said to heck with it. Sadly, I’m hearing some of the same complaints and laments. I talked to these guys before this session started. “What are you gonna do?” “Well, we’re gonna go up there and we’re gonna use leadership, we’re gonna fix this, we’re gonna turn this around,” and now they’re depressed, some of them are, that the leadership is not nearly as excited at fixing these things as some of the Tea Party freshmen were, and still are.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: No. What I was saying was, if I’m up there and I have said all I’ve said about the future of the country, this level of debt, this level of spending can’t be supported, plus we all know what the purpose of this spending is for. There are efforts being made to totally restructure the way this country was founded. There are people who want this to become a full-fledged socialist country, where economic and individual liberty don’t count. Everybody is a ward of the state, and the apparatchiks, the state process, they’re the ones that have the riches, they’re the ones that have the wealth, and they’re the ones that have the power, and they’re the ones that, put simply, get to boss everybody around. The country as we’ve known it can’t be sustained.

So if I’m in Washington and I ran for election based on the premise that this has gotta stop and we have to reform and restructure the country and head it back in the direction the way it was founded, I wouldn’t let some silly poll in a newspaper change my mind about it, such as a poll on who’s gonna get blamed for a government shutdown, a shutdown that’s not even really a shutdown in the first place. But I must be fair. One thing I do not lack is communication skills. I am able to face millions of people behind the microphone and tell ’em exactly what I believe without nerves, without having any compunction about it, and I’m not worried about what the press does to me. Now, also I have my own microphone I can go to if I am mischaracterized. People on our side — and I’ll tell you this, I’ve told you before — one of the big excuses the Republicans always offer as to why they don’t get into a PR battle is they said, “Well, we won’t get covered. The press just won’t cover what we say or if they do cover it, they will make it up, they’ll impugn, they will not get it right, they’ll make fun of us or be critical,” or what have you. To which my reaction always is, “They do that anyway. That’s gonna happen anyway, so why not continue to fall on the side of doing what’s right?”

You know, we own the facts, we may not own the narrative. At some point we hope the facts overwhelm the narrative. They can with enough passion. Passion’s the key to anything. So we got this Washington Post poll. “Voters Still Split on Blame for Possible Shutdown — With a potential federal government shutdown closing in, the public remains split down the middle when it comes to which side it would blame for a work stoppage. In the poll, 37 percent say they would fault Obama … The same number would blame the Republicans in Congress,” 37-37. Now, the Washington Post poll does not give party affiliation. We don’t know the breakdown of Republicans and Democrats in this poll. They do cite party trends, which, to me shows that this was skewed and that the pollsters are catching on. But I think, as I read this, 37-37 because Clinton in ’95 had a huge advantage in the polls, there was no question that it was gonna be the Republicans blamed in ’95.

The way I look at this is I think the Washington Post is sending a veiled warning to the Democrats to be careful here. That’s the way I look at it. Notice also if you read the whole story that the poll pits the Republicans versus the sincere Mr. Obama. It does not ask for opinions about the motives of the Democrat Party in these negotiations. Why is that? It asks about the motives of the Republicans in shutting down the government but not the Democrats. I think there is an attempt here by the Washington Post to warn the Democrats about this, 37-37, that’s not the way it ought to be. Any time the government gets shutdown it ought to be slam-dunk a majority blaming the Republicans, but not even the Washington Post can make that happen in their poll. I would also say it’s probably not 37-37. It’s probably structured in such a way so they could report it that way.

Let me grab a couple phone calls here before we resume with discussion to this. Sheridan in Phelan, California. Is that right, Phelan, California?

CALLER: Yes, it is.

RUSH: How are you?

CALLER: Fine, how are you?

RUSH: Very well, thank you.

CALLER: Good, I had a thought about this shutdown thing, and if you think about it, they’re off every weekend. They’re off for about ten holidays a year —

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: — and that’s about 30% of the year they’re gone, and nobody dies.

RUSH: That’s right.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: That’s very true. Well, in fact, since you’ve mentioned that let me cite for you here, again, the AP story that ran on February 25th, his is the headline: “Psst. No Shutdown During a ‘Government Shutdown’ — Social Security checks would still go out. Troops would remain at their posts. Furloughed federal workers probably would get paid, though not until later,” which is what happened in the last shutdown. Not only did they get paid, they got their turkeys for Thanksgiving and Christmas. “And virtually every essential government agency, like the FBI, the Border Patrol and the Coast Guard, would remain open,” which is a direct contradiction of the lies that Reid and Pelosi, the rest of the Democrats have been spreading about a possible shutdown.

“That’s the little-known truth about a government shutdown. The government doesn’t shut down.” Now, at the time, back on February 25th, we couldn’t figure it out, why is the AP reporting this? What is this? And it had to be that even back then, the AP, the media knew that the Democrats might get blamed. There’s only one reason to run a story like this. There’s only one reason to run a story that says there’s really no shutdown when the government shuts down, and that’s to protect the Democrats or whoever’s gonna get blamed for it. And then the AP says: “And it won’t [shutdown] on March 5, even if the combatants on Capitol Hill can’t resolve enough differences to pass a stopgap spending bill to fund the government while they hash out legislation to cover the last seven months of the budget year.

“Fewer than half of the 2.1 million federal workers subject to a shutdown would be forced off the job if the Obama administration followed the path taken by presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. And that’s not counting 600,000 Postal Service employees or 1.6 million uniformed military personnel exempt from a shutdown.” I remember saying back on February 25th, what is this? AP is tacitly admitting that it’s actually the president who initiates these government shutdowns, path taken by Reagan, H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton. Why, they’re even saying presidents cause these things.

AP: “So we’re talking fewer than one in four federal workers staying at home. Many federal workers get paid on March 4, so it would take a two-week shutdown for them to see a delay in their paychecks. … The air traffic control system, food inspection, Medicare, veterans’ health care and many other essential government programs would run as usual. The Social Security Administration would not only send out benefits but would continue to take applications. The Postal Service, which is self-funded, would keep delivering the mail. Federal courts would remain open.” The AP went to great efforts here, great lengths to assure everybody that a government shutdown is not a government shutdown. And as I say, the only reason for doing this is if their party looks like it’s going to be blamed for it.

All right, Susan in Arlington, Virginia, I’m glad you waited. Great to have you with us on the EIB Network. Hi.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you?

RUSH: Very well, thank you.

CALLER: You know, one of the significant components of Representative Ryan’s budget is to repeal Obamacare.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: And I think he has effectively, intellectually and consistently argued as to what damage Obamacare can do to our country and to our budget. But I also want to add, let’s go back to your discussion yesterday about McDonald’s planning to fill, what, 50,000 slots —

RUSH: Yeah, they want to hire 50,000 people in one day.

CALLER: Right. Well, let’s not forget, back in October of 2010, McDonald’s received a waiver from Obamacare.

RUSH: Yeah, that’s true.

CALLER: So what does that tell us? You take the onerous burden of Obamacare off business, and you get jobs. You eliminate —

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: — Obamacare like Paul Ryan is suggesting, and it helps in our budget. He argues so effectively along these lines, and I’m still scratching my head trying to figure out what Dem or liberal could stand toe to toe with this guy and argue against him on the facts, and —

RUSH: They aren’t.

CALLER: — I can’t think of anybody.

RUSH: They won’t argue on the facts. They’re using, as I point out, the 30-year-old cliches —

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: — of starving elderly people kicked out of their homes, no Social Security checks while the rich gets tax cuts. That’s all they can do. They’re not gonna take him on personally. He wants them attacking this stuff the way they always do. He’s setting it up. He wants them to demagogue it. He said as much. He wants them to demagogue and distort this thing. He wants this to call them out. This McDonald’s business, not only did it illustrate what you said, and that is grant a waiver from the Obama health care law, and they have money to go out and hire, what it also did was put the lie to the notion that they didn’t provide health care for people. All this time people were thinking that fast food restaurants never provided health care for their employees. Those dirty, rotten creepy companies. And all of a sudden we learn that we were lied to about that. We learned that in order for them to stay open and continue to have hamburger-flipper jobs they had to get a waiver in order be able to provide the existing health care plans for their people.

So much of what we’re told by the left or the media is an out-and-out lie. And also we pointed out yesterday — Susan, I’m sure you recall this — go back to the eighties or any time that there is a Republican president, and we’re talking employment or unemployment. And if fast food restaurants start to hire, the left and the media say, “Well, big deal, they’re dead-end hamburger-flipper jobs. Big deal. Those aren’t real job jobs. You can’t feed a family of four flipping burgers.” So those jobs are always denigrated, ripped to shreds. But now that Obama is president and McDonald’s announces a plan to hire 50,000 people in one day to work at McDonald’s doing what? Flipping burgers. Why, all of a sudden those are great jobs. All of a sudden those are worthwhile, very solid, very important jobs. Those jobs indicate an economic recovery.

Folks, I cannot describe for you the level which I detest the people on the left and the lengths they go to shape public opinion in ways to try to get people to really hate this country and to hate success stories in this country. They do. You take a look at the Democrat Party’s enemies list and it’s practically anybody, individuals, corporations, small business, doesn’t matter, who is successful and somehow they have ended up the enemy, they are the ones that have bull’s-eye targets on the front and backs of their shirts.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Savoy, Texas. Hello, Pat. Your turn. You’re up next. Hi.

CALLER: Oh, hi, Rush. How are you?

RUSH: Very well. Thank you.

CALLER: I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for years. I finally got through. I’m excited. I’m a little nervous, but I’ll try to get my point across.

RUSH: You don’t sound nervous at all.

CALLER: Okay. Well, I was telling Snerdley, I really don’t give a rat’s behind if the government shuts down. It won’t affect me in the least and it’s not really gonna shut down anyway. I’m so weary of these lily-livered, spineless jackasses running our country. They’re doing it on purpose. I know they’re doing it on purpose, and you know, when are people gonna get their heads out of their butts —

RUSH: Why are they doing it on purpose, do you think?

CALLER: Why?

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: Because you can’t be that stupid. I think somebody else is running the whole show anyway. I think he’s just a puppet. I think they’re all just puppets. I just wish they would get their heads out of their butts —

RUSH: Okay, so let me explore something with you. I’m not disagreeing, I’m not challenging, don’t misunderstand my tone here.

CALLER: Oh, I understand.

RUSH: I want to know what you really think. Do you think, for example, that it doesn’t matter who is elected president, that there is somebody or some group of people that gives the president the agenda, marching orders —

CALLER: No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No. Not everybody. This one in particular. And I’ve suspected it since he was running, before he even got elected.

RUSH: Well, who do you think it is?

CALLER: Soros.

RUSH: George Soros.

CALLER: Soros ruined five countries already. Why not try for America?

RUSH: Well, we are facing a declining dollar. He does like to —

CALLER: I mean nobody would do —

RUSH: He likes to destroy currencies, there’s no question about it.

CALLER: Have to be.

RUSH: Well, you’re not the only one who thinks that.

CALLER: I mean, you know, it’s just a train wreck and they better man up. I mean they’re a bunch of cowards up there in DC. I mean we voted you guys in, didn’t we? And we can get you out just as easily with our votes.

RUSH: Now, wait just a second, let’s explore this. If George Soros is the puppet master of Barack Obama, that’s a pretty powerful guy. Who’s to say that Soros doesn’t have the ability to instill similar control or fear in other Washington people, House Republicans, Senate Republicans, who’s to say that his only puppet is Obama?

CALLER: Well, judging by what’s up there right now and they don’t have any cojones, it’s very possibly could do it to them too. I wish they’d get somebody in there who would just say, “Screw you, I’m doing it my way and I’m gonna do it for my country.” I mean shoot, I got more cojones than these people do. I’m a Navy brat. My father was a lifer in the Navy. I was raised to work hard, American dream, whole shebang. I’m running an orphanage by myself —

RUSH: Well, I understand —

CALLER: — and I’m taking care of a 90-year-old woman, mother right now.

RUSH: God bless you. I understand all this.

CALLER: You know?

RUSH: But when I hear these theories, I try to visualize them in action. Okay, here’s Soros. Soros a puppet master. Visualizing it. Calls Obama, he sends him e-mails, emissaries, how does it happen? I’m not disagreeing with you. I’m just sharing with you now, how does it happen and why does Obama let it happen? Soros put him there, Obama’s nothing without Soros? What does Soros have on Obama that would make Obama go along with what Soros wants, or do Obama and Soros both agree intellectually with what’s happening? These are the questions I ask when I hear people think that this kind of thing happens. And if Soros has this kind of sway over one guy, why does it stop with just one guy, Obama? Why not others?

END TRANSCRIPT

*Note: Links to content outside RushLimbaugh.com usually become inactive over time.

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This