{"id":24594,"date":"2007-02-14T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T06:00:10","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T06:00:10","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T06:00:10","slug":"america_is_a_welfare_state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2007\/02\/14\/america_is_a_welfare_state\/","title":{"rendered":"America Is a Welfare State"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Let me find a story in the stack here on the budget. This is going to shock you. It may not because so many of these things, so many of these stories have come down the pike in recent years. It\u2019s basically a story on just how much of the budget is actually left over after it all goes out. Ah, yes! It\u2019s a Bob Samuelson column<\/a> in the Washington Post who I quote feverishly, regularly. He\u2019s on a roll lately. He says, (paraphrased) “When are we going to finally admit in the United States that we are a welfare state?” We hide behind such terms as, oh, “entitlements,” Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, all of these nice-sounding terms, when in effect what we have — social insurance, entitlements — is a welfare state. You take the whole federal budget, and after payments to people and defense and debt interest, one-seventh of the budget is what\u2019s left. One-seventh of the budget is discretionary! <\/line> Well, you say defense is discretionary, too, because it comes up for debate every year, but six-sevenths of the budget is already allocated. The budget is $2.9 trillion! Yes, we\u2019re skirting the edges here of $3 trillion. He says, “Spend a moment studying the adjacent table.” I don\u2019t have the adjacent table here in the web version of the column I printed out, but he says, “It illuminates why another of our annual budget battles … seems so fruitless and (yes) repetitious. Every year we hear complaints about accounting gimmicks and unrealistic assumptions. There\u2019s a ferocious crossfire of charges and countercharges. Hardly anything ever gets resolved. Budgets almost always remain in deficit (41 out of 47 years since 1960),” and something that I don\u2019t think he says here is that every year, despite spending gobs and oodles more — $2.9 trillion! — we hear about “Draconian cuts.” We hear about hardships on certain groups of people. “The table shows the rise of the American welfare state. In 1956, defense dominated the budget; the Cold War buildup was in full swing. The welfare state, which is what ‘payments to individuals\u2019 signifies, was modest. Now everything is reversed. Despite the war in Iraq, defense spending is only a fifth of the budget; so-called entitlement payments to individuals are almost 60 percent — and rising. In fiscal 2006, the federal government spent almost $2.7 trillion. Social Security ($544 billion), Medicare ($374 billion) and Medicaid ($181 billion) dominated. <\/line>“There was $199 billion more for payments to the poor, including the earned-income tax credit and food stamps. Almost no one wants to slash these programs. They have huge constituencies; they\u2019re popular. Paradoxically, their invulnerability and size also protect much of the rest of the budget. Look again at the table. After payments to individuals, defense spending and interest on the debt (which must be paid), only about a seventh of the budget remains. Many of these remaining programs are widely supported. Does anyone really want to end the National Institutes of Health at $28 billion? Or how about the $41 billion we spend to support federal courts, prosecutors and police (the FBI, DEA, Border Patrol),” and so forth? “It might help if Americans called welfare programs … by their proper name, rather than by the soothing (and misleading) labels of ‘entitlements\u2019 and ‘social insurance.\u2019 That way, we might ask ourselves who deserves welfare and why.” <\/line>Excellent points. He\u2019s been writing about this for a long time. So when I hear these guys whine and moan about the amount of money we\u2019re spending in Iraq and so forth and they keep demanding we spend never ending sums down the black hole of social welfare programs that have not ended poverty and never will, it burns me up. I just have to tell you — your tax rates are going to start climbing. Mine can\u2019t get any higher unless they raise \u2019em, which they\u2019re going to do, by the way.<\/line><\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/line>RUSH: Barbara in Fayetteville, North Carolina, I\u2019m glad you called. Welcome to the program.<\/line>CALLER: Thank you very much. It\u2019s a pleasure to speak to you. I\u2019m a little bit nervous because you\u2019re the smartest man I\u2019ve ever talked to in my entire life, and I\u2019m 70 years old, and I\u2019m taking issue with your Social Security remark about us being a welfare state. I worked two jobs my whole life. Social Security and Medicare has beaten my checks up something fierce — and believe me, I\u2019ll die before I get all my money back. And not only that, if the government would have never touched Social Security, let it sit there and draw all the interest and place it in a place where it was safe, and let us draw interest, we wouldn\u2019t have a problem with Social Security or Medicaid today. Now, if you can show me where I\u2019m wrong, I\u2019m welcome to listen.<\/line>RUSH: Well, look, I agree with the latter part of what you said, but the Democrats are not going to allow you — or any other recipient of any welfare payment to control it — because then you don\u2019t need them. If the private sector allows your, quote, unquote, “payment” or series of payments to add up to more money than it would if it were just handed out by the government, then they\u2019re really going to look bad. They\u2019ll never allow that to happen. The president tried the whole notion of redoing and reforming Social Security. They sold it wrong because there\u2019s a word in there called “security,” and people don\u2019t want to mess with the word. When they hear “privatization,” it was easy for the issue to be demagogued and for the Democrats to say, “Your money is going to Wall Street fat cats and look at what happened, like the stock market crashed in 1913! The stock market crashed in 1986. You can lose everything you\u2019ve got.” Of course when that\u2019s all you\u2019ve got you\u2019re not going to take the risk, so we\u2019ll have to come back to it another day. <\/line>As to your notion that Social Security is not welfare, Barbara, I\u2019d have to take issue with you. I think if you\u2019re 70, you have long ago collected your contributions to Social Security, and in fact you are now — your Social Security checks are — being paid for with Social Security taxes by people who are working today who think their checks, their deductions are going into an account with their name on it. Of course, I don\u2019t think too many people believe that anymore. But right now, it takes the taxes of three workers to pay the Social Security benefits of the average recipient, and that number is going to soon go to two. The burden for existing Social Security recipients is being spread over more and more people, actually, which is less take-home pay for them. That\u2019s why Robert Samuelson in the Washington Post is calling this “welfare.” The program has become a welfare program now, because people who are working today are paying your benefits. You long ago collected everything you put in.<\/line>CALLER: I haven\u2019t. I just started collecting last year, and I guarantee you I won\u2019t be around to collect it all. What if I had taken all that money that they took from me and put it in a private account?<\/line>RUSH: Wait a second. What do you mean you just started collecting last year? I keep getting things from the Social Security Administration telling me what I\u2019ll get if I start collecting at 59, if I start collecting at 65. What do you mean you just started collecting? You\u2019re 70 and you just started collecting when you\u2019re 69?<\/line>CALLER: I quit working, and I was making too much, and I didn\u2019t want to interrupt that. I wanted to get as much Social Security. Well, you know what I get? $904. My mortgage on the house is $830.<\/line>RUSH: You are the exception. I\u2019m here to tell you: you\u2019re the exception. I can give you other examples. My grandfather — who lived to be 104 and worked until he was 102 — tried to send his Social Security checks back for 30 years, and the government would not take them.<\/line>CALLER: Well, you know what?<\/line>RUSH: You can\u2019t do it. You cannot do it. They won\u2019t take the money back.<\/line>CALLER: Say this. If I had put all that money into a savings account and just drawn 3% interest, I would have enough money to live on for the rest of my life. <\/line>RUSH: Right. On the beach somewhere!<\/line>CALLER: They wouldn\u2019t be able to go into my private account and say, “Here, let me borrow this and put it over here,” where I don\u2019t need it, but I\u2019ll put it over there because I don\u2019t want people to think that I\u2019m spending too much of your tax dollars.<\/line>RUSH: Well, hold it a second. What you have to do here… A lot of people I know that get Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid don\u2019t like it when they hear that they\u2019re on welfare because you work, and you worked until you\u2019re 69, and you paid money into the accounts. You had your taxes deducted and so forth. That\u2019s the point that Mr. Samuelson is trying to make. Until you get over being concerned about what people are going to think about you and start realizing the reality of what is happening, when fully six-sevenths — well, let\u2019s say five-and-a-half sevenths of the federal budget is being spent on people, what do we have? We have a welfare state, and we have a welfare state that is growing, and the liberals have spun it very well. “No, it\u2019s not welfare! I work! Why, I paid into that. Why, I\u2019m owed that. Why, I served my country all these years. I\u2019ve paid my taxes. I\u2019m owed my Medicaid. I\u2019m owed my Medicare.” We have got this mentality, and it\u2019s been around for a long time, that people think America owes them something because they\u2019ve been good Americans. I don\u2019t care how you slice it. I don\u2019t care how you feel about yourself. You have to throw that out, and the reality is — if we\u2019re going to fix the problem, you have to throw it out. <\/line>Now, if people don\u2019t mind being in a welfare state, then we\u2019re never going to fix it, and as long as people vote selfish interests — which they do — it\u2019s going to be a very, very difficult thing to fix this, and what\u2019s going to happen eventually — and I don\u2019t know when — but the people who are being taxed to support all of this money being spent on other people are going to see their tax rates raised so high that they\u2019re going to say, “Screw it!” It isn\u2019t going to be worth working anymore. When 70% of their salary is taxed to pay benefits for other people, they\u2019re going to say, “What\u2019s the point of this?” No matter how hard they work, they\u2019ll never be able to get ahead. That\u2019s the collision that we\u2019re headed to here at some point. There are different predictions on when, 2030, 2050, or what have you, but it\u2019s clear that not only is there a welfare state, there\u2019s a welfare state mentality throughout much of the country. Why do you think that the Democrats are so eager for illegal immigrants? The Democrats need victims, and as the economy does better fewer and fewer people actually need to be on some sort of federal dole, like they have to advertise food stamps every year. The Democrats need new victims. <\/line>So what better than a low-paid, undereducated workforce from a foreign country or two that has no hope of making out very well? Get \u2019em into the country, pay \u2019em substandard wages, and then get \u2019em on the dole. It\u2019s called growing government. It\u2019s called socialism. It\u2019s called making sure that as many people need the government as possible, and it\u2019s been remarkably successful since good old FDR started this whole ball rolling. When 5-1\/2 sevenths of the US budget is spent on people, and all of those people think they are owed it and that they deserve it, and that it isn\u2019t welfare? It\u2019s been a pretty good trick. There\u2019s a breaking point someplace, everybody agrees. It\u2019s just they think nobody today who is alive will be alive when it happens, none of the policymakers, anyway. So they\u2019ll be able to continue to have these little temporary fixes, but when their time is up and they have been called to the great below or the great above (some are going someplace, others are going others), they won\u2019t be around to see the train wreck, and since they won\u2019t be around, they don\u2019t care about it. They live in the here and now.<\/line><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let me find a story in the stack here on the budget. This is going to shock you. It may not because so many of these things, so many of these stories have come down the pike in recent years. It\u2019s basically a story on just how much of the budget is actually left over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nAmerica Is a Welfare State - The Rush Limbaugh Show<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2007\/02\/14\/america_is_a_welfare_state\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"America Is a Welfare State - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"Let me find a story in the stack here on the budget. This is going to shock you. 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It\u2019s basically a story on just how much of the budget is actually left over […]\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:image\" content=\"https:\/\/live-rush-limbaugh.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/01125105.Par.0002.ImageFile.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"11 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/\",\"name\":\"The Rush Limbaugh Show\",\"description\":\"Excellence In Broadcasting\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2007\/02\/14\/america_is_a_welfare_state\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/live-rush-limbaugh.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/01125105.Par.0002.ImageFile.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/live-rush-limbaugh.pantheonsite.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/01125105.Par.0002.ImageFile.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2007\/02\/14\/america_is_a_welfare_state\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2007\/02\/14\/america_is_a_welfare_state\/\",\"name\":\"America Is a Welfare State - The Rush Limbaugh Show\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2007\/02\/14\/america_is_a_welfare_state\/#primaryimage\"},\"datePublished\":\"2011-05-19T06:00:10+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2011-05-19T06:00:10+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/#\/schema\/person\/911066e449df26406b107ca78cbbde0b\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2007\/02\/14\/america_is_a_welfare_state\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2007\/02\/14\/america_is_a_welfare_state\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2007\/02\/14\/america_is_a_welfare_state\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"America Is a Welfare State\"}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/#\/schema\/person\/911066e449df26406b107ca78cbbde0b\",\"name\":\"admin\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/#personlogo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f18195e0073013fa0e16b040686c2924?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f18195e0073013fa0e16b040686c2924?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"admin\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/author\/admin\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"America Is a Welfare State - The Rush Limbaugh Show","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2007\/02\/14\/america_is_a_welfare_state\/","twitter_card":"summary","twitter_title":"America Is a Welfare State - The Rush Limbaugh Show","twitter_description":"Let me find a story in the stack here on the budget. 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