{"id":26240,"date":"2007-07-17T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T05:15:18","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T05:15:18","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T05:15:18","slug":"bush_vs_clinton_on_the_economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2007\/07\/17\/bush_vs_clinton_on_the_economy\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush vs. Clinton on the Economy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

RUSH: Washington, Missouri. Cliff, welcome to the program, sir. Nice to have you with us.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Hi, Rush. How you doing? Hey, Rush, you know, I\u2019ve been a long-time listener of yours and kind of a student, and I remember back in the nineties when Clinton was president, and the economy was doing good, you said the president does not have anything to do with the economy. You said it\u2019s hard-working people getting out of bed and entrepreneurs that make this country great. But now that a Republican is president, you want to credit everything to the economy to the president. Now, why the 180 turn?<\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, as usual, you got some of the opening statement a little incorrect.<\/p>\n

CALLER: No. No.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Yes.<\/p>\n

CALLER: No. That — I listen to you, Rush. They were your exact words. You said the only way the president — president can create any jobs is if he expands government. That\u2019s it. You said otherwise, it\u2019s the people that make this country great, not the president.<\/p>\n

RUSH: That\u2019s right.<\/p>\n

CALLER: That\u2019s right!<\/p>\n

RUSH: The context is wrong.<\/p>\n

CALLER: The economy.<\/p>\n

RUSH: The context was this. Bill Clinton had just imposed massive tax increases on everybody, and on some people they were retroactive. Those tax increases had the possibility of stalling an economy, and were it not for the Republican Congress winning in \u201994 and starting work in 1995 and balancing the budget and coming up with welfare reform, and a whole lot of things that the Republican Congress forced on Clinton because he had to work with them. It\u2019s always the American people that make the economy grow. They\u2019re the ones out there engaging in commerce. What I\u2019ve always said is that government can do one of two things: It can get out of the way, or it can get in the way, and Clinton got in the way. The American people overcame Clinton by getting up every day and refusing to sit back and let the tax increases that they had to pay and some of these other things, slow down their economic advancement. Pure and simple. So, as usual, you got what I said right, but you leave out the context. Do you work for Media Matters?<\/p>\n

CALLER: No. We were running 5% quality growth with surpluses. Now we\u2019re averaging, if we can get 2%, and you want to give credit to the president for that?<\/p>\n

RUSH: If you want to talk about a surplus, let\u2019s talk about Ronald Reagan ending the Cold War, and creating the Peace Dividend. That surplus was always on paper anyway! The Clinton people put out this story that they had about a $10 billion surplus. It never materialized, because budgets change from year to year.<\/p>\n

CALLER: Well, Rush, you\u2019re confusing me. <\/p>\n

RUSH: Well, I\u2019m not surprised.<\/p>\n

CALLER: You know, you say one thing about when there\u2019s a Democrat president and then when there\u2019s a Republican president and everything, a 180 and you want to give credit, I don\u2019t understand it, being a student of yours.<\/p>\n

RUSH: I\u2019m trying to tell you again they know. What I\u2019m trying to do is tell you is that there were specific programs implemented by George W. Bush to get rid of the oppressive Clinton tax increases that have led to unbridled economic growth. It has led people into activity that has been profitable for them. The capital gains tax rate was cut to 15% so it\u2019s not onerous to earn profits on stocks. You don\u2019t have to worry about hiding the profit and sheltering it somehow because if the tax rate\u2019s only 15%, I\u2019ll pay that. I\u2019ll pay that if I can get 85% of my gain. I\u2019ll pay it. The Clinton tax rate was much higher so people were using other investment students rather than equities. There\u2019s a reason the stock market here is doubled! It\u2019s an attractive place to be. The economy is doing well, and so, the companies that are traded publicly are growing in value. It all makes total sense, and it\u2019s all related to tax cuts, and this is the great little secret. The Democrats don\u2019t want anybody to know that the tax cuts are the engine of all this so they\u2019re out there trying to make everybody believe that the economy is not that good. My only point was we have a robust economy, and it\u2019s not being reported and I come up with the phrase ‘Bush economic plan\u2019 because it is his plan to roll back taxes. Nothing I have ever said today or any other day should be construed to mean that I think George Bush is hidden somewhere behind a curtain pulling economic levers that are making it all happen. Bush got out of the way. I\u2019m telling you, taxes are such a key to this. They work every time they\u2019re tried. It\u2019s like abstinence and either teen pregnancy or disease. It works every time it\u2019s tried! That\u2019s irrefutable. <\/p>\n

Yet we\u2019ve got people who say, ‘That\u2019s a horrible, horrible education policy. It\u2019s not realistic.\u2019<\/p>\n

‘What do you mean it\u2019s not realistic?\u2019<\/p>\n

‘Well, we know these kids are going to be like mink. We\u2019re not going to be able to stop them.\u2019<\/p>\n

‘Well, it didn\u2019t stop you from trying to get them to quit smoking, does it?\u2019<\/p>\n

For some reason you liberals want them out there just making love all over the place. Why don\u2019t you get them hotel rooms and put a packs of cigarettes for afterwards on the nightstands? But when it comes to cigarettes, or some of these other things…<\/p>\n

‘We can\u2019t do that!\u2019<\/p>\n

You have to have them driving certain kind of cars, too, but when it comes to behavior that\u2019s actually beneficial…<\/p>\n

‘You can\u2019t legislate that! Why, kids are going to do it anyway.\u2019 <\/p>\n

Well, abstinence work every time it\u2019s tried. Tax cuts work every time they are tried. The states are rolling in money. The federal deficit is at $200 billion, everybody thought by now it was going to be up to $800 billion. I guarantee you, if the deficit were $800 billion, you\u2019d see whining and moaning. ‘The Deficit Monster is back,\u2019 and Bush would be targeted and blamed for incompetent stewardship. Another thing, by the way, about the nineties was that the Democrats and, the Drive-Bys, were going out of their way to give Bill Clinton credit for every infinitesimal thing that happened, which is another reason why I said presidents don\u2019t have that kind of hands-on control over the economy. If they did, there would never be a recession, because it\u2019s always harmful to a president. He always does get the blame. Seldom do they get credit — unless they\u2019re Democrats. <\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: A couple more things here on the seminar call we had accusing me of blaming Clinton saying he had nothing to do with the economy and now crediting Bush for it. You gotta remember, and I do, the economy was relatively flat until the GOP takeover in \u201994. Remember their campaign theme for Clinton was, ‘the worst economy of the last 50 years,\u2019 even though it wasn\u2019t. We were just coming out of a mild little recession, and they called it the worst economy in the last 50 years. We had people calling here, ‘Rush, it can\u2019t get any worse.\u2019 I\u2019m pulling my hair out over the futility of trying to talk to people who had been brainwashed by a typical media barrage, and when they came into office the first thing that happened was they started attacking the pharmaceutical business, and they were trying to sponsor this health care business. That scared the hell out of business. Business was facing Stalinist-type controls over how it was going to be able to manage health care and provide it to employees. <\/p>\n

The whole thing was a mess, and everybody was…I won\u2019t say panicked, but this had a lot of people paralyzed. They weren\u2019t willing to invest in the growth of their business, \u2019til they found out how this thing was going to turn out because it was going to have a dramatic impact. So when Hillary Care went south, when it bombed, there was a huge sigh of relief (big sigh) from American business, and then one of the first things that the Republican Congress engineered was a capital gains tax cut in 1995, and that\u2019s what led to the stock market\u2019s resurgence then and the general resurgence of the economy. Clinton reluctantly signed it. He had to go along with it. Remember, he was running around trying to tell people he was still relevant after the loss of Congress. It was a sweeping defeat. Republicans won 56 seats for the first time in 40 years were running the place. Clinton was all bamboozled and dumbfounded. So the Republican Congress had quite a role to play in that. But the American people do make the economy. There\u2019s no question about it, but a president, and the point I was trying to make, can do one of two things: He can stifle the economy. He can stifle the American people with all these taxes and regulations. <\/p>\n

In this case, President Bush had these new Clinton tax increases that were in playing all through the nineties, income taxes and other silly little regulations that just caused roadblocks and obstacles that people have to work harder to overcome. So President Bush came in and he fought the Democrats, and a bunch of Republicans, too. He had these moderate Republicans out in the Northeast; they\u2019re not for tax cuts, either. But he got \u2019em, and that created a pro-capitalist environment. Americans are like no other people. Through hard work and ingenuity, they will create jobs and create wealth when the government gets out of the way. Hello Ronald Reagan and the eighties. That\u2019s why there\u2019s so much revisionist history about the eighties and ratings tax cuts, because of the great boost it gave the economy. Democrats can\u2019t stand that. They\u2019ve gotta revise history. They gotta make people think that it was not good, that it led to all kinds of problems, like ‘the worst economy in the last 50 years.\u2019 But if you are a big government liberal, you\u2019re not going to appreciate the hard work and ingenuity and the creativity of the American people. It\u2019s going to threaten you, because you think only government can make things good for people. They can\u2019t do it for themselves, and if they do, they\u2019re cheating and they\u2019re denying somebody else the right to do good, too. <\/p>\n

‘It\u2019s just not fair, Mr. Limbaugh, when people are free to be who they are.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: Washington, Missouri. Cliff, welcome to the program, sir. Nice to have you with us. CALLER: Hi, Rush. How you doing? Hey, Rush, you know, I\u2019ve been a long-time listener of yours and kind of a student, and I remember back in the nineties when Clinton was president, and the economy was doing good, you […]<\/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":"\nBush vs. Clinton on the Economy - 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:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2007\/07\/17\/bush_vs_clinton_on_the_economy\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Bush vs. Clinton on the Economy - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"RUSH: Washington, Missouri. 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