{"id":32452,"date":"2009-05-19T01:01:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T02:25:10","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-19T02:25:10","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T02:25:10","slug":"diane_sawyer_begs_for_higher_gas_tax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2009\/05\/19\/diane_sawyer_begs_for_higher_gas_tax\/","title":{"rendered":"Diane Sawyer Begs for Higher Gas Tax"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

RUSH: ‘President Barack Obama\u2019s new fuel and emission standards for cars and trucks…\u2019 This is AP now, and this is not me, so don\u2019t confuse this. ‘President Barack Obama\u2019s new fuel and emission standards for cars and trucks will save billions of barrels of oil but are expected to cost consumers an extra $1,300 per vehicle by the time the plan is complete in 2016.\u2019 Obama\u2019s going to make this announcement today. He\u2019s doing it right now, always in the middle of this program. <\/p>\n

‘Obama on Tuesday planned to announce the first-ever national emissions limits for vehicles, as well as require an overall or industry average fuel efficiency standard at 35.5 miles per gallon. Carol Browner, the White House energy and climate director, publicly confirmed the new initiative in appearances on morning network news shows…\u2019 We\u2019ve got sound bites of that coming up in just a second. Global warming, if you look at any poll of the American public, on the issues that matter most to them, global warming is at the bottom. Global warming is at the bottom — or ‘climate change.\u2019 Whatever you want to call it, it\u2019s at the bottom of issues that most Americans consider urgent and important. Yet we\u2019re going to do this, and we\u2019re going to wreck the US economy in the process. <\/p>\n

They\u2019re going to add $1,300 per vehicle. Double that. Make it $2,600 per vehicle by the time the plan is complete 2016. I play golf. I told you yesterday that I played golf over the weekend. Now, admittedly, mostly I run around with people who are simpatico with me. I run around with people who think and live life the same way I do, think about issues and all that. I actually had a guy who\u2019s a lot older than I am, over the weekend say to me — we were talking about all of these economic changes and all of the destruction and all of the things that are happening to the banks and the automobile industry; Obama, with his fuel standards; and so forth and the general wrecking ball that has been taken to capitalism here by the Obama administration. The guy actually said to me — I thought it was joking at first, but he wasn\u2019t. <\/p>\n

He said he\u2019s actually happy he\u2019s going to die before all of this crap finally settles in. He actually said he\u2019s glad he\u2019s reaching life expectancy before he doesn\u2019t want to live with this kind of misery. He doesn\u2019t want to have everything he\u2019s lived for taken away from him. He doesn\u2019t want to lose this kind of freedom and he doesn\u2019t think there\u2019s anything he can do about it in the remaining years that he has. Well, I don\u2019t share your attitude about that. If I did, I\u2019d retire (laughing) and I\u2019d go ahead and try to have as much fun as I could until I hit the life expectancy. But it is incredible, these things that are happening here. Let\u2019s go to the audio sound bites. Carol Browner was on Good Morning America today, for example, and Diane Sawyer was not happy. She\u2019s happy about the new fuel standards, but she still thinks energy is going to be too cheap, and she wants Browner and Obama to raise taxes. Here\u2019s the first of four sound bites. The question she had is this: ‘If you want to reduce dependence on foreign oil — not by 2015 or 2016, but right now — there\u2019s one way to do. It\u2019s the way Europe\u2019s been doing it and that is a gasoline tax.\u2019<\/p>\n

BROWNER: Well, what we\u2019re doing is we\u2019re using the laws on the books today, which allow us to set fuel efficiency standards and we\u2019re setting the first ever greenhouse gas pollution standards. And what this means is we\u2019re going to be able to reduce our dependence on oil by 1.8 billion barrels over the life of the program.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Life of the — 1.8 billion barrels between when and now and when? What\u2019s the life of the program? 2016? 1.8 billion barrels? Anybody want to bet we don\u2019t reduce our import of oil by 1.8 billion barrels? And even if we do, so what? There is no global warming; there\u2019s no manmade global warming. All we\u2019re doing is reducing our lifestyle. All we\u2019re doing is rolling back the advancements in life and living standards that capitalism has made in this country from the get-go. All we\u2019re doing is rolling back a standard of living that is the envy of the world — and all of it under the guise of ‘saving the planet\u2019 or whatever. And that\u2019s not why it\u2019s being done. <\/p>\n

Why it\u2019s being done is not to save the planet. That\u2019s just what they\u2019re saying. That\u2019s what Obama is saying right now. There\u2019s always this great cause. This is a great reason to do all this, but the real reason… When you look at people who are power hungry and who also happen to be liberals, it\u2019s a combination of limiting your freedom and limiting the ability of you to have and drive the car you want to drive — and being able to raise taxes and the cost of living that you have to spend, with most of the money going to Washington for these people to use to control ever more of the private sector in this country. It\u2019s a devious plan, but that\u2019s what this is, all dressed up as somehow avoiding the evil of importing oil. We don\u2019t need to raise gasoline taxes, Diane. <\/p>\n

We don\u2019t need to drive around in little buggies in order to save oil. All we\u2019ve gotta do is drill our own! If we want to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, then we go get our own. We\u2019ve got tons of it. The environmentalist wackos won\u2019t let us do this because of the so-called damage that will happen, but that\u2019s not the real reason, even, for not doing it. The real reason is, they don\u2019t want us to be dependent. This is, like I said yesterday, Doublespeak, Newspeak. We\u2019re trying to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. It\u2019s just the opposite. We\u2019re trying to make the American people more dependent on government. We\u2019re going to transfer our dependency from so-called foreign oil to Washington, DC. That\u2019s what this is all about. Now, Diane Sawyer\u2019s next question was this: ‘Do you think the gas tax approach is right or wrong or just politically unacceptable?\u2019<\/p>\n

BROWNER: I think what we\u2019re doing today is right. I, uh, think putting these standards, uh, proposing these standards, uh, moving forward, working with car companies, uh, working in partnership is what we need to be doing.<\/p>\n

RUSH: She\u2019s avoiding the question of raising the gas tax. That\u2019s going to happen, too. There isn\u2019t a tax out there that\u2019s not going to go up! San Francisco is gonna raise taxes on a pack of cigarettes 33&cent; or 33%, whatever, on the basis that smokers pollute the city by throwing their butts on the ground. It\u2019s a cigarette butt tax that they\u2019re planning out in California with an additional tax on cigarettes out there, based on the fact that they pollute. So the gas tax is going to go up at some point. Every tax is going to go up because they don\u2019t have the money that they\u2019re spending to do any of this. Sawyer, though, kept begging Carol Browner to raise our gas taxes and make us more like Europe. They had this exchange.<\/p>\n

SAWYER: So no gas tax ever, as far as you\u2019re concerned?<\/p>\n

BROWNER: We\u2019re doing what we think is right today —<\/p>\n

SAWYER: (haughty laugh)<\/p>\n

BROWNER: — which is setting fuel efficiency greenhouse gas standards. We work, obviously, within the laws on the books.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Ahhhh, you know, this push from a member of the media to raise gasoline taxes and Carol Browner saying, ‘We work within the laws on the books…\u2019 That\u2019s code, too. That is designed for you to not be suspicious. This is so that you do not realize that they\u2019re working outside the laws on the books and that they are wresting control of as much of the private sector as they can. Working with the automobile companies? Before it\u2019s all said and done, they\u2019re going to own the automobile companies! There is no working with them, as you will hear in just a moment. Neil Cavuto had a great interview with a Dodge or Chrysler dealer yesterday at the Fox Business Channel. If you want to hear how this administration is ‘working with the auto companies,\u2019 wait \u2019til you hear that. Sawyer still won\u2019t give up, though. Final exchange on raising the gas tax with Carol Browner.<\/p>\n

SAWYER: I\u2019m asking one more time here. (cackling) If the gas tax reduces dependence on foreign oil and changes the foreign political dependency immediately, why not be for it, right now?<\/p>\n

BROWNER: Well, what the president is, uh, announcing today, these proposed national standards will achieve the greatest reduction in oil use, uh, that we\u2019ve seen in — in a very, very long time, 1.8 billion barrels of oil will, uhhh, be reduced over the life of the program.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Now, Carol Browner is not somebody who\u2019s ever been afraid of a tax increase. She was part of the Clinton EPA; she\u2019s been brought back now to be part of the Obama EPA. Why do you think she\u2019s so steadfastly opposing talking about a tax increase, a gasoline tax increase? (interruption) ‘Cause they want to get this done first. That\u2019s exactly right, H.R. They want to get this done first so that when this gets done it can\u2019t be undone. They want to get these new standards in of 35-1\/2 miles a gallon per car, an additional cost. You think you\u2019re going to be saving money driving a small car, right? You think you\u2019ll be saving money on gasoline and all these other things. <\/p>\n

Wait \u2019til they find out how much tax revenue they lose at the states with you buying less gasoline when you\u2019re driving around in a little putt-putt that gets 35-1\/2 miles a gallon, guess what tax is going to go up? The gasoline tax! But they don\u2019t want to kill this right now by suggesting that the gas tax is going to happen after this on top of it, because they want everybody buying into this. They want the blind sheep that make up the support for Obama to buy into this under the umbrella of the ‘good works\u2019 and the goodwill, limiting our dependence on those evil Arabs and those oil kingdoms and making ourselves independent of all these evil things that have them in our clutches! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUSH: ‘President Barack Obama\u2019s new fuel and emission standards for cars and trucks…\u2019 This is AP now, and this is not me, so don\u2019t confuse this. ‘President Barack Obama\u2019s new fuel and emission standards for cars and trucks will save billions of barrels of oil but are expected to cost consumers an extra $1,300 per […]<\/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":"\nDiane Sawyer Begs for Higher Gas Tax - 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\/2009\/05\/19\/diane_sawyer_begs_for_higher_gas_tax\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Diane Sawyer Begs for Higher Gas Tax - 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