{"id":396415,"date":"2021-05-07T16:03:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-07T20:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/?p=396415"},"modified":"2021-05-10T15:17:06","modified_gmt":"2021-05-10T19:17:06","slug":"pelosi-brings-back-earmarks-or-as-rush-called-them-bribes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2021\/05\/07\/pelosi-brings-back-earmarks-or-as-rush-called-them-bribes\/","title":{"rendered":"Pelosi Brings Back “Earmarks” or — as Rush Called Them — Bribes!"},"content":{"rendered":"

JASON: Lots of stuff coming up on this Friday of the Rush Limbaugh program, including this whole notion of Congress reviving earmarks. Now, Rush just told you about the public versus the private sector<\/a>, and there is a fundamental difference between the public versus private sector. It\u2019s called market discipline. The public sector has zero market discipline. They have political discipline.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how you get bridges to nowhere and the Cornhusker Kickback and all the rest. The answer to their political interests; markets answer to economic interests. If you open a business and it has no profit, the business goes away. If you start a government program that has no profit, it gets expanded. So you have a misallocation of resources, almost by definition, under government spending, and that will slow economic growth.<\/p>\n

\"\"You won\u2019t replace the capital stock. You\u2019ll be diverting consumer wishes and desires for government tanks. You know, we gotta be honest about this, folks. We really do as conservatives, as people who believe in a maximum efficiency and a rising tide of economic growth for the most people. In a perfect world… Even though this is the chief object of the central government, national defense, in a perfect world you wouldn\u2019t have to have one.<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t eat tanks. Armaments don\u2019t satisfy a human desire as you\u2019re sitting in your house waiting for the heat to kick on in a Minnesota winter. Now, it\u2019s a necessary expenditure because we\u2019ve got to preserve our safety and our liberty. But it is an economic misallocation nonetheless. There\u2019s a lesson here. I\u2019m not advocating that we don\u2019t have a defense.<\/p>\n

I voted to plus up the DOD when I was in Congress. Not as much as it eventually ended, but I think it needed a little bit more. However, after World War II, the last time we had a debt-to-GDP ratio of over 100%, when we drew down after World War II… The war ended rather quickly. We drew down in 1945 and \u201946. Every single liberal demand-side economist said, “We\u2019re gonna go back to the Great Depression,” as we had before the war \u2019cause the war and government spending pumped everything up.<\/p>\n

That demand side I was talking about. What happened? We had the greatest post-World War II boom in American history. Unemployment dropped to 3.9%. Assets were reallocated from government spending to private sector, efficient spending. Rationing food and tires and everything under the sun — gasoline — stopped as production grew. Markets reallocated the assets.<\/p>\n

All we need to do in this pandemic-driven war is reopen the economy, have government quit spending and regulating, and you\u2019ll see a boom. Unfortunately, Biden\u2019s infrastructure plan (which isn\u2019t infrastructure at all) now has earmarks with it. You know, I heard this before. But in the 115th Congress, the one that I worked with President Trump in, there was a push at our first Republican conference meeting to restore earmarks.<\/p>\n

You go back to the Bridge to Nowhere. If you go back to all of these ridiculous earmarks that were attached that drew so much enmity from the average voter, “Well, we don\u2019t want to let these bureaucrats spend money. Let\u2019s let legislators spend the money.” No, how about no one spends the money? It\u2019s not who spends the money. It\u2019s the amount we\u2019re spending. We are spending $6 trillion a year. When I was in Congress, it was four1<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a couple years ago. It\u2019s not a matter of who gets to spend. It\u2019s a matter of how much. We are bankrupting the country — and you can\u2019t tax, inflate, or borrow your way out of this. Sooner or later, we\u2019re gonna have to get over this nonsense. Sooner or later, we\u2019re gonna have address the real problem. We cannot become tax collectors for the warfare state. We\u2019ve got to address the welfare state.<\/p>\n

Rush had a great, great view on earmarks not long ago, a couple of years ago when this thing was really coming to a head around 2010, and here\u2019s what El Rushbo had to say.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"RUSH: The people who are a little squishy on getting rid of earmarks say, “Look, it doesn\u2019t amount to anything. It\u2019s less than one-tenth of 1% of the budget. It\u2019s silly to plant the flag on earmarks.” Yeah, I agree if the objection to earmarks is simply to save money. But that\u2019s not the real problem with earmarks. The problem with earmarks is that they are used as bribes to thwart the will of the people.<\/p>\n

If there were no earmarks, you wouldn\u2019t had the Cornhusker whatever it was and you wouldn\u2019t-a had that Ben Nelson being bought off for his health care vote, and all of it would have been academic. The problem with earmarks is that they are used — and members of the Senate and House love this. They\u2019re used as bribes. “Okay, Ben! You don\u2019t like health care? Well, how about if we send a little earmark for Nebraska your way? We\u2019re gonna exempt you from it for ten years.”<\/p>\n

“Oh, Good Lord, I love that! I get reelected.” The Cornhusker kickback. I mean, that\u2019s classic illustration of what\u2019s wrong with earmarks, and this is why senators want them. Louisiana Purchase. Do you realize without earmarks they\u2019d-a gotten nowhere on health care, because they\u2019re just bribes? So earmarks are undemocratic.<\/p>\n

Earmarks are used to thwart the will of the people. Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas. They are used to buy votes. They are used to change the votes of elected officials who are prepared to vote the right way to represent their constituents. Here comes the earmark, and they think that they can persuade their constituents, “Hey, look what I brought home for you here!”<\/p>\n

Some of the Republicans like earmarks and the bribing. Yeah. Does anybody doubt that\u2019s what they\u2019re for? Look, in terms of saving dollars, it\u2019s like spitting in the ocean. If you eliminated all the earmarks the effect on the budget, you couldn\u2019t even see it. But the purpose of earmarks is bribery, and of course then how would Congress survive without bribes?<\/p>\n

Kickbacks, that kind of thing. Well, it would be fun to see how Congress would survive without bribes. But does anybody disagree with me that that\u2019s the real purpose of an earmark? They\u2019re not budget busters. It\u2019s how you get a bridge to nowhere. It\u2019s how the will of the people gets thwarted. Without earmarks you wouldn\u2019t-a had enough votes for health care in the Senate, I don\u2019t care what Pelosi did in the House.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

JASON: Yeah, Rush is exactly right about that, and that\u2019s why Pelosi reinstated them when we had gotten rid of earmarks in the — well, long before I got there, but we sustained that, and now they\u2019re back. Will you imagine this infrastructure bill now with earmarks? Oh, my gosh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JASON: Rush is exactly right about that, and that's why Pelosi reinstated them when we had gotten rid of earmarks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":396439,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nPelosi Brings Back "Earmarks" or - as Rush Called Them - Bribes! - 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\/2021\/05\/07\/pelosi-brings-back-earmarks-or-as-rush-called-them-bribes\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Pelosi Brings Back "Earmarks" or - as Rush Called Them - Bribes! - The Rush Limbaugh Show\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"JASON: Rush is exactly right about that, and that's why Pelosi reinstated them when we had gotten rid of earmarks.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/APP-20201-050721-pelosi.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"George Prayias\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/live-rush-limbaugh.pantheonsite.io\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/live-rush-limbaugh.pantheonsite.io\/\",\"name\":\"The Rush Limbaugh Show\",\"description\":\"Excellence In Broadcasting\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/live-rush-limbaugh.pantheonsite.io\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2021\/05\/07\/pelosi-brings-back-earmarks-or-as-rush-called-them-bribes\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/APP-20201-050721-pelosi.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/APP-20201-050721-pelosi.jpg\",\"width\":640,\"height\":360},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2021\/05\/07\/pelosi-brings-back-earmarks-or-as-rush-called-them-bribes\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2021\/05\/07\/pelosi-brings-back-earmarks-or-as-rush-called-them-bribes\/\",\"name\":\"Pelosi Brings Back \\\"Earmarks\\\" or - as Rush Called Them - Bribes! 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