RUSH: I got a lot of e-mails today after the president’s press conference, his opening remarks on immigration. One of those e-mails stood out, they were all of the same variety, had the same theme. ‘Rush, you know, I can’t dislike the president on this.’ I got a lot of those that say they do, but the ones that intrigued me, ‘I just can’t dislike the president. He seems to really believe that this is the right thing for the country and the right thing to do, and it’s hard for me to work up any animus against him because he’s sticking to his guns and so forth and so on.’ We talked about this yesterday. Well, actually last week. I offered you my theory as to what is behind the president on this. It’s a pure, wild guess, just like your weather forecast every day.
The president’s a man of deep faith. That’s the source of his strength, that and the close circle of friends that he has. If you’re not in that close circle of friends when he was in Texas, you’re not going to be in it anywhere else. You’re not going to be in it, period. I think that to him, this is a matter of good works. He’s leading a flock. I don’t want to use religious lingo because that’s not how I really mean this. He’s helping, in his mind, people who are downtrodden, make a better life, and he’s proud that his country offers the opportunity. I also think, independently of that, and this may be a part of a political calculation in this, as you know. Trent Lott has come out just now and said, ‘We need to pass this bill.’ I want to warn you people, he’s going to be the Drive-By Media’s new favorite Republican senator. He’s going to be able to recapture all the lost respect over that Strom Thurmond joke that he told and essentially got run out of Washington for. He was a Senate Republican leader, got stripped from him. But this will bring him back. The Drive-Bys say he’s grown, he has matured, and he’s right on the issue.
I’ll tell you, folks, there’s one thing to consider here, and it’s a flawed calculation on the part of those making it. One thing you cannot take out of this immigration debate. Let’s say you’re in Washington, let’s say you are a senator or a member of the House. They understand that we understand that there are going to be tremendous pressures on our social safety net in the next ten years, 20 or 30; Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, you name it. The efforts to reform those programs have failed. It’s like touching the third rail. You get electrocuted and you’re dead if you try to mention any reform of these entitlements. These guys don’t want to touch the third rail, people in Washington. Now, next you have to realize that we have replacement birth rate in this country that just ain’t cool, and nor do the Canadians. I have the story. One of the common reasons in both countries why the replacement birth level is not what it should be is abortion. You figure since 1973, 1.3 million abortions a year. That’s taxpayers we don’t have. I think these guys in Washington are deathly afraid of the explosion straight ahead of us of the tax rates that are going to be necessary to pay all these benefits with baby boomers that are going to retire, and I think they’re scared to death of it. They are scared to death that people are going to revolt and not pay a 70% tax rate.
Right now the number of workers that it takes, taxes from workers to fund just the Social Security benefits of one recipient is three. So the burden of paying the taxes necessary to support a single Social Security recipient is three workers. With the birth rate being what it is and everybody living longer, the retirement age not adjusted and all, that burden is going to be down to two workers. It’s going to take the taxes of two workers in order to fund fully a single Social Security recipient’s benefits. I don’t want to hear from you Social Security recipients who think you’re only taking out of the system what you put in. That ended a long, long time ago. They don’t dare say this publicly. They’re not going to come out and say we’ve aborted too many kids and we need new taxpayers. They’re not going to say that, so they cloak it in all of this other rhetoric that they think will sell, ‘jobs the American people won’t do,’ and so forth and so on. Plus the Democrats want these voters. They want as many warm bodies in here to be able to fund future retirement benefits and Medicaid and Medicare benefits because we simply aren’t reproducing fast enough. Well, we are, but we’re aborting too many.
Now, here’s the problem with that. It’s flawed because the people that we are letting in are not skilled workers, who are not going to take well-paying jobs. These are poor people, uneducated, who are going to be coming in as cheap labor. There’s a lot of people who look forward to that, too. Big business, a lot of other people — cheap labor. This notion that uneducated, unskilled labor is the future of this country is absurd unless you are a person that thinks we need all these new taxpayers, 50 million new tax payers would overcome the number of citizens we’ve aborted since 1973. Here’s the ultimate problem why that won’t work. We’re importing a bunch of unskilled, uneducated, and therefore they’ll be low paid, the transfer payments to them are going to wipe out whatever benefit their taxes, their Social Security taxes and income taxes will generate. So this is bad. If that’s what they’re thinking, that we need all these new warm bodies to pay taxes to cover these entitlement programs that aren’t going to be reformed, these new arrivals are themselves going to be participating in the safety net programs. So the net is going to be a greater outflow to them than what they are contributing in taxes. But I will bet you a dollar to a doughnut that that’s why some of these people in Washington are for this, but they don’t dare say it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Hot damn. I knew it! I absolutely knew it. I ran across this story today, and I didn’t read the story because of the headline. It’s USA Today: ‘Chertoff to immigration bill’s critics: Get real.’ What else he going to say? He works for George W. Bush. He’s their homeland security secretary. I had dinner with him, a nice guy. But why read this? I know what he’s going to say, that we don’t know what we’re talking about. So I passed it by. A friend of mine listening to the program said, ‘Boy, you hit the nail on the head,’ and sent me the story and highlighted a couple of passages and quotes in this. Listen to this. ‘The U.S. needs more foreign workers as baby boomers retire, the Commerce secretary said.’ The commerce secretary is Carlos Gutierrez. ‘The U.S. needs more foreign workers as baby boomers retire, the Commerce secretary said. His department’s figures show the population aged 25-54 growing at 0.2% a year while the workforce is growing at 1.2% a year. ‘The reality is, we don’t have enough people,” he said.
Well, I knew it. I knew this had to be a fact. They don’t mention abortion in this, but why don’t we have enough people? There’s one reason. Then the rest of the quote from Mr. Gutierrez is this. ”The reality is, we don’t have enough people,’ said Gutierrez, adding that many of the United States’ economic competitors, such as France, Germany, Japan and China, will be facing a similar demographic shift. ‘The big challenge of the 21st century is: who gets the people? Who gets the immigrants?’ he said. ‘We don’t appreciate today that these people are coming in for free.” Apparently, our government leaders — I knew this was the case. I knew it. It’s all about entitlements. It’s all about making sure there’s enough people here to pay taxes for the baby boomers to be able to retire and get their Social Security and Medicaid and Medicare, and I knew it had to be a component. So now what Mr. Gutierrez is admitting is that we are in a worldwide competition for the world’s immigrants. They’re coming in free.
We can’t rely on them to come in free. We need to pay them to come — well, actually we are. That’s why they’re coming. We’re going to pay them whatever they need to live that they don’t earn. We’re in a competition. We don’t want them to go to France, we don’t want them to go to China, where else did he mention? France, China, Japan, Germany, we don’t want them to go there. They’re coming in for free. It’s a bargain. Do you people understand what a deal we’ve got here? These people want to come into our country and they’ll come in for nothing. You really think they’re going to face fines now? (Laughing.) You will not see one fine paid. By the way, it looks like in the Senate that they’re going to get 60 votes for this. It looks like it will sail through the Senate when they get back from their Memorial Day break. I knew it. I always trust my instincts on this stuff. Why don’t we go out and find the world’s educated immigrants? Well, I’ve answered the question. It’s asked and answered.