RUSH: Obama was on Meet the Depressed yesterday with Tim Russert. We have some sound bites here. First question from Russert, this is the payroll tax and Social Security, ‘When you say ‘raise the cap,’ right now you pay payroll tax on the first $97,500. If you increase that for people to pay Social Security tax on their full income, about 10 million people, some could pay as much as $5,000 a year more. How is that going to play in November?’
OBAMA: I’ve got a friend, Warren Buffett, you may know, the guy made $46 million last year — this is public information — because he’s concerned that he is paying a lower tax rate than anybody else in his office. And, you know, he has said, and I think a lot of us who have been fortunate, are willing to pay a little bit more to make sure that a senior citizen who is struggling to deal with rising property taxes or rising heating bills that, they’ve got the coverage they need.
RUSH: So Barack Obama is out actually talking about raising taxes, the payroll tax, on Social Security and citing Warren Buffett as his reason for this, his friend Warren Buffett. Of course, in politics everybody is your friend, including your enemy. The Democrats continue to step in it. They’re going to have big problems on this. They’re going to have big problems on illegal immigration and taxes, folks, and he’s out there proposing more and more taxes to solve Social Security. I really think an extension of this discussion would do a Republican candidate well. It’s a discussion on taxes and working more than it is on Social Security. But it all ties together. Obama is reading right out of the socialist playbook here. A lot of us who have been fortunate are willing to pay a little bit more, people like myself and my friend Warren Buffett are willing to pay a little bit more. This is a promotion of the leftist idea that anybody who succeeds in this country did so not because of hard work, but because they were fortunate. As Dick Gephardt once said, ‘They are the winners of life’s lottery.’ Nothing but good luck. They were lucky. It all just fell into their lap one day like winning the lottery. They expended no effort to achieve their wealth. This is the attitude that people like Obama have. This is not about sacrifice. This is about vision.
Why is it that Democrats always look at the future of the country and say we gotta sacrifice, we have to roll back, we have to do this, and we have to punish ourselves? What is the point? Why must the American attitude be one of self-punishment born of guilt? There’s no need for this. These guys, Obama included in the list, do not have the slightest concept or understanding, or at least they’re not willing to say so if they do, of the whole concept of American exceptionalism. America is not about sacrifice. America is about vision. They keep talking about vision, but their vision is one of apocalypse. It’s one of doom and gloom. We’re not a village here raising everybody’s children in a communal way. For these people, everything that happens that’s good is nothing but luck. It’s not the result of any ingenuity whatsoever. There’s a reason for framing this topic in exactly this way. The Democrats have to convince idiots who might vote for them that the high achievers are just lucky ducks, as we used say when we were kids.
They have to portray that because they play the class envy card all the time, and so they routinely will make the case that anybody who has a dollar more than anybody else is just lucky. Not the result of hard work, because the Democrats have to convince their voters that whatever their economic circumstances are, it’s not their fault. They just haven’t been lucky. It’s so much easier to win the idea of income redistribution if the rich people just got that way by luck. If they just got that way by luck what’s the problem in taking it from them? But if you promote the idea that success and wealth, whatever you want to call it, are the result of hard work, ambition, application, devotion, and so forth, it makes it a little tougher morally to go out and take it. But if you construct it in such a way that people are just lucky, ‘winners of life’s lottery,’ it’s not fair that they should have what they have and I don’t, just take it from them. That’s why they have to continue to portray it this way.
There’s nothing new here. There’s nothing brilliant. There’s nothing new in terms of change, generational change, force of direction, or any of that. This is just right out of the Democrat playbook, and Obama is just like the latest guy reading from it. Nothing new here whatsoever. It’s impossible for liberalism to offer anything new. So we’re just asking these lucky people, when it comes to Social Security taxes, these people have just been plain lucky, so we’re just asking them for a little bit more. Just a little bit more. Who can argue against that, is the thinking behind this.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: One more Barack Obama sound bite from Tim Russert yesterday on Meet the Press. So after saying, ‘Yeah, me and my friend Warren Buffett, we have a lot of money. We can pay more. Sure.’ Russert says, ‘So you would not be afraid to say, ‘We have a problem with Social Security, and I’m willing to raise taxes on some to help fix it”?
OBAMA: The best option would be to make sure that those who are in the best position to, uh, help solve this problem, uh, are willing to do so.
RUSSERT: A tax increase for some?
OBAMA: Well, a tax increase for people like myself, probably.
RUSH: What? See, he says here, ‘The best option would be to make sure that those who are in the best position to help solve this problem are willing to do so.’ How about we finally hold accountable the people who have made the problem? It is not the people paying taxes who have caused the problems in Social Security. It is the people who devised the program, who have expanded it, who have failed to deal with it responsibly, who are now beyond any accountability. So those of us who pay taxes, who had nothing to do with creating the problem or making it worse are, now going to be made to pay for it. See, this is where the Republicans need to better get in gear. Because basically what he’s saying here is that those who have the ability are just lucky, and, of course, if they have it, we should be able to get it! If you create a mind-set in your stupid, idiot voters that it’s just luck and nothing else that determines success, then it makes it much easier to go take it from those people, than if you promote it as reality: ‘They worked hard, struggled! They had a dream. They had ambition, and they pursued it,’ and now after all of that you’re going to blame them for problems created by the elected political class?
That is what’s wrong with all this. I look at this presidential campaign, and the Republicans have a gold mine just waiting for them to tap, to take these people out, whereas all the conventional wisdom has a Democrat winning the presidency next year. Of course, what is conventional wisdom? Conventional wisdom is nothing more, when you boil it all down, than consensus — and what did Margaret Thatcher say about consensus? ‘Consensus is the absence of leadership.’ Consensus is everybody conforming, ‘to get along, so there won’t be any riffs, so there won’t be any waves made.’ John Ashcroft spoke at the Young Americans Foundation in California over the weekend. He basically made the same point. You look at a leader, and you’ll find somebody who’s outside the consensus, and all these Democrats are part of the consensus. The Drive-By Media is part of the consensus.