EMANUEL: I just had a very, very good meeting with the Senate Republican leadership. This also follows up a series of phone calls I’ve had with individual members of both the House and Senate Republican leadership. I did this at the direction of President-Elect Obama. The challenges facing the country require that people of both parties work together to solve those problems. And so I was there very early — you know, this is obviously the last week of 110th Congress but I told them I would like to welcome their ideas, we would like to welcome their ideas on a host of fronts, be that in the area of education, health care, taxes, energy policy, national security, you know, give us those ideas as we are formulating what we’re going to do in the Obama administration.
RUSH: He can’t fool me. What a crock this is! If he’s talking to any conservative Republicans, I guarantee you the ideas they offer on education, health care, taxes, energy, national security, will be immediately tossed out. If there are some moderate McCain-like Republicans that he’s talking to, then the ideas they have will not differ much from the ideas of Obama, so they’ll be able to say that they’re working ‘bipartisan’ on this. But this is just a crock. He’s already up there twisting arms, is what he’s doing. He gets to control the meeting. He comes out, does a press conference (doing Emanuel impression), ‘Oh, yeah, I had a great meeting up there. Yeah, I told the Republicans, ‘Whatever your ideas, give ’em. We want your ideas. Give us your ideas and we’ll work them into our plans.’ We know what your plans are, Rahm. You want to nationalize health care; you want to raise taxes; you want to spend even more on education while dumbing down the results; you want to go total green environmentalist wacko on energy. On national security, who the hell knows? You want to close Gitmo; you want to get out of Iraq. Here’s another portion of what he had to say.
EMANUEL: Since I was named, I also have been reaching out, and I’ve had about 20-plus phone calls with members of the Republican conference. And this is all an attempt because, as President-Elect Obama has repeatedly said, the challenges for the country are large, the problems we face are of a serious magnitude, that there is enough area and enough goodwill for ideas from both parties to solve those challenges. So with that — and I don’t want to be disrespectful to my former Republican colleagues who are waiting for a meeting — I’m going to go have a meeting with them.
RUSH: Right. So whatever conservative Republican ideas he’s going to hear will be ignored immediately. These are the morticians, Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and presiding over, gleefully so, the death of capitalism. We got the death of free market health care that they’re getting ready for, socialized medicine. We’ve got the death of borders. It’s called amnesty. We have the death of science and reason, called global warming and cap-and-trade. We have the death of the stock market. We have, potentially, the death of IRAs. We have the death of the American dream, if Obama’s tax increases kick in for people anywhere — the number’s gone from $120 to $250, but whatever the number is, that’s where the American dream ends because that’s when your tax increases kick in and income taxes are the number one weapon government uses to prevent the amassing of wealth. We already know we’ve got the death of journalism, but what do they care? They just saw their guy win, by dumbing down 52% of the population.
You know, everybody’s talking about we had the death of journalism and that they’ve lost all credibility. What do they care? They don’t think they lost any credibility. They won! They got their guy elected. Their audience is each other anyway. But in a pure sense, yeah, we’ve seen the death of journalism. We’ve seen the death of ‘peace through strength.’ Obama is promising to disarm our nuclear arsenal and get on the phone with people and like Putin (laughing) and get the rest of these guys to do the same thing. We’ve also seen the death of the Democrat Party of JFK. They’re a bunch of morticians out there, folks. They’re acting like it; they’re presiding over this country as though they are morticians — and we just did a quick search. It was February 3rd, 2005, where I first used the term ‘mortician’ to describe the Democrat Party. It was a Bush State of the Union speech with a big focus on domestic issues, and the Democrat reaction to it is these guys look like a bunch of morticians. They sent somebody out there to talk about it.
‘Unemployment…’ This is a Goldman Sachs projection. ‘Unemployment will reach 9%,,’ it’s currently six-and-a-half, ‘by the end of next year. The economy will shrink in each quarter until mid-2009,’ said the wizards of smart at Goldman Sachs today. ‘Their forecasts are lower than previous predictions due to continuing signs of falling domestic and foreign demand, labor market deterioration, renewed tightening in financial conditions and an apparent impasse in fiscal policy pending the transfer of power to the Obama administration in late January.’ Now, at what point does Washington wake up? I’m being facetious here. It’s a rhetorical question. I’m asking it to make a point. At what point does Washington wake up and stop taxing everybody to the hilt? Leave the private sector alone. Leave the American people alone. The people who make this country work can rebuild this economy. In fact, they know it, by the way, because all these promises of further stimulus packages, what are those? The purpose of those stimulus packages is put money in everybody’s pocket so they can start spending it. Consumer-led recovery.
Okay, fine and dandy. Get out of the way and let consumers and let the private sector and let the people who make this country work start the recovery process. All this central planning will guarantee that we’ll be pursuing misery instead of happiness. There is not a single answer to job creation. There are millions of answers. Jobs come from millions of businesses and individuals risking their money (if they have any) on business ideas that they have confidence in. They’ve got confidence because they know that what they can do, given their unique talents and situations will work if the environment’s right for it. They just need to keep more of their money and have fewer government restrictions. What Washington has to do is get rid of job-killing regulations and reduce taxes so Americans can solve this. The American people can and will solve this if given the opportunity to. It isn’t going to be bureaucrats and politicians in Washington. Obama’s not going to solve anything. No one person can. Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd. They are killing the US economy bailing this out, bailing that out; government owning a part of this business, a part of that sector.
If millions of Americans are set free after all of this, then millions of Americans will create jobs through innovation, risk taking, and just the natural order of things. It might not be a new way forward, but we should remember one of Reagan’s timeless truths: Government’s not the solution, government is the problem. See, this economic crisis was not caused by you or me or anybody else in the private sector. We’re sitting here minding our own business, and these people throughout the bureaucracy — Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the pressure brought to bear on banks and lending institutions on Wall Street and so forth — the public sector created this problem and it’s so damn frustrating to have people think that the very people created the problem are the only ones that can ‘solve’ it. This problem can only be solved by people in the private sector. That’s known as the market. The problem we face is that the people that cause the problem don’t want to get out of the way. It’s the source of their power. They, as Rahm Emanuel said… Grab sound bite number five. We can’t play this enough. This crisis is just too great to go to ‘waste.’
EMANUEL: You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that, it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.
RUSH: Stop. ‘[A]n opportunity to do things that you think you could not do…’ He’s not talking about you. This crisis doesn’t afford you any opportunity. He’s talking about agenda items of the Democrat Party. This crisis gives the Democrat Party an opportunity to do things they’ve always wanted to do but haven’t been able to do because it was too big a leap. But now with the crisis it’s easier to get health care nationalized; it’s easier to raise taxes on whoever they want to raise taxes on; it’s easier to get all these regulations. He’s talking about himself, his party, the Democrat Party and their agenda. He’s not talking about you.
EMANUEL: You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before. This is an opportunity. What used to be long-term problems — be they in the health care area, energy area, education area, fiscal area, tax area, regulatory reform area — things that we had postponed for too long that were long-term are now immediate and must be dealt with. And this crisis provides the opportunity for us, as I would say, the opportunity to do things that you could not do before.
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RUSH: People have been, as always, patiently waiting. Here is Carol in Parma, Ohio. Nice to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. I’m a first-time caller.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: And I think you’re wonderful. I have a question on the bailout yesterday. I wondered what you thought. Do you think it’s going to affect retirees’ benefits, pensions, you know, insurance and anything?
RUSH: You mean the auto business, the autoworkers? Well, even if — in whatever plan that comes down the pike, even if, from your standpoint, the worst-case scenario as I understand it, if — the auto companies are able to off-load some of the pensions, the federal government has an agency that buys them, up to a maximum of $50,000 a year. Now, I don’t know what your husband or your pension pays you, but if it’s more than $50,000 a year and if you happen to lose it, the government will buy it (the government fixes everything, don’t you see?) and then they’ll make it good up to a $50,000-a-year payoff. I think that’s fairly close to being accurate. So I don’t have any idea what’s going to happen. Well, I do. I do. I know that there’s going to be a bailout of some kind. It will happen after Obama is inaugurated. The Obama transition team has actually come up with this prepackaged bankruptcy plan that the government would fund to spare them going through all the hassles of courts and so forth.
Hardly anybody goes out and says, ‘What’s the price? Okay, great. Double it.’
What is this? Every year some turkey’s being mistreated somewhere, you know, the week before Thanksgiving. McDonald’s profits are up. ‘Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retailer, unexpectedly announced today that its chief executive will retire in February and be replaced by the head of its international division. The Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer said Mike Duke, 58, vice chairman of its international division, will take the reins from Lee Scott, 59, effective Feb. 1. Duke also becomes a member of the board of directors immediately. The international business is the company’s fastest growing division. Profit rose 11% during this quarter while US profit rose 7%.’ Wal-Mart international profit up 11%, domestic 7%. You know, you read this story, and it makes you think. We’re being told the economy is diving, it’s in a spiral, the Democrats are morticians. Wal-Mart is soaring. Now, how can this be? What do you think? By the way, Wal-Mart is on the big enemies list of the Democrat Party.
Now, why do you think it might be that Wal-Mart is showing — and this is retail, folks. Some of it is food and necessity, but a lot of it’s retail. How in the world is Wal-Mart doing this amidst all this horrible, horrible economic news? Why do they remain at the top of the Democrat Party enemies list? Why do they gotta get Wal-Mart? Why do they not like Wal-Mart even thought Wal-Mart is showing the way to prosperity? Well, the questions kind of answer themselves. If you got a private sector firm that can profit while everything the government touches is going to hell in a handbasket even though we have a shortage of handbaskets, you can understand why government would resent them. But I think one of the biggest reasons for this is that they have driven back all attempts to unionize. So this Christmas when you have less money, disposable money — gas is half of what it was five months ago — Wal-Mart’s offering good deals, and they’re showing a profit offering you discount prices. How can this be?
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RUSH: Obama has time to send a signal to the military and gays. He didn’t have time to deal with the economy. He’s got little time to help with the automakers and their bankruptcy, and I guess this is more important than sending a signal to Wall Street. ‘Obama to Delay Repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” This will not sit well in certain sectors of our society. Remember, he was going to get rid of this lickety-split. This had to go! ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ in the military, had to go. Nah, he’s going to have to delay that. So he can send a signal to the homosexual crowd. He can send a signal to the military. But for some reason he just will not send a signal to Wall Street about what his plans are. He doesn’t want the stability.