Obama goes see out there, does the obligatory, ‘We’re inheriting a $1.2 trillion deficit.’ Okay, that’s on the table, and that’s true, and he is inheriting it in terms of chronology, but this is a Democrat piece of legislation, the TARP, all this. I know Bush went along with it, but this is a Washingtonian bill, and he’s part of Washington, he can try to say he inherited it, but it’s his class, it’s his group of people that have given us this. He went out there today and said we’re going to inherit a $1.2 trillion deficit, and he said, ‘Even with my stimulus plan we are going to have trillion-dollar deficits for years.’ Well, that, to me, is admitting that the stimulus plan isn’t gonna work. The stimulus plan ought to reduce the deficit by causing economic growth and employment. So he just admitted what the game plan is here. In fact, the New York Times headline today: ‘Economists Warm to Government Spending but Debate Its Form.’ Rampant government spending is now mainstream thinking. The New York Times providing cover for this. But the stimulus plan, he is admitting it’s not gonna work. That’s what his press conference was about today.
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RUSH: If Barack Obama is so confident in his plan for the economy, why is he so gloomy? He had a press conference today to announce his new reinvent government person, and he was like an undertaker out there. There was no excitement. There was no upbeat attitude about this at all. There was no positive. It was all doom and gloom. It was all continue the crisis. In the New York Times today: Obama warns trillion-dollar deficit potential, and that is without counting his stimulus package. He actually said that his stimulus package will not alleviate trillion-dollar deficits for years to come. Now, wouldn’t a legitimate stimulus plan prevent these kinds of deficits? This is why I say that the main point here, uh, ladies and gentlemen, is that Obama has admitted that he is clueless when it comes to the economy and job growth. As I look forward, you know, everybody wants something positive, I’ll give you something positive. I think the Democrats are in big trouble in 2010. Obama, the president-elect, is promising, he is assuring us trillion-dollar deficits. Democrats are in charge of DC, so these predictions are promises. This should open some eyes. I mean, this promise will act as a permanent anchor on the financial markets. What’s the stock market? It’s down big today. Well, hundred some odd points. But if you want to buoy the stock markets, you have to work towards balanced budgets. Ask Clinton about that.
Clinton became obsessed with balancing the budget when the Republicans won the house in 1994. He even understood that. You balance budgets or you try, at least, you put forth the image and good things happen. But the bigger point here is that Barack Obama is predicting that his stimulus package will not work. Why would we have trillion-dollar deficits for years to come if Congress passes Obama’s brilliant plan, ladies and gentlemen? What’s with all the hype about the geniuses that he has nominated? These are the wizards of smart, after all. One would think a stimulus plan would bring in more revenue, right? Stimulus of what? They want to stimulate the economy. That’s what they say. If you stimulate the economy you’re going to reduce deficits. But they are not stimulating the economy. See, this, ladies and gentlemen, is where you need me, somebody who can read the stitches on the fastball. Yeah, he wants a trillion-dollar stimulus, of the government. He says that he wants to spend a trillion dollars to create or save three million jobs. It used to be two million, then it was two-and-a-half, so the numbers keep changing, of course, because Obama does not know what he’s doing. He really does not know what he’s doing here.
But let’s just take the number three million jobs and a trillion-dollar stimulus package, okay? I think that comes out to $333,333 per job created or saved. If you run the numbers, I think that’s what you’ll come up with. If you want to spend a trillion dollars to create three million jobs, $333,000 a job. You think every job created is going to earn that much money? Fat chance, ladies and gentlemen. I thought Obama was going to cut all the pork. He says he’s going to cut out all the pork. He’s gonna go through there and streamline government and find the programs that don’t work anymore. He was going to go line by line, remember? He was going to go line by line through the budget to eliminate waste. And with all of that we’re still going to get trillion-dollar deficits, and he’s being supported in this by the New York Times today: Obama warns trillion-dollar deficit potential, and that’s without counting the stimulus package.
Let’s go to page two: ‘While economists almost universally support running large deficits to combat the kind of steep recession the country is grappling with now, they are increasingly expressing alarm at the prospect of sustained fiscal imbalances heading into a period in which the aging of the population will create huge budgetary strains because of the growing costs of the Medicare and Social Security programs,’ two giant Ponzi schemes that make Madoff look like a piker. ‘Obama was not specific about the size of the deficit he expects, beyond his reference to ‘a trillion-dollar deficit. … Aides said later that the estimate — in line with what economists have been anticipating given the economy’s rapid deterioration — did not include the costs of the proposed stimulus package.’ That’s where he’s admitting that his package won’t work. Stimulus package will not work. Now, get this. ‘One thing investors have to be thinking is, what’s the exit strategy?’ Investors, the markets, people who invest in the growth of things. They need to see some effort at fiscal restraint. They need to see some effort to try to balance the budget, some move in that direction. Obama is making none. They’re saying just the opposite. They need to spend all this money to keep the economy from tanking.
Robert Bixby, director of the Concord Coalition, said, ‘I would analogize it to what the government is doing with the auto companies. Congress said, we’ll give you the money but you have to show us a plan for sustainability. Now the government is in the same position of the auto companies, but they haven’t come up with any plan for sustainability.’ And that’s exactly right. Go tell the auto companies and everybody else getting a bailout what they have to do to get the money but the government will not tell itself what it has to do to get the money. Also in the New York Times today: ‘Economists Warm to Government Spending But Debate its Form.’ The upshot of this story is that rampant government spending is now mainstream thinking. That’s from Janet Yellen, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. ‘The new enthusiasm for fiscal stimulus, and particularly government spending, represents a huge evolution in mainstream thinking.’ Well, shazam, folks, this just happened overnight.
Do you realize just overnight, starting in October, with the October Surprise, all of a sudden mainstream thought has now come to embody huge, huge government spending for years and years and years. And then, ladies and gentlemen, listen to this, page two of this New York Times story. This is from Peter Gottschalk, a labor economist at Boston College, ‘Our models are built on the assumption that on average people behave rationally and they do the right thing, but this time people did very much the wrong thing. It’s like thinking you have a disease under control and then being hit with a new strain of it.’ People didn’t do the wrong thing. Government did the wrong thing. Government enabled people doing the wrong thing in the subprime mortgage business. Government encouraged them to do the wrong thing; government told them to do the wrong thing. People didn’t do the wrong thing. This is outrageous. Our models are based on individuals doing the right thing, and those models have to be changed because the individual doesn’t do — So the government’s blaming you. All of these think tank economists are blaming you for the economic crisis that we’re in because you can’t be relied on to do the right thing anymore. And that, ladies and gentlemen, represents a supreme triumph of one of the building blocks of liberalism, and that is elitism, and that is that you are incompetent, you are incapable, you have to be protected from yourself, government, some big state organization, some nanny-like person or bureaucracy has to do things for you because you can’t do it.
So now these economists have to change their models, because their models were always predicated on the assumption that people behave rationally and will do the right thing, but you didn’t this time, and you’ve blown it. So the New York Times with two different stories today providing cover for Barack Obama and never-ending deficits of a trillion dollars or more. Where does this leave the Republicans? Well, my friends, this is once again a huge, huge, huge redefine, reestablish, provide a new launching pad opportunity for the Republican Party. But instead, what I’m hearing from the Republicans is let’s give the guy a chance. Let’s give the guy a chance. Let’s not be critical. There’s a tax cut in there. There is not a tax cut. There may be a couple of genuine tax cuts, but it’s a welfare transfer payment, these tax cuts. The Republicans are buying this little piece of bait hook, line, and sinker. This prevailing attitude is we gotta let him take office, hope he does well. And every Republican with the ability to be honest knows full well where all of this is gonna lead.
Socialism is socialism. Collectivism is collectivism. Transfer of payments is transfer of payments. Wealth redistribution is wealth redistribution, it’s what it is. You don’t need to wait to see what happens here because we have evidence around the world throughout human history what happens. This is time for opposition leadership. They have to get on their chairs, they have to stand on the top of the Capitol, they have to do whatever it takes to get on television and tell the world that this plan is a disaster. Look, there’s nothing they can do anyway, folks. What’s the risk here? They’re barely present in the House of Representatives. Pelosi is gonna shut them out from being able to change anything, offer amendments. They’ve got nothing to lose. They have no power anyway. They’re going to have 58 Senates until Franken steals that one in Minnesota to give them 59. There is nothing they can do in the Senate, really, because there’s plenty of RINO Republicans in there to give Dingy Harry 60 votes on things that matter. And with the fear that Republicans are manifesting these days of being called racists because they dare to disagree with the Immaculate Inauguration and the immaculate administration and the immaculate first hundred days, there’s nothing they can do anyway.
They’ve got to stand up and take this opportunity, seize it for what it is. Signing on to trillion-dollar deficits for years to come is insanity. The Republican party is largely where it is because it was forced to go along with out-of-control spending for the last six years because their president was largely leading the way there, and politically they had to go along. But now with the Democrats willing to single-handedly drive this economy into the ditch, the last thing the Republicans need to do is be on the train. People that vote for Republicans look at this whole thing as insanity. If Republicans get on board, they’re not going to get one vote from anybody that doesn’t already vote for them by appearing nice, by appearing cooperative, by appearing to join the consensus. People that vote for Republicans want leadership. They want somebody they can vote for and stand up and say, ‘I believe in what they’re doing.’ And one thing that Republicans and conservatives do not believe in is trillion-dollar deficits with no discipline for year after year after year. It’s not about just protecting themselves, though. This is about protecting the country.
Republicans have to at least pretend — I can’t believe I’m saying that — they have to at least pretend they are intellectually offended by what Barack Obama is proposing. What he is proposing is as stupid as cap-and-trade. This is as foolish as the Kyoto protocol. Massive government spending on pork barrel may build some bridges, it may help some nearby conservative and convenience stores, but it will drive this country so far into debt that we may never be able to recover, and Obama has admitted as much. Where’s the math on this? Where are the charts? The Republicans ought to stand up and say, ‘Show us how this country gets beyond trillion-dollar deficits, show us how this economy grows, show us how all this infrastructure spending is going to grow this economy. And, by the way, while you show us that make sure you show us the numbers, $40 billion from taxes and fees raised for roads and bridges and a total of $13 billion being spent on it, show us where the money is going.’
This is an unnecessary and dangerous, irresponsible gamble with the money and the fruits of the labor of the American people. Where is the plan? New York Times just said it, they don’t even have a plan to spend this trillion dollars, they’re just going to spend it. They’re demanding everybody else taking a bailout come up with a plan before they’ll give ’em the money. But of course the wizards of smart and our Little Lord Fauntleroy royal presence in the House and Senate, why, don’t bug us with these details. You can’t understand what we do, just like you can’t understand what journalists do. Remember what the car companies were told? They were told to put together a plan that showed how they would become solvent. Well, where’s that same plan to make the United States solvent? Where is the plan to make the United States economy whole once again? The country cannot take bankruptcy like the car companies. Barack Obama sat in a chair yesterday. He told the nation — and it wasn’t eloquent, and he did not look eloquent — that we would have trillion-dollar deficits for years to come even with his stimulus program, all right?
Then go back to work. What are you gonna slash in your budget? Make some demands, where’s the sacrifice by the public sector in any of this? And why won’t your plan stimulate growth to avoid this unacceptable result? That’s a question that needs to be asked of The Messiah right now. Why will your plan not reduce these deficits? What the hell are we doing? Folks, what are we doing? Are Republicans all so scared, so beaten, so down and out that they are accepting this, that they are okay with this, that they’re okay with trillion or larger dollar deficits for the unforeseeable future? I’m telling you, this is a golden opportunity. There were two or three of them in the campaign, too, that were not used. Republicans need to get on this, and not just for their own political salvation. The bus is going off the cliff, the doors are locked. I happen to want off the bus. I don’t want to go off the cliff with Barack Obama, the Democrat Party, and where they’re taking this country, and everybody who understands what Obama is saying would want off the bus. But, see, it isn’t what he says, it’s how he says it.
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RUSH: Here’s George in Charleston, South Carolina. It’s great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: How you doing.
RUSH: Excellent.
CALLER: Obama says he’s going to keep the earmarks out of the stimulus bill. How can he do that?
RUSH: Ummm. (snorts) What do you mean, how can he do it? He’s The Messiah!
CALLER: But, I mean, Reagan couldn’t.
RUSH: Well, yeah, because he didn’t have the line-item veto.
CALLER: Line-item veto. I thought that’s what conservatives were always fightin’ for.
RUSH: Yeah. Look it, Obama… Earmarks, pork. You know, an earmark is something that can’t be voted on. Pork is something else. But they’re really the same, when you get right down to it. My contention is, George, and I think that — to use an old liberal trick here — you’ll agree with me when I say it.
CALLER: (laughs)
RUSH: (laughs) The whole stimulus plan is a pork barrel project! If we were not in a recession, George, you would look at this spending bill and say, ‘This is filled with pork.’ Whether you want to call it earmarks or not, this spending is designed to expand government and move this country beeline as far left as Obama can take it, as fast as he can get there.
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RUSH: Here’s Carl in La Quinta, California. It’s nice to have you on the program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you this morning?
RUSH: Good, sir. Thank you.
CALLER: I wanted to first say AT&T mega dittos from the celebrity rotation. We certainly love having you up there every year.
RUSH: Oh, oh, oh! You mean in the golf tournament.
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: Thank you, sir. I’m not going to be able to make it this year, nor the Bob Hope.
CALLER: Well, we will miss you.
RUSH: I know.
CALLER: The reason I called is I wanted to talk about the Big Dig that they had up in Boston, Tip O’Neill’s boondoggle.
RUSH: John Kerry’s boondoggle.
CALLER: Yes, and the original budget was $1.5 trillion; it ended up being over $15 trillion.
RUSH: I don’t remember what the numbers were, but it was exorbitant. Certainly it was ten times over the original prediction. And the thing collapsed in the midst of construction. Yeah, these are the guys going to rebuild the infrastructure. Mwa-ha-ha-ha.
CALLER: You know, if I just look at… I think if you liked Illinois politics and pay-to-play, I think we should probably just get national with this new program that they’re going to do.
RUSH: You know, pay-to-play, it’s interesting. If you go back to after the 2006 congressional elections, when Nancy Pelosi was sworn in as Speaker of the House, she promised something called ‘pay-go,’ and what pay-go meant was, ‘We’re not going to have a new program unless we can pay for it either with a tax increase or eliminating something from the budget.’ Look how long that lasted! We’re being sold so many bills of goods with all of this. This is why I said the Republicans have a golden opportunity, but they have a responsibility as well to stand up and stop this, or do what they can to stop it. The American economy (think of it as a bus) is on its way to the cliff, and we’re all on the bus. I don’t want to go off the cliff! You know, ladies and gentlemen, let me put it in these terms.
We are witnessing the growing of a massive government spending bubble. Now, we had the tech bubble, and it burst, right? And then we had the housing bubble. People thought prices would just continue to rise; values would be up and up and up. It burst. And, by the way, what forced it to? What caused the bubble to burst? Wasn’t it something called debt? Well, here comes the government spending bubble, and it will burst as well. When it does, the American people will be told that they have to pay for it with higher taxes, massively higher taxes. Didn’t we just learn through this entire bank, financial, subprime mortgage problem — didn’t we just learn through all of these crises the hard way — that massive debt cannot be repaid, that it is a disaster waiting to happen? Didn’t we just learn this?
Just a few short months ago, didn’t we just learn that massive debt that cannot be repaid is a disaster? ‘What do you mean, Rush? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ How about all of the subprime mortgages that were worthless because the people who were granted those mortgages never had a ghost’s chance of paying them back? And those pieces of paper were then worthless. So to try to make ’em worth something, the financial Wizards of Smart came up with all kinds of new products to sell, to try to put some worth to the valueless paper those mortgages were. And debt was piled upon debt, and nobody thought it would ever come due because prices were continuing to go up and the economy was roaring along. But finally the crush of the debt, nobody had anything!
All of these financial houses, they didn’t have anything. They needed to be bailed out. The banks needed to be bailed out. They didn’t have anything. Everything was an empty suit because of what? Because of debt, massive debt! We are in this circumstance because of debt. This is insanity what we are doing here! We are in this circumstance because of massive debt, and we are replicating it with Obama’s spending plan. We just learned the hard way that massive debt that cannot be repaid is a disaster. This is deja vu. We just left this party. What happened to all that talk about paying down debt? What happened to all that talk about living within our means? There’s a story in the Stack today (this never ends) guess what? People are saving too much, now! People aren’t saving enough (and we’ve had that story for ad infinitum) and now they’re saying people are saving too much.
You people can’t win. No matter what you do, you screw up this economy. Yes, you are saving too much because you’re afraid to spend. Well, when you don’t spend the economy slows down. You people do not know how irresponsible you are! You just do not know how to do the right thing. You save when you shouldn’t save and you don’t save when you should. Of course they never talk about the savings that are represented by your 401(k), that this crisis built on massive debt has devalued. You saved, you had your 401(k), and look what’s happened to it — and you’re being blamed now. You’re not saving enough. You’re not spending enough. Retailers may go bankrupt; they may not be able to stay afloat. This is just a few short months ago, and we are replicating all of this with Obama’s spending plan, the federal government spending bubble.
A couple of months after all this, we now don’t have enough debt. All of this trillion-dollar stimulus — this deficit, annual deficit of over a trillion dollars — that’s being tacked on top of the certain bankruptcy of Social Security and Medicare. Massive debt that cannot be repaid got us where we are just two months ago, and yet everybody seems to be clapping their hands and saying, ‘Yeah! Yeah! We got a stimulus coming, man. We’re going to get out of this!’ We’re quintupling our problem. This is so obviously stupid. We’ve got a guy whose trying to replicate FDR here. We’ve got the Great Depression and the Japanese economy in the nineties as a guide. We know this public works spending does not work. Uh, I take it back. It does work. It did work.
FDR and his New Deal worked, in fact, precisely as he intended it to. Franklin Delano Roosevelt is the model for Barack Obama’s Raw Deal, and FDR’s New Deal was a champ. There may have never been anything like it, until the October Surprise of last October, which led to the new New Deal equaling the Raw Deal. No! I know, folks. I know the New Deal did not get us out of the Depression. I’m not saying that that’s its measure of success. The New Deal worked for Franklin Delano Roosevelt like a charm, though. It empowered the Democrat Party with unbeatable majorities in the House and Senate for 40 years. It worked like a champ, and that’s what this stimulus is about. This stimulus and these never-ending deficits in an ongoing recession and ongoing crisis, the real purpose is the reestablishment of 50 years of unbeatable Democrat Party majority control.