RUSH: I want to take you back to late in the campaign, the presidential campaign. Barack Obama had an economic speech, and in the economic speech he announced a partial plan to create jobs in the small business sector. One of the plan’s details was a $3,000 tax credit for every new hire. In other words, a small business (and maybe businesses that even are a little bit larger than the way government defines small business) would be given a $3,000 tax credit for every new employee hired. This probably was in October, September-October. I said, ‘This has no chance. In fact, this is such a bad idea that my guess is whoever came up with it wants it to fail.’
Remember we had a couple phone calls from people who were just incredulous, ‘What do you mean? Obama wants to give businesses $3,000 for hiring people. What could that possibly do?’ I happen to love those calls because, why would a business accept a $3,000 tax credit when it might cost them $50,000 to hire the person? Business people hire employees ’cause they have work that needs to be done that can’t be done by the current workforce, because they’re expanding, or somebody leaves. Work, jobs are not welfare programs. Companies do not exist in cities to hire people so the city exists! The purpose of companies is to build their product or provide their service and earn a profit doing it, while supplying a product or service that is more than acceptable to the people who are buying it. And my theory back then was, ‘A $3,000 tax credit, when it costs…?’
Then I heard, ‘What do you mean it cost $50,000 to hire someone?’ Okay, say somebody hired you — and actually, if you make 50, it costs about 65 or 70 to hire you. Got that? ‘How can that be, Rush? The salary is $50,000.’ Yeah, but there’s their health care package there’s a number of other things they have to pay that you never see. So to pay you 50. It might cost ’em 70, 65 or 70. Why would somebody hire somebody for that if they’re going to get a $3,000 tax credit, if they don’t have the work for somebody to do? Then, why would somebody devise a plan like this if they wanted it to fail? Well, if you are a Big Government liberal like Obama is, and if you want the country to continue to demonize business people, you come up with a plan that you know the Drive-By Media is not going to analyze as I just did, and you say, ‘Small businesses and other business are going to be given a $3,000 tax credit for every new person they hire!’
Then what happens when the businesses don’t do it? Guess who gets to portray them as greedy and selfish? Obama and his team, and then you end up hating business even more, ’cause they don’t care about you. And since you haven’t been given a proper economics education (also by design in the American public school system, run by Obama’s teachers unions) you haven’t the slightest clue what’s just happened. Well, lo and behold, when Obama announced his $340 billion ‘tax cut’ plan as part of his trillion-dollar stimulus, I looked at it and I said, ‘There’s no tax cut in here. There’s just wealth transfers for people that aren’t working or businesses that are losing money, which are by definition bad businesses.’ I hate to be cruel, but how many of you think Ford and GM and all ought to go bankrupt? A lot of you do because they’re not run right. That’s what you think.
Well, let’s say the mom and mop dry cleaners down there is also showing a loss but you want them bailed out because (wailing), ‘They’re mom and pop and you know them and you take your clothes there!’ What’s the difference? A bad business is a bad business. I think it’s Frank Deford, Sports Illustrated, once said in rebuking the notion that Chicago is a good baseball town, a good sports town, he said, ‘Chicago fans, they support losers. What’s good about that?’ If they had a bunch of dry cleaners that lost money all the time and they kept going there, would you say Chicago is a great laundry town? So guess what, ladies and gentlemen? I have here holding in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers (and, frankly, I’m surprised to see it) a story from Stephen Ohlemacher from AP.
‘President-elect Barack Obama’s proposed tax cuts are running into opposition from senators in his own party who say they won’t do much to stimulate the economy or create jobs. … They were especially critical of a proposed $3,000 tax credit for companies that hire or retrain workers. Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota described it as ‘misdirected.” Mutiny! Mutiny in the United States Senate. Conrad doesn’t understand the purpose of this $3,000 tax credit. It’s not to increase employment. It’s designed to make business an even more susceptible target for hatred in the American mind. Nevertheless, nevertheless his own party says, ‘Well, it’s not going to stimulate the economy,’ because they know it’s not going to result in anybody being hired, bottom line.