RUSH: Let me change subjects real quickly to Obama for a second. I want to go back to this dinner that he had, because one of the things we’re hearing about the dinner with the conservative pundits last night was that they did say tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts. And Obama said he’s open to ideas that work, right? Which, you know, is just PR smoke and mirrors. But how about this? I’m going to give Obama a test here. I’m going to offer him an idea. I’m going to offer him an idea without having to meet him personally. Here is how Obama could test the idea of a tax cut without actually doing it, which is his modus operandi. He’s going to sign an executive order closing Club Gitmo but it’s not going to close, right? All right. He doesn’t have to mean it. It’s right up his alley here. He doesn’t have to mean it. He doesn’t even have to propose it. But if Obama was truly open to ideas on how to spark an economic recovery, all we’d have to do is, on a weekday morning, give an interview and say that he’s open to across-the-board tax cuts.
All he has to do is just say that he’s willing to look at that as an option, and then we see what the market would do. What would the market do if Obama says he is open to across-the-board tax cuts, not going to touch capital gains, might even lower it, he’s open to reducing the corporate tax rate, he’s open to keeping the Bush tax cuts and having them renewed in 2010. What do you think the market’s reaction would be? He could get the market up. He could do it like that without ever having to actually lower the taxes. Now, if the market sinks a few hundred points, like it did with his FDR plan, then I guess the economic activists in the private sector don’t care much for that approach. But if the market was to jump hundreds of points, then Obama might seriously want to consider tax cuts. You know, float the balloon when the markets are open, gauge the reaction. It’s all it would take. He wouldn’t have to really even do it. And, of course, he won’t do it, because what I just described is exactly what would happen.
From the Cybercast News Service: ‘America does not need a new New Deal or a stimulus package to rescue its foundering economy, Dr. Burt Folsom, a professor of history at Hillsdale College, and Steven Moore, a columnist with The Wall Street Journal, argued at the Metropolitan Club in Washington, D.C., on Friday. Real tax cuts would lift the economy,’ they say, and of course — can you imagine — I want you to stop and think of this, folks. I know this will never happen, but just imagine if it did, I just want you to pretend here. I mean, we’ve been doing that for the last year with the presidential campaign anyway, we’re pretending, we’re buying into all kinds of PR, so pretend this. Pretend that they canned the income tax for one year, just pretend that they eliminate the income tax for six months. Imagine what that would mean to you. Imagine how much more disposable income you would have, money you’ve earned, and what you might do with it, and thus what that might do to the economy. Just pretend. I think it would be a fascinating exercise.