RUSH: I have a sound bite I want you to hear. It is from former labor secretary Robert B. Reichhhh, but it may as well be any liberal. It could just as easily be Barack Obama. It’s on CNBC this morning, and they had a discussion on a program called The Call, on Obama’s budget and the national debt. By the way, the budget passed in the House and the Senate without a single Republican vote anywhere. There are some things that didn’t make it; they’re going to have trouble. They’re not gone. Cap and trade in big trouble. Card check in big trouble. The charitable donation, some Democrats are balking at that. But the budget outline, the blueprint was passed, not the budget itself, but the blueprint was passed with not a single Republican vote. And, of course, the Drive-Bys are going, ‘This is horrible, why, this is just bad for bipartisanship.’
The Democrats don’t need a single Republican vote. If I were the Republicans I wouldn’t vote for one shred of this. I’d try to stop as much of it as I could, but make them own this. When 80% of the people in this country think that this economy is owing to George Bush and the banks and corporations, then the challenge is to turn this into Obama’s economy as fast the hell as you can, and that means staying away from it and not voting for one aspect of it. In fact, Obama lost in the House 20 Democrats from the previous vote on this. This has got to be turned into Obama’s economy and Obama’s budget. Now, here’s Robert B. Reich talking about something that’s very interesting.
REICH: Tax cuts are fine, but what we know about tax cuts is that they don’t always stimulate growth nearly to the extent that direct government spending does for two very obvious reasons. One is that a lot of people, if they get a tax cut, they are going to save it or they’re going to pay down their own debt. That may be good for the individual, even if they do spend they are often going to go to the mall and buy something from another country.
RUSH: We have to do a stimulus instead of tax cuts because the American consumer is too stupid to know what to buy. That’s the umbrella under which this statement was made, but I want to parse this even further. First place, he’s lying through his teeth. ‘Tax cuts are fine, but we know that tax cuts, they don’t always stimulate growth nearly to the extent that direct government spending does.’ Well, Secretary Reich, that’s just disingenuous of you. That is purposefully dishonest. What’s the new unemployment number, 669,000, 8.5%, some stimulus, huh? Some stimulus, Secretary Reich. We’ve had trillions of dollars in stimulus since last year, and we’re losing jobs, and I thought the purpose of the stimulus was to create jobs! So all this damn government spending is better at creating jobs in the private sector than tax cuts are? ‘A lot of people get tax cuts, they’re going to save it, they’re going to pay down their debt, that may be good for the individual,’ but not good for Democrats. It’s all about the individual. It’s his or her money.
If the individual wants to retire some of their debt, which they have been preached to for decades to do, even in this Washington Post poll, 70% say that our economy’s in bad shape because you have been irresponsible with your credit card. So it ought to follow that if you get a tax cut and you pay down your debt, your fellow citizens will love you. But regardless, you are the individual, and it’s nobody’s damn business what you do with your money, as long as we’re living in a moral society and you’re not breaking the law with it, it’s nobody’s business. But the Democrats and the liberals are going to make it their business ’cause you’re not smart enough to spend it on the right stuff to cause economic growth. ‘It may be good for the individual.’ Self-interest, the individual, the world’s smallest minority. The individual, working in his or her own self-interest is what built this country. And then, ‘even if these individuals do spend, they’re often going to go to the mall and buy something from another country.’ Do you realize just in how much contempt the Democrat Party holds you? Do you realize what a bunch of brain-dead idiots they think you are? And a bunch of brain-dead idiots voted for them. Why would they not think it?