RUSH: Yesterday at the White House, Vice President Biden’s chief economic advisor, Jared Bernstein, held a press conference to talk about the new unemployment rate and the economic stimulus package. And during the Q&A, Jake Tapper of ABC says, ‘In January you and Dr. Romer issued your recommendation for the stimulus. It turned out to be rather optimistic. I think it’s fair to say you said without the stimulus the unemployment rate will be just over 8%. Obviously it’s 9.4% with your stimulus. How do you explain that?’
RUSH: This is flat-out pap. This is rigmarole. This is BS, plain and simple BS. You just heard Biden’s economic guru explain that their estimates on unemployment were wrong because it was Bush’s fault, the fourth quarter of 2008 was worse than they thought, and, by the way, it would be worse than ever if we hadn’t done what we did, that they were too optimistic. They are not optimistic at all. They talk optimism. They implement plans that are based upon pessimism. They implement plan and plan after plan that is destroying the US economy. It is destroying the opportunity for the American dream for millions of Americans who don’t yet realize that their pursuit of the American dream is in the process of being destroyed. They will learn this, sadly, soon enough. This is how it’s done. ‘Hey, we didn’t know how bad Bush left it.’ I knew they were going to do that with Iraq, they were going to do it with Club Gitmo, ‘Well, we didn’t know how bad it was, Bush didn’t really tell us. The economy was so bad, we had no clue. Our plan, why, if we hadn’t done our plan, it would be even worse.’
His plan has made it worse the last five months, and that is why I have gone back to this January 10th speech to illustrate. His plan has made it worse. Obama is succeeding. He’s getting everything he wants. We want our president to succeed. Well, this, my friends, is our president succeeding. Bye-bye, American dream; bye-bye a demand command economy; bye-bye free market economy. Now, another bite from Jared Bernstein. Chuck Todd of government-run NBC said, ‘Can you give us a little better accounting on the 150,000 jobs that are going to be created or saved? It’s a number I know I’ve heard a couple of times. What is the accounting on that?’ Now, if George Bush had tried, ever, at a single time during his eight years of presidency to talk about the jobs saved, he would have been laughed out of the briefing room, and so would have his press spokesman. And, if in the midst of unemployment reaching 9.4%, on the way to double-digit 10%, in the midst of 1.8 million jobs having been lost since Obama took office, if George Bush faced the same circumstances and touted 150,000 jobs saved or created, he would have been laughed at and editorialized out of the office. But Chuck Todd from government-run NBC, ‘Could you clarify this for us, 150,000 jobs, give a little better accounting?’ Chuck Todd so wants to be able, for government-run NBC to be able to report this accurately from Obama’s standpoint. So he’s asking for help here. Please, Dr. Bernstein, 150,000 jobs, please help me understand so that government-run NBC that I work for can help you here.
BERNSTEIN: We know how fast the plan is spending out, we know which sectors, and actually if you go back to the Romer-Bernstein report, you’ll see that we actually have estimates by sector, by industry, but also by energy, construction, infrastructure, tax cuts —
TODD: One hundred fifty thousand are just based on these estimates so far or what you guys projected out of how this money would be spent?
BERNSTEIN: Correct.
TODD: So we don’t know exactly —
RUSH: Translation: It’s a wild guess. Worse. Translation: I am going to calculatingly lie to you in a way that you will believe because you are part of the government-run media. I’m going to get to it, folks, just give me time here. When he said that tax cuts generate a smaller multiplier than direct government spending, that is absurd and even Christina Romer before she joined the Obama administration said so, that tax cuts generate something like a buck-and-a-half to two bucks of revenue and economic output where government spending is a negative, and yet she has thrown away everything she knows as an economist to serve Barack Obama. So basically what you just heard here was Jared Bernstein admitting that the jobs, quote, unquote, created and saved are just extrapolations from the amount of money they spend and what they think spending that much has created.
In other words, it’s totally made up. There is no such formula. There is no record kept on jobs saved. It’s not possible to know. God may not even know. That’s how impossible it is to know. Tax cuts generate a smaller multiplier than direct government spending? Once you know the spendout, the type of spending, then you can derive an estimate of how many jobs you believe you created? What’s the multiplier? Who is the multiplier? Is there a multiplier czar in the White House? One more Jared Bernstein, this time the question came from Bloomberg News’ Hans Nichols: ‘Those summer jobs, that 125,000, are you counting that toward the 600,000 jobs you’re going to be saving or creating?’
BERNSTEIN: Yes.
NICHOLS: Are you also going to be counting that towards the 3.5 total goal?
BERNSTEIN: That is — yeah, that — the 3.5 is the, uh, the 3.5 is an estimate of jobs created or saved by the end of, uh, of next year.
NICHOLS: What you’re obviously acknowledging are temporary jobs over the summer which won’t last three months —
BERNSTEIN: Oh, that’s a good question, right.
NICHOLS: How that’s being counted in the 3.5?
BERNSTEIN: Thank you. Now, that’s a good question. The 3.5 million jobs are what economists call full-time equivalent jobs. So those 125 would not count as a full 125. Two part-time jobs count as one full-time equivalent job.
RUSH: You know how ridiculous this is? We’ve lost 1.8 million jobs since Barack Obama took office and got the stimulus bill passed. We were at 9.4% unemployment. Do you believe these exchanges? Do you think reporters would be asking for clarification on 600,000 jobs created or saved were it a Republican president who came up with this fallacious notion? Absolutely no way. This is the government-run media asking for guidance on how to report this so they can sell it to their viewers, readers, customers, whatever. This is a wild guess. These people in the White House, Jared Bernstein, Christina Romer, dirty little secret, they know that they have been tasked with destroying the private sector of the United States economy. They know it. They are employees of Obama, they have to be loyal, they are out there spewing absolute drivel that makes no common sense. They admit they’re guessing. These are estimates based on the spending. They’re speaking in such detail about 125,000 summer jobs, 600,000 overall, 1.8 million jobs have been lost, 9.4% unemployment. All of this is irrelevant. It matters only in that it is propaganda from the White House and the government-run media to you.
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RUSH: More on the gobbledygook from Jared Bernstein, who just announced the formula the Obama administration is using. He admits the job plan makes no sense. There is no ‘there’ there. Jared Bernstein’s brilliant formula was established when he brilliantly estimated an 8% unemployment rate, and now we’re at 9.4%, and he blames the fourth quarter that he didn’t know about for his formula being wrong. (crumbling up paper) This is Joe Biden’s economic guru. I’d rather hear from Biden’s guy at the Hair Club for Men! That guy probably has more knowledge of economics in the real world than Jared Bernstein has. And, hey, Chuck Todd! How many homeless people are there today? Have you asked about that? Brian Williams, ditto.
I want to know how many homeless there are, how many children are starving. I want to know if Obama is going over to Lafayette Park and stealing the homeless’ cans of beans and taking them back to the White House and feeding them to his kids, as you said about Reagan! I want to hear about all the economic disaster. We got 9.4% unemployment! Where are these people living, all these foreclosures? How many children would have been fed if Obama had not taken his trip to New York with his wife for a play? Remember all those comparison stories you used to do, guys? Bush going to play golf here, Bush going there, Reagan going there, how many homeless people could be fed? Remember the school lunch program and how kids were gonna starve because of Newt Gingrich and the Republicans ‘cutting’ the school lunch program when there were no cuts whatsoever, during the great economy of the 1990s?
Where are the stories on the hardships of America brought about by Barack Obama’s economic policies? As State-Run Media, I guess you’re not charged with doing that kind of reporting. As government-run media, you’re not only interested any longer about the hardships created by administration policies. You just want to celebrate at the feet of the king. And you want to be in the loyal entourage, and you want to be treated fairly. You want to be in the ‘in.’ Oh, there’s an entire story that is the destruction of the United States economy. There are real people who don’t get to travel on private jets to take their wife to a play and dinner in New York on somebody else’s dime.
There are people who don’t travel to Paris and snub foreign leaders, have another plane paid for by somebody else bring the wife and kids over, and then go out on a date paid for by other people and then go back yourself and leave the wife and kids to party and sightsee and fly back on a separate plane paid for by other people. There are real people in this country who have lost their jobs, who have lost their homes. There are children who obviously must be going hungry. It’s so bad that when they go to McDonald’s and want a Happy Meal and the fries are left out or there are no Chicken McNuggets, they call 911! This is left to local news to tell us about. This is a crisis in the making, the destruction of the United States middle class — and what do we get? We get news stories from the government-run media about what a wonderful guy Obama and his wife are, and how great she looks in a sleeveless sweater. Well, what about the starving kids and what about the homeless? What about people losing their hair who don’t have access to plugs like Joe Biden?
We’ll be back. Stay with us.
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RUSH: These poor economists that work for Obama — Jared Bernstein, Christina Romer — they actually are Rent-an-Economists. They come from Rent-an-Economist. They will say whatever they have to say — no matter how nuts, no matter how deceitful it is — because Obama hired ’em. In other words, they’ll sell their soul for a seat at power.
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RUSH: You know what, I just used Jared Bernstein’s formula, I figured over 20-plus years on the radio I have saved over ten million jobs just keeping the mood of employers up — and nobody can prove I didn’t.