RUSH: Martin in Altamonte Springs, Florida, welcome to the EIB Network. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, how you doing?
RUSH: Very well, sir. Thank you.
CALLER: I’ve listened to you for ten years now. I just want to find out why you make people getting unemployment feel like they’re, you know, useless and stuff like that, and I just didn’t know why you do that. Some people have to be on it, you know, and —
RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, wait. Run that by me again. You want to know why I make people on unemployment feel useless?
CALLER: Yeah, like you talk like they’re no-good people and stuff. And I just wondered why.
RUSH: When did I ever say that they’re no-good people?
CALLER: I’m just saying it’s the way you talk, and just —
RUSH: No, no, no. Don’t give me the way you talk stuff. Tell me what I said.
CALLER: You know, like dope addicts or, you know, stuff like that —
RUSH: Never said it. I don’t know what you’re referring to. I never called the people on unemployment dope addicts. Maybe lazy a couple times, but never dope addicts.
CALLER: (laughing) Well, I been listening to you, I like you, I love you and, you know, some people that, you know, like me, I have had some injuries and stuff and have to be on unemployment, and trying to find a job, you know, ’cause I was doing a trade before for 20 years and I can’t do that trade now and that’s just what I’m saying —
RUSH: It’s actually a good question. Let me explain this to you. Let me explain my fear of this.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: I do believe that never-ending unemployment extensions — and I think this is the purpose — put less pressure on people to go find jobs.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: I think there’s dignity in work.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: I think people working is what makes this country great.
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: And telling people they’re worthless is not what I do. It’s this regime that’s telling people they’re worthless by trying to destroy the very market in which they could get a job. I am so angry over what this administration’s doing.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: I have nothing but compassion. It’s not the United States of America to me to find people on unemployment for 99 weeks.
CALLER: Oh, I know. I understand. But it’s just, you should go try to find a job out there when you’re doing a trade for so long —
CALLER: All right.
RUSH: — confusing that with calling them unemployed. I think they’re two different groups of people.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: There might be some unemployed getting in on this. The point is if you make $50,000 a year and have a couple of kids you can end up paying no federal income tax at all whether you’re working or not.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: And that’s how you create a permanent underclass.
CALLER: Oh yeah.
RUSH: Pretty soon you’re going to have people realizing tax increases are what they live off of.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: And that’s hideous. This regime is destroying people just like the Great Society and the War on Poverty broke up the black family, it took the place of the black father so there were single parent mothers with multiple children out there, cultural disarray. Black people themselves will tell you this. And it was the never-ending flow of welfare money that made it happen. It allowed the fathers and husbands to forget their responsibility.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: So these kind of programs never work. It’s undignified. They do not help people become better people.
CALLER: I just think if Obama would get down and make more jobs, you know, we could get our jobs and I think it would all get, you know, better.
RUSH: Obama can’t make a job.
CALLER: (laughing) Yeah.
RUSH: The government cannot make a job.
CALLER: Like I said, he’s worried about everything else but jobs, and that’s what we need.
RUSH: Well, yeah, while he’s over there smiling while signing a deal that gets rid of our national security a bit.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: If he wants to create jobs, he’s gotta cut taxes, he’s gotta remove some federal regulations, he’s basically gotta get out of people’s way. He’s gotta stop taxing achievement; he’s gotta stop punishing risk-takers; he’s gotta do the exact opposite of what he’s doing. The blueprint for coming out of one of these recessions exists back in 1981 and ’82. It goes by the name of Ronaldus Magnus and it worked so well that this regime is doing everything they can to reverse every aspect of Reaganism. (interruption) Yes, Dawn, I do say good morning if you’re just waking up and on welfare, welcome to the program, yes, but that’s welfare recipients. I’m not talking about the unemployed. I have never insulted the unemployed. The unemployed, the vast majority of them are nothing but pure victims of this regime, to put it bluntly. My heart goes out to them. Ninety-nine weeks on unemployment. At some point you give up looking, and that doesn’t help you find a job down the line even when the recovery happens, if it does.