RUSH: Nancy Pelosi just put the ‘Depends’ in Dependence Day. ‘Unemployment benefits create more jobs than any other initiative.’ We have her saying this. Grab audio sound bite number 10. Yeah, 10 and 11. Yesterday in Washington, DC… You know, it’s still up for grabs. The jury is still out.
Is the woman really the dumbest woman on the face of the earth, or is all of this produced for her from some wordsmith like George Lakoff (rhymes with)? Does this indicate that she thinks we are all stupid? Does this indicate that she thinks that all the people who are not working, who are receiving unemployment benefits are stupid, or is it that she is? The jury is still out. A reporter asked her yesterday: ‘Congress is gonna leave with unemployment insurance not extended. This is the second time y’all have recessed. What do you say to those who are going to be losing their benefits? How do you respond to the argument that maybe Congress shouldn’t be extending unemployment benefits because it’s a disincentive to people to look for work?’
PELOSI: Let me say that unemployment insurance — we talk about it as a safety net and the rest — this is one of the biggest stimuluses (sic) to our economy. Economists will tell you, this money is spent quickly. It injects demand into the economy, and it’s job creating. It creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name; because, again, it is money that is needed for families to survive and it is spent. So it has a double benefit. It helps those who have lost their jobs but it also is a job-creator.
RUSH: Okay, so is she really this stupid or does she think we are? (interruption) It is not that easily answered, Snerdley. Snerdley is in there saying, ‘It has to be she’s that stupid.’ Anybody — you know, sixth grader — would know taking money out of the private sector and then putting it back in the private sector is not growing the private sector. Taking money away from people who are working and giving it to people who aren’t is creating jobs. Somebody at home getting an unemployment check is not working. Folks, you let a Republican say anything like this and they would be drummed out of town in 24 hours on the basis that they’re insensitive and stupid. Pelosi is essentially… If we wanted to spin this the way the Democrat media would spin this if a Republican had said it: ‘Pelosi, elitist in her ivory tower, in her corporate jet, with her $26 million husband, is telling people sitting at home on their sofas getting unemployment, ‘How’s your job? We’re creating jobs by sending you a check.” A Republican would be called insensitive, stupid, condescending, pandering. She wasn’t through. She continued with this…
PELOSI: It’s impossible to think of a situation where we would have a country that would say, ‘We’re not going to have unemployment benefits, and the only people who want them are people who don’t want jobs.’ That’s just so contrary to what our country is about and I reject, uh, that misrepresentation of the motivation for people to be on unemployment insurance.
RUSH: Ms. Pelosi, you’re creating them. Your policies along with the president are creating circumstances where people who want to work cannot. It’s just that simple. Obamaville is all about welfare checks, and Obamaville is the country. ‘It’s impossible to think of a situation where we would have a country that would say we are not going to have unemployment benefits and the only people who want them are people who don’t want jobs’? Anyway, this is what passes for leadership today in Washington. There you have it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: To the phones! Karen in New Haven, Connecticut, welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi. How are you?
RUSH: Very fine. Thank you.
CALLER: That’s good. I just wanted to let you know that, you know, pretty upset about this unemployment for almost two years. I have a neighbor who looked for jobs at the beginning of the summer last year. I own a very small company. At the beginning of the summer last year I could have offered her a job. In fact, I did so and she said take the summer off and keep her unemployment going. I offered her a job later on when I can still afford to give hardware a job, and she said that Obama was absolutely fantastic and she was just enjoying having all this time off and collecting her unemployment. That doesn’t help people. Years ago I was on unemployment. I had to go out and actually get two businesses to sign a form saying that you applied for a job and you did speak to somebody legitimately.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: You couldn’t collect without having that form signed.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: This is just ridiculous.
RUSH: Well, you remember Nancy Pelosi. Nancy Pelosi selling health care. She said one of the reasons people want to have health care is so that they’re not ‘job locked.’ We have artists and creative people to be able to not to have to work so they can sit at home and be creative and still have access to health care, and this is essentially what the friend you were trying to offer the job to said. ‘Naw, I don’t want to blow up my unemployment benefits here.’ I know there’s some I’m sure anecdotal evidence of a lot of this, people prefer unemployment check. It’s one of the problems. We’ve got a lot of people who think being an American means being taken care of, but I think a lot of these people on unemployment want to work. I think a lot of them still do, and those are the people that are genuinely frustrated because there’s no improvement and there’s no light that they see at the end of the tunnel.