RUSH: The Republican Pledge is divided into five parts. One, spending; two, jobs; three, government reform; four, national security; five, healthcare. On spending, to cut spending the Republicans say that they are ‘committed to cancelling remaining expenditures for the 2009 [porkulus] bill and return domestic appropriations to 2008 levels,’ which, fine and dandy. That’s plenty of money. I mean, we’ve gone into debt. The amount of debt, the spending since 2007 when Pelosi and the Democrats took over the House — and then you go to 2009 when Obama was immaculated. We don’t need more. We don’t have the money we’re spending anyway. It’s a moot point. ‘Impose hard budget caps on discretionary spending accounts and reduce spending for congressional operations. Have weekly floor votes on winners of the YouCut program. It allows citizens to vote online for programs that ought to be slashed.
‘End the Troubled Asset Relief Program.’ Now, that’s big, and there’s still money left over in that account. That’s TARP. Remember we were told we had 24 hours to authorize TARP or else the world financial system would collapse, including ours — and the Republicans held firm on the first vote and they didn’t vote for it. And two weeks went by after we were told that we were going to plunge into the abyss after 24 hours. Two weeks went by and that’s when the strong-arm tactics began. That’s when the Treasury secretary — what was his name? The guy from Goldman Sachs. I forget his name, Bush’s guy. He dragged everybody in there, all these bankers, at 3:00 in the afternoon and gave them until 6:00 to sign this thing agreeing to accept bailout money — (interruption) yeah, Hank Paulson — even if they didn’t want it, even if they didn’t need it. So there was a lot more going on here than the truth, or at least what we were being told. So end TARP. It turns out that it wasn’t even necessary. It was a giant fraud perpetrated on the people of this country. They also Pledge ‘to end government control of the secondary home mortgage lending giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and they freeze federal hiring for non-security jobs and sunset programs after a certain number of years.’
There’s nothing crazy about any of this.
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RUSH: On the spending side they promise or they Pledge ‘to freeze federal hiring for non-security jobs, Sunset programs after a certain number of years, use more straightforward budgeting for entitlement programs.’ Now, the second section is ‘jobs,’ and here they Pledge ‘to stop all of the planned 2011 tax increases, including the expiration of the 2001 Bush tax cuts for individuals and the reestablishment of the estate tax. It calls for a small business tax deduction that allows owners to take a 20% deduction, roll back the so-called 1099 requirement that businesses report certain spending to the IRS, and establish a requirement that new federal regulations that cost more than $100 million get congressional approval.’ Now, as I said, I could go on and do the whole thing. There’s nothing extreme or wacky or crazy about it.
It’s basic common sense positions and it is what people are clamoring for. People want an end to what is happening now. They want the brakes applied to the Obama agenda. I just love listening to all these Democrats react in panic to it, because all they can do is spout all of their worn-out templates, all of their worn-out narratives, ‘Yeah, this is going to end Social Security. This is nothing more than tax cuts for the rich,’ all of this. They really are a bankrupt bunch of people. The Democrat Party today has no ideas they can sell. The people of this country, if they were to honestly hear, if they were to have been honestly presented with Obama’s agenda prior to the election, he would not have gotten 30% of the vote. The Democrat Party — the socialist-Marxist agenda, whatever you want to call it — if ever put to a vote would get creamed in a landslide.
They can’t be honest about it. Now people are running around saying, ‘Where’s your agenda?’
‘Well, you mean like in a 21-page proposal? Well, we don’t have one.’
Of course you don’t have one because theirs is nothing but fraud and deceit. The Democrat plan’s very simple: Lie to the American people; present a whole bunch of fictitious, fraudulent people spouting platitudes, citing fear; get elected, and then govern against the will of the people. It’s very simple what’s happening here. We are being ruled by a really small minority made to look larger than it is because their minority includes the media, the so-called media. So against fraud and deceit, here comes a document that’s pretty basic and tailored for the times. Now, depending on where you go to read it, it’s 21 pages, 26 pages. They need, I think, to put this out in bullet form like I, ladies and gentlemen, have done here. It doesn’t exist as I have presented it to you. Of course, that’s why I’m host and why they are in Congress. But they need to do it in bullet points so people can see it rat, tat, tat, tat.
Now, the White House is responding to this thing. The White House claims, literally, tax hikes for $110 million middle class families and millions of small businesses. That’s what the Democrats are saying is in the Pledge! It’s not in the Pledge. There are no tax increases in the Pledge. There are no tax increases for anybody, and you know what? There aren’t even any real tax cuts. It’s just the maintenance of the current tax code. Now, there is the 20% deduction on small businesses which is a little bit of a tax cut, but the administration is also claiming ‘tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires by borrowing $700 billion we can’t afford,’ and this is infuriating to me. What they’re saying is that extending the Bush tax cuts will ‘cost’ the government $700 billion, $700 billion that we can’t afford.
But we’re in the situation we’re in because of ‘two unfunded wars and two unfunded tax cuts’ and so now we can’t follow through. We cannot extend the Bush tax cuts — tax rates, essentially — because it will cost the government $700 billion. Let me give you an alternative way of looking at this. I’ll accept their bogus hypothesis for the purposes of making this as simple an explanation as I can. Let’s say that cutting taxes or extending Bush’s will ‘cost’ the government $700 billion. Let’s just say that. The purpose, as I’ve been intoning all week, of tax cuts is to keep money in the private sector to grow the economy, and I maintain that growing the economy and cutting taxes further would make that $700 billion minuscule in terms of the amount of money it would generate and raise.
But it’s sophistry to say that it’s going to ‘cost the government $700 billion we can’t afford.’ We can’t afford anything Obama has done! We cannot afford anything he’s done. We don’t have the money for anything Obama is doing. The Democrats have nothing positive to run on. That’s why they’re not going to publish an agenda. They can’t. They don’t dare be honest about what their policies will do. And everybody — well, more and more people — are seeing this now because even the people that showed up at Obama’s town hall on CNBC. ‘Mr. President, is this our new reality? Is this it?’ These are the people that took the ecstasy in the bar, got all caught up, and are now finding out that they were defrauded. Here’s Paul Ryan. He was on Good Morning America today with Stephanopoulos talking about this. Stephanopoulos said, ‘You heard the president. He said this is the exact same agenda that Republicans had before he came to office and that this is what got us in the mess. How is this different?’
PAUL RYAN: First of all, cutting spending, creating jobs and putting the policies of economic growth in place and cleaning up the way Congress works not only stands in stark contrast to this Congress and this President. But, actually, George, it stands a bit in stark contrast to the way Republicans conducted ourselves a decade ago. We need to own up to the fact that when we were in the majority, we spent too much money. We lost our way. We have to get that back. We are here trying to reclaim our country by rededicating ourselves to the timeless principles that made us exceptional. These are the basic building blocks to get us on the right track, the first steps.
RUSH: Okay. Stephanopoulos said, ‘Okay, now you’ve got the Pledge. What will you Pledge to pass in the first year if Republicans take control of the House?’ Now, that, who knows? What we’re going to pass? We’re talking about objectives. We are talking about philosophies and principles that will go long beyond election results in November. But anyway, here is how Paul Ryan answered this silly question.
PAUL RYAN: If we got in control of Congress tomorrow, here’s what we would do — and there are dozens of pieces of legislation here we’re talking about. First of all, the healthcare bill, we think, is a disaster. It’s making the deficit worse. That’s according to the president’s own actuary. It’s making healthcare costs go up. We would replace this healthcare law with consumer-directed healthcare. We would cut spending right away. We would rescind TARP. We would do a federal hiring freeze. That can get you $1.3 trillion right there in spending cuts, and we would prevent these massive tax increases from hitting our economy this January 1st. What we’re trying to do is remove uncertainty so that the economy can grow. There’s a big uncertainty problem. Businesses aren’t hiring; we want to address that.
RUSH: Right. And they’re sitting on tons of cash, as everybody knows. They are smart not to invest it. They have no idea really what circumstances they’re going to face once the New Year hits.
So Ryan rat-tat-tat. ‘What are we going to do? Okay, here it is. Here it is, George.’ What Stephanopoulos ought to do is go get any Democrat, go get anybody from the Democrat Party, from the Obama regime, bring them in and ask them what they’re going to do. You know what you’re going to hear? ‘Carbon taxes, cap and trade, green energy, renewable energy! We can’t go back to where we were. We can’t hand the keys back. We can’t go back to the problems that put us in this mess.’ That’s all they can say because they will never, ever be honest about what they’re going to do. If your intention was to destroy the country — and you knew the people didn’t want it destroyed — would you tell them that’s what you’re going to do? Of course not. Neither are the Democrats. And the media’s going to…
You watch. They are going to insist that this is not specific enough. ‘The Republicans need to get more specific in their presentation.’ Meanwhile the Democrats are refusing to even present a budget! The House Democrats are not even going to present a budget prior to the election because they can’t afford for any of you to know exactly what their budget intentions are. So while their buddies in the press are going to run around and demand even more specificity and they’re going to accuse Paul Ryan and all these other Republicans of being suspects simply because of this Pledge and its contents, they’re going to demand even more specificity without demanding the same from the Democrats who will not even present a budget. On Morning Joe today Clinton appeared. Mika Brzezinski: ‘Can you understand the White House might have some difficulty communicating on this convoluted issue of the economy? What can they be doing better?’
BILL CLINTON: Democrats ought to put, on one card, no more than five and no fewer than three things that will be their priorities. We’ve still got a chance here. We’ve got 30 days to have an honest debate. I know how easy it is to lose control of the debate. It happened to me in ’93 and ’94. The president and the Democrats, even at this late date, should do this as an opportunity and an obligation to say, ‘All right, they’ve organized their national plan; here’s what ours is. If you hire us for two more years, here’s what we’re going to do.’
RUSH: They can’t do it, Mr. President, and you can’t, either, because you’d have to lie. You can’t be honest about what you’re going to do. You’re going to tell them you’re going to move amnesty? Are you going to tell them, ‘Yeah, we’re going to find a way to legalize 15 to 20 million illegals so that we can turn them into Democrat voters’? Can you be honest about that? Is that what you are going to tell them you are going to do? You are not going to tell them that. Are you going to tell them you’re going to raise taxes on every ‘carbon transaction’ or existence that occurs? Are you going to tell them how much their taxes are going to go up across the board? Are you going to tell them how much health reform is going to cost them and how little and less access to healthcare they are going to have? Are you going to tell them the truth about any of this? You can’t. The Democrat Party wouldn’t stand a prayer if they were honest about even one agenda item. The Obama people, they don’t want to give the keys to the car back yet. They are not through stripping the car! If they want to use this automobile analogy, then let’s take it full out. Obama loves to say, ‘Well, we can’t give them the keys to the car. Why, they drove in the ditch last time.’ They don’t want to give the keys back. They’re not through stripping the car — the car being the country.
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RUSH: That’s right, my friends, keep a sharp eye. You’re going to hear the Drive-Bys and the Democrats and talking to Republicans about the Pledge and they’re going to demand that they be more specific: ‘What do you really mean here?’ And every time you hear that, just remember Nancy Pelosi saying, ‘Well, we have to pass this health care bill before anybody will know what’s in it.’ Just remember that the members of Congress that passed that abomination had no idea. They hadn’t read it. And even Max Baucus who wrote the health care bill in the Senate said he didn’t read it. ‘It’s too statutory,’ he said, meaning it’s legalese. ‘We have experts to do that,’ he said. The people that supposedly are the authors didn’t read it and they’re going to run around and demand all kinds of specificity.
There’s a new day coming. Folks, I told the people of Philadelphia last night — and by the way, the audio of the Philadelphia appearance, 95 minutes, is up on the Members Only side. The transcript is for everybody. The audio’s up on the Members Only side. I told the people in Philadelphia, I said, ‘I’ve been doing this for 23 years and I’m constantly looking back to ask myself if I could have done something different.’ One of the things I’m asking myself is, ‘Did I not take these people seriously enough?’ We laughed at them all these 23 years. Liberals are really funny when they’re out of power because that’s when they get wacky and stupid. They’re more dangerous when they’re in power. But now, I never, I never — honest to God, folks, because of the faith I have in the people of this country — I never really believed that the people of this country would elect somebody who intends to destroy it. And they didn’t knowingly. They didn’t knowingly. But I’m going to always ask myself if sometime in these past 23 years — I’m not beating myself up, don’t misunderstand — but liberalism was something to laugh at, and it still is. But now we’re talking Marxism.
We always thought these people — and they are, they are a fringe minority in this country. Liberalism is nowhere representative of a majority body of thought in this country, but they happen to own entertainment, education and media. And so it appears that they are much more prevalent and larger a majority when they’re not. And now look what we’re faced with, I mean, we cannot simply just make fun of this. This has to be stopped. Politically this has to be stopped. The Democrat Party agenda has got to be arrested, and part of me says, yeah, it had to happen in order to wake people up. And there is a theory that because of this they’re never, ever going to be majority victors in elections ever again, people have finally woken up and see it. But I’ve always told people, ‘No, we don’t want to elect people like this just to show how bad it can be so people will learn and never do it again,’ even though it has happened.
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RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, there are some, Charles Krauthammer for one, suggesting that it might have been an incorrect strategery for the Republicans to release the Pledge. Now, this thinking says that the Democrats, the Obama agenda has been so disastrous, let them lose the election on their own. Don’t put anything out there that the Democrats can point to and make a target out of as the Republicans have done with their Pledge. All it’s going to do is maybe confuse people. Some people are saying that the Pledge is giving Democrats ammunition to attack something of ours that they didn’t have before. Up until now all they had to do was run on their failed agenda. Now they can run against the Republican Pledge.
Now, what is your knee jerk reaction to that, that the Democrats only had their own agenda to run on and therefore run from, that the Pledge now provides the Democrats with something to run against, a target. Snerdley is shouting at me in the IFB, ‘It’s already over for the Democrats. We’re just waiting on the dates to see the actual triage damage.’ This is a fundamental point to me. When did the Democrats stop calling us racists, bigots, homophobes? When did the Democrats stop accusing us of wanting tax cuts for the rich? Even before the Pledge was released today and leaked yesterday, for years — forget years, the last several weeks I’ve been hearing Democrats in this debate about whether or not to extend the Bush tax cuts, ‘It’s just tax cuts for the rich.’ You mean the Democrats were not attacking us before the Pledge came out? The Democrats were not attacking Republicans before the Pledge was published? Is that right? Do I understand that right? The Democrats only had their own agenda to run on before the Pledge? When did the Democrats stop impugning and maligning Republicans? When did that stop? I don’t think it did is my point.