Big Budgets are NOT Compassion

RUSH: Paul Ryan, by the way, we’ve got more audio coming up of him, is also mentioning that there’s a morality to the budget plan that he has presented today in that he sees the need to fight a moral decline that is taking place in the country. The moral decline defined as dependency and passivity. Both those things weaken the country. Now, to you and I, this is nothing new. You and I for the last 25 years, probably all of our lives, folks, have lamented, understood what dependency does and you look at the food stamp numbers that we had yesterday, food stamp participation is at an all-time high. The number of people working for government is dwarfing the numbers of Americans working in production, in manufacturing. It’s a two-to-one ratio in that regard. But you and I have always known, we’ve always felt that it’s the exact opposite of compassion to create dependency among our fellow citizens.

I’ve never forgotten Jack Kemp saying the way we define compassion is not by adding up how many people receive government benefits, but rather tallying the numbers of those who no longer need them. The Democrat Party is not interested in that definition of compassion. The Democrat Party wants more and more people dependent. The Democrat Party has a condescending view of the average person, the average human being as incompetent and incapable, not very smart, needs the government protecting them at every phase of their life. And in so doing, create this dependency on the Democrat Party, not on the United States. The creation of dependency is on the Democrat Party. If you look at all these Democrat social programs, forget the good intentions, that’s how they wish to be judged. Instead, look at the results. That’s one of the things that Ryan is attacking in his budget.

What good does it do, the recipients of your largesse, if the end result is to break up your family? If the federal government becomes the husband, freeing the husband from any responsibilities, run around living his life however he chooses without meeting any of these responsibilities, what good is that doing anybody? The old AFDC argument. It’s not doing anybody any good. And the very people who are the targets of all this assistance are the ones who end up being irreparably harmed. We’ve had the war on poverty; the percentages of people in poverty have not changed. No social program that the Democrats have undertaken that now comprise the vaunted so-called social safety net, have actually worked. They have done great harm and this is what Ryan is saying.

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RUSH: A couple more sound bites here from Mr. Ryan, again going back to CNBC on Squawk Box, Becky Quick and Joe Kernen. Joe Kernen says, “Congressman Ryan, the idea of public unions sort of electing all the state and local officials, that was good, but now to have the public unions actually controlling who’s on the Supreme Court, there’s a whole new form of government we’re seeing potentially.” I think he’s talking about what’s going on in Wisconsin today.

PAUL RYAN: Look, what I see happening systematically across government is a different philosophy that is contrary to the American idea of our founding principles. And it is systematic replacement of the rule of law with the rule of man, where you have unelected bureaucrats running government, running society. That is not what we want to do. We want to get back to those core founding ideals. We want to get back to limited government, economic freedom. We believe in the principles of liberty, of self-sufficiency, of individualism. We believe that it’s important to get this country back on the right track so we can grow and prosper.

RUSH: You start talking about individualism, rugged individuality to a liberal and it’s like showing Dracula a cross. That is just a huge insult. You go back to the days where homelessness was a front-and-center issue every day, and somebody would suggest, “Well, maybe they should just think about getting a job.” And the typical liberal response, “Well, easy for you to say.” “Well, yeah, I mean that’s the solution. The best welfare program there is, in fact, a job.” You know, jobs are how people define themselves. The liberals speak of jobs as if there’s something corrupt about a job. Oh, easy for you to say. Meaning it’s easy for people who have a job to talk about it but you go try to get one. Well, imagine if everybody had the attitude that the left has about jobs, that they’re impossible to get, you shouldn’t focus on that, instead focus on the government taking care of you. What if everybody just checked out? And the reason most Americans don’t is because of self-worth, a desire to have dignity and meaning in your life.

Work is where you accomplish things. Work is where achievement is noted. Work is where progress takes place. Work is what makes everything else possible. It’s a dirty word to the American left. As long as one person doesn’t have a job it’s not fair that somebody else does, and that’s true across the spectrum. If somebody has a hundred thousand dollars, it’s not fair that somebody else only has 50. And every decision they make is always in favor of the lesser, or the less. And everybody must be dumbed down or everybody must be reduced. The left never wants to improve people’s lot in life in order to make things fair and equal. What they want to do is lower the achievers so that there’s less of a gap.

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