RUSH: Now, last night in the debate, Paul Ryan made reference to the fact that his tax plan is no different than Ronaldus Magnus and no different than JFK. At which point Joey said, (imitating Biden) “Ho, so, so now you’re Jack Kennedy, too, huh, kid?” And Ryan said, “I’m closer to him than you are.” Well, we, I think — it doesn’t matter — but I think we were the first popular, major media outlet to dredge up a speech made by President Kennedy, 1962, December 14th, in New York City at the New York Economic Club. It was JFK making the case for tax cuts as a means of growing the economy. In 1962.
There is no Democrat alive today who would make this speech. If JFK were alive today and hadn’t changed, he wouldn’t find room for himself in the Democrat Party. The things that JFK says in this speech are daily mocked, laughed at, impugned, made fun of, and the people who believe in these things are targeted for personal destruction. We got ’em from somewhere, is my point. We dredged ’em up from some archives. But we were the first major media outlet to find these in the archives and play them, and here they are. It’s old and scratchy, no doubt, it comes from 1962.
KENNEDY: This administration pledged itself last summer to an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes to be enacted and become effective in 1963. I am not talking about a quickie or a temporary tax cut which would be more appropriate if a recession were imminent. Nor am I talking about giving the economy a mere shot in the arm to ease some temporary complaint. The federal government’s most useful role is not to rush into a program of excessive increases in public expenditures, but to expand the incentives and opportunities of private expenditures.
RUSH: This speech was given two years before Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, two years before the Civil Rights Act, two years before the War on Poverty, two years before Medicare was created, two years before all these entitlements, other than Social Security. It was two years before the War on Poverty, 1962, the economy’s in a slowdown after the fifties boom, post-war, and JFK, a Democrat popularly elected president, is advocating tax cuts in the same sense that Arthur Laffer always has or Ronald Reagan or Jack Kemp or me or anybody else with a brain.
Jack Kennedy, for a time the most popular Democrat alive or dead, martyred. I wonder how many Democrats alive hearing this today had never heard it before and are having trouble believing it? JFK. There’s not a Democrat alive who would make this speech today, and this speech is exactly what is needed today. The philosophies, the policies in the JFK speech is exactly what is needed today and everything JFK advocates is a opposed top-to-bottom by today’s Democrat Party.
KENNEDY: When consumers purchase more goods, plants use more of their capacity, men are hired instead of laid off, investment increases, and profits are high. Corporate tax rates must also be cut to increase incentives and the availability of investment capital. The government has already taken major steps this year to reduce business tax liability and to stimulate the modernization, replacement, and expansion of our productive plant and equipment.
RUSH: My gosh, folks, a Democrat president talking positively about profit. A Democrat president talking positively about business expansion and incentivizing business. By lowering taxes, investment increases, profits, high corporate tax rates must be cut, a Democrat president suggesting this. That’s right. A rich Democrat president, 1962. Fifty years ago, right? Fifty years ago. Here’s the next bite.
KENNEDY: Our true choice is not between tax reduction on the one hand and the avoidance of large federal deficits on the other. It is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, so long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget, just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits. Surely the lesson of the last decade is that budget deficits are not caused by wild-eyed spenders, but by slow economic growth and periodic recessions, and any new recession would break all deficit records. In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low. And the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now.
RUSH: John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1962, December 14th, advocating tax cuts. Today, the Democrat president is saying the exact opposite. Where Kennedy says that we need to raise revenue and lower tax rates, Barack Obama wants to continue to raise taxes, not to raise revenue. He wants to raise taxes to punish achievers. The only people paying taxes are the achievers, for the most part. He wants to take what they earn and redistribute it and give it away. The government gets less money, fewer people become independently productive and fewer people acquire wealth. More people become dependent on Obama; more people become dependent on government.
So you have Barack Obama asking people to treat him essentially as government, him as provider, him as protector, rather than themselves. Paul Ryan, the Republican vice presidential nominee, cited this speech, cited JFK, as saying, “This is what we, Mitt Romney and I, believe in,” and it was pooh-poohed, laughed at, and discarded very sarcastically and cynically by the Democrat vice president, Joe Biden. But you heard it. JFK’s own words. That’s 1962, by the way.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: The Official Program Observer, Mr. Snerdley, reminds me, the first time we aired those JFK tax cut sound bites, that somebody in the media went to Ted Kennedy and asked him about them. He was furious. He was livid. I was trying to hijack and distort his brother’s memory. I had no business doing it. It was uncouth and vulgar to go back and dredge up these words of his assassinated brother. He was furious about it. I’m telling you, there isn’t a Democrat, there’s not a popular elected Democrat today — forget popular — not an elected Democrat today who would say what you heard president JFK say in 1962.
Folks, the point of the illustration is to show you how far left the Democrat Party has become, and it is not your father’s or your grandfather’s Democrat Party. The Democrat Party is what you saw out of Joe Biden last night.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This is Linda in Bergen County in New Jersey. Great to have you on the program. Hi, Linda.
CALLER: Oh, hi, Rush. I’m so excited to talk to you, really. My cell phone is ready to blow up.
RUSH: (laughing) Well!
CALLER: The other day you had a caller call in and ask you who did you fear more: liberalism or terrorism. Well, after these two debates, it’s liberalism for me because if we keep these liberals in here, terrorists are definitely going to get us.
RUSH: Let me tell you what she’s talking about. I made the statement, I have made it frequently, that the American left considers us, conservatives, a greater threat to them and their security than they do Al-Qaeda or terrorism. So a snarky guy called, “Well, do you think liberals are a greater threat to America than terrorists?” And I said, “Well, I have to say terrorists because liberals aren’t shooting us yet.” But what Linda here is saying, it’s gotta be liberals, ’cause if you don’t deal with them, the terrorists are gonna have their way. That’s your point, right?
CALLER: Absolutely. I mean, Joe Biden, did you see him last night? He’s a disgrace. He looked like he was a dummy that should have been sitting on somebody’s lap, with his laughing and his big teeth smiling. He was an embarrassment. You know, Obama, what they’ve done to the Oval Office, oh, my God, it should be revered. I mean, it’s a disgrace. It’s a disgrace.
RUSH: I hear you. We have a serious discussion on terrorism, and he’s laughing at Paul Ryan. We have a serious discussion on the economy and taxes, and split screen, and there’s old Joey laughing and in a condescending way. You know, Clint Eastwood, he’s on TV, is right. Biden is the intellect of the Democrat Party. A smile with a body behind it.
CALLER: Bravo to you for playing the JFK tapes. I’d never heard that. Oh, my God, it’s just —
RUSH: You had not?
CALLER: Unbelievable.
RUSH: Is that not powerful?
CALLER: Here’s Michelle and Barry, they think they’re Camelot. It’s more like Crapalot. It’s ridiculous.
RUSH: Exactly right. They think they are Camelot. So she hadn’t heard it. You know, we haven’t played those JFK bites in years. I’m sure a lot of you in this audience are probably hearing those for the first time. In 1962, JFK advocating for tax cuts, the same way that Ronald Reagan did later, and I did, and anybody else that knows what they’re talking about.
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