RUSH: Wilmington, Delaware. This is Eric. I’m glad you waited, sir. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. I hope you’re having a good day and a good Thanksgiving coming up.
RUSH: Yeah, thank you very much, sir. Same to you.
CALLER: The reason why I’m calling is, during the election, Obama came out with this $2,000 per family tax increase because of a bogus — or one of his cronies came out with a study saying that Romney would have to do that to get the $5 trillion. The Republicans need to come out with a same study or some crony to come out with a plan saying that they need to raise taxes — well, don’t call taxes, call it a surcharge for health care for the 18 to 30 somethings, the single women, the illegals, on video games, on Starbucks, on the places that they use and they spend their money, because you look at people, they’re enjoying their lives. They have iPhones, they have everything, it looks like nothing is really hurting anybody. They have the money to pay for all that. Also, on the Internet, they should have a surcharge for the Internet, because these people use that. See, that’s the new way they get around and get things, and they’re enjoying their lives and things are going on, and that’s why they voted for Obama. He’s giving ’em free stuff, and to pay for it, they have to do these things.
RUSH: See, this is an interesting point, but I have to take a break. Thanks, Eric, for the call.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Eric in Wilmington, Delaware. I gather what he was saying, and how many of you have observed, we’ve got this dire economy, and there’s no question that it is. We have unemployment that is horrible. We have underemployment. We’ve got people whose home values are underwater, people being laid off, businesses are downsizing, preparing for Obamacare. His point is that there’s a whole group of people out there just casually living their lives as though we are in the midst of the average American prosperity that you and I have all known, that they’re not feeling any pain at all. They got their iPhones and they got their Internet surfing and they’re watching YouTube and they’re doing whatever they do, and they’re not feeling any pain whatsoever.
He’s saying that apparently some people aren’t paying any taxes at all. He was primarily talking about young people, too. He said, get ’em in the game. Tax some of the activities that they engage in so that they have some way of understanding what’s going on because he’s seeing a bunch of people, probably voting for Obama, who think everything’s cool ’cause they’re not feeling any pain. So he wants to transfer some pain via taxes on some of these people. And it’s an interesting point. He thinks the Internet ought to be taxed. If it were — (laughing) — I read these tech blogs, and they’re all liberals there. But the moment taxing the Internet comes up, they start having cows. They start screeching bloody murder. Sales tax, stuff bought on the Internet, they go bonkers, they lose it. The Internet ought to be the essence of freedom. There ought to be no controls, no nothing. Except they like net neutrality because they don’t understand what it is.
But it is true. You can go through the day and you can see some people who, while maybe living in this slowdown economy, recession economy, you see people that aren’t affected by it, and you just assume, well, they’re earning enough money that it doesn’t matter what their taxes are, they can still live their lives. His point is that maybe they’re not being taxed and depending on where they live, that could be the case. You know, most of the tax burden at the country is at the state and local level. I’m not talking about the amount, but you’ve got property, sales, gas, all these are state taxes, all these are local taxes.
And, by the way, folks, if you look at the 2012 election returns and throw out the presidential race, the Republicans cleaned up in a 2010 way in state legislatures and governorships. It’s the most astounding thing, when you look at the maps, the red and blue maps at state legislatures and governorships, they’re all red. Very few blue. They’re all red. I mean, there were couple of Democrat pickups, Colorado and legislatures in Nevada, I believe, but a lot of places went red. Not talked about much. There’s some people starting to cipher through this and publish the maps and so forth, but there was a 2010 turnout at the local and state level in many places. Not everywhere, but in many places.
Why are Republican governors winning? Why are Republican legislators being seated in greater numbers while Obama wins the White House? If you look at some of these states you’ll see unemployment below the national average. You’ll see other taxation lower than the national average. There may be some things that can be learned here. But, you know, on this tax business, I think we’re beyond the semantics of this now. I mean, the time to make semantic points, the election is over, and we got a real-world circumstance here. It’s predictable as the sun. Here’s Bernanke, the Fed Reserve chairman, “If they don’t get a deal, I don’t know, we might go into recession.” It’s the same old bogus modus operandi, the same old panic, the same day old, oh, woe is us. It is true except that there is this singular solution: raise taxes on the rich. That’s the singular objective that everybody has. And I’m telling you, it isn’t gonna matter a hill of beans. All it’s gonna do is further expand the government and weaken the private sector.
It’s gonna weaken hiring. It’s gonna weaken job creation. It is gonna weaken the opportunity to create wealth in the private sector. And that’s the design of it. What I’m telling you is that the damage to the private sector is still underway. The assault on capitalism and the private sector is still underway. They are not through. Look at the unions and the activities. They’re amassing against Walmart. They’re amassing at LAX trying to shut down travel on Thanksgiving, shopping on Thanksgiving. You might ask, “Well, what are they mad at? They won the election.” They’re never happy, folks. The left never, no matter what they win and no matter what you give them, it’s never enough. It’s why I’ve always been opposed to compromise with them. There is no compromising with them. There is no point where they’re ever happy.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Back to Eric in Wilmington, Delaware. Let’s say the Republicans enact his idea. We are going to raise taxes on iPhone consumption, smartphone consumption, we’re gonna raise taxes on the Internet, we’re gonna implement them. We’re gonna raise taxes on marijuana. The fur would fly, and do you know what the media would say? The media would say the Republicans are raising taxes on the backs of the poor and middle class who’ve already been creamed by the Bush economy.
All this guy was doing was talking about spreading the burden. “Hey, let’s spread the tax burden out a little bit.” And a lot of people agree with that. The media is always gonna say these things and the Democrats are always gonna say these things, and until the Republicans come up with a way around it or not caring about it, or coming up with ways to refute it by way of policy, not other words, then they are always gonna be in this fix.