RUSH: Can I give you a little news item here that to me expresses perfectly where we really are, as a culture, as a country, as an economy, as a society? I have it right here. It’s a story from the AP, but it’s everywhere. “Democrats want extension of unemployment benefits for 2 million Americans as part of fiscal cliff deal.” Guess what? This is a brand-new demand. “Hovering in the background of the ‘fiscal cliff’ debate is the prospect of 2 million people losing their unemployment benefits four days after Christmas.” Okay, putting on my cap as mayor of Realville, does anybody think that either one of our two political parties wants to be blamed for that happening?

So can we conclude that there will be unemployment compensation benefit extensions? We can. Do you think the Republicans want to go to the mat on this one? I guarantee you, right now the Republicans don’t want to be seen as being in opposition to anybody getting anything. But here’s why this is happening, and that’s the real nub of this. You see, the real irony is, unemployment benefits are ending because unemployment rates are falling. It’s the way the law was written. States with jobless rates below 9% are losing their extended benefits. It was originally written, and this made perfect sense, that the unemployment compensation extensions would end as the employment situation improved. Well, statistically, the unemployment situation is improving. The unemployment rate nationally, 7.7%, down from 8.3, down from 8.2, down from 8.1, down from 7.9.

So on paper, and as far as the low-information voter is concerned, and the low-information voter is a majority of the voters, the unemployment situation is getting better. There are jobs being created, according to what they believe, ’cause the number says so, unemployment rate’s going down. Well, you would figure, if the unemployment rate’s going down and more people are getting jobs, then we don’t need to extend unemployment. No, precisely the unemployment rate is falling, we need to extend unemployment benefits.

Now, if that doesn’t tell you how utterly out of kilter, how totally out of whack we are as a country, I can’t think of anything else that does it better. Because, in other words, this is on paper now, you and I both know that the job situation is really not improving, but reality doesn’t matter. Perception is what matters here. The perception is it’s getting better. So the perception is the jobs picture is getting better. And precisely because the jobs picture is improving, we have to extend unemployment benefits. The jobs situation is improving, which means people are losing their unemployment extensions.

However, the jobs picture really isn’t improving. That’s why we need to have extended unemployment, because there really aren’t new jobs to be had. And the law says that state by state, as the unemployment rate goes below 9%, the extensions end. And for two million Americans, they end four days after Christmas. (chuckles) Did anybody think, again, that that news will be allowed to be made?

That two million people lose their unemployment extension benefits four days after Christmas? That story will not be written. That headline will not appear. Now, the Democrats would love for it to. Just to confuse or complicate things a little bit here, the Democrats would love for that headline to be written. The truth is that if two million Americans lost their unemployment benefits and it could be blamed on the Republicans, the Democrats would sign onto that right now.

But the Republicans are very, very smart, see? And they know that that’s what the Democrats intend. So the Democrats will not get that headline. Republicans are gonna outsmart them. Ha! (laughing) This is just so pathetically comical all you can do is laugh. The Republicans are going to outsmart the Democrats, and they’re gonna agree to extend unemployment Democrats so that the Democrats don’t get the story, “You lost your unemployment because of Republicans.”

So the net end of this is, that while we apparently are in an improving economy with jobs being created — so much that the unemployment rate is down to 7.7% — we still are going to have to extend unemployment benefits for two million Americans who’ve already been on unemployment six months. They haven’t gotten to their 99 weeks yet. This is a key. These people that we’re talking about haven’t hit their 99 weeks because the unemployment rate in the states they live in is under 9%.

That’s why they have to be extended. And since the Obama administration is about Santa Claus — since the Obama administration is about buying loyalty and votes, since the Obama administration is about providing for people so that they don’t have to work — why does anybody think that’s gonna stop after Obama wins (and, to boot, four days after Christmas)? So in light of that, why does anybody on our side think their taxes aren’t going up?

“Well, Rush, go back to 2010. Obama didn’t want the taxes to go up ’cause it was gonna hurt the economy.” Yeah? Well, that’s because he still had another election to worry about. Now he doesn’t for at least two years. He’s at maximum damage potential right now, max damage. He can inflict the greatest damage possible for the purpose of transforming the country from capitalism to Western European socialism.

He’s got two years here to double down, triple down, max out on it — and that’s if he cares about the 2014 midterms. But if you listen to Democrats talk, they don’t care about that. Hillary’s already been anointed for 2016. That election’s over. This AP story, even the AP admits, “Since the collapse of the economy in 2008, the government has poured $520 billion — an amount equal to about half its annual deficit in recent years — into unemployment benefit extensions.”

You see? Do you realize that aspect of this, too? No matter how much we spend on unemployment, it’s still never enough. We still need to extend them. It’s never enough. Oh, and don’t forget this. From Pelosi to Chuck Schumer to Obama and to all the Democrats, unemployment benefits are now an economic stimulant. Every dollar of unemployment benefits generates $1.73 of economic growth, you see.

And the people who voted for Obama believe that crock. But they believe it, and so we have arrived at the point where the recipient of unemployment benefits is told that he or she is helping to grow the economy! So we’ve even turned the morality aspect of this upside down. Now it is perfectly moral to extend unemployment benefits because those are growing the economy, without jobs. It’s magical! It’s a beautiful thing.

And the Democrats do it because they care. The Republicans don’t care. But Obama and the Democrats do care. Democrats claim… In this story, folks, I kid you not. They’re claiming that extending unemployment benefits will create 400,000 jobs. It’s a stimulus. It is. Unemployment benefits are a stimulant. They will create 400,000 jobs. Of course this is all a crock. But everything I’ve just said, if a low-information voter is listening, they would agree with me 100% and would think that I’ve finally seen the light.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, as you know, the White House is still in campaign mode. Obama’s still campaigning for all of this with the American people. The Democrats are arming their soldiers on Twitter. Let me give you a tweet here. This is a sample tweet that the Democrats are using to persuade people to pressure Republicans into agreeing to raise taxes on the rich. Here’s the tweet.

Quote: “Extending unemployment insurance would create five times as many jobs as Bush tax cuts for the rich.” Now, you and I know that that is patently absurd. It doesn’t even compute. It is as far from reality and truth as you can get. But it’s being tweeted like mad, and it’s being tweeted like mad to people who are going to believe it. If you are also, at the same time, saying that extending unemployment benefits…

In other words, “paying people not to work will create 400,000 jobs,” is what they’re saying. I don’t know about you, but it is scary as it can be to realize that a majority of people who vote believe that. Paying people not to work will create 400,000 jobs. This tweet here, paying people not to work will create five times as many jobs as the Bush tax cuts for the rich. I mean, this is so absurd, this wouldn’t even make good parody or good comedy because there’s not one element of truth in it.

And yet, it’s being tweeted all over the place, and Democrats are soaking it up. Paul Bedard at the DC Examiner, says, “He may have won the election but President Obama hasn’t given up the campaign. Aiming to bring public pressure on Republicans to back higher taxes for the rich in the ‘fiscal cliff’ fight, the Obama-Biden campaign today began urging supporters to join a local, online phone bank to help the president blast the GOP.”

So they have revved up their get-out-the-vote apparatus, and they’re calling people as though the election is today. Rather than tell them to show up and vote, they are telling them to put pressure on Republicans to support tax increases for the rich so as to create jobs. What are the Republicans doing in the midst of all this? I don’t even have to answer that for you.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Tom in Chillicothe, Ohio. Great to have you, sir. There you go.

CALLER: Hey, mega dittos from Ohio’s first capital.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: I want to dispute your interpretation of what Speaker Gingrich said. I don’t think he said that we couldn’t win in ’16. He said we couldn’t win as we’re constituted now. That’s what I got out of it.

RUSH: Yeah, he did say the Republican Party today is incapable of competing at whatever level Hillary Clinton would be competing at.

CALLER: I think we’re gonna need a guy that speaks Spanish, too, fluently.

RUSH: Well, did you just hear me say that the Mexicans are leaving America in greater numbers than they are arriving?

CALLER: They’re not leaving here. We got three Mexican restaurants, and we only got a town of 23,000 people and they’re all staffed by Mexicans. We had a Mexican construction crew come through here and put up a Walgreens. I mean, I don’t know where they come from but they’re here.

RUSH: Well, they come from Mexico.

CALLER: Well, I understand, but I don’t know how they got here, but they’re here.

RUSH: They drove.

CALLER: Well, probably, I guess. I’ll agree. But Obama quoted that vote. You know that. He put ads in Spanish in some markets, and I don’t think Romney did anything like that. He didn’t court the vote.

RUSH: No, but even if Romney had, what was Romney’s message versus Obama’s? See, Obama’s message is benefit after benefit after benefit after benefit, and Romney’s message was feature after feature after feature, and one of our features is freedom, and what does freedom mean to an Obama voter? I’m not trying to be a wise ass. I’m asking, what do you think freedom means to an Obama voter, as a feature, freedom, liberty, Founding Father sense, all that stuff, what does it mean to an Obama voter, not just an Hispanic, any Obama voter. What does it mean?

CALLER: I’m not real sure.

RUSH: Work.

CALLER: Well, freedom to work?

RUSH: Freedom to be the best you can be. Freedom to be great, freedom from obstacles, freedom from limitations in your way, freedom to be who you are, the best you can be. But how does that stack up against an immediate benefit offered by Obama? Whatever the benefit is.

CALLER: Well, I don’t have an answer for that.

RUSH: I don’t either.

CALLER: Doesn’t stack up very well.

RUSH: The Republicans don’t have an answer for it yet, either. But what we’re talking about here is long-term philosophical belief versus instant immediate benefit. That’s what the Democrat Party is perceived as. I mean, there are instantaneous benefits to having Democrats in power. The Republican convention, what was it about? It was about family, country, God. It was about Hispanics, Mexicans, Latinos who had moved to this country to escape bondage, to escape communist tyranny. They came here with little or nothing, and they worked hard, and they sweated, and they slaved. They waited tables. They tended bar, and their children are now senators and governors. And what’s the message? Work hard, and in 25 or 30 years, you might amount to something.

Obama’s message is, along with the mayor of San Antonio, we’re gonna extend your unemployment benefits tomorrow. You don’t have to worry about finding a job. Our message is, find an entry-level job, work hard, be the best you can be, it’ll pay off at some point down the road. Obama’s message is, why wait? Why work? This country’s unfair anyway. The rich, they’ve gobbled up all the money. There isn’t any money left for you. And there isn’t gonna be any money left for you until I tax the rich and give it back to you. There’s no point in working. The rich have all the money. The rich have all the cars. The rich have all the nice houses, but not for long, because I’m here to make sure that what was rightfully yours is returned to you.

The average Obama voter doesn’t say, “Wait a minute, I never owned a big car that the rich took. I never owned a house on the beach that the rich took.” They don’t stop to think that. They just believe, “yeah, yeah, damn straight, that was mine. It was all of ours. The rich took it.” And on promise that it’s all gonna be returned and given back, and until it happens, “Here’s a phone and unemployment check and a food stamp debit card, ’til I’m able to take care of the rich and get even with ’em, here.”

So delayed gratification that you make happen yourself versus instant gratification because it’s owed you. The Republicans are going to have to come up with a rejoinder to this. Now, the popular sentiment circulating in the party is ideas, ideas, ideas, and they will triumph. We’ve got to get our ideas spread further out beyond our choir. We have to have our ideas spread. But our ideas are still going to be ideas up against benefits. Now, you see in the real world where we live, we don’t have the money for these benefits, people are going to have to provide it to themselves because we don’t have the money. To Obama, that’s not a concern. He’ll print it. He will borrow it. He will sell the A123 battery company to the ChiComs. Doesn’t matter.

We don’t have anything in common. Obama is perfectly fine with a $20 trillion national debt. He’s perfectly fine saddling this country with debt that it can never repay. He’s perfectly fine shrinking the private sector where all of these wonderful jobs 25 years down the road are. Perfectly fine with it. People say, “Well, okay, Rush, if there is nothing in common with them…” We’ve gotta have a way to beat these people, folks, not compromise with them. We have to find a way to defeat them, and that’s going to entail getting more votes than they get, and that’s going to entail convincing people that long-term they are much better off believing in what is naturally inside them, rather than being co-opted by this message of instant gratification, because I’ll tell you one thing that isn’t gonna change.

No matter what happens, there are still gonna be entrepreneurs in this country. Maybe a dwindling number, but no matter what happens there are always going to be filthy, stinking rich liberals, at least. And they’re gonna have huge houses, and they’re gonna have multiple cars, multiple estates. They’re gonna have all the trappings of wealth. And no matter how much money Obama gives away, there isn’t enough to give away to make everybody on the recipient end or on the receiving end wealthy. And so the divide is always going to be there. The rich are always going to be there, no matter what Obama’s policies are. There may be a dwindling number of them, but this economic divide, haves and have-nots, income gap, whatever, it’s always going to be there. The thing that’s going to change is that the people in the middle class are forever going to be shut out of getting out of it, if Obama persists.

If Obama continues to win, if the Democrats, beyond Obama, continue to win, the escape route from poverty is gonna be closed off. The escape route for the middle class is gonna be shut down, which is the objective, by the way. They don’t want you self-sufficient and self-reliant. You don’t need them, then. They don’t want you being able to take care of yourself. That’s why they want to be able to give you just enough to give you what the basics are that they think make you happy. A big screen TV, food stamp debit card, a telephone, and maybe those things change as a society, maybe it’s a checkerboard in ten years, who knows what the hell it is, but whatever it is to keep you satisfied, to keep you not protesting, that’s what they’ll give you.

But they’re never gonna be able to make you rich. They’re never going to be make you wealthy. They’re never even going to be able to make you happy. An Obama voter is going to be perpetually angry, an Obama voter, a Democrat Party voter, is going to be perpetually ticked off, miserable, angry, at the unfairness of things. Because there’s nobody alive that can change unfairness or fairness or make things fair, equal, equitable, it’s not possible. The alternative to that is where everybody has a chance to improve themselves, and that’s our way. With Obama’s way and the Democrat Party way, millions and millions each year have that chance cut off.

A, they won’t be taught what’s necessary to learn in order to improve themselves. The public education system will continue to be corrupted so that what people are taught is worthless. They’ll just be propagandized so that they’re kept angry at whoever the political opponents of the Democrats are. That’s all that’s happening here. We don’t look at the world that way, and we don’t look at people that way. We want people to be happy, fulfilled, moving upward. We want people to realize the bounty, the greatness that freedom and liberty and opportunity and being an American has always meant. That’s being shut off. The roots to that definition of happiness are being closed off, roadblocks everywhere.

RUSH: Mitt Romney was running around campaigning for the office of president of the United States, and among the things that he was saying was, “When I’m elected, I will put Americans back to work,” and 51% of the people that voted said, “To hell with that!” (pause) “Participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, reached another high in September, according to new data released by the United Stated Department of Agriculture.

“The most recent data on SNAP participation were released Friday, and showed that 47,710,324 people were enrolled in the program in September, an increase of 607,559 from the 47,102,765 enrolled in August. The number of households enrolled in the program also increased from 22,684,463 in August to 22,973,698 in September, an increase of 289,235. The average benefit, according to the new data, was $134.29 per person…”

Let’s add this up. It’s $134 per person food stamps, $160 per person in poverty. So, let’s see, it’s $134, $135, $200 and… Whoa, no! It’s $295 a day on food stamps and welfare. And, by the way, we’re not solving either problem.

Benefits, folks.

Benefits!

Benefits, right here, right now!

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Jake, Clearwater, Florida. Jake, great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you today?

RUSH: I’m fine. Thank you. I’m feeling a little stupid today, but I’m hoping I can overcome it later.

CALLER: Well, I don’t believe there’s any part of the Obama agenda that isn’t tied to the Santa Claus factor, and one area where we lost that last time was in the youth vote of the university students that have been graduating over the last four, three, two years. While Obama was in office they sat around and watched their parents struggle to keep their houses, lose their jobs, their dollar values have gone down, house values have continued to drop, but yet these youths that can’t go out and find a job bought into the Obama agenda and supported him strongly.

RUSH: So how do you explain that?

CALLER: The Santa Claus factor. He just gave more to them and promised ’em more than you can possibly —

RUSH: Yeah, but look at what you just described. You just described the youths, who are seeing all kinds of economic damage while he’s president, happen, to their families. They are seeing their student loans skyrocket, which he owns, by the way. They are seeing no jobs worth having, able to be filled because they don’t exist. They are living at home in many cases, having to move back home. There’s nothing that they went to college for out there for them. By all reason and by all logic, in the past, they would blame the current occupant of the White House, who’s been there for four years for creating this mess, but, no, they blame Bush, or for some reason they think Obama is their solution.

They believe in magical thinking. They believe what Obama tells them, not what they see. Not what’s happening to them. It’s the first time in my life this has happened, by the way, that people living through horrible economic times are not influenced by it. The Republicans counted on that, and it didn’t happen. It was clear. Romney was playing defense. Everybody assumed that this economy was in such bad shape, going nowhere fast, that none of Obama’s policies had worked in reviving the economy. You know, the mistake that everybody made was — and you’ve put your finger on it in a roundabout way — the mistake we made was thinking they want an economy rebounding. That’s not what they want. A rebounding economy means jobs, which means work, which means deferred gratification.

I’ll never forget, folks, when I was growing up I was telling one of my cousin’s sons over the weekend, we’re having a talk about this, he’s not yet 30, and he has expectations. He wants a lot now, part of his generation, but he understands better than most the realities of life. But I was telling him, when I was growing up, when my father was growing up, they, meaning society, didn’t let you become anything until you were 40. You had to build up experience. You had to prove you were trustworthy. You had to prove you could do the job. You had to prove that you were dependable. You had to prove that you were worth somebody investing a lot of money in you. And that took a lot of time.

I remember when I bought my first house — well, actually my second. I don’t count the first one ’cause it was odd circumstances. I had no business buying it. There was nothing celebratory about it. But the first house in Sacramento, I bought it from the developer. And we’re at a bar, a place called Mace’s in Sacramento, and he said at me — and I’m 37 or 38 when this is all happening. “They don’t let you make any money ’til you’re 40.” And I knew what he meant. The “they” is not some conspiracy. It’s just the culture. You had to work a long time to prove you were worth being invested in, a large salary being the investment. Earning a lot, being paid a lot of money. Well, you tell somebody coming out of college today they’re not gonna let you make ’til 40, and you’ve got a fistfight on your hands, ’cause they expect to have it made the day they get out of college.

The expectations are they’re gonna have what their parents had relatively immediately, because some of their generation has. They’ve come out, big deals, lucrative deals on Wall Street, couple other places. So the exception game has changed, is my point, and there’s not a whole lot of patience to sit around and work and work and work and slave away and slave away and have it finally pay off when you hit 40, just to use a round number. So if somebody comes along and offers a benefit to you that can be realized much sooner than putting in a lot of sweat and toil ’til you’re 40, that’s a part of our culture that is vanishing. It’s not totally gone. I’m not saying that everybody has these demands to be fully vested at age 25, but there are a lot who do. And when it doesn’t happen, there’s hell to pay.

They are open to a political argument that will blame a political party for their plight rather than, hey, you know what, you just gotta be patient. It takes hard work. It takes a long time. You have to demonstrate over many years that you have talent, that you have ability, that you’re willing to show up, that you’re dependable, that you can be counted on. It takes awhile to build up that kind of experience. It takes awhile to learn enough to be able to do a job to the extent that you’re gonna be paid a lot of money for it. That patience and such is just not present in as many people today as it used to be. So that old adage, they’re not gonna let you make it ’til you’re 40, that’s out the window now. And I’m not complaining about it; it’s just the way it is. And if you’re the Republican Party you’re gonna have to come up with some answer to it.

The Republican convention answer apparently didn’t sell: Up from nothing, work hard, become somebody, become the best you can be, didn’t sell. Or maybe it was something else at the convention that didn’t sell, but whatever, it didn’t. But immediate gratification, Santa Claus, we care about you, they don’t, that did sell.