RUSH: The Democrats are in circle the wagons mode. The economy is contracting. This morning on the Senate floor this is Dingy Harry, the Senate majority leader.

REID: We are in a recovery. The moral of the fourth quarter is a repudiation of the Republican playbook.

RUSH: Of course it is.

REID: Growth went down in the fourth quarter because of reduced government spending —

RUSH: Of course it did.

REID: — and the reticence of the private sector as Congress fought over the fiscal cliff.

RUSH: That’s right.

REID: The economy was rejecting the austerity and brinksmanship.

RUSH: That’s exactly right. See how this works? The economy contracted. I gotta remind you, at the end of September, the third year calendar quarter, economic growth rate in September was 3.1%. Something happened, though, folks, I don’t know what. Between the end of September and the end of the year, in October, November, December, something happened, and it caused the economy to stop growing. Something happened, I don’t know what it would have been, but something happened in there that caused the economy to stop growing.

Here’s Dingy Harry with the answer. “Oh, yeah, we’re still in the recovery. The economy contracted, yeah, but we’re still growing. What that fourth quarter contraction means is just a repudiation of the Republican playbook. Growth went down in the fourth quarter because of reduced government spending.” That’s right. You know the Republicans engineered that? The Republicans cut spending. Poor Obama couldn’t do anything about it. Poor guy’s hands were tied, he was handcuffed. He just won the election, and the Republicans somehow went in there with swords and stuff and they just started slashing spending. They cut a lot of spending out there. And the people of this country didn’t like that.

The American people saw that the Republicans were cutting spending in December, and they didn’t like it, and they got all depressed. So they stopped spending money because the Republicans were cutting spending. It’s what Dingy Harry is saying. You stop spending. You stop buying gas. You stop buying cars, stop buying TVs, stop buying cell phones, stop buying iPads, who knows, whatever, because you saw the Republicans slashing spending. And, yeah, they were gonna take us over the fiscal cliff. So the Republicans are responsible. And, of course, folks, the low-information voters soak all this up and believe it.

The truth of the matter is, of course, you know and I know there weren’t any cuts in government spending. I mean, that’s such a laugher. Spending continues to skyrocket so much that we gotta build and expand the debt limit to accommodate it. There isn’t any spending cuts. So age-old question, how do you counter this? I mean here you have the Senate majority leader lying, brazenly, openly, that there were spending cuts, that the Republicans did it, that caused the economy to shrink, which took everybody’s confidence in the economy away. So it’s the Republicans’ fault. They lost the election, by the way. The Republicans lost the election. They held the House. Still, they were able, in the House, the Republicans were able to cut all that spending.

Obama wasn’t looking. It was a trick. The Democrats in the Senate weren’t paying attention, the Democrats in the House. They were all down at Casa de Campo down there in the Dominican with Menendez, so the Democrats weren’t paying any attention. They were having fun with the ladies down there, flying down on Democrat-donated corporate jets. Bob Menendez led a troupe of people down there, having fun with the babes. And Obama, he’s playing golf or whatever he’s doing, and the Republicans went in there, Boehner, they cut spending. And we didn’t know it ’til yesterday.