RUSH: The media and their cherry-picked economists are doing their best to dumb down the unemployment picture. They predict a hundred thousand jobs will be created in the month, and we get around 160,000, and they run around and say “better than unexpected.” They’re all happy, and they’re looking at this through the prism of Barack Obama’s reelection. Anything they can do to cover up the bad news or lie about it and make it appear to be good news. The United States economy, this economy — sometimes I feel like I’m beating my head against a wall. Sometimes I really wonder if spending all this time on economic news makes any sense anymore.
This economy should be growing by hundreds of thousands of jobs every month. If this economy is to roar back, if we are to have a genuine recovery, if we’re to get back to some semblance of where this nation is in terms of the rest of the world and the economic engine that drives it, we’re talking 400, 500,000 jobs a month that must be created just to stay even before we even talk about any growth. They’re out there doing handstands over 160,000 jobs, and that number’s likely made up out of whole cloth because of a computer algorithm. This is the worst so-called recovery after a recession in modern American history. We are talking about the American economy here. This economy is the engine of the wealth of the entire world.
We sit here, we analyze a couple thousand jobs here, a couple thousand jobs there, a tenth of a percent increase or decrease in the unemployment rate, and we’re told what to expect when. And it’s all just a game. Everything is just a game to the elites that report this stuff, that calculate it, that disseminate it. We need to be growing by 400,000 or 500, even 600,000 jobs a month, coming out of a recession. That’s what’s standard. That’s what’s normal. This isn’t even a recovery. We’re nowhere near a recovery. There’s no strengthening going on. More and more people are becoming more dependent each day on the government. The welfare rolls — or the dependency rolls — are growing; they’re not shrinking. And that growth is being promoted and advertised and sought by this administration.
They get all excited about gross domestic product of 1.5, 1.7%. Hey, you know what? It was revised, it was actually 1.7 last month, not 1.5, whatever they’re saying. This is the United States of America that we’re talking about. Our GDP ought to be 5%, 6%, 7%, not one-and-a-half, not 1.7, not 1.9. It wasn’t that long ago that we had five, six, 7% GDP growth. It wasn’t 50 years ago. It was ten or less, 8.3% unemployment. That means that under Barack Obama, unemployment has never been under 8%. And this is even before all of the massive tax increases that are associated with Obamacare kick in, before the massive tax increases kick in when the Bush tax rates expire in January and before the regime’s massive EPA and other regulations, which are being held back until after the election, and instituted if he wins. There’s a whole bunch of damage that’s on hold, folks. There are a whole bunch of regulations and a bunch of hidden fee increases, user fees, tax increases that are not scheduled to implement until after this election.
So what’s the role of the media? You know as well as I know, the role of the media is to find good news for Obama wherever they can, even if they have to make it up. Now, I’ve said all this before, I don’t know how many times since this guy was immaculated. I’ve said all this before. The only way that we can grow this economy and create opportunities, create wealth, create jobs, see real GDP growth over 4%, see real job growth of hundreds of thousands a month, the only way to do that is to get rid of this economically illiterate president who is driven by an ideological straitjacket that makes it impossible for him to do what must be done.
What must be done cannot happen under Obama. It will not happen. He doesn’t understand it. He is in an ideological straitjacket. He is obstinate and stubborn, and he’s not all that smart. And we are paying the price. It is Barack Obama standing in the way of blue-collar jobs. It’s Barack Obama standing in the way of small business job creation, big business job creation. It is Barack Obama standing in the way of a healthy and vigorous economy. He’s a wet blanket. He’s a wet blanket that is holding this nation back while sitting there telling us that his policies have worked and that the only way out of this mess is to not go back to the failed policies of the past. The policies of the past that worked are precisely what needs to be done and cannot be done as long as he is in the White House.
There’s a giant blanket smothering this economy. He’s the one smothering our economy, smothering opportunity for young people; smothering hardworking people; smothering one industry after another. I’ve got some sound bites coming up from a manager of a coal plant asking, begging the American people to wake up. His business has just been thrown out of business because of Barack Obama and his sheer hatred for coal, the energy source, by the way, for his electric car from Obama Motors, the Chevrolet Volt. We’re talking about real people who are being smothered; real people who can’t find jobs; real people whose ability to create wealth is being impaired. These are not numbers. It isn’t a game.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I have some audio sound bites from President Obama a half hour ago at the White House, and then I have some facts and figures to illustrate how he’s lying to us. Pure and simple. I don’t know how else to say it. Let’s just get started. Here he is bragging, bragging, folks, about job creation.
OBAMA: This morning we learned that our businesses created 172,000 new jobs in the month of July.
RUSH: Didn’t happen.
OBAMA: That means that we’ve now created 4.5 million new jobs over the last 29 months —
RUSH: Didn’t happen.
OBAMA: — and 1.1 million new jobs so far this year.
RUSH: Didn’t happen.
OBAMA: Those are our neighbors and family members finding work, and the security that comes with work.
RUSH: Sadly, folks, there were 195,000 fewer people employed in this country in July than there were in June. It might have been 172,000 new jobs. That’s even debatable. But it was a net wash because — these are numbers from the BLS report. I’m not making it up. Obama’s Department of Labor’s own numbers, 195,000 fewer people employed in the United States in July than there were in June. We lost jobs. We also lost more people from the labor force. The national unemployment rate went up, 8.2 to 8.3%. One-hundred and fifty thousand people simply dropped out of the labor force. Actually that number is 155,000, which means that this 172,000 new jobs that he’s trumpeting are actually a wash, folks. No net new jobs, 195,000 fewer people employed, 150,000 simply dropped out of the labor force. That’s the pattern.
The percentage of people working continues to shrink. The number of jobs available in the country continues to shrink. Well, here’s how they got there. In June, according to the BLS, there had been 142.4 million people employed. In July, it’s 142.2. Two-hundred thousand fewer people employed. He goes out, “We created 172,000 jobs.” It’s a lie when plugged in with all the other relevant data. And that’s why the real unemployment rate, what’s called U-6, when you include the people who’ve given up looking, it’s now 15%, and our buddy Jim Pethokoukis has his analysis of the numbers out. We do this every month. We’ve been doing this every month for three years. We’ve been trying to hammer the truth home for three years.
Every month for three years, it’s the same old thing. The regime comes out, lies big time, and everybody’s trying to tell us, essentially, we’ve got a burgeoning, growing economy. We got the worst, there is no recovery. It’s the worst recovery ever since the Great Depression. I would like for the president to have told us what’s working, what it is that he’s doing that’s causing all this wonderful news to be reported today. He didn’t take any questions. Fifteen percent is the U-6 unemployment number. Fifteen percent. And if this 8.3% number, if the labor force participation rate were today what it was when Obama was inaugurated, that number would be 11%. In fact, probably could go ahead and call it 11% in order to try to make the point because the labor force has shrunk.
This man’s economy has been so bad that there are over two million fewer jobs to have in this country. That’s why everybody talks about job growth. It’s not as though there are jobs unfilled out there. It’s that there aren’t any jobs besides those that we have. And we keep shrinking, that number keeps shrinking every month. Oh, yeah, in pockets, you can find companies with openings, people looking for work. But nationwide, overall, the universe of jobs able to be filled is down by over two million. That’s why job creation, new businesses, entrepreneurial growth, that’s why the recipe that’s called for that is what’s not being done. That’s why we are talking about job growth. We need to create jobs so that people have jobs to apply for. There aren’t a bunch of jobs unfilled out there.
In July, the number of people in the civilian labor force, 155 million. That’s down by 150,000 from June. Every hard number is down. Every seasonally adjusted number is down. In fact, it’s gotten so bad that even last night, the New York Times committed a random act of journalism. On a blog post, one of their economics writers, threw cold water before he even know what the numbers were, and he mighta known what the numbers were gonna be for all I know, threw cold water on whatever was announced today because it’s really, really bad out there. The point was, it’s gonna be really, really easy to misunderstand some misleading numbers that might make it look good, or better than it is. The New York Times last night, admittedly on a blog post, random act of journalism. Here’s the next Obama sound bite. This is where he says, “We’re not gonna get where we need to be by going back.”
OBAMA: Let’s acknowledge, we’ve still got too many folks out there who are looking for work. We’ve got more work to do on their behalf. Here’s the thing: We are not gonna get there, we’re not gonna get to where we need to be if we go back to the policies that helped to create this mess in the first place.
RUSH: You, sir, are the one creating the mess. The days of who created the mess are long gone. You inherited the mess, and you’ve doubled down on it. You have made the mess even worse. It’s amazing, these guys love Reagan, now and then. They hate Reagan most of the time, but sometimes they want to invoke Reagan’s name. It’s amazing, really, except when it comes to comparing economic recoveries, then they don’t want to talk about Ronald Reagan. During this time in Reagan’s first term, our economy was growing at 6%, the GDP. Unemployment was dropping like a rock, from double digits under Carter. We were creating 600,000 jobs a month. And when Reagan was done, we had created over 20 million new jobs, economic growth for 25 years like the nation had not seen in a century. So, yeah, that’s what Obama says we can’t go back to.
He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Ideological straitjacket. A closed-minded economic bigot, is what Barack Obama is. Yeah, folks. I’m sorry. I am mad. I am mad at what is being done to this country, and I get infuriated listening to an arrogant know-it-all tell the world essentially that he doesn’t have the slightest clue what he’s talking about while sounding condescending and arrogant as though he’s got all the answers. In the meantime, you go through these numbers, 150,000 jobs, people leaving the labor force. Those are real people! Those are real lives that are being destroyed.
And I’m sorry, food stamps doesn’t make up for it. Welfare benefits don’t make up for it. Disability payments don’t make up for it. Real people are being affected by this, and it’s just disheartening to see. The greatest nation on earth, economic engine of the world. The economy that has created the wealth of the record is essentially under assault here by a bunch of arrogant economic bigots, know-it-alls, elites, nothing but a bunch of theoreticians whose only experience with any of this is talking about it in the faculty lounge or in class. And here’s one more. This is Obama. Yep, couldn’t finish this off without telling us that patriotic Americans realize they’re not paying enough taxes.
OBAMA: Keep in mind, we’re talking about folks like me going back to the tax rates that existed under Bill Clinton. If you remember, that was when we created 23 million new jobs, we went from deficits to surplus, and, folks at the top did well, too, because when middle-class families have money in their pockets, they go out and buy that new car or that new appliance or the new computer for their kids or they go out to a restaurant —
RUSH: Whoa, whoa, whoa.
OBAMA: — heaven forbid they take a vacation once in a while —
RUSH: What?
OBAMA: — and that money goes back into the economy and businesses do well because they’ve got more customers. And, you know, here’s the thing. There are a lot of well-to-do Americans, patriotic Americans who understand this and are willing to do the right thing.
RUSH: You hear that? He just redefined trickle up. Did you catch that? The money starts with the middle class, and as long as the middle class has money, then they go out and spend it, and that’s how the rich get rich. Wow! Wow! Folks at the top did well, too, because when middle-class families have money in their pockets, they go out and buy that new car, that new appliance, or that new computer for their kids when they’ve got money in their pocket. So we gotta get money into the hands of the middle class. How we gonna do that? We’re gonna do food stamps. Trickle up. So we got a brand-new economic definition here from Mr. Wizard of Smart.
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RUSH: Oh, my friends, it gets so tiresome. It really does. It’s exhausting. Let me try to explain something to our absolutely uneducated, delinquent economic bigot of a president. He talks about this class and that class, trickle down and trickle up and trickle sideways and rich folks and middle class folks and vacations and toasters and cars and rich people doing well and poor people doing well and rich people agree they’re not paying enough taxes. We don’t have economic classes in this society. That’s the whole point. It is the whole point of free markets. We don’t divvy people up this way. In a free market economy, people are moving in and out of every category their whole lives.
You’re not born into a caste in this country. You’re not born into a class that you’re forever — they look at this like they look at the economy as a zero-sum game: You’re born middle class and that’s it, you’re forever screwed unless some angel like Obama comes along. We are our own angels in a free market economy. You talk about individual human beings in this country. We don’t talk about people as members of a caste or class, as though they’re slaves to some economic group, as defined by Obama or the IRS. I don’t think this man has ever understood what the American dream means. Mr. President, I don’t think you have the slightest idea. You wouldn’t talk like you do. You wouldn’t act like you do, if you understood the whole concept of the American dream.
People in this country can come from nothing and be whatever they want to be, or they could. I try not to get too personal with this stuff. And I will admit, it gets frustrating. Three years talking about this stuff, and it doesn’t seem to matter, three years and this rotten economic news doesn’t seem to matter. It doesn’t seem to move anybody. It’s because there’s so much welfare. I don’t know why. So many food stamps. But it just doesn’t seem to bother people. But people say to me, after hearing a show like this, “Why are you so concerned? You’re doing okay, you could retire if you wanted to. What’s it matter to you?” Well, they don’t say that. They say, “You can’t fix it for everybody.”
You know, one of the things that’s always driven me, one of the things that that I get the most joy out of my life is sharing what has happened to me. And having the knowledge that it can happen to anybody, for anybody. That’s what’s eroding. That’s what’s being destroyed. It used to be, the American dream, you come from nothing, it didn’t matter where you were born, and didn’t matter where you grew up. What mattered was you, how much did you have. And I’m talking about desire, ambition, guts, commitment. You had all that, you could write your ticket. If you didn’t have any of that, you weren’t gonna be writing a big ticket. It was up to you. It was up to every American. And there used to be people who inspired others. There used to be heroes that people wanted to emulate. There used to be role models that people wanted to be like. And those people generally achieved things. They were accomplished people, in whatever field. They served as role models.
Those people are now under assault in this country. They’re the suspects. They are the targets. The people that show the way, the people that provide the inspiration, whether they know they’re doing it or not, the people that light the path, those are the people that are the enemy to Barack Obama. I want everybody to have the chance I had. I want everybody to be able to pull off what I pulled off in whatever field of endeavor they want. Whatever success is to you, I want you to be able to reach it, however you define it. That’s what’s being destroyed. That’s why I was talking to the 24-year-old guy yesterday who was talking about how much fun it is. I worry that he’s not gonna have the opportunity to create the kind of wealth that’s possible or that used to be. Or don’t even look at it that way if it bothers you. To be successful as he defines it. Whatever that would be. There’s gonna be too many shackles, too many regulations, too many taxes, too many penalties for doing well, that’s gonna take away what people earn.