RUSH: For crying out loud, did you see Obama has decided — now stop and think of this for a second, folks. Obama has decided that his historic legacy as president is going to be his handling of the economy. Now, when you hear that, I know full well what your reaction is. Is that really what he thinks his big achievement has been? What about Obamacare? What about immigration? What about foreign policy? I mean, he gets the Nobel Peace Prize. What about all these things that he was elected to do?
I saw somebody on TV saying — or maybe I was reading it. It was a leftist and they were proclaiming their disappointment in Obama and their reason why they think he’s a failure. And the reason was he was going to unite everybody. This is what this guy said, might have been a woman, I don’t know. Everything’s jumbled together because I’ve been in a pressure cooker all morning. I didn’t know it, but I apparently was.
Anyway, this guy was going on and on about how, yeah, this is a dismal failure. He was going to unite us. He was going to change Washington.
He said that’s what all of us that voted for Obama really thought he was going to do. He was going to get rid of the partisanship. He was going to cross the aisles and everybody was going to be happy Kumbaya.
I could have told him the exact opposite was going to happen as it has. But nevertheless, in his mind, that’s why Obama is a failure. But you have Obamacare, the failure to unite Washington, the failure to change our politics, the failure to make the world love us or what have you. So it’s come down to this. Obama has decided that the economy’s going to be his legacy, his handling of the economy. And there’s an article on this in the Hill. TheHill.com, and it’s not the Onion. It’s a real story. It’s not a satire piece.
Never mind that Obama has given us the worst economic recovery from a recession probably in our history and that’s assuming that we have even recovered. I can’t believe what I’m holding here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers. I’ve got an AP story here that I really don’t believe that I have. AP actually has released a report that contrasts the view of a robust, roaring economy and recovery with the fact that there aren’t any high-paying jobs to be found.
“The US unemployment rate has plunged since the start of last year to a five-year low of 6.1 percent. And the July jobs report being released Friday will likely show a sixth straight month of healthy 200,000-plus gains.” Now, before I go any further, I know it’s not really 6.1 percent. The only way they get there is because of the number of people leaving the workforce, which makes the whole universe of people working smaller, which changes the percentages. We’ve got the highest, well, the lowest is the right way to say it, labor force participation rate since 1978.
We’ve got nearly 100 million Americans not working. I don’t care what the unemployment rate is. They could say it’s 4.7 percent like it was with Bush and it wouldn’t mean anything now. It’s like everything that this regime has touched, every institution and tradition has been corrupted to one degree or another. But let’s stick with this for the sake of the story because it’s what comes next that I don’t believe I’m holding here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers, because it’s from AP. The US unemployment rate plunged since the start of last year to a five-year low of 6.1 percent. Jobs report Friday supposedly 200,000 more jobs more created, yada, yada.
“Yet for Douglas Hunter and millions like him, happy days aren’t quite here again. Hunter earned $14 an hour cleaning oil drums before the Great Recession seized the economy and his job was axed. At 53, Hunter now works three days a week for $9.25 an hour, mopping floors and fixing fryers at two McDonald’s restaurants in Chicago. ‘If the economy is getting better, I’m not sure for whom,’ he said. ‘It certainly hasn’t trickled down to me.'”
Whoa! AP actually correctly portrays trickle down in a piece critical of the status quo, which would be Obama. And then they say this: “The Gallup Organization has found that consumers’ view of the economy is the glummest it’s been in seven months.” And yet here’s Obama saying he’s decided that his historical legacy as president is going to be his handling of the economy. This AP story is right on the money. They can give us all the Washington statistics every month they want, how unemployment’s coming down and how all these jobs have been created, but it’s not happening in a vacuum.
Wait till you hear that 80 percent of the population growth in this country is now due to immigration, a full 80 percent. Eighty percent of US population growth is from immigrants now. The birth rate is below replacement levels in this country. Immigration, in uncontrolled numbers now, is accounting for 80 percent of our population growth. And you know that the job situation for those people is, at best, part-time. It certainly isn’t high wage. That’s why the Chamber of Commerce wants them here. So the AP actually is right on the money, as is Gallup.
“As the economic recovery enters its sixth year, a number of factors help explain why many Americans don’t feel better off: Income hasn’t rebounded. Millions are working part time even though they want full-time jobs. It’s taking longer to find work. People are still struggling with mortgage debt. Some feel down about the economy because of their political views. And most people don’t feel free to spend as much as they used to,” because they don’t have the money and their credit cards are maxed out. And yet they get up every day and now here’s Obama saying that his historical legacy is going to be his handling of the economy.
Think about it. This means the public now views Obama’s handling of every other issue as so terrible, as so bad, that he has to turn his handling of the economy into his legacy? That’s the way to look at this, how bad everybody must think everything else is, including the signature issue, Obamacare.
Man, if I had passed Obamacare… If I was a socialist, a leftist, and I finally got universal health care? If I got government-sponsored health care, that would be… I’d be singing. I’ll be crowing. I would be beating my chest! I don’t care what else was going on. That is so huge. They have commandeered one-sixth of the economy, and he doesn’t even want to make that his legacy? I understand why. Everybody hates it. And that is my point. He’s got nothing to hang his hat on in terms of historical legacy.
So he’s going to go to the economy, and he’s going to rely on the media to convince people that while their lives are stagnant, everybody else’s must be going through the roof. “It must be! It must be cooking out there. There must be some great recovery going on out there, and maybe, maybe my day is coming.” That’s what he’s going to have to create, because it isn’t chugging along out there. The economy is not recovering.
More part-time jobs than full-time every month. Part-time jobs do not pay a lot. You don’t build a career on part-time jobs. The fundamental reason why all this is happening is the pie that everybody wants a piece of… That’s just the private sector. When we talk about “getting your piece of the pie,” it’s a name for the economy, the private sector. Well, when the government comes in and absorbs one-sixth of it in the health care takeover called Obamacare, the pie gets smaller.
As government grows, how does it grow? What’s government doing? It has to take money from other people, allocate it to itself to spend it however it wishes. It’s called redistribution; it doesn’t produce anything. The private sector is getting smaller. The pie is all getting smaller, and that’s why there’s less of it to be had for people. You want to talk about why the gap between rich and poor is expanding? It’s because the pie’s getting smaller, and the pie can only get smaller as government grows.
That’s the argument against government expansion in its simplest form. The argument against government expansion is that it shrinks opportunity for everybody who doesn’t work or have anything to do with government. So now we’ve got circumstances here where we’ve got a president literally on the ropes, and the modern-day Republican Party is acting like it’s on defense, acting like it’s to blame for all this, acting like they think that everybody’s blaming them for all of this.
(pause) What other explanation could there be? They actually are running around thinking that most Americans think they are the reason they can’t find a job; they are the reason their health care is screwed up. They believe that Obama has been inoculated because the media never criticizes Obama. So they believe the American people give Obama a pass.
They believe that the American people believe everything the media says about them and Obama, and therefore they’re constantly on defense. So now they want to pass an immigration bill that’s going to go nowhere, knowing full well it’s going to go nowhere, just so the Hispanics will love them. Just so they can send a message that they love the Hispanics. But the message isn’t going to get out. This is not how you convey love and respect anyway.