RUSH: Warren Buffett, his picture headlines the Drudge Report, and the headline is: ‘The Savior?’ with a question mark. Now, I want to know something. Here’s what Warren Buffett did. He just purchased $5 billion worth of Goldman Sachs stock. It’s a publicly traded company. Anybody can buy shares on the open market, but not shares like these. Warren Buffett, who is a Democrat, gets 10% interest a year — every year forever. You can’t get that. He gets options to buy another $5 billion worth of stock at a guaranteed price of $115 at any time in the next five years. You can’t get that. (interruption) No, I can’t, either. (laughing) I can’t! they’re asking, ‘Can you get that, Rush?’ No. I can’t get it. I don’t have $5 billion to invest in Goldman Sachs, anyway. It’s a specially created class for this particular situation.
Now, I don’t totally begrudge Warren Buffett and his Berkshire Hathaway coup. I really don’t, but I do have some reactions to this. What I do resent about Warren Buffett is when he runs around and plays the fairness card on income taxes and death taxes. Here’s a guy out there getting the best deal he can for himself, and it’s a sweet deal that nobody else can get, and yet there’s no fairness in this, and yet when it comes to the death tax or income taxes, ‘We’re going to be totally fair, we’re going to take as much from people who have the most as we can, ’cause it’s not right they should die and be able to leave all that to their families.’ Now, if we can’t get Warren Buffett’s stock visions, if we can’t get the deals that he’s getting such as this from Goldman Sachs, why should we be saddled with his tax ideas?
But I also have another question to ask about this. ‘Cause, you know, Warren Buffett, ‘Savior?’ He’s a guy who buys low and he sells high. Why isn’t he hammered for being a greedy capitalist vulture feeding off the misfortune of others instead of being portrayed as a savior here. Warren Buffett is doing what all liquid Americans do, he’s buying value, except that you can’t get the value from Goldman that he got, but this is what the wealthiest 1% of Americans do when they have disposable income: They make our economy work even in tough times. This is a buy opportunity, and he sees it. Now, while we’re talking about an upside down world here, look at Iraq, two years ago. Follow me on this. The people of Iraq were siding with Al-Qaeda out of fear when their best friends were trying to save ’em: Us.
Now, two years later, that ravaged, destroyed, lost country is looking more and more like a shining city on a hill. It’s amazing what a strong military and ‘drill here, drill now’ can do, and what it has done for Iraq. Americans who are shaking with fear right now might remember that. Obama wanted us to surrender in Iraq, and it would have destroyed that country. He wants us to surrender our capitalist foundation today, and that will destroy our country. You can look at our economy one of two ways. Our economy is either on the verge of socialism or the verge of booming. There’s a Texas congressman, Jeb Hensarling, and he’s got a great idea: cut corporate and capital gains taxes for two years. Just cut the capital gains tax for two years: a temporary cut for two years and watch the $700 billion that’s supposedly necessary for the bailout all of a sudden not become necessary.
The government really wants to do something here, they’ve got plenty of ammo. They have plenty of things at their disposal without printing 700 billion new dollars. So you cut corporate and capital gains taxes, you drill everywhere, you drill now, and you keep Obama out of the White House — and look out! We’re going to be booming. Or you don’t do any of this, you raise all these taxes as Obama is promising to do. You guarantee that our military loses in conflicts around the world. There will be no drilling whatsoever for any new energy sources, all you’ll get’s a tire gauge. Hello, socialist foundation to our. Are times bad now? That’s the strange thing. They’re not.
The overall economy, the fundamentals, they are there. They are there. We are teetering. We’re teetering. We have choices to make. We either make socialist choices or we make free market choices that benefit people like Warren Buffett who’s being called a savior. Warren Buffett is not being socialist here. Warren Buffett is the epitome of capitalist here, going and getting this deal that he got from Goldman Sachs for giving them $5 billion. He is a steely-eyed capitalist. He is looking for value for himself and the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway. That’s what oil companies do when permitted by the government, the same government that destroyed the home mortgage market and put us in the situation we are in today.
If we just get out of the way of capitalist vultures like Buffett and get out of the way of greedy oil barons who make 8% after tax profit, this country can be more prosperous and more free than it ever has been. But if we put socialists like Barack Obama in charge, we run the risk of looking more like Iraq looked two years ago. So God bless Warren Buffett, but let’s learn the lesson. What’s saving Goldman Sachs? The reason he’s being called a savior not ’cause he’s doing anything socialist, is he?