Bush Proposes Stimulus Plan

RUSH: The president had a little press conference today and announced a stimulus package, $145 billion consisting primarily of tax cuts. H.R., I was having trouble, so much going on in here, did he propose a specific dollar amount rebate? Because the word was floating around before he spoke it was going to be 800 bucks per man, woman, and child. I have a Wall Street Journal story on it here, but they don’t recount that. They just give the highlight of the cost of the thing, $145 billion. They did make a pitch for keeping tax cuts permanent beyond 2010. Actually, the $145 billion is tax relief. This is one of the things that very rarely happens. Normally, when people start proposing or talking about stimulus plans — I have just one question. Okay, so we’re supposedly heading into a recession. I want to tell you, the numbers are not there yet, folks. There aren’t any numbers for recession yet. I’m not predicting there is going to be or not, but the numbers are not there in this recession business.

We’re living here in a sort of surreal universe where the whole concept has been created with daily reports by the Drive-Bys coupled with the fluctuations going on in the markets on Wall Street. So everybody’s convinced, and you combine that with the subprime crisis and so forth, and people are convinced that we’re either in one or it’s going to happen. So voila, what do we do? We start talking about stimulus packages. My reaction to this is, if we have the ability, which we don’t, by the way, that’s another point for a moment later. If we have the ability to stimulate the economy with packages like this, why don’t we do it every damn day and make sure there’s never a recession? Why didn’t we do this six months ago to keep this day from ever coming? It’s because we can’t. Government can’t. The market’s too big, it’s too complex. It’s the same thing with trying to control global warming. The climate’s too complex, so here’s what we got. The administration’s gotta talk with the people in Congress, and Harry Reid, there was a conference call yesterday, it was hilarious. Harry Reid and Pelosi, others in the congressional leadership on the phone with Bush and his team at the White House, and Reid blew up.

Dingy Harry blew up on the phone because Bush was going to go ahead and do this and propose something without getting a deal with Congress first, i.e., he was going to go and be unipartisan instead of bipartisan, and Dingy Harry didn’t like that. He started screaming on the phone, from what we’re told, and had to be calmed down by other Democrat leaders on the conference call. Bush today just mentions it, says, ‘I had a productive call yesterday with members of the congressional leadership and I was happy they shared their ideas with me.’ I can just see this little gnome, Dingy Harry, on the phone yelling and screaming as it’s reported. So what do you have with these things? Well, on one side you got plan A, stimulus package, on the other side you get plan B. Plan A has never worked. Plan B always does, when you try it. If you want to give a boost to the economy, whether it’s needed or not, you would think the answer would be obvious, do plan B. Plan B’s the one that always works. My friends, this is an election year. Plan A doesn’t work, but it gets votes. That’s the problem. Plan A, just give money away. As Fred Thompson said, just send helicopters out and drop crash in all your neighborhoods.

Now, will we do plan A or plan B? It depends upon if you’re serious or if you are a politician. Plan A, pass out a few bucks, walking-around money to every voter, every household. It’s never worked. Plan B, boost economic activity, produces growth, cut taxes, make tax cuts permanent. Plan B is what President Bush proposed. Now, I’m being cautious here because I don’t know if he or some in his administration later on are going to propose elements of plan A to go along with plan B. The saddest part of all this is that everybody knows that plan B is the way to do it, but many in Congress are going to reject it as vigorously as they reject victory in the Middle East. I just want to remind you, probably blowing against the wind here, but the numbers that signal recession aren’t there yet, and it’s going to be months before they are. I’m not going to call a recession. I don’t know. But I just know that we’re not in one now.

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RUSH: Philadelphia and Josh. You’re next, sir. Hello. Josh, are you there?

CALLER: Yeah, I’m here. How are you?

RUSH: I’m fine, sir. Thank you.

CALLER: So I was just wondering about the Bush tax rebates, I guess. I was just wondering how does he plan to do it?

RUSH: I don’t know that he’s going to do it. I haven’t heard that there are going to be any rebates in this. There was a lot of news before he spoke today that there are going to be $800 rebates, but his speech did not talk about that, he just talked $145 billion dollar stimulus panel. Do you know, by the way, a little observation, that Bush’s $145 billion stimulus package is more than the two stimulus packages offered by Hillary and Obama combined? Josh, are you there?

CALLER: I’m here. Sorry. Yeah, I was just wondering, like, how does he plan to do it, by printing more money or does he plan on doing it through the actual tax cuts? Because the way I understand economics is if he prints more money, then doesn’t that cause inflation, which would actually be a detriment to the economy. I mean, I’m all for tax cuts, but it just seems to —

RUSH: That’s a good question. I don’t know if we print more money or just get it from our loan reserves or call the ChiComs for it, maybe the Saudis. We have plenty of places we can go to get it. You know, there is an economic stimulus plan C. I erred when I said there’s only plan A and plan B. Plan A, give everybody a little money; give every house a little money. Yeah, yeah, yeah, election year especially, works really great. Plan B, stimulate the economy, tax cuts, making tax cuts permanent beyond 2010. Plan C, don’t do anything. Plan C is not on the table. But it is an option.