RUSH: Reno, Nevada. Bill, welcome to the program, sir. Great to have you.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. It’s a pleasure talking to you.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Listened for many years. There was a comment earlier this week on the radio about the lack of experience of the Democratic nominees for the presidential race had, and I remember in 1972 I voted for George McGovern, and years later, listening to PBS I heard an interview with Mr. McGovern, and he had gotten into a business venture in New England and it was a bed-and-breakfast that went bankrupt.
RUSH: Oh, yes.
CALLER: He and his partner lost money.
RUSH: I remember that.
CALLER: And he stated that if he had known what business was like, he would have voted differently in the Senate.
RUSH: He said specifically, your memory is fabulous. He said if he had known what it took to make a payroll —
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: He had never run a business. It was a little hotel or something, and it was in New England.
CALLER: Yep. Up in Maine somewhere, I think.
RUSH: Up in Maine.
CALLER: He and his partners lost it, and so that sort of brings it to the forefront. What is your opinion of the experience level of these different Republican as well as Democratic people that are trying to get into the White House? I mean, like Bush, he always seemed to be what he was, you know? And that’s why I voted for him. But after that thing from McGovern, it really — I always thought, you know, who knows what they’re doing, you know?
RUSH: This is not hard to understand. It’s hard to explain why voters don’t care about it, but it’s not hard to understand. You’re familiar with David Broder, the dean of Washington columnists, the Washington Post, right? He wrote a piece yesterday, said, you know, these Democrat candidates are running around here and they’re talking about all this experience, and they don’t have any. They don’t have any businesses. Not one of them has ever run a business. None of them knows the first thing about it, and he said, ‘This is really going to come back to haunt them on Election Day.’ Right now it doesn’t matter because it’s primaries, but any number of these Republicans are going to be able to say that they have run businesses, that they’ve made payrolls, and they’ve turned them around and they made big successes out of their businesses in the private sector.
Now, the Democrats, from Hillary to Obama, let’s throw Edwards in there, too. He’s run a business, an ambulance chasing firm. You mine for money in one of those things. You troll the streets looking for injured people. If you’re John Edwards, you need movement to make money; you need people moving around, getting in accidents. That’s not really entrepreneurial. It’s just having sharp eyes and making sure you’re the first lawyer on the scene. But these other Democrats, Bill, they don’t care. If you listen to Hillary and Obama, what are they going to do to business? They’re going to punish it. They’re going to take ExxonMobil’s profits. Hillary said this. They’re going to make sure that these businesses stop screwing the American people. Business to them is a competitor. To them, the only thing that matters — they’re liberals — the only thing that matters is government. That’s their source of power and that’s where they’re going to utilize it, and everybody is a potential target to liberals, including business.
So, to them, having no business experience is perfect, because they could say we haven’t been corrupted. They think — or they want people to believe that they think that all business is corrupt; that it cheats people; that it steals; that it treats employees unfairly; that it fires ’em left and right. They only pay the CEO a lot of money, and they deserve to be punished. They get votes on this basis. It’s called class envy. So I think Mr. Broder — I hope he’s right, but I don’t think that a lot of Democrat voters, a lot of liberal voters give a rat’s rear end about the fact that Democrat candidates don’t understand business. But it does point out one of the real, real problems, is that when you’re liberal and you believe in government, folks, your big enemy is capitalism, your big enemy is freedom and liberty, enjoyed by the American people. Your biggest friend is an always expanding government with more and more power.
That’s why liberals get so cranky and out of sorts when they don’t run government because they can’t do anything without it. They cannot empower people — well, that’s mistaken to say. They don’t want to empower people. They want to enslave people. They want to make people dependent. They can’t do that if they don’t have control of the government. They are totally at a loss. When the government’s not actively engaged in creating more and more dependence, people more and more fend for themselves. This is the ongoing battle, and that’s anathema to liberals. So it’s a great question. I’m glad you called with that, because as far as liberals and a lot of their voters are concerned, business is to be screwed, business is to be gotten even with, business is to be cut down to size, CEOs are to be punished, taxed through the roof so the little guy feels like the big guy feels some pain, too, pure and simple.
Bill in Salt Lake City, welcome to the program. Great to have you here.
CALLER: A longtime listener. I’ve been listening to you since 1985 on our station north of Sacramento in the Air Force.
RUSH: Wow. Twenty-two years.
CALLER: Yes. One of the local civilians out there turned me on to you. We listened to you as we worked. I got a question about stimulating the economy. Wouldn’t it better if we focused towards business? They do a lot to generate growth in our economy.
RUSH: How do you mean, tax cuts for business, or —
CALLER: Yes, definitely tax cuts.
RUSH: Yeah. Well, we’re going to have to wait and see the details of what the president’s proposed. It’s $145 billion, but from what he said, the vast majority of it is tax cuts, and he made a big, big deal about making the current tax rate reductions permanent, beyond 2010. He reminded people the big tax increase is going to happen if those things are not made permanent. But, about your point. When you look at small business, small business is the largest employer of people in the country. A lot of small businesses, who are Subchapter S corporations, are allowed to file their tax returns on an individual 1040. So a stimulus package that does include significant tax cuts will end up benefiting a lot of Subchapter S-corp businesses, small businesses, those businesses that do take the option of filing a personal 1040 form will benefit from this. And this, I’m sure, is something not lost on the administration.