RUSH: Obama was just — what? — ten, 15 miles south of us this morning. He was down in Lake Worth, Florida, and this is among the things he said.
OBAMA: Yesterday I heard Senator McCain say I’m more concerned with who gets your piece of the pie than with growing the pie. But make no mistake about it, after eight years of Bush-McCain economics, the pie is shrinking. It’s not growing. That means lower wages and declining incomes, plummeting home values, rising unemployment. So we’ve seen what happens with their policies. We’ve had an eight-year experiment. We see where it leads. This economic crisis is the final verdict on that failed leadership. It is time to try something new.
RUSH: All right, now, none of that’s true. But what is the ‘something new’? We’ve had eight years of tax cuts; we have had eight years of profound economic growth. It wasn’t until Democrat-inspired crises in the home mortgage industry surfaced that the economy took its sharp turn. Don’t buy into all this, folks. The last six years, last seven years have been an economically robust time in this country, when you consider what we had to deal with. We had to deal with a recession that Bush inherited coming out of the Clinton years, and then 9/11 happened. We had to rebuild the economy after that. We had tax cuts; people’s incomes grew. The economy expanded. The pie did grow. Health care spending went up; government spending went up.
Everything was going up, and then all of a sudden this Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac stuff hit. That’s when everybody thinks… This is the challenge McCain has. Because there’s no doubt that to the extent that there are people unhappy out there, it’s because of the economy; and the natural tendency is to blame the party that holds the White House, in this case Bush, i.e., Republicans. But this economy is directly traceable to Democrats from Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton on, to Barney Frank, to Chris Dodd, the whole mess of them. McCain is going to have to tie them together. I just don’t see him doing it. He still rips on these Wall Street greedsters, and he does reference government corruption.
Well, the government corruption is what led the Wall Street greedsters doing what they were doing, and the bankers doing what they were doing. It was Democrat policy that forced these loans to people that had no business paying them back. Now the Democrats are out whining and moaning about tens of thousands of people will soon be homeless because of this and we’ve got to do something about it. Well, what’s ‘the thing’ we have to do? We have to raise all of our taxes to bail out these people who are going to be foreclosed on. We’re working on the audio of this right now. But the challenge McCain has here is to peg this economy to Democrats and their policies, because that’s the culprit. They are the culprit.
Obama says, ‘McCain says, I’m more concerned with who gets your piece of the pie than growing the pie.’ He doesn’t deny that, by the way, in this statement. ‘Make no mistake about it, after eight years of Bush-McCain economics the pie is shrinking. It’s not growing.’ Only in the last quarter can you say that the economy has not grown! The economy has grown, GDP has grown throughout the past seven years. Only in the past quarter or so has it slowed down to the point… We’re not even in a recession! Obama can’t even be up front about this. Lower wages, declining incomes? Wait ’til you see what his tax increases will cause in both of those categories. Plummeting home values? I wonder why that happened? That’s traceable straight back to the Democrat Party.
I know a lot of you people think I’m just being partisan. I’m not. Being factual with you here. All of this that’s happening in the home market is brought about by all these subprime loans that were given to people had no business being given loans because they never had the opportunity to pay ’em back. It was what Barney Frank called ‘affordable housing.’ What we’ve had is not an eight-year experiment. What he’s talking about is capitalism doesn’t work. Capitalism doesn’t work. We’ve got to find something new, and what is that something new? Some people call it socialism. I don’t know if that resonates with a lot of people. Pretty much what Obama is going to do is punish every achiever he can find. I don’t care how much income you earn, you’re going to be punished for earning it. Here, Barney Frank, closing bell, CNBC yesterday, Maria Bartiromo, ‘Do you want to encourage Obama to pull in his spending plan a little bit?’
FRANK: Well, I think at this point there needs to be a focus on a — an immediate increase in spending and I think this is a time when deficit fear has to take a second, ehhh — a second seat. I do think this is a time for a very important kind of dose of Keynesianism. Yes, I believe later on there should tax increases. Speaking personally, I think there are a lot of very rich people out there whom we can tax at a — at a point down the road, and recover some of this money.
RUSH: ‘Recover some of this money’ by taxing some rich people down the road. ‘A lot of very rich people out there whom we can tax at a point down the road to recover some of this money.’ He’s talking about the deficit spending. He wants new spending. He wants the government spending like drunken… (well, I don’t want to insult sailors) and to fix the deficit spending that occurs. They will raise taxes on ‘the very rich at a point down the road and recover some of this money.’ Now, I know a lot of people have a resentment for the rich. A lot of people say it’s just unfair and so forth. But you have got to change your attitude about this. The old American dream was becoming rich. The old American dream was becoming the best you can, experiencing the greatest amount of prosperity possible. The Democrats have succeeded in tarnishing these people and making them evil and making them the enemy of the United States. This is what Obama means when he talks about trying something new. Maria Bartiromo then said, ‘Do you think we’ll actually see this market return to focusing on fundamentals earnings news like the quarterly numbers that we’re talking about right now in the near future, or do you think that we’re still very focused on the stimulus plans and alleviating this troubled banking system?’
FRANK: I obviously hope we will get back to the fundamentals. I think it’s clear that the fundamentals are better than the psychology.
RUSH: What? What did he just say? He just said, ‘[T]he fundamentals of the economy are better than the psychology.’ Thank you, Congressman Frank, for opening up and being honest. Now, when John McCain said this, the Obama campaign went out and reamed him a new one. McCain said, ‘The fundamentals of our economy are strong.’ ‘That just shows how out of touch that old man is,’ they said. Now here’s Barney Frank admitting, ‘the fundamentals are better than psychology,’ meaning the economy is in far better shape than what you people have been led to believe and what you have soaked up. Barney Frank even said so.
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RUSH: Now, here’s Obama once again talking about the pie, mentioning that McCain’s accused him of not wanting to grow the pie, said this in Lake Worth, Florida. Don’t forget, Michelle Obama, they don’t want the whole pie, she told a woman, ‘There are some who do but most Americans feel blessed just being able to thrive a little bit, but that’s becoming more out of reach. The truth is in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system somebody’s going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.’ Barney Frank, once again, yesterday on CNBC.
FRANK: Well, I think at this point there needs to be a focus on a — an immediate increase in spending and I think this is a time when deficit fear has to take a second, ehhh — a second seat. I do think this is a time for a very important kind of dose of Keynesianism. Yes, I believe later on there should be tax increases. Speaking personally, I think there are a lot of very rich people out there whom we can tax at a — at a point down the road, and recover some of this money.
RUSH: This is just — folks, how can anybody who hears this not be affected by it? In the first place, look at the deficit spending these bailouts have already added. Now he wants to spend even more, cementing the Democrats’ hold on the electorate, and to make up for the difference, ‘They’re plenty of rich people out there we can tax down the road and recover some of this money,’ that we’re going to spend. Bartiromo then said, ‘You agree taxes should go up, then, for the top earners, even in this slow environment?’
FRANK: No, not right away — I — I –I want to wait a year for that.
BARTIROMO: Did you ask him to push the plan back, then? Because he wants to raise tax as soon as he gets in office, correct?
FRANK: Well, I don’t think he has said recently he’d do it as soon as he gets into office. I do think that we can incur a short-term deficit increase and not raise those until later in the year.
RUSH: One of the premises of the Obama campaign is how out of control the deficit is and how irresponsible the Bush administration has been with spending. And here’s Barney Frank who wants to ladle it up, load on even more spending and then raise taxes on the rich down the road, ‘There are plenty of rich people out there we raise taxes on. We can get that money back, but we don’t want to do it next year. We want to give the deficit spending a time to work.’ Now, the point about this is, he’s admitting that it’s not a good idea to raise taxes in a slow economy. That’s what he’s saying. So if it’s not a good idea to raise taxes in a slow economy, why is it a good idea to raise taxes any time? If raising taxes in a slow economy is going to retard economic recovery, wouldn’t raising taxes in a good economy slow it down? Especially the kind Obama’s talking about. Obama’s talking about marginal rates on achievers, not just the rich.
You’ve got to get this word ‘rich’ out of your mind. He’s not talking about the rich; he’s talking about achievers. And, by the way, he is going to cut into your Social Security benefits. Democrats are out talking about how McCain’s going to cut Medicare and so forth. We’re going to go into great detail on this as the program unfolds. Some people have taken in-depth looks at Obama’s tax plan and he’s been out there saying 95% of the American people going to get a tax cut. We now found out how. He’s going to give money away. He is going to call stimulus checks tax cuts, even for people who do not pay taxes. And people said, ‘How are you going to give a tax cut if people don’t pay income taxes?’ ‘Well, everybody pays payroll taxes and we’re going to give ’em a payroll tax credit.’ Well, you know what the payroll tax is. That’s what funds Social Security. May I have the attention of all of you seasoned citizens? You damn well know, I’ve talked to enough of you, you don’t even want your own kids getting a tax cut because you’re afraid it will incur negative results on your monthly Social Security checks.
I’ll never forget that woman that called from somewhere off the Mass Turnpike, was all upset that somebody was going to cut taxes because it would mean less Social Security to her. So listen to this. If Obama is going to make sure that people who don’t pay income taxes get a tax cut by giving them a payroll tax credit, that means that less money will be pouring into the Social Security trust fund, i.e., the lockbox, and that is going to have a negative impact on Social Security benefits, that’s how he’s going to do it. Algore ought to be coming out of the woodwork saying, ‘I can’t support Obama. He’s messing with my lockbox.’ That’s exactly what Obama is going to do. That’s how this is going to happen. Now, on CNBC this morning a show called Squawk on the Street, cohost Mark Haines was interviewing Eugene Ludwig, the former controller of the currency and now a Wall Street executive and Obama supporter, and they are discussing how many homeless will be produced by the housing crisis.
HAINES: What homeowners are being thrown out of their homes?
LUDWIG: Ten thousand a day, I’ve been told, the initial rate is huge.
HAINES: Here’s where you run into a political problem in my opinion because an awful lot of people, I mean they are mad enough that we’re bailing out, they perceive we’re bailing out Wall Street, now you want them to bail out their neighbor who lied, probably lied on his mortgage application and couldn’t afford the house he bought.
LUDWIG: Mark, I realize that this is not necessarily popular politically, but in fact a lot of these people were victimized. They were sold products by unregulated institutions, mortgage brokers, people thought they were getting one thing, got another, and we really have to show compassion here. We have thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens that are going to be on the street. That’s not acceptable in America.
RUSH: This is an Obama supporter by the name of Eugene Ludwig, who once again is lying through his teeth. ‘They were sold a bill of goods, they were sold products by unregulated institutions, mortgage brokers, people thought they were getting one thing and they got another.’ Nothing could be further from the truth. There were not greedy, predatory lenders. I’m sure there were some but this whole thing that we’re talking about here was brought about by the fisted, big hand of government demanding these loans be made to people who couldn’t qualify for them. And now you hear an Obama supporter, what does he say, 10,000 a day are being thrown out of their houses, he’s told. Where are these 10,000 a day on the street? You seen ’em? 10,000 a day for how many days? Ten days, 20 days, 30 days? We got 300,000 people out there on the street? Now, where are all these homeless people? Where are they, Mr. Ludwig? So we’re back to making all this up. Now we’ve got a crisis, people being thrown out of their homes because of greedy Wall Street people. This is all traceable to the Democrats in Washington.
Folks, if we could get rid of the Democrats who were responsible for this problem, the Republicans would win this election in a landslide. And so now Mark Haines gets it exactly right. Now we’re going to start bailing out these people who were the victims of all of these horrible products, they were lied to because we have to show compassion. So we’re not only going to bail out the banks and bail out the Wall Street firms, whoever we’re bailing out, now we’re going to bail out all the people being foreclosed on. And guess who’s going to pay for that? You are. Do you realize how little money we’re all going to have left after Obama gets through taking from the achievers of this country what he needs? This is stunning stuff! A brief time-out. We’ll come back. Joe Biden now on the front pages and the lead item on all the Drive-By network programs over his promise yesterday that Obama will be tested in his first six months because world terrorist dictator leaders think he’s weak.
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RUSH: The gasoline price now is officially below three dollars a gallon. The national average is below three dollars a gallon. In some parts of the country it’s two and a half dollars. Some places, in the Midwest. You remember when Obama said he was happy with gas prices at four bucks a gallon? Remember it got up to four bucks, Obama said he was happy with that. He just didn’t like how fast the price rose, but he was happy with the price at four bucks. Now, one would have to assume that Obama is unhappy today with gas prices now tracking down toward $2.50, $2.25 a gallon. What will Obama do to get gas prices back up to where he likes them? He wants expensive gas just like he wants higher taxes.