A Second Stimulus? Let’s Do Mine

RUSH: All right, there’s a headline here in The Politico. this is from yesterday: ”Skepticism About Second Stimulus’ — A day after President Barack Obama acknowledged he was exploring ‘additional options to promote job creation,’ Washington opinion leaders and policy makers on Sunday cautioned against a new stimulus package, urging more targeted steps to ease mounting unemployment.’ Ladies and gentlemen, this is unbelievable to listen to. I don’t know if you heard the Bamster, the weekend radio address and YouTube address that no one listens to, Obama said that his health care plans would help to solve our unemployment problem because it would make small business startups more affordable. Well, how is that? The only way that can be is if small businesses don’t have to provide health care for anybody and that means there’s gotta be a public option which Obama is out there denying that there’s going to be.

I don’t know what planet this man thinks he’s running these days. Did he learn nothing at Harvard about business, or did they teach him what he knows at Harvard about business? I watch all this, second stimulus now, ‘Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) , John Cornyn (R-Texas), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) in appearances on Sunday shows all rejected or brushed aside suggestions of another stimulus.’ Another stimulus? We haven’t one stimulus. There hasn’t been a stimulus. We have a reelect Democrats in 2010 bill that’s being called stimulus but it’s a Porkulus bill. There aren’t any shovel-ready jobs being worked on, nothing, it was nothing it was advertised to be and they’re talking about a second one? Ladies and gentlemen, Obama makes a universal promise. I have figured this out, and here it is. One promise fits all, you fill in the blank, will create jobs. Now he’s saying it’s Obamacare that will create jobs, small business jobs, specifically, passing his health care, which will not be implemented ’til 2013, by the way.

So we wait ’til 2013 to create small business jobs on the basis that we’ll have smaller startup costs because we won’t have to pay for health care because, why? ‘Cause there’s going to be a public option. But before it was Obamacare will create jobs, it was cap and tax will create jobs, it was cap and trade, all these brand-new green jobs, new technology green jobs. There aren’t any out there. And before that it was the Porkulus bill that was going to create jobs. All right, show me the jobs. We’ve had nine months of two job stimulus bills, and now health care will stimulate jobs, starting in 2013. Show me the jobs. Reminder here, folks. Obama inherited a mess. He loves to tell us this. Well, so did all presidents. Ronald Reagan inherited the mess that Jimmy Carter gave him. George W. Bush inherited a bunch of Clinton messes. The dot-coms collapsed, Al-Qaeda launched its attack on 9/11, 2001, and in four years we hope the next president will inherit Obama’s messes. It’s breathtaking to watch.

Do you know what it’s time for? They’re talking about a second stimulus. I want to go back to last January. The Wall Street Journal asked me if I would submit my own stimulus plan in the form of an op-ed, which I did. I think it would be wise to recall it now, because if we’re going to do a second stimulus, maybe we could do mine. My original plan was, ‘Okay, you’re going to spend a trillion dollars on stimulus.’ That was the ballpark number. I said, ‘Let’s try something genuinely bipartisan, Mr. President. You got, what, 53% of the vote, and my guys got 47%, roughly, 46%, so let’s do this. You get $530 billion of the stimulus to spend however you want, and I get $470 billion,’ whatever the electoral returns were, the exact numbers escape me for the moment, and I said, ‘Let’s compare ’em side by side. You spend your $530 billion doing whatever you’re going to do with it, and I’ll do tax cuts, I will stimulate growth, I will suspend capital gains for a couple years and I will really cut business taxes. Let’s see which one actually stimulates economic growth.’ So I propose that again today.

If we’re talking about a second stimulus, let it be the Limbaugh stimulus plan as published in the Wall Street Journal in January. I mean, what do we have to lose now? A second stimulus? The first stimulus, by the way, again I say, is working exactly as they had it planned. It’s creating no new jobs, it’s creating more chaos, it’s creating more dependents. There is no indication of any job growth any time soon. Even the administration on Friday said we hope the next three to four months maybe we’ll be showing a net gain in jobs. But Obama has the audacity to say that he’s more concerned about that than anything? He’s out there, he’s talking to his advisors every day ’til jobs are created. The man doesn’t know how to create jobs. He knows how to agitate people, he knows how to aggravate and he knows how to organize but he doesn’t believe in a private sector creating jobs by virtue of private sector growth because he doesn’t believe in private sector growth. He’s shrinking it; he is depleting capital from the private sector by design and on purpose, for the express purpose of growing the public sector.

Now, this is the UK Guardian, of all places, a story from yesterday: ‘Will California Become America’s First Failed State?’ I don’t know if you remember, last week we also had the news that California, somebody out there proposed eliminating business taxes and lowering taxes on the rich as a last-gasp effort to get the state growing again. Now, they always, in the direst of circumstances, every time liberalism fails, which is every time it’s tried, at some point you reach a catastrophe. You get to the tipping point of utter and total disaster, and then they always revert to Reaganism. They always revert to conservatism ’cause it works. It’s such a myth that this is about creating jobs and a new economy which will never have down cycles again. The only reason it will never have down cycles again because it will never have an up cycle. You can’t have a down cycle without an up cycle. If Obama contains and maintains control over this economy there’s never going to be growth and so we can’t ever have a down cycle again, he’s right about that, because you can’t have a down cycle unless you’ve had an up cycle first.

‘California may be the eighth largest economy in the world, but its state staff are being paid in IOUs, unemployment is at its highest in 70 years, and teachers are on hunger strike. So what has gone so catastrophically wrong?’ Answer: liberalism! Democrat Party. Who has run that state? ‘Patients without medical insurance wait for treatment in the Forum, a music arena in Inglewood, Los Angeles. The 1,500 free places were filled by 4 a.m. California has a special place in the American psyche. It is the Golden State: a playground of the rich and famous with perfect weather. It symbolizes a lifestyle of sunshine, swimming pools and the Hollywood dream factory,’ along with the occasional forest fire. ‘But the state that was once held up as the epitome of the boundless opportunities of America has collapsed. From its politics to its economy to its environment and way of life.’ And of course what this story doesn’t mention but it has to be said, one of the primary reasons California is failing is the conservative right-wing talk shows in that state. We all know this.

Right-wing talk shows, local right-wing talk shows in California single-handedly have brought about the disaster that is California. Just like every inside-the-Beltway commentator, be they Republican or Democrat, wants to blame Obama’s problems on me and my compadres in talk radio nationally. Well, then, I guess we have to follow suit and say all those conservative talkers in California have single-handedly brought down the state of California. Yes. And, of course, all the racist talk show hosts in California, they, too, have helped bring about this economic collapse. That’s what they want everybody to believe. ‘At the start of summer the state government was so deeply in debt that it began to issue IOUs instead of wages. Its unemployment rate has soared to more than 12%, the highest figure in 70 years. Desperate to pay off a crippling budget deficit, California is slashing spending in education and healthcare, laying off vast numbers of workers and forcing others to take unpaid leave. In a state made up of sprawling suburbs the collapse of the housing bubble has impoverished millions and kicked tens of thousands of families out of their homes. Its political system is locked in paralysis and the two-term rule of former movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger is seen as a disaster.’

Why? Because he campaigned as a conservative, he tried to govern as one, gave up on it and became a total wuss liberal pantywaist in order to get along with the other people that run the state, and, voila, we have California as it is and Schwarzenegger has the indignity of it being reported here that his approval ratings have sunk to levels that would make George W. Bush blush. ‘California is on the verge of becoming the first failed state in America.’ I wonder if Obama and his gang want to own and run California. Is California going to fail? Maybe bail it out? A very teachable moment here. If we collectively as a country don’t look at this and see a lesson on how not to do things, unlike this British writer, if you read the whole — it’s a very long story, I’m not going to read the whole thing to you. We don’t look at this as another chance for the government to fix and take over and control us and keep us blissfully ignorant. That’s the solution. What can government do to fix what government broke? Government can get out of the way, government can let the people of California take over, get rid of the tax burden, get rid of the regulatory burden, turn ’em loose, turn the entrepreneurs loose and then all they’ll have to deal with is Obama’s obstacles and not the obstacles placed in front of them by Democrats in the state of California.

ABC has this just comical headline today: ”Obama Confronts Waning Political Capital.’ — Think the White House may want to work on its vote-counting operation before the health care bill makes it to the Senate floor? Think the CBO might be just as brutal as the IOC — with scoring that counts just as much? Think the public debate over Afghanistan strategy gets any easier as events shape perceptions? Nobody will much remember a 24-hour trip to Denmark in early fall if–‘ well, that won’t be the case if I can help it, ‘– by the start of winter, there’s a health care bill in place and a Afghanistan policy everyone in the administration can agree to.’ Utter disasters, both would be utter disasters if we have a health care bill in place as designed, utter disasters. This guy had all the political capital God ever created, and in nine months it is already waning?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Do you know how much of the stimulus has been spent? (interruption) Well, it’s actually it’s more than that now. It’s 14.5% percent of the stimulus that has been spent. The stimulus, as you know, it’s actually $787 billion, but there was $200 billion of earmarks in there, too, to get these guys to vote for it. But we’ll use the $787 billion figure. It’s $84,587,463 as of September 1st. And some people say, ‘Well, why not spend the rest of the money?’ Noooo! No! That would be the biggest… (laughing) Because it won’t work. None of it’s oriented toward creating jobs. You watch how fast it starts getting spent after January, which starts an election year. The stimulus Porkulus bill is simply the Democrats Reelection Act of ’09. Now, here’s my stimulus proposal that ran on January 29th this year in the Wall Street Journal. I’m not going to read the whole thing. I’m joining it in progress here. ‘Recent polling indicates that the American people are in favor of [two different] approaches. Notwithstanding the media blitz in support of the Obama stimulus plan, most Americans, according to a new Rasmussen poll, are skeptical. Rasmussen finds that 59% fear that Congress and the president will increase government spending too much. Only 17% worry they will cut taxes too much. Since the American people are not certain that the Obama stimulus plan is the way to go, it seems to me there’s an opportunity for genuine compromise. At the same time, we can garner evidence on how to deal with future recessions, so every occurrence will no longer become a matter of partisan debate. … Fifty-three percent of American voters voted for Barack Obama; 46% voted for John McCain, and 1% voted for wackos. Give that 1% to President Obama. Let’s say the vote was 54% to 46%. As a way to bring the country together and at the same time determine the most effective way to deal with recessions, under the Obama-Limbaugh Stimulus Plan of 2009: 54% of the $900 billion — $486 billion — will be spent on infrastructure and pork as defined by Mr. Obama and the Democrats; 46% — $414 billion — will be directed toward tax cuts, as determined by me. Then we compare. We see which stimulus actually works. This is bipartisanship! It would satisfy the American people’s wishes, as polls currently note; and it would also serve as a measurable test as to which approach best stimulates job growth. I say, cut the US corporate tax rate — at 35%, among the highest of all industrialized nations — in half. Suspend the capital gains tax for a year to incentivize new investment, after which it would be reimposed at 10%. Then get out of the way! Once Wall Street starts ticking up 500 points a day, the rest of the private sector will follow. … There’s no reason, as the administration is doing, to depress their hopes. There’s no reason to insist that recovery can’t happen quickly, because it can. .. Let’s stop the acrimony, Mr. President. Let’s start solving our problems, together. Why wait one more day?’ The entire column is now posted for you to see at RushLimbaugh.com: The Obama-Limbaugh Bipartisan Stimulus Plan. They’re talking about a second one. I proposed it on January 29th of this year. Check it out.