Pelosi Pushes for Global Tax

RUSH: Nancy Pelosi, last Thursday, Capitol Hill, she held a news conference. Reporter said, ‘If unused TARP money goes for job creation –‘ and that’s what Obama’s talking about, and remember, most of the banks were forced to take bank bailout money, remember? They were sequestered in a room at the Treasury department and given three hours to sign it. So they want to pay it back now, they want to pay it back because they want to get out of the shackles of government control. They’re not paying it back because they have recovered from a crisis. The whole thing is a myth. Everything this administration does is a myth. So a reporter says, ‘Oh, wow, we have unused TARP funds, going to use for job creation. Does that mean a tax on financial transactions is off the table?’

PELOSI: I believe that the transaction tax still has a great deal of merit. The concern that many others have had is that it will send transactions overseas. Well, let’s see. But the fact is what we’re talking about is a global transaction — something that we would do in connection with other G nations, whether G8, G20, whatever the current G number is, and because it is really a source of revenue that has really minimal impact on the transaction, but a tremendous impact on helping us meet our needs, and I think there would be a market among the American people to say that we’re all participating in the economic prosperity of our country and we’re all pitching in to continue that prosperity.

RUSH: And we’re all participating in the destruction of economic prosperity, Madam Speakerette. I’ll tell you what else, this is a $150 billion global tax on every stock transaction, every one. And they think it’s going to raise $150 billion a year because it is her belief that people aren’t going to stop buying stocks because of the stock tax. Well, every time you raise taxes on an activity you get less of that activity.

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RUSH: Kelvin, I’m sorry – in Stanbury Point, Iowa, great to have you on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hi.

CALLER: Hi. Thanks for taking my call.

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: My question is, how can economists comment and predict on the economy, and especially unemployment I’ve been hearing about, right on the eve of cap and trade and health care legislation?

RUSH: An even better question is, ‘Why is there ever going to be any serious employment take place when employers do not know what all this is going to cost them?’

CALLER: Absolutely.

RUSH: So what predictions are you referring to specifically, future predictions? Just every month when we get the numbers, ‘experts were surprised, experts were unexpectedly shocked,’ or what have you? And —

CALLER: Well, all the experts talk about how much of the economy this will affect but they’re all making predictions on unemployment, and I don’t understand how they can not knowing what the effects are going to be.

RUSH: Well, it’s a good question because when they — well, they’re trying to calculate the effects, but they never do it dynamically. They’ll say, ‘Okay, we’re going to raise taxes $150 billion on stock transactions. Global stock transactions will raise 150 billion.’ And it won’t because there will be fewer transactions taking place, so the tax revenue will be less just like the income tax revenue that’s projected to increase with tax cuts — or tax increases. Never materializes, because when you tax an activity, it slows down.

So, look, all of these predictions into the future about the economy and so forth from people who are on board with the Obama agenda can’t be believed anyway. They’re sugarcoated to hide the disaster that awaits.