Ideas Will Matter Most in 2010

RUSH: Here’s Alan in, Holmdel, New Jersey. Great to have you on the phone, sir. I’m glad you waited.

CALLER: Thank you, Rush. Yeah, I’m calling because people need to get involved in the 2010 congressional elections right now because this is the time when elections will be won and lost, because, remember, a lot of these challenges are going to be going up against incumbents with multimillion-dollar war chests. So to wait until the fall may be too late. And I know this firsthand because I’m running against one of the cap-and-trade Republicans here in New Jersey in six months in a primary.

RUSH: I actually think that that process is underway. I think this whole tea party movement is exactly what this is about, and I know those people are fired up and they are recruiting, and I think they’re going to find their recruitment efforts made easier —

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: — especially you know, wait ’til Obama does that State of the Union speech, wait ’til he starts patting himself on the back, wait ’til he starts lying through the teeth about how everybody’s going to have increased care, increased coverage at a lower cost, praising himself, ripping the Bush administration. That State of the Union speech is going to be the equivalent of himself carving his own face on Mount Rushmore, and it’s going to repulse people.

CALLER: You know, for someone like myself, who, you know, has a primary in six months against a cap and trader, you know, and the tea party movement has been involved in my race as well, we just need more ammunition to go up against these guys who are funded, you know, by special interests, unions, and those sort of things.

RUSH: Yeah, I know.

CALLER: Even Republicans.

RUSH: I know and they’re going to have slush fund assistance as well. But never before in the upcoming elections will ideas matter as much as they will in November of 2010, never before. I know all of you guys running for office need money. But I can give you countless examples where candidates who were so underfunded compared to their competition, their opponent, and still won. The mayor of Indianapolis won reelection with practically no money. It can be done. The power of ideas and the power of articulating them and communicating them, rallying the American people, being positive, upbeat, inspirational, motivational, speaking great things about the United States and our potential, and there’s no reason for this country to change, there’s no reason for us to ever believe that the best days in this country are behind us. It can be done. I know money is important, but money is going to be scarce. The economy is in the tank, ten percent unemployment and maybe higher. The power of ideas — trust me on this — the power of ideas next November will matter more than they have in a long time.

It’s why I wanted to mention this Wall Street Journal editorial today, their lead editorial. This is an illustration of the disparity in how tax increases are going to apply. Eugene Steuerle of the left-leaning Urban Institute, and they are a left-leaning bunch, think tank, Eugene Steuerle points out: ‘The truth is that no one really knows how much Obamacare will cost because its assumptions on paper are so unrealistic. To hide the cost increases created by other parts of the bill and transfer them onto the federal balance sheet, the Senate sets up government-run ‘exchanges.” Have you heard this word being bandied about? Who the hell knows what it is, a health exchange. Well, the purpose of the health exchange is ‘to hide the cost increases created by other parts of the bill and transfer them onto the federal balance sheet, the Senate sets up government-run ‘exchanges’ that will subsidize insurance for those earning up to 400% of the poverty level, or $96,000 for a family of four in 2016. Supposedly they would only be offered to those whose employers don’t provide insurance or work for small businesses.’ And this is where the left-leaning Urban Institute comes on the scene.

Eugene Steuerle says that ‘this system would treat two workers with the same total compensation — whatever the mix of cash wages and benefits — very differently. Under the Senate bill, someone who earned $42,000 would get $5,749 from the current tax exclusion for employer-sponsored coverage but $12,750 in the exchange. A worker making $60,000 would get $8,310 in the exchanges but only $3,758 in the current system.’ I know these numbers run together and it’s hard to keep track of it on radio, but this is the reason that Mr. Steuerle from the Urban Institute ‘concludes that the Senate bill is not just a new health system but also ‘a new welfare and tax system’ that will warp the labor market. Given the incentives of these two-tier subsidies, employers with large numbers of lower-wage workers like Walmart may well convert them into ‘contractors’ or do more outsourcing,’ in order to have to pay less. Taxes, spending, whatever numbers are in any piece of federal legislation that get scored by the CBO, they always score them as a static, never counting for the dynamic, never accounting for how real people will react to these new laws. And that’s why these guesses are just that, just wild guesses.

Sue in Boca Raton, great to have us with us on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, longtime listener, first-time caller, and my son actually, who’s 19, he’s listening right now. But I have to tell you, I was born in Venezuela, so I know very well what’s happening with Obama and this is becoming totally socialistic and for all those people in Nebraska that are calling, I was listening today, you’re going to need to get out every single — you’re going to knock on doors, you’re going to have to go out and get these people out of there. But I don’t know, what would you suggest we do? I mean I have called this guy here. Ben Nelson is a Benedict Arnold. They’re liars, they’re cheaters. We have lost all integrity, character, morality, and if people don’t think that one vote matters, just look what’s happening. It’s so frustrating because I mean you sit there and you don’t even know what to do. And so I’m asking you to tell all of us, what are we supposed to do? I mean we’ve called, I talk to everybody I can, and, you know, you tell me, you’re the master, you tell us what —

RUSH: This is very true.

CALLER: — we’re supposed to do.

RUSH: Very true.

CALLER: (laughing) What are we supposed to do? Except, people cannot be — we tend to be very forgetful people. You know, we forgot 9/11, and I’ve lived all over the world and we do live in the greatest country on the planet.

RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, people are not going to forget this, because if it indeed is signed into law early on next year, then the tax increases commence immediately, and people will feel the impact of this right off the bat. I wouldn’t be surprised if they delay the tax increases to 2011 as a result. But don’t worry, people are not going to forget this. Here’s the first thing I would suggest that you do. I don’t know that you are of this mind-set, but there are a lot of people today who think that there’s no difference in the two parties and that the only solution to this is a third party, particularly for a presidential candidate. Now, if you haven’t noticed, I’m not speaking to you specifically yet, Sue, on this, and your question, but if you haven’t noticed, folks, not one Republican in the Senate voted for this. There is a huge difference in the two parties. Do not think that the whole system has to be tossed aside because both parties are just as bad. Both parties have elements of worthlessness in them, but still structurally and philosophically there are huge differences. Really there’s not a whole lot you can do. The next elections are where it all is. November 2010 is where it all is. I know you’re worried people are going to forget about things by then. They’re not.

CALLER: Well, we’re not. I mean here we are, we’re down here in South Florida, and I can tell you that there is not a person that I don’t talk to, whether they were Republican or Democrat, everybody is so up in arms that I think they better pay attention. I mean I do e-mail, I do call, as a matter of fact I don’t call Washington, I call their offices even though I’m not in Nebraska or Nevada, I call them and I tell them, ‘I can’t wait for the next election,’ because I’ll go from Florida to Nebraska to knock on doors just to do that, and the American people need to understand what our Founding Fathers did, you know, so that we do the same thing.

RUSH: Let me tell you something. The Founding Fathers created this country. They rose up against a tyranny that is nothing compared to the tyranny in this health care bill. The Founding Fathers created in country over much less than what it is happening via health care and everything else in the Obama agenda. Now, I don’t want to say this the wrong way, but I actually think you’re wasting your time calling these people. I think you’re wasting your time e-mailing them. (interruption) You disagree with that, Mr. Snerdley? You do? They’re not paying any attention to it. If it makes you feel better go ahead and do it but don’t expect any reaction to it. If it makes you feel better to pepper these people with e-mails and phone calls, by all means, do it, but don’t think that’s going to change the way they vote. Until you can pay them $500 million, like Harry Reid can, you’re not going to change the way they vote.

The only answer to this is to defeat every liberal on every ballot in every state in every election. That has to be the objective. The lesson here is that liberalism is a lie, it is a destructive force, and it is un-American, and it has to be defeated. And liberals run as Democrats so there has to be a mobilization against the Democrat Party. There are no moderate Democrats. We’re seeing that here. And that’s what has to happen. The American people, in our constitutional form of government, make changes at the ballot box. You gotta get your ego out of this in terms of having these people react to you and respond to you. Even if they do, it’s going to be phony just to get you off their back. We’ve gone way beyond that. We’ve gone beyond that. What we have to do now is increase voter registration, increase voter turnout, and use the emotion that’s building up here as a means of pulling that off.

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