RUSH: New York Times today. I read this story, and even though I know the New York Times and even though I know what Obama and his administration is all about, it made me sick. That sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that I had Sunday. ‘In Health Bill, Obama Attacks Wealth Inequality.’ This is from an approving New York Times, David Leonhardt. ‘For all the political and economic uncertainties about health reform, at least one thing seems clear: The bill that President Obama signed on Tuesday is the federal government’s biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago.’ Vindication once again, a crucial story. They got their bill, and now they can proudly trumpet what its real purpose is, the redistribution of wealth to make everybody the same. Dick Durbin this morning on Morning Joe, Scarborough says to him, ‘Most Republicans I talk to support it but we don’t believe you raise taxes on people that make wise investments during a recession.’ What’s Scarborough talking about? Most Republicans I talk to support it? What Republicans is he talking to? Anyway, what this is about is raising taxes on investments, or taxing investments, raising taxes on investment income, Medicare taxes and all the rest. Here’s what Durbin says.
DURBIN: If you’re making over $200,000 a year, you’re going to pay slightly more in taxes. It’s the cost, I think, of having the kind of America that we want to have.
RUSH: It’s the cost of having the kind of America we want to have. It’s going to take us a long time here to put the legislation together to control the people, says Dingell. The kind of America we want to have to, says Dick Turban, and now the New York Times. The federal government’s biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago. Are we to believe that 30 years ago everybody was the same? So, what are they attacking here? The Reagan years. ‘Over most of that period, government policy and market forces have been moving in the same direction, both increasing inequality. The pretax incomes of the wealthy have soared since the late 1970s, while their tax rates have fallen more than rates for the middle class and poor,’ and that, my friends, is an utter lie. It is utter BS. The poor do not pay income taxes. Fifty percent of the American people don’t pay — well, it’s 47%, 46 — don’t pay income taxes whatsoever. They get paid by the government not to pay taxes. It’s called the earned income tax credit.
How many years have we had the chart on my website that shows who’s paying the tax burden? Yes, the rates of the wealthy may have come down from 70% to now 36, but the percentage of the federal income tax being paid by the wealthy has skyrocketed and continues to. ‘Nearly every major aspect of the health bill pushes in the other direction. This fact helps explain why Mr. Obama was willing to spend so much political capital on the issue, even though it did not appear to be his top priority as a presidential candidate. Beyond the health reform’s effect on the medical system, it is the centerpiece of his deliberate effort to end what historians have called the age of Reagan.’ Vindication. Everything we have said that is Barack Obama’s intent is now being documented by his own media. And even in his book, I forget which one, it doesn’t matter which one, he describes his desire to overturn and reverse what Reagan and his minions have done.
Well, what did Reagan do, ladies and gentlemen? What happened during the Reagan years? It’s another reason why they want to get rid of granny because granny and grandpa are the ones that remember, can teach people. For obvious reasons, the New York Times forgets to mention some hard facts about the age of Reagan. Reagan’s policies resulted in the largest peacetime economic boom in American history and created nearly 35 million more jobs. How does that sound to you about now? Thirty-five million new jobs created because of Ronald Reagan. Federal revenues doubled from just over $517 billion in 1980 to more than one trillion in 1990, after the Reagan tax cuts. It is a stunning growth period. President Reagan was able to bring down inflation rates from 10.4% in ’81 to 3.7% in ’87. He brought the unemployment rate down from 9.7% in ’82 to 5.49% in 1988. The American economy grew by almost one-third because of Reagan’s economic plan. Conservatism, it works every time it’s tried. And they have the audacity here to continue to trash it and say that Obama has secured a victory over the inequality of the Reagan years.
Well, the Reagan years featured freedom, liberty, and ambition. People felt good about their country and loved it. During Reagan, we didn’t have news stories like this: 79% of voters think it’s possible the economy could collapse, including large majorities of Democrats, Republicans, 84%, and independents, 80%. This is a Fox News poll. We didn’t have polls like this during the Reagan years. I know. I was alive. And I was not rich. In the early eighties I earned less than I ever had in my life and I still loved Ronald Reagan and I still loved what was going on. Americans loved their country. We had come off of four years of utter disaster called Jimmy Carter, and we now have Jimmy Carter’s second term, only worse. Carter was a bumbling idiot but I don’t think he really despised the country. We’re being led by people that don’t like this country or at least they’ve been raised not to like it.
So, Mr. Leonhardt, I doubt you could go back in your archives and find any polling data where 80% of the American people thought the US economy could collapse. ‘Speaking to an ebullient audience of Democratic legislators and White House aides at the bill-signing ceremony on Tuesday, Mr. Obama claimed that health reform would ‘mark a new season in America.’ He added, ‘We have now just enshrined, as soon as I sign this bill, the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health care.’ … And it would do so in large measure by taxing the rich. A big chunk of the money to pay for the bill comes from lifting payroll taxes on households making more than $250,000. On average, the annual tax bill for households making more than $1 million a year will rise by $46,000 in 2013, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research group. Another major piece of financing would cut Medicare subsidies for private insurers, ultimately affecting their executives and shareholders. The benefits, meanwhile, flow mostly to households making less than four times the poverty level — $88,200 for a family of four people.’
So, if you make $88,200 and you have a family of four, your health care is going to be subsidized by people who make $89,000 and above. It’s Christmas. It’s Christmas. So this is what we face and this is what we told you was the case. This is what Obama admitted to Joe the Plumber, they want to spread the wealth around. Remember, folks, he is destroying every segment of the economy he’s touching. He is destroying the automobile business. He is destroying the home business. He’s destroying unemployment, the job market. Everything he claimed to fix is getting worse, and he doesn’t care. He’s piling more debt and more spending that we don’t have on top of all the other spending and debt that we don’t have, and that’s why 79% of the American people say it’s entirely possible that the economy could collapse. I wonder if some of these pseudo-conservative intellectual elites on our side inside the Beltway read this New York Times story and applaud ’cause they’re the people out there telling us the era of Reagan was over, praying for the era of Reagan to be over. I wonder if this story gives them satisfaction.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Yeah, it’s amazing, folks. Did you ever dream when you were a kid that you could make $88,000 a year, have a flat-screen TV on the wall in the suburbs, a couple cars, and be on welfare? Did you ever think that? Listen to this little passage from the New York Times piece: ‘Much about health reform remains unknown. Maybe it will deliver Congress to the Republicans this fall, or maybe it will help the Democrats keep power. Maybe the bill’s attempts to hold down the recent growth of medical costs will prove a big success, or maybe the results will be modest and inadequate.’ (laughing) It’s going to be an utter failure, you idiot! ‘But the ways in which the bill attacks the inequality of the Reagan era — whether you love them or hate them — will probably be around for a long time.’ That’s why the New York Times, that’s why the left is happy.