RUSH: Here’s Dick Durbin, by the way. This morning on Bloomberg Television’s ‘InBusiness’, Peter Cook, the chief Washington correspondent, was talking to him. Cook said, ‘A lot of angry Democrats out there.’
DURBIN: The nature of a compromise is to give up some things so that the other side will do the same, and that’s what happened. The president has a big victory here. It’s big because it means there won’t be a tax increase at the first of the year, which could have hurt our economy. Unemployment benefits are going out to help millions of people across this country, and we’re giving businesses some breaks to help that they will be able to stabilize and build their own employee workforce in the process.
The next thing. ‘There won’t be a tax increase that would have hurt our economy.’ Finally! Who won here? You people want to tell me Obama wins when this is their take on it? They’re singing our tune! They’re using our lyrics. They’re singing out of our hymnal. They’re singing from the Reagan book. They’re singing from the Buckley book, from the Burke book. I’m sitting here and I’m stunned. I know I’m not as smart as the people inside the Beltway, but how can anybody look at what Durbin here — and, by the way, Durbin is saying this is what they want out there, this is what they want the media to report: ‘Oh, yeah, big, big win.’ The president who has destroyed this economy, the president whose policies have stunk this country up, has spent us into generational theft levels of debt, now claim victory because there won’t be a tax increase?
Six weeks ago you wanted this tax increase, Dick. Two months ago you wanted this tax increase. Two months ago you and every Democrat wanted these tax cuts to expire. You wanted the Clinton tax rates. The Clinton tax rates of the nineties, that’s what gave us the boom, you guys have been saying. A year ago you wanted these tax rates to expire. You’ve wanted these tax rates to expire for ten years ever since they were implemented. You guys have said these current tax rates (that you now celebrate as your own) were the source of all the economic problems. ‘The Bush tax cuts, which never cut taxes for the middle class.’ Dick, this is what you guys said. The Bush tax cuts were only for billionaires and millionaires, and you guys were saying that those tax cuts that Bush did were the single most destructive economic policy in ten years. And now, after three weeks, you want credit, and you want Obama to be able to claim victory because the Bush tax rates are extended? The party, the people that never wanted these tax rates to go up, is the Republican Party. You guys ride in here at sunset and you play almost Russian roulette with the nation’s economy, and you guys claim victory? This is a big victory for Obama because taxes won’t go up, ‘which could have hurt our economy’? You guys are the architects of economic pain! And now you admit that we’re right, that tax increases are bad for economic activity at any time, particularly in a recession — after you guys have done all the damage!
‘Unemployment benefits are going up out help millions of people’ that you have put out of work? Unemployment benefits are not gonna help the economy, Dick. Unemployment benefits are not gonna help these people find jobs. Nothing that you people on the Democrat Party have done has been in one way positive, supportive, or affirmative for the middle class in this country. You have done nothing but pull the rug out from under them with every policy that you have come up with under your so-called stimulus ideas.
‘Businesses are being given some breaks to hope that they will be able to stabilize and build their own employee workforce’? Why didn’t you do this two years ago, Dick? If all of these conservative ideas are so good in December of 2010 that you guys, after two years — I cannot say this enough — after two years of destroying this economy, the last three weeks of the year you come out in support of all this stuff that we have been supporting our lives, and you claim victory for you?
What this really means is that this is a huge defeat for Obama, and I don’t care how anybody wants to look at this. When Barack Obama and Dick Durbin are singing from the Ronald Reagan hymnal and we got people want to talk about what a political victory it was for Barack Obama, I’m sorry, folks, I’m not seeing it. To paraphrase John Kerry, who served in Vietnam, the Democrats were against the Bush tax cuts before they were for ’em. By the way, what is in this tax cut bill that does anything for business? That’s the one thing somebody’s gotta explain to me. Stabilize? You guys haven’t stabilized diddly-squat.
So don’t buy this inside-the-Beltway pap, folks. When Dick Durbin starts singing our tune, increasing taxes will hurt the economy, we win, and particularly when we realize if they’d have done this stuff two years ago, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
RUSH: Play Durbin again. Grab sound bite 28. I just want to listen to his words. You keep in mind as you hear this, the question to him is: ‘Are there a lot of angry Democrats out there?’ A lot of angry leftist, socialist, Marxist Democrat base. And they’re not happy about any of this. They’re not happy the budget deal went south. They’re not happy with this tax deal ’cause they see it as a validation of Bush who they hate, and here’s Durbin coming along and saying basically, ‘You know, the president has a big win here. The only way to save the economy is to keep Bush policies in place.’
DURBIN: The nature of a compromise is to give up some things so that the other side will do the same, and that’s what happened. The president has a big victory here. It’s big because it means there won’t be a tax increase at the first of the year, which could have hurt our economy. Unemployment benefits are going out to help millions of people across this country, and we’re giving businesses some breaks to help that they will be able to stabilize and build their own employee workforce in the process.
RUSH: Dick, if a tax increase will hurt the economy in January, December here, 2010, why won’t a tax increase in November, December of 2012 hurt the economy? If a tax increase hurts the economy, why won’t it two years from now? What’s the magic of two years? ‘Well, the economy is gonna be coming back, Limbaugh, we’re gonna be roaring back by that time, just has to be, just has to be.’ Oh, okay, so we got an economy in recovery, we’re finally coming back and then we can raise taxes? Right. The theory is that tax increases hurt the economy, period. So when the economy’s coming back, it’s safe to raise taxes? Ho-ho-ho. That makes a lot of sense.
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RUSH: Let me ask the question another way. This is going back to Dick Turban. He says we can’t raise taxes now ’cause it would harm the economy, right? Yeah. But somehow we’re gonna be able to raise taxes in two years. It won’t harm the economy then. Here’s the real question. The Democrats take credit here for Bush tax rates, they take credit for conservative ideology, and now in two years they’re gonna turn around and run against that? In two years they’re gonna want to raise taxes and run against what they said was necessary to save the economy. They’re gonna run against themselves? They will. There’s no question they will. Clinton did it like it never happened. But we’re ready for ’em. Well, I’m ready for ’em. Inside the Beltway people are gonna be talking about how smart he is all along, but we’re ready for him ’cause he’s gonna be running against what his own people said was necessary to save the economy, two years. He’s gonna be running against himself. We’ll be here and we’ll put the concrete wall right up so he’ll run against himself right into the wall. Then we’ll see how smart he is. See if he can miss the wall. It’s gonna be a big wall.
Bill, Richmond, cell call, great to have you on the EIB Network.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. How you doing today, sir?
RUSH: Good, sir. Thank you.
CALLER: Yeah, I just wanted to comment about the Clinton years. Yeah, what I believe is what really fueled the Clinton years was the expiration of the Treasury bonds, the ten-year notes that were given to reduce the inflation in the beginning of the Reagan years, and then subsequently (unintelligible) until 20-year time period. I mean you had tons of money coming into the market that fueled that economy.
RUSH: Yeah, that was the bond market.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: The bond market. Everybody was focused on the bond market, and Carville couldn’t figure out, ‘Why does everybody care about the bond market? Who cares what the bond market’s doing? I don’t care about the bond market, who cares about it?’ You have just identified why. It was the source of funds.
CALLER: And there was plenty of money coming out into the market, and where did it go? It went to the stock market, offered better returns.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: And there you go. That’s how Clinton got his great economy.
RUSH: Your point is it had nothing to do with his tax rates.
CALLER: Not at all. Not at all, sir.
RUSH: Because there’s no way tax increases boost an economy, it just doesn’t happen, but they wanted credit for it, they’ve been saying that Clinton tax increases fueled the boom. If they did, where are they now? Why didn’t they let these taxes go up? Remember, folks, the Bush tax cuts — if you listen to Obama, any Democrat — the Bush tax cuts, these current tax rates are the reason for this economic problem that we’re in. They’re the reason for the recession, the reason for the Iraq war, the reason for Afghanistan, the reason we had 9/11, all this crap. Bush tax cuts, right? Clinton’s tax increases gave us the boom. Well, we have a chance here for tax increases in two weeks. In two weeks we could get back to the Clinton boom. No, no, we couldn’t, no, no, everybody knows raising taxes is gonna thwart economic — we’ve got ’em tied here in as many knots as pretzels. And, sorry, I just don’t see how they win this.