RUSH: The president of the AFSCME (which is the largest union in Wisconsin) Gerald McEntee makes $480,000 a year plus expenses. That’s the union thug leader. Okay, the union leader. That’s the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. These are the little guys. You want to start talking about the Trumkas and the Bolsheviks and that crowd you’re talking a lot more than that. So there are doctors in Madison now handing out phony sick notes to the protesting teachers. What’s gonna be fun… (laughing) These Democrat senators when they get back, whenever they get back, however they’re brought back, they’ll have fake notes from doctors, too. (laughing)
‘Hey, my absence has been excused!’ Even the head of the teachers union in Wisconsin has called on ’em to go back to work. Now, if that’s happened… You heard about that, didn’t you, Snerdley? What do you think that means? (interruption) That’s exactly right. That means they have some polling data that must be telling them how regular people have turned against them on this if the union leader is telling you, ‘You’d better get back to work.’ So we’re asking ourselves, ‘Will the Muslim Brotherhood take over Egypt?’ and in America we’re asking, ‘Will the Education Brotherhood take over Wisconsin?’ Check the news, folks, because they’re sure trying.
The Education Brotherhood, which is a branch of the Government Unions Brotherhood, has already shut down public schools for how many days is it now? Three days? Three or four days? No end in sight, and yet all they really care about is ‘the children.’ That’s all they care about, children. They shut down the schools. They are robbing inner-city kids of precious schooldays that would help make America more competitive. They’re robbing these young skulls full of mush of their opportunity to be exposed to even more leftist propaganda. And look what they are doing to working mothers who can’t afford to pay for somebody to watch their kids. Have you ever thought about this? In many cases, school exists to get the kids out of the house and feed ’em.
Folks, this is what liberalism has done. The purpose of school is to get the kids out of the house before Fabio shows up and to feed them. (interruption) Don’t give me that look! School breakfast? School will you tell the jury, school snack, school dinner, even in the summer when there is supposedly no schooling going on. So what about these moms and dads? What about them? Working mothers, what are they supposed to do now? Go to work, leave the house to the kids? The kids out of the how was doing who knows what? So then you got working mothers because of these teachers having to choose between food and safety, going to work to provide food for their children or stay at home to provide supervision.
You know, it’s hard to tell how much the Muslim Brotherhood frightens liberals, but we know that the Education Brotherhood has scared the heck out of liberal Wisconsin state senators. We know that for sure. We know that the Education Brotherhood has got these state senators cowed. They ran. They fled for the border. Just like Texas Democrats fled the scene twice (losing both times), and in this chaos — and that’s what we have here — the State-Controlled Media faces a great challenge. They have to report how the left shut down the school system. They have to report how the left shut down government. I mean, it’s the senators who fled. It’s the teachers who walked out of school. They have to report that.
Except they’re not reporting that they ‘shut down the government.’ They are reporting they shut down the school system, but they are not blaming the left for shutting down the government. They are blaming the Republicans, they’re blaming the governor for doing this, and they’re saying, ‘See? That’s just what Republicans do!’ They’re setting it up. The State-Controlled Media is using this in Wisconsin to set up the coming federal government shutdown in early March. That is what’s happening. I have an interesting story. We went back over the weekend and did a lot of research. We found something interesting from the Washington Times. September 22nd, 2004: ‘Nearly One-Third of Milwaukee Public School Teachers Have Their Children in Private School,’ and that’s 2004.
I think the number is probably even higher now that it’s seven years later. ‘More than 25 percent of public school teachers in Washington and Baltimore send their children to private schools, a new study reports. Nationwide, public school teachers are almost twice as likely as other parents to choose private schools…’ In Wisconsin it is almost a third. (interruption) You do. You have to make some money to send your kids to private school. They don’t even send their kids to the schools they go to to work and teach. Then Terry Jeffrey, Cybercast News Service, yesterday: The federal government gave $669.6 million to the public schools in Wisconsin in fiscal 2008, according to the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).
‘That is more than 20 times as much as the $30 million that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is trying to save in the current fiscal year by asking state employees, including teachers, to pay for a fraction of the cost of their own pension packages and health-insurance premium. May I give you the numbers again, ladies and gentlemen? In fiscal 2008, the federal government gave (let’s just round it up here) $670 million to the public schools in Wisconsin. ‘That is more than 20 times as much as the $30 million that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is trying to save…’ That’s right: We’re talking $30 million. That’s what his savings have up to, versus $670 million the federal government gave the school district in 2008.
‘Because of this federal subsidy…’ Now, this is important to look at it this way: ‘Because of this federal subsidy, taxpayers in the 49 other states make a handsome contribution to the salary and benefits packages of Wisconsin school teachers.’ Well, if the federal government is going to give $670 million to the public schools of Wisconsin, where they get the money? They get it from us, from taxes. This is taxpayer money. So, pure logic: ‘Fiscal 2008 is the last year for which the NCES has published the state-by-state dollar amount of federal subsidies for public schools. Wisconsin faces a $137 million shortfall for the state’s current fiscal year, which ends June 30, and a $3.6 billion shortfall for the next two fiscal years.
‘To help close this budget gap,’ that’s what this is all about, ‘Gov. Walker, a Republican, has proposed legislation that would make state employees, including teachers, pay 5.8 percent of their salary in contributions to their pension plan and 12.6 percent of what the state pays for their insurance premiums,’ and I heard some of the biggest caterwauling over the weekend. ‘Oh, these people are strapped! I mean, they’ve been asked to give back here, they’re going through the recession, they’re barely hanging on, and they don’t have any more to give,’ and this was some typical leftist defending these teachers. ‘They don’t have any more to give.’ (interruption)
Okay, ‘How do you afford private school?’ but THEY don’t have any more to give? Who is it that’s giving? It’s people in Wisconsin who are out of work! There are people who have lost their jobs, and we still hearing, ‘These people are cash-strapped! They can’t hang on! They can’t! They don’t have any more to give.’ They’re not ‘giving’ a damn thing! They’re taking. So now they’re being asked to pay for 5.8% of their health care, but my gosh! How terrible. What’s gone wrong with this country? Somebody actually thinks that some individual ought to pay 5.8% of their salary for their own pension plan and somebody else is gonna the other 94%? Let’s look at this another way.
Instead of saying, ‘These teachers should pay 5.8% of their salary and contributions,’ the way to look at this is the teachers think that somebody else ought to pay 94% of their pensions. If the teachers are going to object to paying 5% of it — 5% of it! — then they must think it’s perfectly fine for everybody else to pay 94%, or even all of it. People who are unemployed are paying taxes on their unemployment benefits to pay these outrageous public sector salaries and benefits, and I only say they’re ‘outrageous’ because it’s a gift. Now they’re being asked to pay 5% of it, of pensions, and they’re being asked to pay 12% of what the state pays for their insurance premiums, and that somehow is criminal? It just doesn’t wash. Pay 12%. Let me put it another way.
I would love it if somebody came to me and said, ‘You know what, Mr. Limbaugh? From now on you’re only gonna have to pay 5% of whatever amount of money you’re gonna retire on. Everybody else gonna pick up the rest of the tab, and your health care costs? We know we don’t have an insurance plan, Mr. Limbaugh. You pay your health care costs when it comes down to it. You’re only gonna be required to pay 12%. Next time you go to the hospital or anything, you only have to pay 12%. Your audience is gonna make up the remaining 88%.’ Oh, man, I’d love that! Wouldn’t you if somebody came along and said, ‘You’ll only have to pay 5% of your retirement plan. Everybody else, people are gonna band together and pay 95% of it for you’? Would you dare go on strike? Just a different perspective. A different way of look at it.