RUSH: Next up, folks, of course is going to be the battle over raising the debt limit. State-Controlled Media already girding for this one. We have a couple of sound bites here from Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, and her guest, Charlie Cook, this afternoon on Andrea Mitchell Reports, NBC News, Washington. And they have this little discussion about the debt ceiling. Here’s the first of two bites.
MITCHELL: We’ve talked about the debt ceiling. When you look at the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll numbers, 46% oppose, only 16% support raising the debt ceiling. And after being told that the U.S. would default without raising the limits, 62% oppose. How do you get past that kind of lack of understanding of what’s going on out there?
COOK: What we were just facing Friday night was sort of a government slowdown, not a shutdown. I mean there were all kinds of safeguards and it was not what it should have been. But this would be Social Security checks don’t go out, nobody gets paid, the U.S. goes into default. This is nuclear. And never in the history of this country, we’ve never defaulted on debt.
RUSH: Wait a second. That isn’t true. I’m gonna have to go back to my archives, but we operated without redoing the debt limit. Either 2006 or 2009, I’m going to have to find it. But we’ve done this before. We’ve operated without a formal agreement to raise the debt limit. It has been done. These people are shameless. We’ve operated past the debt limit before, and we do it frequently. And now they set the stage. It’s nuclear. It was. It was December 2009. The last time that we operated above the debt limit without authorization to do so was December 2009. This would be Social Security checks don’t go out, nobody gets paid. The people in the private sector will get paid, those relative few who have jobs in the private sector would get paid. Never in the history of this country, we’ve never defaulted on the debt. Well, that may be technically true, but we’ve certainly operated without the authorization to go above the debt ceiling. We’ve done that before. But even before that, that’s Charlie Cook. You heard Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, she’s just beside herself here that 62% of the country oppose raising the debt limit after being told what the result would be. You don’t think there’s a backlash going on out there about this?
I said last week on this program that if the deal announced to avert the shutdown is less than $61 billion, there would be hell to pay. I told that to the Heritage audience on Friday night. There’s gonna be hell to pay. I got a record amount of e-mail, and all but one phone call today, and we can’t do anything scientific with phone calls, I don’t take enough to even guess that that’s an accurate representation. But it is what it is in terms of that universe. I think we got a second one up there that disagrees with me; is that right? Line five says, “I don’t get it,” that’s somebody that disagrees with me. Okay, so there’s two, and that guy is coming up soon. He’s from Northridge, California. That’s Mike. Mike, hang in there, be tough, we’re gonna getting to you here in a minute. But still, Andrea’s all upset the public’s lack of understanding of the debt limit, “Oh, my God, oh, my God what are we gonna do? How do you get past this kind of lack of understanding?” Andrea, it’s not a lack of understanding. It is a total understanding of what’s going on. We just can’t keep doing this. And then, Andrea, amidst a sigh of resignation says…
MITCHELL: Well, Charlie, I guess it’s part of our job, too, to try to educate people, but the president is gonna take a stab at it on Wednesday.
RUSH: Well, Charlie, (sighing) I guess it’s part of our job, too, to try to educate people, but the president’s gonna take a stab at it on Wednesday. Well, Charlie, (sighing) I guess it’s part of our job. Wouldn’t you think journalism is about education every day? I mean in its raw form you’re telling people things they don’t know. (interruption) Well, of course, Snerdley, the assumption that she knows everything and nobody else does, yes, but I mean even beyond that, well, Charlie, (sighing) I guess it’s part of our job to try to educate people, as though you doddering fools, do we have to do everything for you here? Can’t you do anything for yourself? Can’t you figure out for yourself that we gotta spend whatever it takes to keep our precious government running? Here’s Jay Carney at the daily press briefing this afternoon in Washington about the debt ceiling.
CARNEY: The consequences of failing to raise the debt ceiling would be Armageddon-like in terms of the economy, on the impact on interest rates, on job creation, on growth would be devastating.
RUSH: Okay, here it comes, folks, they’re already setting the table. This is what this weekend has all been about, these cuts, devastating, big, big win for Boehner, oh, my God, these cuts, I don’t know if we can go on. This is the first major cut, why, the Democrats really took it on the chin. Now here comes the debt and, oh, my God the country may end next, unless we raise taxes.
Mark Knoller, CBS, December 16th, 2009: “The latest calculation of the National Debt as posted by the Treasury Department has — at least numerically — exceeded the statutory Debt Limit approved by Congress last February as part of the Recovery Act stimulus bill. The ceiling was set at $12.104 trillion dollars. The latest posting by Treasury shows the National Debt at nearly $12.135 trillion.” So last December we were operating above the authorized debt limit. And lest we forget, Obama had raised the debt ceiling with his stimulus bill to $12.104 trillion just back in February, and we blew past it in December and we kept operating.
Now, Jay Carney is out there saying that Obama really wishes he had that debt ceiling vote back when he was senator. He’s really learned his lesson on that now. But that’s not all. Harry Reid, 2006: “Raising the debt limit is the last thing we should do. It would weaken the country. It would hurt the economy.” He said, “If my Republican friends believe that increasing our debt by almost $800 billion today and more than three trillion over the last five years is the right thing to do, they should be up front about it. They should explain why they think more debt is good for the economy. How can the Republican majority in this Congress explain to their constituents that trillions of dollars in new debt is good for our economy? How can they explain that they think it’s fair to force our children, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren to finance this debt through higher taxes? That’s what it will have to be. Why is it right to increase our nation’s dependence on foreign credit?” This is Harry Reid in 2006, five years ago. This is Harry Reid so concerned about the economy in 2006, when it was really rolling along, the economy was really good, rolling along fine in 2006.
But this is the ruling class. This is how they work. He didn’t mean it then. He doesn’t mean what he says now. He’s gonna have the exact opposite approach now. We’ve gotta raise the debt ceiling. We’ll destroy the US economy if we don’t. Five years ago, how can we destroy the economy by raising the debt ceiling? Five years ago, Harry Reid said, how can we consciously destroy our economy by raising the debt ceiling, trillions of dollars in new debt for our children or grandchildren? Five years later, this week, Harry Reid will say, we will destroy our economy if we don’t raise trillions of new debt. Is it any wonder the voters of this country have become properly cynical? Is it any wonder the people of this country look at our elder statesmen in Washington with little or no respect anymore? Five years ago, folks, five years ago, you just heard it, Harry Reid, “How can we destroy the economy for our children by raising all this debt?” This week, Harry Reid will say, “How can we destroy the economy by not raising our debt?”
The world is gonna end. We had to pass TARP or the world was going to end. We had to pass the stimulus or the world was gonna end. Five years ago, no, we can’t pass TARP. The world will end. It’s tough to take any of them seriously. And your best bet is not to. In fact, let’s go back to Obama, January 27th, 2010 just a reminder of how he can’t be trusted or believed. You know, Obama’s speeches are carefully crafted, deceitful. They are lies delivered on teleprompter. The president is a con artist. He said, “If we had taken office in ordinary times, I would have liked nothing more than to start bringing down the deficit, but we took office amid a crisis. And our efforts to prevent a second depression have added another one trillion to our national debt. I’m absolutely convinced that the right thing to do was that. But families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions. The federal government should do the same. So tonight I’m proposing specific steps to pay for the $1 trillion that it took to rescue the economy last year.” That was January 27th, 2010.
A little over a year ago, Obama said he would cut $1 trillion. He has since added more than that to the deficit. So that makes this statement a greater than $2 trillion lie. “Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years. Spending related to our national security, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, will not be affected, but all other discretionary government spending will. Like any cash strapped family, we will work within a budget…” and they didn’t even present one. So you see, Reid, Obama, Pelosi, the exact opposite, one year ago, five years ago, of what they are saying today.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Speaking of Obama lies, we have this whopper from the New York Times, Jackie Calmes, February 22, 2009, where he said he would cut the budget deficit in half by the end of his first term. Jackie Calmes wrote, “After a string of costly bailout and stimulus measures, President Obama will set a goal this week to cut the annual deficit at least in half by the end of his term, administration officials said. The reduction would come in large part through Iraq troop withdrawals and higher taxes on the wealthy.” Look at how he had to be dragged fighting, kicking, and screaming into cutting a measly $38.5 billion.
Folks, the bottom line is the Democrat Party and everybody in it is lying through their teeth every time they open their mouth — and that sounds extreme, I’m sorry, but that’s how you have to understand liberals, and that’s how I always get them right. “Cut the deficit by half after his first term,” and yet dragging kicking and screaming even to $38 billion in cuts. He now regrets his votes against the debt limit when he was a senator. Dingy Harry was talking about how raising the debt limit would destroy the economy five years ago. Today, he’s going to lead the effort to raise the debt limit. What the hell are we to do? Defeat them is what we are to do. It’s like I said in the first hour of the program: The worst lesson to come out of this whole budget thing, this continuing resolution thing — the worst lesson, if they take it — is that compromise is the way to go. ‘Cause it’s not. These people are going to have to be defeated.
There’s nothing new about that.
It’s just going to require a continuing commitment.
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