RUSH: It breaks my heart, folks, I can’t tell you. Thirty-nine percent of the American people believe the US economy has now entered permanent decline according to a new poll from the CBS/New York Times, and 63% of the country believe it’s headed in the wrong direction. I don’t know how to voice my frustration and sorrow over this. Real people are affected, and there’s no empathy from this White House. I don’t mean sympathy. There’s no connection here. These people are just a bunch of robots. To the liberals this is just one giant social experiment. People’s lives here are being gutted, and these are people that are, in large part, playing by the rules, trying as hard as they can, and every time they make a move, there’s a new obstacle in their way, or the threat of a new obstacle in their way.
Welcome back, folks. It’s Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network. Great to have you here. Telephone number is 800-282-2882, and the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.
It’s important to point out, polling data, even back in the Great Depression, nobody believed the situation was permanent, my friends. This is striking. Thirty-nine percent of Americans believe the economy has now entered a permanent decline, meaning they don’t think it’s ever going to reverse. Nobody thought that during the Depression. Nobody believed the situation was permanent. People still believed that prosperity was just around the corner.
By the way, that corporate jet thing, I need to clarify one thing. It’s even worse than I said. That $3 billion that would be generated by getting rid of the accelerated depreciation tax break for corporate jets, that’s over ten years! Over ten years. That’s how insignificant an amount of money we’re talking about in terms of the corporate tax break. It would raise $3 billion over ten years, yet this year alone we’re going to spend $42 billion on student assistance. And whatever assistance we’re giving them, it isn’t working because they aren’t learning anything that is valuable to them. There are still reasons people should be optimistic, and that’s one of the reasons we are here at the EIB Network, is to try to maintain, instill, promote optimism, ’cause we’re gonna come through this and we’re gonna triumph over this. And we’re going to do it on Election Day in November, 2012. We actually started last November with that election.
I want to take you to Wisconsin. We can cut our way to prosperity. The president of the United States says that we cannot cut our way to prosperity. We can. Scott Walker is the governor of Wisconsin. A little story here from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “Cost savings from worker contributions to health care and retirement, taking effect today as part of the new collective bargaining laws, will swing the Kaukauna School District from a $400,000 budget deficit to an estimated $1.5 million surplus, the Post-Crescent in Appleton reports. The district tells the Post-Crescent that it plans to hire teachers and reduce class size.”
What does this mean? Remember all the fights, protests, bickering, caterwauling and complaining from these public employees in Wisconsin about taking their collective bargaining rights away and mandating that finally, for the first time, they start contributing a little bit to their own pensions and their own health care benefits? That law goes into effect and immediately turns a $400,000 budget deficit into a one-and-a-half-million-dollar surplus in one school district. It’s a win-win. Public sector employees are paid by the taxpayers. It is not too much to ask public sector workers to contribute a little bit to their own pensions and to their own health care. They’re not having to pay for all of it. They’re now having to pay a little. But that little that they are contributing themselves, which is now not having to be paid for by the taxpayers, has resulted in a flip from a $400,000 budget deficit to an estimated one-and-a-half-million-dollar surplus in one school district in Wisconsin.
We talked yesterday about how Republican governors, conservative Republican governors, are showing the way. How this can be done, how this can be fixed. And, by the way, these public sector employees who are now contributing a little to their pensions and a little to their health care, they’re still getting up every day. They’re still able to turn on the TV and watch whatever channel they want. They’re able to eat breakfast. They’re able to get in their cars, go to the gas station, put gasoline in the tank and head to work. After work, they’re able to go home, go to a movie, whatever they want to do. Their lives have not been destroyed. They’ve not been turned into paupers. They simply have been asked to contribute a little bit to their own retirement rather than their taxpayer neighbors paying all of it, and, voila, we’re running a surplus of one and a half million dollars in one school district in the state of Wisconsin.
Cutting spending is what this is. State spending in Wisconsin has been cut because individuals are now forced to assume a small bit of responsibility for their own wherewithal. As an added bonus, we’ve cut into the Democrat public sector union money laundering scheme at the same time. Not fully, not totally. But here’s an example of conservatism works every time it’s tried. Scott Walker’s budget helps the children. A school district has a one and a half million-dollar surplus, and here we have with our own president yesterday, corporate jets versus children; Republicans hate the kids; Republicans hate the elderly; Republicans want everybody to die; the oil companies want their customers to get poisoned. Walmart wants their customers to die somehow if you listen to these people on the left. In the meantime, a Republican governor stood firm, stood tall during all of that and ends up cutting spending, ending the money laundering scheme and helping the children and producing a budget surplus in just one school district in the state of Wisconsin.
Meanwhile, the jobs picture remains ugly as weekly claims are still high. This is from a flummoxed Reuters, flummoxed CNBC. They just don’t get it. And Obama owns this ugly jobs picture. In fact, he painted it. “The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits was mostly unchanged last week, evidence that the weak economy is struggling to generate jobs. Applications have topped 400,000 for 12 straight weeks. Applications had fallen in February to 375,000, a level that signals sustainable job growth,” but it didn’t stay there.
Now, how embarrassingly adolescent was it for Obama to lecture Congress for being lazy? He’s golfing, he’s vacationing his way to irrelevancy. He’s lashing out because Greek columns and godlike echoes in speeches no longer work, folks. He’s mired in the quicksand of his own decisions.
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RUSH: I got an e-mail. “Dear Rush: It does not break my heart that so many people see a permanent decline.” It’s about the New York Times/CBS poll: 39% the American people think the economy is in a permanent decline. “I’m glad so many think we’re in decline. That’s good news! We need people to realize what’s happening and that it’s the direct result of Obamanomics. Not Bush, not the GOP. It’s all the result of the Democrats, liberalism. Bam! It looks bad, but we can fix it. We just need where you remember election. All is not lost.” Oh, I’m not saying all is lost. I just… This is the greatest nation in the history of the world with unparalleled prosperity and opportunity for everybody in the world generated by this country, and for residents here — 39% — to think that we are in permanent decline? Whoa! That is such a great illustration of the damage done by Barack Obama. Now, if you want to look at that as good news in the sense that people realize what’s happened? Well, if there is an accompanying “We gotta vote Republican” or conservative as a result of the opinion, fine and dandy. Still bothers me that people in this country have that attitude about it.
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