RUSH: Open Line Friday, Eatontown, New Jersey. Hi, Ed. Great to have you. I’m glad you called, sir. Welcome.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. Dr. Rush, that is.
RUSH: I appreciate that.
CALLER: I’m here to talk about politics, and specifically when we passed the deficit ceiling a few months ago we put triggers into the in case they couldn’t come to an agreement. Politico’s reporting today that the “weeper” of the House, Boehner — and the Democrats — are trying to come to an agreement to take out all these triggers. Why this is so upsetting to me is I know the answer to the Medicaid problem that you talked about before, and it’s all wound up with the amount of our deficit. Specifically, when states pay Medicaid, they charge three or four times what it actually costs them out of pocket, and they get 50% back from the federal government. So if they’re increasing their budgets for Medicaid, they’re actually getting more money from the federal government to fund things. If you go for a Band-Aid for the emergency room, they bill you $1000. Of course a hundred bucks actually provides the service. This is why the deficit plan was so significant, and now we’re seeing the Republicans caving in on it, apparently.
RUSH: I’m glad you brought this up. I had it in the Stack and I forgot that it was there, but you’re right for the most part. For the most part, the Republicans and the Democrats are trying to get rid of some of the obstacles that they were forced to put in their own way during the last debt ceiling debate while nobody is looking. What they don’t understand is that everybody’s looking and everybody’s noticing, and the Tea Party is not shrinking in size nor is it shrinking in its passion. This is not gonna go down well.
CALLER: I’m well aware of that. The other thing is if you ever get to the OWS on Wall Street, you’d better hold your nose, because there’s violations of air quality. You can’t believe the smell. It’s like being in the middle of a garbage dump.
RUSH: (laughing) You are. (laughing) You are! These guys run around, they look like urine, they smell like urine. It is a pigsty.
CALLER: I know.
RUSH: It’s a total, 100% pigsty — and, of course, that doesn’t matter. You know, the mayor says, “You can’t smoke!” except they can.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: The mayor says you can’t slope overnight in a park except they can. The mayor says, “You can’t pollute the city,” except they can.
CALLER: I want to make one more comment.
RUSH: What is that one more comment?
CALLER: 98% of all the people that work in financial services in this country are good people. The small number of people that created the problem in mortgages are the “uncredible” minority in allowing the president to just defecate on all these good Americans who work very, very hard, is upsetting to me —
RUSH: What’s the difference…?
CALLER: — and our industry doesn’t say “boo” about it.
RUSH: Amen. Amen. But that’s true of every business the Democrats have on their enemies list! Everybody in Big Oil is a creep. Everybody in Big Pharmaceutical is a creep. Everybody in Big Retail is a creep. Hell, everybody in a corporation is creep. You know how to really tick off a liberal? You want to really tick ’em off? Just say to ’em, “Wait a minute. What is a corporation? It’s just people.” They just go ballistic, because in their minds a corporation is not people. A corporation is the embodiment of spiritual evil. May be not “spiritual,” because they don’t believe in spiritual. A corporation, to them, is not people. You tell ’em that all it is is people — it’s your neighbors; there are people that work for the corporation.
A lot of people who work for the, quote, unquote, “corporation” don’t like it, either. They think they’re underpaid. The same things happen in corporation that happen in any other organization of human beings. Everything that happens in every club, in every group of people, happens in a corporation. But they have this mental characteristic in their head of a corporation that it’s superhuman, that it’s all powerful, that it is robotic, and that it’s evil. It’s devoid of any reality. Now, I want to go back to the first story that you talked about with the triggers and how the Republicans and Democrats are trying to erase the triggers as the obstacles that are in their way to further spending. You gotta keep in mind, now, the story is in The Politico.
I know some of the guys at Politico, and I don’t mean to be impugning the Politico, but it’s clear that the Politico has sympathies toward Obama and the Democrat Party and so forth. But this story in The Politico makes it sound like the Republican leadership — John Boehner, who you called the “weeper” of the House. I caught that. The story in The Politico makes it sound like the Republican leadership is afraid that another standoff over debt will hurt the Republican reelection effort. It is the same thing, and the reason that the Republicans… If the Politico is right — and I’ll end that as a caveat. If the Politico is right, the Republican leadership doesn’t want another debt ceiling fight ’cause they’re afraid of the impact it will have on their reelection effort.
It’s simply because they continue to believe that the only media that matters is the, quote, “legacy” or mainstream or Drive By Media — and if the Drive By Media is critical of ’em, then that’s all that matters. It doesn’t matter who else would be praiseworthy. It doesn’t matter who else might be critical. If the Drive-Bys are critical — the Washington Post, New York Times, CBS, NBC, you name it, they’re critical? “Oh, can’t have that!” They think that they have to use those people to get their message out. They think those people have to approve of what they’re doing if they’re gonna survive. It’s frustrating as it can be, and it all centers around the independents. The media inside Washington, the establishment media along with the establishment everybody, tells the Republicans, “The independents really don’t like you opposing Obama! They don’t like you opposing spending!
“The independents want this country to recover! They want the economic recovery to happen and they want federal spending to happen!” They get away with putting fear in these people’s hearts each and every time they try. That’s The Politico story. That’s what, as you read it, it sounds like: The Republican leadership is afraid that if they have another debt fight, they’ll lose it; the media will be critical of ’em and they’ll be accused of wanting to be hard-hearted and cold-hearted to the poor and the hungry and the thirsty and the suffering. They don’t want that said about them, and it will hurt their reelection efforts. So they choose the path of least resistance, which in this case is whatever the Democrats and the media want. If it’s more spending, fine. Then we’ll do what we can to make it look like we are not opposed to it. This is how ridiculous it’s getting. Last night on MSNBC, Barney Frank showed up. He was on with Al Sharpton, and Sharpton said to him, “House Republicans keep saying that they have ideas for jobs. Are they credible?”
FRANK: No. They are w’iterally doing the opposite of what virtually every economist except for a handful on the right think, which is: At this point you should not be further we’t’wentching government spending. In every month for the last year the p’wivate sector has gained jobs. The public sector has lost jobs. Firefighters, public works employees, teachers, cops have been laid off. So, again, there is an overwhelming consensus that the short term, and this comes from Bush appointees like Ben Bernanke at the Federal We’serve, you need to do some things that stimulate.
RUSH: Never stops, does it? Never stops! Why, every day cops are being laid off! Every day firefighters are being laid off! Every day teachers are being laid off. And guess where all the jobs are going? Private sector. Yeah. You’ve seen all those private sector jobs created, haven’t you? You may have gotten one! Yeah. Yeah. It’s the private sector getting all the goodies; the public sector getting screwed. So we need more “stimulus.” We need more federal money to go hire these precious people.