RUSH: Roger in Pittsburg, Kansas (No H on Pittsburgh in Pittsburg, Kansas), welcome to the program. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thanks. It’s an honor.
RUSH: You bet, sir.
CALLER: I wanted to — if you can tolerate one more caller talking about Newt, something about his comment really stood out to me.
RUSH: Sure.
CALLER: He sounded like some kind of a Soviet-era commissar wanting to make another government program to create jobs.
RUSH: Hmm. Interesting take: A Soviet-era commissar to teach the kids how to work.
CALLER: Right. You know, and —
RUSH: If that were the case, the left would have loved it.
CALLER: Well, I was kind of wavering on maybe going ahead and hoping that Gingrich could actually stay conservative and not make any more mistakes. I’m definitely a small government conservative guy, and Gingrich it seems like he’s more a big government guy with conservative leanings and that’s what makes me take issue.
RUSH: There are a lot of people who have that fear of Newt Gingrich, and it’s deserved.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: I mean, he’s done some things, said some things that raise legitimate questions here about how deep the conservatism goes and just how tied to establishment Washington he is.
CALLER: Exactly. And the thing in that that stood out is he starts talking about, “Well, we can maybe come up with some jobs like ‘assistant janitor’ or ‘librarian’s helper’ or something,” and that just struck me immediately as the kind of thing you would see in the Soviet Union.
RUSH: Well, let me just…
CALLER: Everybody’s guarantee a job.
RUSH: I’m not defending Newt here but I just want to say: I do know him, and if you spend any time around him at all, he’s gonna have a hundred of those thoughts a day —
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: — and some of them are gonna end up being broadcast.
CALLER: Sure. And it just terrifies me to have a person with that mind-set. He doesn’t say, “Let’s shrink welfare and out of necessity people will work.” No, instead he says, “Let’s find ways to get people to work.”
RUSH: No, but he did shrink warfare. He was the architect of welfare reform. He was largely responsible with a lot of other Republicans for forcing it on Clinton.
CALLER: And you’re right, and that still gives me a little bit of hope but I’m just terrified when I hear sound bites like that.
RUSH: Well, look, I didn’t hear a Soviet commissar there.
CALLER: No, it’s just in there. You played the clip a lot of times. It was in the last couple sentences or the last half of that little sound bite where he comments about different ways of getting people to work.
RUSH: Well, I just thought he was sounding like the schools ought to be a little bit more realistic. Why are they in school? What is the ultimate reason anybody’s in school? It’s to get a job! It’s to learn how to feed yourself without killing somebody.
CALLER: Exactly. But it just seemed like his take on it, and I could just see this turning into some government program where people are offered tax break if they hire somebody on welfare.
RUSH: Oh, well, now, see, didn’t say that.
CALLER: I know he didn’t say that and I realize I’m reading some into that, but that’s where I’m at. Any time a politician —
RUSH: You know what you heard? I know what you heard. You heard him say that and your question was — because you’re a small government Republican, and you’re worried about the debt and you know we don’t have any money — “Okay, where are we gonna get the money to pay ’em?”
CALLER: There you go.
RUSH: There you go you’re thinking, “Okay, where we gonna get the money,” and here’s Newt, he’s a Washington guy. Government will do it, and that’s a red flag for you, right?
CALLER: It is.
RUSH: See, that’s why I’m host, I know what callers are saying even when they’re not sure how to say it.
CALLER: Help me, Maha Rushie.
RUSH: I’m happy to do that, and that’s a legitimate concern. You know, when you are a capital C conservative, and you know that we don’t have any money, and one of the problems is the government’s trying to be the solution to everything– throwing money here or there — and you hear the putative leader of the polls on our side running around proposing, essentially, a new spending program, your red flags go up. Now, this spending program, however, has a component. There is work to be done here! This is not welfare. This is not being paid to do nothing. The motivation or the objective here — teaching people to work, to feed themselves — to have that concept of getting up, going somewhere, doing something, being paid for it, I don’t find anything wrong with it. (chuckles) Sorry.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, the caller upset with Newt and the whole concept of work, I knew it; I understand exactly why. This guy was a capital C conservative. What he was saying is: Why does the federal government have to get involved in something as simple as people working? ‘Cause this guy, what he knows is, once the government gets involved it never stops.
Even if the intention and the motivation is supposedly honorable. How many times have we been through that? Our problem isn’t that there’s too little government. Our problem is that there’s WAAAAAAAAAY too much. You cannot fix the culture by expanding government programs. Government programs have to shrink. Government has to get out of people’s lives — and don’t forget Newt. Newt complained. Remember Paul Ryan had his Medicare fix, and Newt was out there saying, “This is right-wing social engineering.” So Newt was complaining that Paul Ryan’s plan was conservative interference are private activity, when it was not.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Jay in Soso, Mississippi. Well, it’s kind of Show Low, Arizona. It’s great to have you on the program. Hi.
CALLER: Great to be here, Rush. I appreciate what you do for us.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Look, the caller that called earlier, I had the same flags he did when I heard Newt’s work program suggestion, but then I recall we had a similar setup — I think it might have been a state program — in Mississippi in the late seventies and early eighties called YPI. YPI was an acronym, and I can’t remember what it stood for but it was after-school work, and it was janitorial, yard care, all within the school system, and there was a lot of competition for those jobs.
RUSH: Yeah. Yeah. And now there isn’t any competition for it. You propose it and you are some kind of a creep.
CALLER: Well, I am a capital C Christian, a capital C conservative, and I don’t want another government program, but that one — to my recollection — worked pretty well in south Mississippi.
RUSH: Look, I’m not so sure Newt was talking about a new government program. He didn’t specify, but you could say that you could take dollars from the existing schools budget, the existing education budget. We wouldn’t need any new dollars. I mean, everybody would fight us on this but you could divert some of the redundant wasteful dollars that we’re already spending on education. We’re not talking about paying these kids six-figure salaries. That’s for when they become adult janitors for the SEIU — and you try to get one of those guys’ jobs, they will break your bones. In New York City janitors own yachts; 60 Minutes profiles them for all the stuff they got at home in the garage. They make six figure salaries, and if you try to take their job you will have an arm less or a knee busted or some such thing.
But we’re not talking about that here.
I’m sure Newt’s talking about paying these kids, what, minimum wage, 50 cents, who knows? Whatever it is, just to establish a behavior that wouldn’t require a new stash of money, it certainly wouldn’t require a new government program, but I can understand people thinking, “Oh, gosh. Oh, no. Here’s a guy from Washington proposing spending more.” I know how people could arrive at the thought that Newt was proposing a new government program. He’s a Washington guy. (interruption) What was that? (interruption) Mmm-hmm. (interruption) Yeah, try that. (laughs) They’re already there for lunch and dinner (laughing) we may as well make ’em work? Yeah, “Sing for your supper, kid. We’re gonna start serving you dinner here at school, so…” You think they could…? I wonder if they have to clean up their tables after lunch. Do they have to take the tray anywhere or get up and leave and the school nurse comes along and picks it up?
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