RUSH: Well, there he is, the Bamster’s on television, ladies and gentlemen, all upset that nobody will go along with him on extending the payroll tax cut for the length of time that he wants it cut. He’s out there blaming the Republicans. Of course, he thinks that’s gonna drive up his-poll numbers. He’s sitting there, he’s all excited, he’s up to 50% job approval, and they’re telling him this is why, so he’s out there hammering the Republicans again.

Now, the House Republicans want to cut the payroll tax for a year. Senators of both parties don’t. And that’s the bottom line today. The Senators of both parties only want to go two months. Obama wants to go two months. The House Republicans want to do this for the whole year. So what’s happened here, folks, the House has rejected the Senate’s two-month extension, after the Senate rejected the House’s one-year extension. Now, everybody’s knows that the House plan on this is more rational, and it’s more economically sound, but despite that, the Republicans are gonna be blamed for this. But I want to raise another point.

By the way, welcome back, Rush Limbaugh and the EIB Network and the Limbaugh Institute. And it’s great to have you with us.

Obama — stick with me on this. Obama really wanted to cut the payroll tax by 4%, which experts say would have blown a hole of $250 billion in Social Security funding. Now, what we’re talking about here, the payroll tax cut extension, the payroll tax, FICA on your pay stub, if you see it — I need to ask a question, seriously, pardon my ignorance on this. I just don’t know. Are any of you on the other side of the glass there — Dawn, Snerdley — do you get paid with direct deposit? Okay. Where do you see what your deductions are? Okay, the statement is sent to you in the mail or electronically? Okay, but you get either electronically or in the mail, but is it just like any other piece of junk mail that shows up? Do you have to look at it? Is it something you normally look at every week to see how much you got paid and how much is withheld?

My question is, and I’m sitting here saying payroll taxes, FICA on your pay stub, do people know what I’m talking about? Okay. All right. Good. In the old days where you actually got paid with a check, you know, had your deductions listed on there and that’s back in the old days. I’d get paid by a Brinks truck so I don’t — (interruption) right, I know you get a statement, but is it — you know, I get junk mail I don’t even open ’cause I know it’s junk mail. So I’m just asking, how many people look at these statements? You know what your net is but you don’t know what your FICA deduction — what I’m asking is, is how many people know what that is? I’m telling you that the vast majority of people, I’m guessing, do not know what the number next to FICA is. Okay. Well, that’s why I’m spending time, because the FICA deduction, if you are paid by electronic deposit, next time you get your statement, look at FICA, that’s your payroll tax. That is the sole funding mechanism for Social Security outside of borrowing and all the other rotgut.

I’m talking about the direct constitutional, virtue-of-the-law way that Social Security’s paid for is with that one deduction on your paycheck, FICA. I don’t remember what it stands for and it doesn’t matter. Now, my point about this is, here you have a Democrat president, who wants to cut the payroll tax by 4%, he wants that large a tax cut in the payroll tax, which would blow a $250 billion hole in Social Security funding at a time when everybody knows that we’re short on being able to pay all the obligations now. We have reached the tipping point. People who are receiving Social Security payments are now receiving more than they contributed. That’s not a knock. I don’t want to get any phone calls, I don’t want to hear it.

We’re getting to the point now where the youngsters in America know full well that it’s probably not gonna even be viable by the time they retire, and yet here is a Democrat president advocating a huge tax cut in the sole funding mechanism for Social Security. If this were a Republican president, folks, we wouldn’t be having the argument about whether to extend it for two months or a year. The Republican president would be in the process of being destroyed as somebody who wants to kick senior citizens out of their houses, deny them health care, force them to eat dog food. This is so damn topsy-turvy, the news media and the rest of the Democrats have managed to convince the American people that cutting Social Security funding by hundreds of billions of dollars is a good thing.

Meanwhile, when George W. Bush came along and wanted to privatize a portion of Social Security, or allow individuals to, so as to increase, maximize the returns, make their stash bigger, you remember the demagoguery. Bush wants Social Security recipients to go broke. Look at what happens in the stock market, want to turn it over to those Wall Street people. It’s another get rich quick scheme for Wall Street people. Now we have a Democrat president, Democrat Senate doing everything they can to blow holes and underfund Social Security under the guise of a reelection tactic for the president and putting money in people’s pockets.

“Mr. Limbaugh, you’re leaving out something very key, and that is how the president is choosing to pay for it.” There’s no paying for it. Raising taxes on millionaires and so forth, there’s no paying for this thing, there never is any of this paygo stuff never happens, it never works. Folks, this goes to show you two things, the raw power of the media but also the unrelenting power of propaganda and the absolute lack of objectivity on the part of the news media covering this, because I am here to tell you that if anybody with a capital R beside their name were proposing a one-month cut, if he were a president, in the payroll tax, my God, there would be an endless parade of seasoned citizens in Washington with pitchforks, and they’d be hunting down members of — remember what they did with Rostenkowski in Illinois? They surrounded his car. And that was over a tiny little Medicare thing.

I find this bizarre. I find this truly bizarre. And Obama’s out there saying, “Well, we’ve got more important things to worry than politics right now.” By that I mean his Hawaii vacation and his reelection. I’m gonna tell you something else about this two month business and I’ll make this a little selfish. Like some Americans, I pay my taxes every, on average, three months, quarterly estimates. The second estimate of the calendar year, that’s the bear, because that comes in two months. For those of us that pay our taxes this way, on April 15th we pay whatever we owe, and we always structure it so that we owe a little. You pay what you owe for the year you file, then you have your quarterly estimate for the first quarter of the current year. And then two months later you have the second. That June 15th estimate, that’s a bear.

My point is, they’re gonna extend this, they want to extend this payroll tax cut for two months, but it’s an accounting nightmare for people who file quarterly estimates, and there’s a lot of self-employed, entrepreneurs, contract hires, this kind of thing, independent contractors. And this is what the report out yesterday said. We can’t implement this. Two months is not enough time to rewrite the software, we just can’t. This is nothing but a political football that’s being kicked around, and the House is the only place where there’s a rational belief or policy involved here. Senators of both parties want to cut payroll taxes for two months. House Republicans want to cut payroll tax for the full year and just be done with it.

Now, for those who want to know, FICA equals the Federal Insurance Contributions Act. And the FICA tax is 6.2%. If you’re self-employed, you pay the whole thing. It’s a mess. I don’t even want to get sidetracked on that. But we have here a Democrat president and a Democrat Senate cutting Social Security funding by $250 billion with a payment mechanism that doesn’t exist. There is no paying for this. And people don’t associate a payroll tax cut with Social Security. That’s why I asked, “How many people know what the FICA number is on their pay stub or on their statement?” I find this literally amazing. At any rate, Obama’s out there, you know, yapping on the Republicans. Now Boehner is taking his turn. Our microphones are there, if there’s anything interesting being said we’ll have it for you.