RUSH: Okay, now, ladies and gentlemen, everybody agrees. They might not all say it, but everybody now agrees that even with the sequester, the government is going to be spending more money. You heard Jonathan Karl of ABC News admit that even with the sequester, the government will spend $15 billion more this year than last. Now, $15 billion when compared to $3,700 billion is chump change.

But we’re still going to be spending $3,700 billion this year! We’re gonna be spending more this year than next, and even with sequester now, people are admitting it. But here’s the AP’s contribution to the sequester story today, and it’s all wrapped up in their headline: “Government Downsizes Amid Republican Demands for Even More Cuts.” The government isn’t downsizing! The Republicans are demanding more cuts. At some point we’re gonna have to.

If we don’t, we are gonna become Greece. If we don’t downsize and seriously do so, then all these dire predictions that you’re hearing today are gonna become a fact of life every day. Right now we still have a choice. The longer we go, the less choice that we’re gonna have, and eventually all of this fearmongering is going to manifest itself as reality. Do you know all we would have to do to get started on this? We don’t even have to talk about real cuts.

All we have to do is stay level. If we could just freeze the federal budget for five years, that would be such a profound start on fixing the problem. Do you remember hearing the Democrats talking about how great the economy was during the Clinton years? The reason they do that is because the Clinton years featured tax increases on the rich, and the Democrats love to run around and talk about the boom economy of the nineties, and they try to relate it to Clinton’s tax increases.

Okay, fine and dandy.

They’re wrong, but fine and dandy.

But then say, “Well, why don’t we also return to Clinton-era spending levels?”

“Oh, no, no, no! We can’t do that!”

RUSH: “Why not? If we had a booming economy during the Clinton years with government spending what it was back then, why can’t we go back to that and still have a booming economy?”

“Oh, no, no, no! No! No, no, no. You can’t do that.”

I remember I was on Charlie Rose one night back when I used to be invited on that show. I lived in New York. I remember I was on one night with some of Clinton’s guys, Roger Altman and Tony Coelho, and couple other guys. All Democrats. I was the only conservative. I had just read and talked to some think tank budget people, and they had explained to me how a five-year budget freeze, factoring inflation… You let the government grow at the inflation rate every year, but that’s it.

Back then, this was in the nineties, it was said that we could balance the budget in five years doing that. So I threw that out. They said, “Oh, no, no, no, no! Who’s telling you that? See, this is why, Charlie, you can’t let people that don’t know what they’re talking about on your show, Charlie! I mean, that’s just a talk show host. That’s absurd! I’ve never heard anything so absurd.” They were all nervous as hell when I mentioned it, and they were nervous as hell rejecting it.

But you go talk to anyone. Call someone at the Heritage Foundation and you ask them. A five-year, maybe seven now, freeze. But just freeze the budget every year, and allow for increases every year equal to inflation so that there aren’t any cuts. There’s no Social Security cuts. There are no Medicare cuts. No nothing. You’d be amazed at how quickly we could start to turn things around. I think it’s a little worse now, obviously, than it was then, back in the nineties.

That would have been a relatively painless way to go about this. It was sensible, but, boy, it just didn’t fit the political template of the Democrat Party. You just don’t do that. “What? Freeze the budget? No new spending? Why, that’s absurd! Government can’t function without new spending.” But it could. If we get by every year with what we’re spending, then don’t spend any more except for inflation…

How many families in this country have to live on the same amount of income every year? We know that not very many people are getting raises, and the raises they’re getting are not very big. They manage. They’ve got no choice. They can’t go print money. Most of them can’t borrow any. They’re maxed out on the credit cards, anyway. It can be done. But not when we’re talking about government. They can’t! “No, no, no, no. No! We can’t do with less. We can’t even do with the same!

“We have to have 10% more every year. We can’t get by with any less,” and the proof is this: With the sequester, we’re going to spend $15 billion more than we did last year, and we have these forecasts of abject destruction, the end of the world. So the AP contribution is: “Government Downsizes Amid Republican Demands for Even More Cuts.” Now, this takes the cake for sheer mendacity because the AP is try to confuse either the low-information voters or the ADD voters.

They’re claiming the government has already shrunk even before the sequester, and it hasn’t.

Of course, at the AP there’s no shame.

They lie, they misrepresent — and if they don’t know, when they are informed how wrong they are, it doesn’t matter. They don’t care.