RUSH: Here’s Dan, Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. Great to have you, sir. EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: How you doing?
RUSH: I’m fine. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Great. I’m calling because I guess I’m labeled an unessential government employee.
RUSH: Nonessential is the term.
CALLER: I’m sorry. Nonessential.
RUSH: What did you do?
CALLER: I work at the War College creating online courseware for our graduate program that we have. So it’s a government agency that actually produces something. And right now, a lot of my unessential or nonessential work isn’t getting done and it’s piling up, and I guess my point of calling is that it seems like everybody has this attitude to nonessential personnel that, why do we even have a job to begin with. And I have a lot of work to do right now, and I can’t get it done because of what’s going on in Congress.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: And with the president and the Senate.
RUSH: Look, I understand how you feel. I mean, your own company, as it were, your own government has classified you as nonessential.
CALLER: Correct.
RUSH: And, as such, your own government has determined that when they have to shut down, it’s you who get shut down.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: So people who pay your salary with their taxes are asking, “Well, if they’re nonessential –” see, words mean things “– then why are they there?” I think to be honest with you, I understand why people are doing it, because they think it’s a way to make a point. I think the rule is, according to the federal guidelines, only people who protect life and property are essential government workers. I mean, you could even say that members of the House and Senate, on a snow day, are nonessential.
CALLER: They’re nonessential now.
RUSH: I agree. (laughing)
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: Look, I just want to assure you, it’s a rhetorical exercise for a lot of people who think they can make a point about government waste, and because it’s their taxpayers. I think there are far larger issues than whether or not you are essential or not. I know you want to be. Everybody does. Everybody wants to matter. I can understand you being offended at Obama telling you you don’t matter. I would be upset, too.
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