RUSH: Marybeth in Gravette, Arkansas. Welcome. Great to have you here. Hello.
CALLER: Hi. Thanks for taking my call.
RUSH: Yeah. You bet. Thank you for waiting.
CALLER: Oh, I’ve been waiting for eight years.
RUSH: (laughing) Well, we’ll make it worth it.
CALLER: (laughing) Thank you. I am calling to talk to you about how out of touch Washington seems to be with the people. The people are trying to have enough money to put gas in their car or pay their utility bills or buy food, and nobody’s listening to the news about Obamacare because they have bigger fish to fry.
RUSH: Well, I’m not so sure, because Obamacare’s affecting people. You know, I think they’re listening to it. Every day there’s another story about a drastic loss of coverage for treatment by a seriously ill citizen.
CALLER: I understand that, but what I’m saying is there’s other things besides just Obamacare, and there’s just more things going on and Washington is so out of touch with what gas prices are, food prices are —
RUSH: I don’t disagree with that at all. If you look, Washington, DC, now, I think it’s in the top three wealthiest areas of the country. The unemployment rate in Washington is around 3.5%. The per capita income is rising. There is no recession, not even close, none whatsoever.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: And I guarantee you, people that live there and work there and don’t get out just assume it’s fine. You know, economic numbers are stats. The unemployed are statistics. They’re not really people. They’re not lives that have been ruined.
CALLER: But I’m just not talking about the unemployed, Rush. I’m talking about people that are just trying to survive. You know, do the congressmen, do the senators fill their car up with gas? Do they know what it costs to put a kid through college? Do they know how much a gallon of milk is?
RUSH: I think they do. I think they just assume that everybody’s able come up with it. If they’re not, there’s some government program to help you.
CALLER: But if you have a college education, if you’re married, if you have a brain, it’s real hard to get on some of those programs. They just put you off and put you off, and if it wasn’t for people’s family stepping in — parents, grandparents helping people today — it’d be so much worse than what it is.
RUSH: Yeah, but we’re nearing the point, Marybeth, where the grandparents of tomorrow aren’t gonna have the money to help the grandkids and the parents.
CALLER: I don’t have it now.
RUSH: Right. So here’s the thing about this, and this is just the way it is. Of the two political parties, one political party is very happy with this. The more people in dire straits who depend on them and government, the better. That’s a winner for them. People in need — needing a government program here, government assistance there, food stamps over here — that’s a guaranteed lock on power.
That’s why liberalism and the Democrat Party offend me and anger me because they’re literally, consciously destroying people’s lives and their future. They’re busting up families. The other party, the Republican Party, used to loudly stand for economic freedom, economic growth, rugged individualism, self-reliance, hard work. Look at that Cadillac commercial that’s caused so much controversy. Are you aware of that? Were you listening yesterday?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: That Cadillac commercial talks about how get things in America. (paraphrased) “You work hard. We don’t talk about vacations. We don’t stroll to the espresso shop. We work; we work hard.” The left is outraged by this commercial because it makes fun of Europeans, and it stresses work over vacations and “enjoying life” and all this. The Republican Party used to stand as the opposite of what the Democrats believe in. So one of our problems is that one of the two political parties is actually cool with the economic circumstances that you describe.
CALLER: Maybe it’s time for everybody to go, because that’s not how I was raised. I was raised to take care of my family.
RUSH: I hear you.
CALLER: I mean, that’s how my husband and I have raised our children. We’ve paid for their education.
RUSH: Right. You were the providers.
CALLER: And now they can’t get jobs.
RUSH: Right. You were the providers, and you raised them to be able to provide for themselves.
CALLER: Correct.
RUSH: And you counted on the fact that there was a sizable, growing economy that they would have a chance to grab a piece of.
CALLER: Correct.
RUSH: That’s shrinking. More and more of that economy is being taken over by government, by design and on purpose. Look, I agree with you. I think that there is a tremendous amount of aloofness in Washington. I think there’s a tremendous amount of what you say, people that no longer can relate to just the normal things people encounter today that are more difficult than they’ve been in the past. These are necessities.
When you talk about gasoline and food, you’re not talking about luxuries. You’re not talking about desires. You’re talking about needs, and what you’re really saying is that the needs that everybody has are now dangerously close to un-affordability to a growing number of people. The Democrat Party, Marybeth, is describing this as “the new normal.”