RUSH: I mean, yeah, the Democrats are doing what they’re doing, and it’s undeniable. But Trump’s budget. This is absurd. This is outrageous. McCain and Lindsey Graham pronouncing it dead on arrival before it shows up. The media — you wouldn’t believe — the media is accusing Trump of outright indecency by suggesting economic growth of 3%, such a thing is not possible. It’s irresponsible to make people think that it is. That Trump’s budget’s gonna kill people with all these cuts. There aren’t any cuts in the Trump budget.
As always, all there are is reductions in the rate of growth. There are no cuts. Well, look. There might be some genuine cuts at the National Endowment for the Arts, and there might be some serious cuts over at the EPA, but in general there aren’t any real cuts. There are major reductions in spending, no question about that. But the cuts are nevertheless reductions in the rate of growth. They are not below-the-line cuts.
Take a look at what’s happening with Obamacare. This is a flat-out joke, what’s happening. Or I should say what’s not happening with it. Where are Trump’s own buddies? Where are the Republicans here on the budget? You know, it’s a fine budget. The New York Times has a story here about it. “Trump’s Problematic Math: Budget Plan Adds Growth, but Doesn’t Subtract Cost.”
And look at this. “When the government –” who wrote this? Binyamin Appelbaum, clearly demonstrating economic ignorance here. He says, “When the government cuts taxes, it collects less money. That is the purpose of a tax cut. But Mr. Trump’s budget does not include any hint of a decrease in federal revenue.”
Because it’s gonna grow, you…
Cutting taxes does not reduce money to the government. We’re proving that even now. And we proved it in the eighties. And if they repatriated with a lower tax rate on all this money corporations are holding overseas, you wouldn’t be able to get out of the way of the deluge of money floating into the U.S. economy, by reducing tax — Everybody knows you reduce tax rates and you produce more tax revenue.
So there’s constant ignorance or lying or history revisionism going on constantly in the media. Obama’s budgets. You know what Obama’s projected budget growth was year after year? All eight of his budgets. You know what his projected growth rate was? No! I’m talking about what he projected, 5%, 6%. Obama was promising 5%, 6% growth.
The media never said that was outrageous. The media never said it was unrealistic. And Obama’s growth never exceeded one and a half to 2%. Now, Trump is projecting 3% growth and they’re acting like he’s committed a crime here, misleading the American people of what’s possible in the United States.
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RUSH: You can look it up, folks. John Hinderaker published it at Power Line. Obama’s budget growth projections were five-and-a-half, six-and-a-half percent every year, and we never got even one-third of that from the guy. And here Trump has proposed 3% and they’re having a caterwauling fit at the New York Times and the Washington Post. What McCain and these people are doing, this is despicable what’s happening there.
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RUSH: Sound bite 13. We’ll start there and go in order, until I get tired of hearing people. Got that? (interruption) Right on. Sound bite 13. Well, since I brought the budget up, I may as well get to it. It’s not a big Stack, and I want to get to this. As I said yesterday, if Trump could move on this domestic agenda, particularly the budget — get Obamacare repealed and replaced, get these tax cuts going — believe me: The Democrats wouldn’t stand a prayer in 2018. I don’t care what they think they’ve got.
When it comes to this Russian business, and there’s nothing there. Trump’s having a pretty successful foreign trip here, at least in the optics and the appearance that he’s presidential and serious and so forth. Great meetings with the Saudis, good meetings with Netanyahu, met with the pope today. I have comments on that coming up. The pope gave him a little book on the environment. Do you know the Catholic Church does not have a position on the environment, other than the biblical requirement that we be “stewards of the planet”?
But there is not an encyclical or position on climate change, and pope’s out there preaching on it. And Trump did what he always does. Trump left the Vatican and he said, “I leave with a renewed commitment to peace like I’ve never had before.” It’s just like he left the New York Times telling them, “I leave with a more focused view of climate change than I’ve ever had before.” He doesn’t mean it; he just says it. Here’s Mulvaney. Mulvaney is saying more. He’s the budget director (chuckling), and he says that the budget — Trump’s budget — gets away from the crazy stuff that… (interruption)
Well, Mulvaney, you ought to love. Mulvaney’s a Tea Party guy. He’s a solid-rock conservative guy. He’s great to be in this position of budget director. But the Drive-By Media is incensed here because Mulvaney is actually telling people that the Trump budget “pulls back from all that crazy climate stuff.” That’s a quote! All the crazy climate stuff that Obama prioritized. He said, “We’re simply trying to get things back in order to where we can look at the people who pay taxes and say, ‘Look, we want to do some climate science, but we’re not gonna do some of the crazy stuff the previous administration did.'”
So it’s a serious budget, I think, and 3% growth is not outrageous. And it’s being presented as almost blaspheme. Which ought to tell you something. When the leaders of the American leftist and progressive movement — which is the media. When they try to tell people, their readers, and their viewers, that 3% economic growth is a pipe dream, that it is so far beyond what’s possible, that it is near criminal to suggest it and promise it? That is scary stuff. And it goes again to just how poorly educated people in this country are.
Economic growth in this country has, on many occasions, in normal circumstances — not, for example, after a war or during a war — been there. We’ve had 5% growth, we’ve had 6% growth, sustained. It has happened. It happened in the eighties with Reagan. We had some pretty good sustained economic growth during the Clinton years because the Reagan boom was still happening. It’s just in the last eight years that we shrunk down to 1%, 1.5%, barely even 2% growth precisely due to Obama’s policies.
So remember, the left is marshaled and mobilized to defend and protect the Obama legacy. So when Trump presents a budget that features more economic growths than we ever had with Obama, it has to be destroyed. If the best we could do during the Obama years was 1.5% or 2% max, then that’s all that’s possible, as far as they’re concerned, ’cause Obama is god, Obama is the savior, Obama is infallible, Obama shall not be improved upon. It is not possible to improve upon Obama, as far as the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, you name it, are concerned.
So Trump proposing a 3% economic growth budget is blasphemous. But, in fact, it’s barely half of what this country is known for. Why do you think that we’re a superpower? You think we’ve gotten there with 1%, 1.5% economic growth? That’s not even enough to support entrepreneurism. That’s not enough to support wage increases; 1.5% economic growth is stagnation! But yet Obama and the media told us that was the new norm. We had to accept it.
We had to come to grips with it because previous United States economies — which were growing and burgeoning — were unjust and immoral because they were built on the backs of what? This minority group or that minority group, or we had stolen whatever we needed from some poor foreign country or whatever. Because we, the United States, were evil and immoral and unjust. So everything had to be adjusted down and we had to have a life experience that’s more like everybody else on the planet.
Because it was just not fair that the United States was so much better, because capitalism sucks, as far as they’re concerned. Capitalism is not ever be portrayed as successful. Communism is what it is. Communism’s the answer. In communism, it doesn’t matter whether your economy grows or not because it can’t. So this budget gets submitted, and here comes McCain pronouncing it DOA. Why do we elect Republicans if this is what we’re gonna get? What is the point? Now, as for the Democrats on this, you’re gonna love this.
“House Democrats are hoping President Trump’s newly proposed budget blueprint will be a political albatross for Republicans [in 2018]. Unveiled Tuesday, Trump’s fiscal 2018 budget proposal pushes sharp increases in military spending, steep across-the-board cuts to nondefense domestic programs…” No cuts, folks. (sigh) Sigh! No real cuts. There are significant reductions in the rate of growth, but there are no real cuts. Maybe a couple of secure places like, as I said, “the arts,” whatever that is, the NEA. They might be eliminated.
Some budget items are targeted for elimination. But overall, the total amount of money spent next year is not gonna be less than this year. There aren’t any “cuts,” okay? Serious reductions in the rate of growth — serious, in fact — in some of the agencies. But nevertheless the Democrats, they’re out saying, “It’s gonna kill people. People are gonna die! Trump’s murdering people! Trump’s killing people.” But here’s the thing: If this budget is going to be an albatross, if this budget is gonna kill the Republican Party, if this budget is gonna doom the Republican to defeat in 2018, why don’t the Democrats vote for it?
Why don’t they the heck stand up and support it and ask that it be implemented, if it’s gonna ruin the Republican Party? If it’s gonna launch them back to power, why aren’t they supporting it? “[M]any of the programs slashed or eliminated by Trump’s proposal disproportionately benefit low- and middle-income families — many of whom supported Trump at the polls last November — and the Democrats wasted little time on Tuesday vowing to hang the president’s budget around the necks of Republicans who defend the plan.
“‘President Trump made a lot of promises to families across the country that supported him. This budget turns his back on all of the promises,’ said Rep. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.), head of the Democrats’ campaign arm” in the House. Again: If Trump’s budget will turn the country, including his own voters, against him, then why don’t the Democrats insist on passing it? Don’t they want to win back the House and Senate? Don’t they want to win back the White House? I mean, if this budget is gonna destroy…?
“They’ve never worried about destroying the country before. Trust me on this. Their attitude is, “Whatever damage to the country happens, we’ll get to that later. The first important thing destroying our opposition: The Republicans.” If this would do it, why aren’t they out there telling McCain he’s full of it? Why aren’t they out there trying to get McCain to support the thing? Why aren’t the Democrats the biggest proponents of this if it means the end of Trump and the Republicans?
“Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, singled out several cuts he deemed particularly devastating, including sharp reductions in funding for Medicaid, Meals on Wheels and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP.” How did we ever survive without it! Man, oh, man, I’m wondering: How did we ever get here with all these programs?
Go to the audio sound bites and we’re gonna kick it off here with Steny Hoyer, who is much younger than he looks. He’s about 102. He looks 70. He can’t smile anymore. Part of that is just that he’s a Democrat. Very long face, sad eyes. You would be, too, if your number one confidante was Nancy Pelosi. But he was on CNBC’s Power Lunch yesterday, and he was being interviewed by Brian Sullivan. Question, “This budget, is that a cut or is that a decrease in forward spending over time?”
HOYER: It’s a decrease in forward spending, you’re correct on that, but it’s a decrease in terms of effort, because as inflation occurs, obviously a dollar doesn’t buy tomorrow or the next year or five years from now what it buys today. So yes, okay, fine, now I’m gonna let you have an increase, but if you have an increase of five cents and the product costs you another 15 cents, you have a decrease.
RUSH: That’s how they do it! This is exactly how they do it. This is how they’ve sold baseline budgeting. The story here is that Hoyer admits that there aren’t any cuts, that there are reductions in the rate of growth, but the reductions in future spending are too big. Because, yeah, if the product you’re buying today costs you five cents and in another 10 years it costs you 15, you’re — the way this works is, you’re sitting at home and you and your wife decide that you want a new car. You don’t need a new car, but you want one, and you and your wife say, “Okay, well, what are we gonna spend on it.” I’m just know I’m just gonna pick a number here.
“We’ll spend $30,000 on the car we’re gonna buy.” So they go out shopping. And they look at cars that cost 30, not happy, cars that cost 35, 50, 55. And they can’t make up their mind. And the wife eventually says, “Look, we budgeted 30 for this. We’re not going over.” So they find a car for $25,000, they buy that, and they think they saved $5,000, when what they’ve done is spent 25. They just spent 25 because in their minds they’re gonna spend 30. They didn’t. They save $5,000.
On the other end, you say you budgeted $30,000 for a car but you end up buying one for 50, you tell yourself, “Yeah, but did you see the list on it was 65. We saved $15,000 on this.” No, you just spent 60. “No. We saved.” This is classic the way the Democrats have — and it’s not just Democrats. Republicans play this game, too, baseline budgeting, current services baseline. That is the amount of money every budget item was allocated, not spent. That’s the key.
And there is a guaranteed every-year budget increase on what was budgeted the previous year. What was spent is never calculated. So if the agriculture department got a budget item of $24 billion doll, just to pick a number, then that $24 billion plus 10% is the budget item for the next year. But what if they only spend $20 billion? Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter. Current services baseline is what they were given the previous year that determines how much they’ll get in the next, not what they spent. There is no zero base budgeting in Washington. It’s one of the biggest scams to ever come down the pike. Well, 95% the American people don’t know it. You people in this audience do. You were first made aware of it back in 1990, what, 5?
Okay, so here’s Hillary last night. This was the Children’s Health Fund annual benefit.
HILLARY: This administration and Republicans in Congress are mounting an onslaught against the needs of children and people with disabilities, women and seniors. This budget shows an unimaginable level of cruelty and lack of imagination and disdain for the struggles of millions of Americans, including millions of children. (applause)
RUSH: So here you have a tired, worn-out, most cheated on female Democrat leader in history spouting the same, tired, worn-out lines. An onslaught against the needs of children and people with disabilities, women and seniors, unimaginable level of cruelty, a lack of imagination, a disdain for the struggles of downtrodden.
Yesterday afternoon, Capitol Hill press conference, Nancy Pelosi, leader of the Democrats in the House, a reporter said, “Do you feel that because this budget’s so extreme that now it’s gonna make it hard to pass the appropriation bill? And the rhetoric we’re hearing from the Republicans, that this is dead on arrival, too, this is such an extreme budget and not even the Republicans like it. What about that, Ms. Speaker?”
PELOSI: With all due respect in the world for the fact that some Republicans are saying this is dead on arrival. They voted for the Ryan budget. The Ryan budget contains many of these same things. It subscribes to their philosophy that Medicare should wither on the vine. So we’re talking about Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
RUSH: Are you kidding me?
PELOSI: This is a killer for the American people, literally a killer. And as long as the public is aware of what is in these budgets, and that’s the important point, they have to know there is a price to pay in terms of public opinion if they would vote for this. But they all did already vote for the Ryan budget.
RUSH: This budget’s a killer, literally a killer. Medicare, wither on the vine. That is a distortion that also goes back to 1995. I’m not gonna take the time to explain it to you. But Medicare withering on the vine, everybody’s out there promoting single payer and they’re claiming Medicare is withering. Nothing is withering away on the vine. That’s the problem.
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RUSH: Letting back to some more sound bites on the budget, just to give you an idea. This is John Kasich, the governor of Ohio. He was on CBS this morning, and Charlie Rose said, “What impact will Trump’s budget, as presented, have on the state of Ohio?”
KASICH: It’d be significant, but this isn’t gonna pass. The problem here is that you can’t just take stuff away when people need to be healthy; they need to be fed, you know? So it’s not just a one-way street.
RUSH: What?
KASICH: It has to be both ways. The changes, the reforms that can come from many of these programs are fine. But you just can’t pull the rug out from under people. If they’re not healthy, they’re not going to work, and if they’re hungry (snickering), they’re not gonna go to work.
RUSH: What in the world is he talking about? It needs to be a…? It has to go both ways? It can’t just be a one-way street? The problem here is you can’t just take stuff away, and when people need to be healthy, they need to be fed? You know, it used to be the objective of the private sector is feed people. It was a commercial enterprise. It’s why grocery store markups are so small. One percent. That’s why they sell things that have nothing to do with food to earn a little bit more profit, because people have to eat. It’s not an elective purchase.
You have to eat. The great miracle of American agriculture has been producing the finest food on earth cheaper than it is anywhere. The government never did this! It’s not the government’s job to feed people. It’s actually your job to feed yourself, if you want to get down to brass tacks. I know. “It’s Draconian to suggest that people take care of themselves. That’s very Dracon! It’s a very, very heartless point of view, Mr. Limbaugh! Are you sure you don’t want to revise that?” This is John Kasich. This guy used to be a conservative.
This guy was instrumental in balancing the federal budget in 1995 or 1996 and now the purpose of government is to not take things away from people and to feed people. “You can’t pull the rug out from people. If they’re not healthy, they’re not gonna work.” Hey, some of them are not working and they are healthy! That’s the focus area. Nobody wants to make the unhealthy penalized. Here’s Tim Kaine, the vice presidential candidate running with Hillary Clinton. He is on Bew Day today, CNN, with Alisyn Camerota.
Question: “The budget director, Mulvaney, said yesterday, Mr. Kaine, that we’re no longer gonna measure compassion by the number of programs or the number of people on those programs but by the number of people we help get off those programs.” I should have known that this would be controversial. Remember this is the old Jack Kemp theory. We conservatives measure compassion not by how many people are on the dole, but by how many people no longer need to be. Real compassion is teaching people self-reliance, self-sufficiency.
Real compassion is unleashing forces and removable obstacles, permitting people to reach for the stars, to dream of and reach impossible heights, limited only by their desire of hard work and their ambition. But we are not gonna sit here and tell you our hearts are bigger than everybody else because we’re better at giving money away than anybody else. We want to teach people how to become the best they can be. That’s love. That is compassion. Those are also fighting words. That’s controversial! You can hear it in Alisyn Camerota’s voice. How dare these people think this way?
Here’s what Kaine thinks about it…
KAINE: He’s looking at numbers on the page and he’s not thinking about people. This isn’t about programs. It’s about people. And Director Mulvaney sent a budget for the president [that] isn’t at all about people. When you cut Medicaid, in Virginia about a million people get Medicaid; 500,000 of them are kids, 112,000 of them are elderly people. 186,000 of them are folks with disabilities. That’s who gets hurt when you cut Medicaid. It’s poor, vulnerable people, and children. That’s who they’re hurting. They’re looking at numbers on a page but in the Senate what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna look at people because that’s what this budget is really about. It’s about people, and we’re not gonna let them make these Draconian cuts.
RUSH: All right, fine. There aren’t any Draconian cuts, but I want to attack this in a different way. Kaine was saying here by inference that they care about people and that the Republicans only see numbers. (impression) “The Republicans don’t have hearts! The Republicans don’t care about people. But we Democrats do. We love people. We don’t see numbers. We don’t see numbers on the pay sheet next to a name. We see hearts, and we see minds.” All right.
I want you to travel out to anywhere where the vast majority of people vote Democrat and you take a look at how they’re living, and you tell me then how much the Democrats are caring for them. You go to places outside of Silicon Valley and Hollywood. You know, the Democrats have become the party of the rich. The Democrats are the party of the rich and the party of hate. You go take a look at all of these places where the Democrats claim if it weren’t for them, there’d be real suffering because the Republicans don’t care about them.
You go take a look. Find out how these people are living. Find out all these people the Democrat Party cares for. Take a look all these people Democrat Party cares about. And, by the way, then listen to them, listen to the people that routinely vote Democrat. What will you hear? Anger! You’ll hear anger and people that are outraged and think they’re getting the shaft and they’re not being treated fairly and they don’t have enough, and that nobody cares about them.
Why is it? The Democrats care for so many more people than everybody else, they love people? How come the great majority of their voters are miserable, angry, unhappy, and living in lower-middle class and poverty rates? Why is that? Where is the evidence of all this compassion? Where’s the evidence of all this caring? Why aren’t people that vote Democrat happy and content? Why aren’t they just robustly positive and optimistic ’cause they’ve got the Democrat Party looking out for ’em?
They got the Democrat Party caring for ’em. Why, the Democratic Party has been protecting African-Americans for 50 years. The Democrat Party’s been doing everything it can to protect African-Americans from evil. Far be it for me, but I don’t see all of this happiness. I don’t see all this even contentment.
I see rage. I see hatred. I see anger. I see disappointment. I see unemployment. I see people that are so poorly educated, they can’t even read their college diploma or high school diplomas and yet they’re being graduated, and they all vote Democrat.
You know the people the Democrats never see? I’ll tell you the people the Democrats never see. There’s Tim Kaine, “We see the people. The Republicans, they just look at numbers.” You know the people that Democrats never see and you know the people the Democrats don’t care one rat’s rear end about, and that’s the people paying for all their compassion, and that would be you, the taxpayer. You’re just a bunch of numbers.
And, by the way, they could hit you up any time they want and you pay up and you’re not gonna complain, you shouldn’t complain. You should feel fortunate the Democrats are using your money to spread their compassion around. And it’s a bottomless pit. They never think twice about asking you for more money. And they never think twice about accusing you of not paying your fair share.
They never think twice of accusing you of being the problem because you have a job and somebody else doesn’t. The Democrat Party never misses an opportunity to blame the achievers and the successful for the problems in America. You’re the enemy, as far as their voters are concerned. The Democrat Party, they may have compassion for people, but I’ll be damned if I can find people who are living better lives because they vote Democrat.