RUSH:  David Asman yesterday or actually last night hosting the Fox Business Network’s show called Bulls &  Bears, and he introduces a segment by playing a clip of me from yesterday’s program…

ASMAN:  Rush Limbaugh thinks he knows why Bill Gates and other rich liberals say they are undertaxed.  Take a listen…

RUSH ARCHIVE:  Why do they do this? Because it keeps the people with pitchforks away from them. …  You don’t see them giving it away. Some of them put it in foundations, but when they say they’re not paying enough taxes, you never see them write additional checks to the government, do you? … Now, Gates right now is worth about $96.5 billion, and he “said he and other business barons should have to contribute more,” taxes. Bill, there’s nothing stopping you from writing a check to the Treasury.

ASMAN:  Boy, that’s the truth.

RUSH:  It is absolutely the truth, and it’s exactly how these guys get away with it.  You notice when there’s ever a big, massive move to tax the rich, nobody ever says, “Like Gates”?  They never say, “Oh, yeah, we need to raise taxes on people like Warren Buffett.”  No, because those guys are always out there apologizing for it, making excuses for it and saying they don’t deserve it, saying they ought to be taxed higher.

So all the people that… Like, Ocasio-Cortez would never use them as example of the rich not paying their fair share because they’re acting like they don’t pay their fair share — when there’s nothing stopping ’em.  His guest was “Teve Torbes,” formally the Forbes magazine editor-in-chief, and he said, “Is there something wrong with being rich?”  I mean, you’ve been rich, Forbes.  “Is there something wrong with it?”

“TORBES”:  It just shows what happens when you have a generation without growth — we’re just beginning to get growth — is you get envious.  And most Americans don’t care if Bill Gates is worth $96 billion or $960 trillion.  They want to know, are their opportunities in life improving, are their wages going up, are they gonna have chances for a better job for themselves, a better future for the kids?  That’s what Americans want.  This redistribution mentality we have today, are they paying too much or too little? Everyone should pay less, and the government could collect more from the prosperity resulting thereof.

RUSH:  You know, Drudge — every time the government increases its take, he headlines it.  Drudge has a bugaboo about this, and it’s true.  The government is collecting more in taxes than they ever have, after Trump’s tax cut!  It works every time it’s tried, and it always leads to people asking me, “Well, if it does that, why don’t the Democrats support it?  Because they like Big Government and they like money coming in. Why?” Because that’s not what taxing the rich is. Democrats are not trying to get money to run the government.

We have a $22 trillion national debt.  It doesn’t matter. Whether we’ve got money or not, they spend it!  If there’s a lesson for anybody to learn, it is… Frankly, I’m to the point where I don’t even know why we have a budget, because it doesn’t matter.  The budget deficit? It doesn’t matter.  We’re spending money we don’t have, no matter what the budget says.  The budget allocates spending every year of money we don’t have.  It doesn’t stop them from spending it. It doesn’t worry anybody that it’s being spent.

So the fact that cutting taxes raises revenue to the government? That’s not gonna mollify Democrats.  But the Democrats want to use the tax code for — and do not doubt me on this. The purpose… Let me modify that a bit, ’cause I’m not sure everybody is of this frame of mind.  But the practical result of the progressive income tax is to put obstacles in the way of the acquisition of wealth.  Progressive taxation is the number one obstacle to creating wealth.  That’s why it is there.

You’ll notice Bill Gates is a $96 billion billionaire.  Nobody paid him that money.  I mean, he has not earned that as a salary — and the same thing with Buffett, and the same thing with all these other people who have that kind of money.  Your source for it comes in other ways.  They’re not paying income tax on $96 billion because they haven’t been paid income of $96 billion.  There’s different taxation methods for certain kinds of income.  But the purpose of the tax code…

The reason the Democrats want progressive taxation is the more you make, the more they want you to pay, because the more you pay, the less you are going to have.  They’re not targeting Gates and all these other people with their income tax demands, with their raising rates.  They want the percentages to be what they think are fair.  That’s why Ocasio-Cortez talking about 70% or 90%? There’s only one purpose for a tax rate like that. It’s to take your money away from you, to prevent you from keeping what you’ve earned.

And no matter what your income is, there’s a tax rate — there’s a marginal rate — that taxes the last dollars you earn at the highest rate, and it’s designed to make sure that you keep less and less as you earn more and more.  That’s the purpose of it, and what could be the purpose of that?  To run the government? (Snort!) The amount of money the government collects is immaterial to how much it spends, I maintain. Now, you’d have all kinds of budget officials even in this administration tell me and you that that’s all wet, that they’re all constrained by how much money they take, but they’re really not.

You can’t have very many constraints if you’re $22 trillion in debt!  We can’t even imagine how much money that is!  It’s the amount of money we spend, the government spends every year.  We can’t comprehend that, much less a total national debt since the founding of $22 trillion.  You know one of the real numbers on this? When Barack Obama took office in 2009, the national debt was $6 trillion, and when Obama left office it was up to $18 trillion or $19 trillion.  It was multiplying in geometric progressions.  There isn’t any concern about federal revenue as it relates to taxation.

The purpose of taxation is to make sure that the more you make, the more you pay — and what’s the practical result of that?  The more you pay, the less you have.  They make you think that they’re targeting people like Gates and Buffett and all these hedge fund people when they’re not.  They’re targeting people who earn $150,000 to $200,000, who earn that in salary and who are subject to the income tax code.  Even independent contractors who have to file quarterly, get 1099s, get the same thing.

However income comes in, it’s taxed — and the more you make, the higher your rate. The express purpose is to make sure you keep less and less.  What could be the purpose of that?  Why would they want you to keep less and less of what you earn?  I’m telling you, the income tax code is the number one obstacle in the way of the creation of wealth.  This is a little fun bite.  This is Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity last night during the handoff from Hannity’s show to Ingraham’s show on the Fox News Channel.

HANNITY:  Are you in New York tonight?

INGRAHAM:  No, I’m here. I was in Texas. I’m going to move to Texas. I love Texas. Okay?

HANNITY:  You want to know why I want to move to Texas?

INGRAHAM:  I was in Dallas. I love it ’cause of taxes.  Why are you in New York?

HANNITY:  I don’t want to pay anymore.  I’m sick of it.

INGRAHAM:  Come on!

HANNITY: I wanna.

INGRAHAM: Come on! Rush said we should move to Florida, what, two decades ago?

RUSH: Twenty years ago is about right, 1997. I did. I remember when I moved to Florida in 1997 I sent the New York state tax authorities all kinds of letters: “I’ve moved, I will not be filing an income tax form. I’ve joined these clubs, here’s my driver’s license,” all this sort of stuff, and I did it, lifestyle reasons and to escape the confiscatory taxes, and everybody said, “Why are you doing this?  You have to be in New York for what you do. You have to be there. Don’t you want to be in New York? Everything’s happening there.”

I said, “I’ve done my eight years. I’ve gotten to the point now where I can do it from anywhere. It won’t matter. And pursuing quality of life is what matters.” So 20 years ago, I did. Now, look, all kinds of people are leaving these states now, New York, California.