Glenn Beck Program, April 11, 2011

Guest Host:  Judge Andrew Napolitano

Budget

• The budget battle is over – or is it?
• $38 billion is such a small number, a little more than 1% of the total budget.  We still need to borrow $1 trillion between now and October.
• Last Friday’s agreement only funds the government until Thursday.

Guest:  Senator Rand Paul (R-KY)

• We will spend more in 2011 than we did in 2010.
• (Technical difficulties)
• The deficit will be larger this year than last year.
• We debated the spending bill over 8 days.  During those 8 days, we borrowed over $50 billion.
• We haven’t been serious about this.
• I ran for office saying the Republicans were spending too much money during the prior administration.  Then we had a $500 billion deficit.
• Now we have a $1.5 trillion deficit in one year.
• Most of the plans being discussed are arguing about spending reductions over ten – twenty years, but that spending went up in only a two-year period.
• I won’t vote to raise the debt ceiling unless it is the last time it will ever be raised.
• People want it done (spending cuts), but Congress hasn’t gotten the message yet.

Guest: Congressman Connie Mack (R-FL)

• The little amount we cut, it sounded like we cut the entire government.
• I don’t look at this as a victory.
• People are offended that the cuts are so little compared to the amount borrowed.
• He voted no on the continuing resolution.
• The current debt limit is $1.294 trillion.
• Why have a debt ceiling if all you are going to do is raise it?

Guest:  Congressman Charlie Rangel (D-NY)

• I’m glad we reached an agreement on the budget last Friday, not so much for the amount cut, but if we shut down, it would have been more costly.
• Even if we don’t raise the debt ceiling, we still owe the interest on the money we borrowed to get to the $14 trillion. 
• If we don’t pay the interest, the whole fiscal system collapses.
• The Republicans only want to cut.  They never talk about raising revenue.
• (Then there was a discussion about only borrowing to pay interest and corporations that don’t pay any taxes.)  [Note Congressman Rangel was head of the House committee that drafts tax legislation until removed for ethics violations. – Ed]

Debt Ceiling

A video was shown of Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) discussing the budget negotiations and saying…

• The Republicans were playing a game of threatening to shut down the government until the last minute.
• Fortunately, we didn’t go along with a lot of them.
• They are playing with fire.  A disaster.
• A formula that could actually have the credit market stops taking U.S. debt and create a recession.  It should be taken off the table.

Guests: 

• Art Laffer, Former Economic Advisor to the Reagan Administration
• Stephen Moore, Senior Economic Writer for the Wall Street Journal

Laffer

• The hypocrisy of the other side is amazing.
• When Obama was a Senator, he voted against raising the debt ceiling.
• If you just quote their quotes, they are saying what the Tea Party is saying.
• This is not the time to have an Armageddon battle.
• We are going to take the Senate after the next election.

Moore

• During the hour you are on the air, we will be borrowing $100 million.
• We need to get automatic spending cuts.  We need to get rid of the processes that lead to these deficits.
• We ought to have a path to a balanced budget over the next 10 years.  If we don’t reach those targets, there should be an automatic hatchet that drops on the spending.

Laffer

• Steve is completely correct.  But we shouldn’t lose the 2012 elections
• The end game is the 2012 election.

Moore

• The absolute maximum leverage the Republicans have is on this debt ceiling.
• Until we get spending and deficit reductions, you don’t give a big spender a bigger credit allowance.
• During this 6-minute debate, we just borrowed another $10 billion.

Laffer

• I’d like to see the Bush tax cuts passed permanently.
• Tax increases are the worse thing you can do in a bad economy.
• If we wait ‘till after the next election, we’ll have enough Republican Senators to get this easily.

Guest:  Charlie Gasparino, Fox Business network

• Expect a lot of doomsday predictions from The Street.
• Watch Goldman Sachs. 
• The epicenter of progressive liberalism on Wall Street is Lloyd Blankfine, the CEO, and Gary Cohn, the President. 
• They are huge backers of Obama. 
• Many staffers are Keynesian economists.
• They have been putting out report after report supporting big government spending and worrying that Republicans would cut spending and hurt the economy.
• Rank and File people on Wall Street will be annoyed (about tax increases on those earning over $250,000), but the company leaders will say that that’s good. 
• Not many people in the economics departments in these firms follow the Laffer Curve. 
• They believe that increasing tax rates really does raise revenue when we know that over the long haul it doesn’t.
• No one wants the U.S. to default on paying our debts.  If we can pay our debt service, let it ride.  Let’s play chicken.

Judge:  Is President Obama losing his base?

• Leftist columnist Paul Krugman writes that President Obama is missing and has been since 2008 when voters elected him.
• He accuses President Obama and others for not standing for anything and caving in to the GOP.
• A recent Rasmussen poll shows 37% of liberals strongly approve of his performance, down from 63% a year ago.

Guests

• Kirsten Powers, Fox News Contributor and New York Post Columnist
• Judson Phillips, Tea Party Nation Founder

Phillips

• John Boehner showed a white flag of surrender on last week’s budget battle.
• Obama came away as a big winner.
• Boehner and the GOP got their heads handed to them.
• Another poll I saw reported 19% of Americans overall strongly support Obama.
• If I have anything to say about it, Boehner is going to have a challenger next election.
• We’re saying stop the spending, no more debt.

Powers

• Boehner took the Democrats from zero to almost $40 billion in cuts
• I thought Boehner played the Democrats pretty well.
• Krugman and others believe that the government should be stimulating the economy and he (Obama) is publicly agreeing with the Republicans on the cuts.
• If Obama is a socialist, I’m the Queen of England.
• He is far from being a socialist, which is why liberals don’t like him.
• He is not in trouble overall because…
• He has no worthy opponent, and
• Democrats overwhelmingly approved of this budget even if liberals didn’t.
• Liberals are a small part of the party. 
• Also, Independents overwhelmingly approved of the budget compromise.

Egypt and the Arab World

Judge

• The Egyptian Army is turning on the revolution.
• Recently, a young blogger was sent to three years in prison for speaking out against the government and…
• A deadly assault was launched against demonstrators.

Guest:  Colonel Douglas Macgregor, Author “Warrior’s Rage”, http://www.amazon.com/Warriors-Rage-Great-Battle-Easting/dp/1591145058/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1302581647&sr=8-1

Macgregor

• The Egyptian Army was never the guardian of the revolution.
• The Egyptian Army exists to preserve order in Egypt.
• Chaos will ensue if the army surrenders control of Egypt over to the various elements that want to overthrow the Mubarak regime, many of whom are still in power.
• There will be no liberal democracy in the Arab world because the conditions for it do not exist.
• The culture doesn’t support it.
• There is no rule of law.
• There is no respect for private property.
• Graft and corruption are rampant.
• These regimes survive on the basis of…
• Passing out cash to their supporters, and…
• Their ability to suppress descent.
• Libya is not different from Egypt.  In fact, the standard of living is much higher.
• The truth is President Obama doesn’t care. 
• He is an ideologue.  He thinks we can export liberal democracy at gunpoint.

Judge

• The President is suggesting that the refugees from Libya can fly to the U.S.

Macgregor

• The last thing we need in the U.S. is to add to the growing underclass and the number of people dependent on the government.  That is exactly what would happen.  We need to reduce those numbers.
• If I were President, I would say we have been enormously successful and get out.  Leave.  It’s costing over $100 million per day.  We need to get out of Afghanistan and Iraq too.

Judge:  (Wrap up)

• The government shutdown was averted because the agreement was reached that the government would spend $38 billion less than the President originally wanted to spend over the next 6 months.
• To paraphrase Mac Beth, “This is a tale told by idiots full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
• We will need to borrow another $1 trillion to spend what they just agreed to.
• The two parties pretend to battle over values, but both parties have a lust to dominate.  They both believe in…
• The need for war.
• Central economic planning.
• Indispensability of debt.
• Transferring wealth for votes.
• The above views are antithetical to our founders.
• We should encourage Congress to vote against the budget and borrowing this year and next.