Following is a transcription of a portion of the first segment of the second hour from Rush Limbaugh's show on Thursday, June 6, 2002, where he appears to suggest that new taxes may be necessary to fund the President's proposed Dept. of Homeland Security. This follows similar comments from his first hour on Thursday. I was unable to listen or tape hour 3 that day. He sounded serious. No joking around.
He made no suggestion to fund the new Cabinet level department by cutting spending instead of imposing new taxes on the already overtaxed producers in this country. Here's what Rush said:
I just want to reiterate too that I wouldn't be surprised if there's a call for new taxes to pay for this on the Democratic side of the aisle. It may be necessary you don't know, depending on how widely - or wide the scope of this new department is going to be, what they're going to do, I mean the money is going have to come from somewhere [pause] and it'd be an excellent opportunity for these [pause] and you know how they are, for these Democrats to make a move on taxes, as I said in the last hour, the economy is starting to come back, and they don't have that as an issue, and I can just see them trying to make this an issue out of the fact that the president wants this new cabinet level department but how's he going to pay for it? That's their question for everything, well how are we going to pay for it? Especially when tax cuts are proposed.
After listening to this several more times, and the way Rush said it, I am convinced that he was attempting to soften up the audience to accept new taxes, for the good of the country, and to demonstrate our support for President Bush. I'm convinced he did this as a result of his conversation he told us he had with Karl Rove on Tuesday or Wednesday, ostensibly about the EPA Global Warming fiasco.
I also say there is no way whatsoever that President Bush will support or sign a tax increase. That's veto bait for sure.
We should know where Rush stands next week. It will be interesting to watch.
If I am wrong on either of the above points, I will happily chow down on a large helping of crow!
Cheers!