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BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Another extensive look at Obama's budget. It is just amazing how destructive this is for years and years and years. This is truly a problem. For example, the charitable deduction will be gone in 2011. The charitable deduction will be gone. The mortgage interest deduction will be taken away from some people. The mortgage interest deduction will be taken way and/or limited for upper income people, the $250 grand and higher. That's on the table. We'll have to wait and see how much of this Congress actually approves. But when it comes to the charitable deduction, right now the top payers and the most philanthropic, obviously, get to deduct 39.6% of every dollar they donate. That will be taken away in toto. Obama wants the government to be in sole charge of charity. He wants everybody thanking him for whatever philanthropy goes on in the country. We'll get to all that stuff in great detail.
And there's a funny thing today, Reuters actually has a story entitled: "Backdoor Taxes to Hit Middle Class." Not just the rich. The rich tax increases are up front and center. The middle class is gonna get robbed, and they will not know it. "Backdoor Taxes Hit Middle Class." But the White House got hold of Reuters and said, "That's not true. It is outrageously false." And so Reuters has withdrawn the story because the truth is not to be tolerated in the Obama administration.
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RUSH: Here it is: "Backdoor Taxes to Hit Middle Class." The story was posted last night at 8:07, I think. Maybe that's when they withdrew it. Anyway, the Obama White House got hold of State-Controlled Reuters and said the truth is not to be tolerated here. And so Reuters has withdrawn the story and says that a replacement story will run later this week. So what is this story the White House was so concerned about? Here it is: "The Obama administration's plan to cut more than $1 trillion from the deficit over the next decade relies heavily on so-called backdoor tax increases that will result in a bigger tax bill for middle-class families. In the 2010 budget tabled by President Barack Obama on Monday, the White House wants to let billions of dollars in tax breaks expire by the end of the year -- effectively a tax hike by stealth. While the administration is focusing its proposal on eliminating tax breaks for individuals who earn $250,000 a year or more, middle-class families will face a slew of these backdoor increases."
Here's why. "If the provisions are allowed to expire on December 31, the top-tier personal income tax rate will rise to 39.6 percent from 35 percent. But lower-income families will pay more as well: the 25 percent tax bracket will revert back to 28 percent; the 28 percent bracket will increase to 31 percent; and the 33 percent bracket will increase to 36 percent." This is what they all were before Bush cut them. "The special 10 percent bracket is eliminated." This is all true. Every bit of it is true. If you're going to let these tax cuts sunset, it means we're going to go back to what they were before Bush cut them, and those are the rates that I just gave you. That means that everybody paying income taxes is going to effectively get an increase, a tax increase, despite Obama's constant pledges that 95% of the American people get a tax cut, and he's calling one-time tax rebates a tax cut. So obviously the White House did not like this story. It is curious how this story ended up at State-Controlled Reuters. I mean Reuters goes out of its way to propagandize for the administration.
Something's happened here. So the administration -- probably Gibbs -- got on the phone and said (imitating Gibbs) "This is outrageously false, you gotta pull the story." And Reuters dutifully complied. We'll keep a sharp eye to see what the replacement story is later this week. These are not all the changes on the table. "Investors will pay more on their earnings next year as well, with the tax on dividends jumping to 39.6 percent from 15 percent." That hits the middle class, too. The middle class own stock. The middle class sometimes own stock that pays dividends. Hell, that's more than a hundred percent increase, 15% to 39.6%. "The capital-gains tax increasing to 20 percent from 15 percent. The estate tax is eliminated this year." The estate tax is gone, for just this one year, 2010. So if a member of your family dies, say your mother or father, grandfather or whatever, it's all yours, whatever the inheritance is, it's all yours. But next year, in 2011, "there has been talk about reinstating the death tax," and the Democrats are talking about reinstating it even sooner, this year, and not waiting for 2011.
Now, this produces all kinds of morbid thoughts. I can see Snerdley's mind is turning. His eyes are just rotating and flashing back and forth in there. And, yes, I am fully aware, I personally am aware -- I'm not going to tell you how many -- of people who have done everything they could to sustain family members on life support to 2010 because the estate tax is 55%. It's pure redistribution of wealth. Don't forget, Warren Buffett is all for the estate tax. There are a lot of rich liberals who amazingly are. "Millions of middle-class households already may be facing higher taxes in 2010 because Congress has failed to extend tax breaks that expired on January 1, most notably --" get this, now, this is something that irritates and more people every year. "-- a 'patch' that limited the impact of the alternative minimum tax. The AMT, initially designed to prevent the very rich from avoiding income taxes, was never indexed for inflation. Now the tax is affecting millions of middle-income households, but lawmakers have been reluctant to repeal it because it has become a key source of revenue.
"Without annual legislation to renew the patch this year, the AMT could affect an estimated 25 million taxpayers with incomes as low as $33,750 (or $45,000 for joint filers). Even if the patch is extended to last year's levels, the tax will hit American families that can hardly be considered wealthy -- the AMT exemption for 2009 was $46,700 for singles and $70,950 for married couples filing jointly. Middle-class families also will find fewer tax breaks available to them in 2010 if other popular tax provisions are allowed to expire. Among them: Taxpayers who itemize will lose the option to deduct state sales-tax payments instead of state and local income taxes; The $250 teacher tax credit for classroom supplies; The tax deduction for up to $4,000 of college tuition and expenses; Individuals who don't itemize will no longer be able to increase their standard deduction by up to $1,000 for property taxes paid; The first $2,400 of unemployment benefits are taxable, in 2009 that amount was tax-free."
They're taxing the first $2,400 of unemployment benefits starting this year. This year -- and, by the way, if you doubt me, go to the people in your company who do payroll and just ask them, tell 'em I told you to ask 'em if when 2010 rolled around they had new withholding instructions to withhold additional funds from for your paycheck, because there are. So the White House is clearly not happy that this story is out there. Reuters has dutifully withdrawn it. But all of this is true. Every aspect of this is true. There's nobody in the country who will escape tax increases. It's impossible with this irresponsible, insane, lunatic budget. And, folks, there are $1 trillion deficits for ten years, $1 trillion deficits, annual deficits for ten years. Do you understand that? We're gonna get to the point here where it's possible that it will not be possible to fund our debt, even with worldwide investors buying it. There's going to be that much of it.
Obama is just spending and spending and spending, and, by the way, James Clyburn, the head honcho of the Congressional Black Caucus says we can only spend our way out of the recession. There's only one way to do it, and that's spend our way out of it. Now the Investor's Business Daily today in a story by Jed Graham: "Higher Taxes for All in Obama Budget -- After cutting taxes for 95% of working families in his first year, President Obama has proposed a budget that would raise taxes on 100% of them." So whereas Reuters, under pressure, has withdrawn its story, Investor's Business Daily has not.
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RUSH: Oh, by the way: "Backdoor Taxes Hit Middle Class," the Reuters story, is still up on the Washington Post website. It's still there. Reuters may have pulled it but the Washington Post has it. I'm just giving you people at the White House a little help here, because you got Reuters to pull it. It's the headline they don't like. They couldn't care less about the story. It's the headline: "Backdoor Taxes to Hit Middle Class." That's probably what they don't like. The story won't have many changes, but it will have a headline change like: "Rich to Get Soaked, Bankers Especially Hard Hit by Obama Tax Hikes in New Budget."
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And Snerdley said, "You know, when you were in Vegas, I was at home. Now, I've been here in the studio on the other side of the glass and I hear you say that, I hear you say that, but when you hear it at home or in the car on the radio, it's jarring." I said, "I know." He said, "It's jarring because you just can't -- it's the one thing that no American ever thinks about the president is that he wants to harm the country. It's just hard to hear that, Rush." I said, "Believe me, I know it. This is why I always preface it by recognizing that I know this. And I don't say this lightly." And I don't say this, as Candy Crowley intimated, to shock anybody. I don't have to try to do that. I somehow have evolved the ability to do it. I'm not trying to shock anybody for the express purpose of shocking you. If I didn't believe it, I wouldn't say it. The more I look at this budget it distresses me to no end. I don't think there's any tone deafness whatsoever.
I mean, here's a story from MarketWatch: "Twenty Reasons Global Debt Time Bomb Explodes Soon -- Which trigger will ignite the Great Depression II?" The Wall Street Journal: "The President's Priorities -- One of the greatest spend-while-you-can documents in American history. We now know why the White House leaked word of a three-year spending freeze on a few domestic accounts before this extravaganza was released. No one would have noticed such a slushy promise amid this glacier of spending. The budget reveals that overall federal outlays will reach $3.72 trillion in fiscal 2010, and keep rising to $3.834 trillion in 2011. As a share of the economy, outlays will reach a post-World War II record of 25.4% this year." Twenty-five-point-four percent of GDP will be government. The only way that can happen is if you slice away at the private sector. They are robbing the private sector. They are defunding it, they are crippling it, taking over as many of the aspects of private sector market economics as they can, 25% of GDP is government, and government doesn't produce anything. All this is transfer payments. It's just redistribution of wealth, which Obama told Joe the Plumber, that's what he wants to do. He wants to return the nation's wealth to whoever the hell he thinks are its rightful owners, unions and minorities, whatever else.
Now, as recently as fiscal year 2008, federal spending was 21% of GDP, and even that was high. But, remember, we all got mad at Republicans and Bush for what we thought was out-of-control spending. Those guys were saving money compared to what Obama's doing. Let me read for you excerpts here from Brian Riedl. He's a guy from the Heritage Foundation. He's got a published column today in the New York Post: "It's a good thing President Obama and the Democratic Congress just agreed to raise the federal debt limit by nearly $2 trillion -- they're going to need every penny of it. And fast. Last year, Obama swept into office promising to make tough choices -- and then released a budget proposing the largest debt-and-spending spree in American history. This year, he's at it again: Over 2010-2019, his new plan boosts spending another $1.7 trillion and the deficit by $2 trillion over what he proposed last year." And last year was irresponsibly over the top.
"In fact, this year's budget shows yearly deficits as much as 49 percent larger than even last year's bloated proposal. This spending spree will drive up both taxes and deficits to levels unseen in US history. Nor are the Obama deficits a temporary result of the recession. Despite a modest recovery, the 2010 budget deficit will be higher than the 2009 deficit. Nearly 42 cents of each dollar Washington spends will be borrowed," or printed. Nearly 42%. We are broke! We do not have this money. We don't have a hundred million or $500 million to give the Taliban in hopes they'll start collecting garbage instead of killing people. We don't have the money. We don't have a hundred million dollars to give to Haiti. We don't have the money for anything. Forty-two cents of every dollar is borrowed or printed. "Even by 2020 -- which Obama's planners assume will be a time of peace and prosperity -- annual deficits would still exceed $1 trillion." By 2020, this is not sustainable. This will not work. Even after all of his tax increases, trillion-dollar deficits through 2020.
"The president who said 'I didn't come here to pass our problems on to the next president or the next generation -- I'm here to solve them' would, over the next decade, dump $75,000 per household in added debt into the laps of our children and grandchildren." Seventy-five thousand dollars, household share over the next decade, added to what it already is. "Obama claims it's not his fault. In his State of the Union speech, he asserted: 'By the time I took office, we had a one-year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts and an expensive prescription-drug program.'" Now, we played that sound bite. It just infuriates me. This little guy can't even accept responsibility. (imitating Obama) "It's not my fault, Bush did it, Bush did it, you can't make me do anything, Bush did it." And it's not true.
"Those policies were all implemented in the early 2000s." All these things that Bush did were in the early 2000s. "Yet, by 2007, the budget deficit was still only $162 billion," after all that Bush had done. After all that Obama cites as the big problem, still only $162 billion deficit, as of 2007. Now we're at $1.4 trillion! Try ten times as much in two years. It ain't Bush, my friends. "The trillion-dollar deficits didn't begin until 2009 -- after the recession hit. And the subsequent deficits are driven by runaway spending -- mainly from Social Security, Medicare (beyond just the drug benefit), Medicaid and net interest. In fact, under current policies, nearly 90 percent of the growth in the budget deficit by 2020 comes from spending hikes already programmed in -- and just over 10 percent from declines in revenues (And even that assumes all tax cuts are extended.)
"Before the recession, Washington spent $24,000 a year per US household. Obama would hike it to $36,000 by 2020 -- an inflation-adjusted $12,000-per-household expansion of government. (And does anyone think they're getting their money's worth?)." Add that to the $75,000 share of our debt that every household has. "If spending jumps $12,000 per household, taxes must eventually rise. The president would make a large down-payment on that with a $2 trillion tax hike on all Americans." This is the fourth source now that says every American gets a tax increase. Reuters, Investor's Business Daily, the New York Post, and the Wall Street Journal. And whoever looks at this honestly will conclude the same thing.
"The president would make a large down-payment on that with a $2 trillion tax hike on all Americans. Yet that would still..." even with a $2 trillion tax increase, folks, we can't do this. We're sitting around, we are watching the destruction of this country as you and I know it. Listen to this. After a $2 trillion tax increase "we would still leave the government running up $8.5 trillion in deficits over the decade, setting the stage for even larger and more damaging broad-based tax hikes later." A $2 trillion tax increase still leaves us $8.5 trillion in deficits over ten years. That's the kind of spending that this man has authored.
"Ominously, economists close to the White House suggest that a value-added tax (which is like a national sales tax) of 15 percent and 20 percent is eventually possible to finance the president's spending agenda. Obama has offered a budget that does nothing to address the nation's serious short- or long-term fiscal problems. Indeed, it makes them worse. By doubling the national debt over pre-recession levels, he'd push America toward a tipping point -- where rising debt levels will become too large for global capital markets to absorb." Now, stop and think of that. Global capital markets could not fund our debt! "This could trigger a financial crisis, an interest-rate spike and gigantic tax hikes. Last year, Congress went along with most of Obama's budget proposals -- enacting a $787 billion 'stimulus,' raising discretionary spending by 8 percent and approving more than 10,000 earmarks. But it eventually balked at the president's expensive cap-and-trade and health plans," although the health spending is still accounted for in the budget as though they're going to get it.
So this is going to be really, really interesting here in an election year to see what these Democrats -- by the way, Blanche Lincoln is now trailing by double digits in Arkansas. Republicans might win big in Illinois in November. The Democrats, they're the ones who may have to not be tone deaf, Mr. Snerdley. Obama doesn't care. He really doesn't care but it's going to be fascinating to watch what they do with this budget knowing that November is looming.
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The only reason you can't understand it -- if you don't -- is because you don't understand liberals. Because you don't understand radicals. Because you don't understand ideology. A lot of people don't because ideology makes 'em uncomfortable. That's partisanship. And they would rather we all just get along and they hold out hope for it. But I'm telling you: The only way we're going to rescue ourselves here is for as many people -- as many multiple, millions of people to find out what the hell liberalism is all about -- because that's what's happening. It's radical, radical leftism. Fascism, Marxism, I don't care what you want to call it. It is radical and it is not American. What's happening here is un-American. This budget is so outrageous. This budget... You know, back when Republicans used to send budgets up and they'd always said they're DOA before Democrats had seen 'em. This one genuinely ought to be dead on arrival. It is just hideous.
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RUSH: Here's more from Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. He says, "The president's budget is not like most budgets, with some tax code tinkering and spending. This budget is a choice. We are about to make a decision whose consequences will last for generations." A generation is 25 years. We're talking about two futures. It's a choice of two futures: The one we've always known in the past or something unlike we've ever seen in this country. That's what we face.
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RUSH: Here, back to the phones, Mark in Vienna, Virginia. I'm glad you waited, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Mega dittos from Vienna.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: Something struck me this morning when I heard James Clyburn's comments about in times of recession, the only way to get out of it is to spend more money. That struck me as it seems to me that there is no economic situation now when Democrats can't spend more money. If times are good, we have to spend more money because it's our moral obligation. When times are bad, we have to spend more money. In fact the recession requires us to do so because that's the only way out. So there's absolutely no economic situation that I can see where Democrats can't open the spigot and spend more money.
RUSH: Exactly. Exactly. They're setting it up so that whatever economic circumstance exists, we are going to need more spending. Grab audio sound bite number 14, Ed. We have a backup engineer today. Maimone's on his 25th wedding anniversary and he's doing something else. I forget what it is. I don't know what. What's he doing, Ed? Did he tell you what he's doing? (interruption) He kept quiet. He didn't to me. He sent me a note. But I don't remember what he said. I know it's his 25th wedding anniversary but he's doing something else that's going to cancel it out. He was making a joke. I don't know what it is. Anyway this was on Fox News Channel's Happening Now with Jane Skinner. She interviewed James Clyburn (Democrat-South Carolina). He heads up the Congressional Black Caucus. She said, "Our deficit will be hitting a record this year, the highest since post-World War II, well, beyond sustainable. And going forward if you look at these numbers we wouldn't hit the level the administration said it wants. What can you say to reassure taxpayers here?"
CLYBURN: We've got to make some decisions here as to what's in the best interests of the country going forward, and I think the best interest is to invest in education, control these deficits while at the same time try to get people back to work. We are not going to save our way, uh, out of this recession. We've got to spend our way out of this recession, and I think most economists know that.
RUSH: That's an Obama trick: "I think most economists agree. Most economists agree." This is insane. Plus, it's stupid. We're not going to save our way out of a depression? We gotta invest in education? For crying out loud, I am so sick and tired of hearing we gotta "invest" in education. That's all we do is invest in education and look what we're getting for it! We're getting a bunch of indoctrinated mind-numbed robots. I mean, there are even reading lists in certain schools now that include Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. Obama's big organizing Bible. You grow your way out of a recession, Congressman Clyburn. You grow your way out. There is no growth whatsoever anywhere near this budget. By design. There is no change to unemployment. Nobody is forecasting a significant change for two years. If that's the case, there will be no end to this recession.
I don't know how you can say you can have a recovery without adding jobs -- and if you don't add jobs and you still say you've got a recovery, most people aren't going to consider it a recovery anyway. But all these people on unemployment, with extended benefits and more people destined to be unemployed is the purpose. It is the design anybody with anybody economic literacy knows, especially after one year of this, that this is not what you do to stop a recession or come out of it. This is not the way it is ever been done. This is almost criminal, compared to the greatness of this country. This is destroying the greatness of this country. This is cutting this country down to size for whatever perverted reasons Obama and his people have to not like the way this country was constituted and founded. Paul Ryan is right. Two choices, two futures. The future made up of what we've always known in the past. Your kids do better than you, there's always expanded economic opportunity, expanding standards of living, or we go just the opposite. Your kids will not do better than you. Your kids may not even work. There may not be jobs for them. More and more people than ever on welfare. The welfare state growing and growing and growing. No more economic prosperity. Economic prosperity will have been usurped by government growth, by design. And Paul Ryan says it's not too late to make the right decision. The problem is we have to convince a bunch of Democrats to punt this budget.
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From Power Line, posted yesterday: "Today the Obama administration unveiled its budget for FY 2011. Obama said, 'Our government is deeply in debt after what can only be described as a decade of profligacy,'" but we have established that as recently as 2007, the budget deficit was only $164 billion, 176. And now it's a trillion because of policies implemented in 2009. "So he proposes to put the country far more deeply in debt through profligacy of a sort that was undreamed of just a few years ago. ... Either Obama has completely lost touch with reality, or he thinks we have." In truth, it's neither. He's not lost touch with his reality, and he doesn't care whether we have or not. I mean he would love to fool us, but he doesn't care. Just like he doesn't care what you think about illegal immigration, cap and trade, or health care. He doesn't care. He and his buddies have a mission and it is to remake this country. The choice is between the death of America and America's survival. Put plainly, that's what we face with Barack Obama. Not just this budget, but with his entire presidency.
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| Read the Background Material... |
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| • PowerLine: Obama Parts Company With Reality • Wall Street Journal: Wealthy Face Tax Increase. Budget Projects Rising Debt Despite Spending Cuts; GOP Decries Deficits |
Republicans and Democrats alike joining together to not fund Obama's show trial of Khalid Sheikh -- this thing better not happen in a civil court, folks. As I discussed yesterday, a mistrial has already happened. Obama and his stupid press spokesman have already proclaimed the guilt of these guys and said that they're going to be executed. That defense lawyer, first thing he's going to say: "You have tampered with every possible jury in this country that we could put together."
McCain, (imitating McCain) "I don't like partisanship, Limbaugh, but this I can't avoid." He said that Holder has obviously botched this. Senator McCain, it's not Holder. I don't care what anybody says, he cannot do this on his own. This is Obama. For whatever hideous reasons, this decision was Obama's. I still believe he's trying to impress the European left and radical Islam, and I think that he actually wants international courts to charge Bush and Cheney officials with war crimes. I do believe it, and it wouldn't surprise me if he's throwing the trial. I mean, look, in a civil court you gotta give these guys constitutional rights, and one of them is the presumption of innocence. That's not been provided. It's been denied them by no less than President Obama and his idiot spokesman.
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RUSH: Jimmy in Los Angeles, thank you for calling, sir. You're next on the program.
CALLER: Rush.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Wow. This is a great moment for me. Thanks for taking my call, man.
RUSH: You bet, Jimmy.
CALLER: Listen, I have a question for you about our BVD bomber.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Well, we get this guy and then we question him for, what, less than an hour before we actually gave him his lawyer and Mirandized him, et cetera? Is that the truth?
RUSH: That's true.
CALLER: So now all that information we got from him, isn't it inadmissible in court?
RUSH: Yes!
CALLER: So I'm a little confused, then. If the 50 minutes was enough for us to question him what good does it do anyway?
RUSH: The story is he was singing like a bird. He was singing like a bird, and then the doctors said... The latest I've heard is that he was given sedation for his injuries, probably morphine, and he started getting a little loopy and passing out and that's what they said, "Okay, we gotta stop this," and then the Mirandizing happened. It's a fiasco. It was totally, totally botched.
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CALLER: Good afternoon. Mega dittos, Mr. Limbaugh.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Thank you for taking my call.
RUSH: You bet.
CALLER: The air that we breathe, our atmosphere, contains a lot of different things, nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor, particulate matter, pollutants, and carbon dioxide.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: When we inhale our body captures the oxygen, some water vapor, particulate matter, and pollutants.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: And then we exhale what the body doesn't capture. So the carbon dioxide that we're exhaling is the same carbon dioxide we inhale. Therefore there's no increase in the carbon dioxide that's in the atmosphere.
RUSH: You mean from humans?
CALLER: Right. I heard you say earlier we create carbon dioxide by breathing. But we're just passing it through our body. It's already there.
RUSH: No, no, no, what I read was that humans contribute via exhalation 30% of the CO2 that's out there. You are telling me something, and as host, you know, I'm very confident and comfortable in my own skin, I did not know what you say. I'm not afraid to admit that I didn't know it.
CALLER: I'm not going to question you.
RUSH: I know you're not questioning me. I've never heard your theory explained. I'm not doubting you, don't misunderstand.
CALLER: All right.
RUSH: Okay. Well, I appreciate the information.
CALLER: Thank you very much, sir. Have a good day.
RUSH: You bet. You do, too, and thanks for holding on.
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RUSH: We have a physicist on the line from Long Island, New York. Greetings, my friend, and welcome to you, doctor.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. First-time caller, longtime listener. I'm on a cell phone so I can't really talk long but I did hear the comment about CO2 and I called to correct it.
RUSH: You mean about the CO2 that we breathe in and breathe out canceling out?
CALLER: Yeah. It doesn't cancel out. You take in food through your stomach, including lots and lots of carbon, amino acids, you break them down, too, and then all of the cells of your body oxidize the carbon, what you get from your food, and combine the oxygen you breath in with the carbon, you're oxidizing carbon and breathing out carbon dioxide. Now, the other half of the cycle is the plants. The carbon dioxide that we breathe out is food for them. They change it into oxygen and starch.
RUSH: Right. And so the net effect here is what? We do contribute net to the overall amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?
CALLER: We do contribute. Unfortunately the gentleman that called in was misinformed. We do breathe out more carbon dioxide than we take in but plants put out more oxygen than carbon dioxide we take in.
RUSH: In fact, they love it. The more carbon dioxide the better, they grow, they flourish.
CALLER: Right. If they regulate it they're going to kill all the plants.
RUSH: I know that you're a physicist and you're a scientist first, but I can't accept the notion that something human beings, who I believe were created, do, is a virtue of our creation, would contribute to the destruction of the environment we need to live, it just makes no sense to me.
CALLER: Makes no sense at all. It's a natural process. It's a cycle. We breathe out the carbon dioxide, and that's food for the plants, and they make oxygen for us. We're in balance, and the man-made effects don't affect the climate in the first place.
RUSH: Yeah, via the process of photosynthesis.
CALLER: Yeah, the plants take energy from the sun and they make the oxygen. Without the plants we'd be dead and without the carbon dioxide the plants would be dead.
RUSH: Let me ask you something else I've heard and see if this is true.
CALLER: Sure.
RUSH: I keep hearing from various nonscientists that we're deforesting too much of the country, which we're not, that we need grasslands, wetlands, we can't cut down trees because we need all of that to breathe. Somebody once said to me, I think it was a climatologist, I'm not sure, said we get all the photosynthesis we would need in an average lawn.
CALLER: I don't know if that would do it for the whole earth, but there's certainly a lot of green around and I don't think we're in jeopardy of --
RUSH: Of course not.
CALLER: -- starving if we cut down some forests. On the other hand, we do need the trees. You can't wipe 'em all out.
RUSH: Exactly, especially if we're putting more CO2 in the atmosphere via the burning of carbon fuels and so forth. Doctor, I'm glad you called. Thanks very much. (interruption) There was a lot of consensus there. Well, no consensus between the caller and this guy. And, by the way, we didn't take this call to embarrass the previous caller, Alan. That was not the purpose. I just had never heard what Alan said. I've never heard that. I wasn't ashamed to admit that I didn't know it. You know, I'm a very confident guy, very comfortable in my own skin. There's so little I don't know that it doesn't bother me to admit I don't know something. So I'm glad to get the call to correct it from a physicist, a man of physics, that's what a physicist is, for those of you in Rio Linda.
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RUSH: I just got a flash from our official climatologist here at the EIB Network, Dr. Roy Spencer (University of Alabama-Huntsville) informing me that Mother Nature absorbs, gobbles up, uses an average of 35 million tons of CO2 per day that we produce through the burning of fossil fuels. Mother Nature gobbles it up. It doesn't just pile up.
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| Read the Background Material... |
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| • Dr. Roy Spencer, Principal Research Scientist, University of Alabama • Climate Depot: Continuously Updated 'ClimateGate' News Round Up |
