RUSH: Do you remember Barack Obama back in 2016? It was a PBS special, "Questions for Obama: A NewsHour Special on PBS." It was in the middle of the campaign, obviously, and Trump was talking about keeping Carrier in Indiana. He was gonna talk to Carrier. He was gonna talk to Ford. He was gonna make sure that they didn't take those jobs, close up shop, and go to Mexico. So Obama is out there pooh-poohing this, saying (impression), "How's he gonna do it, huh? Wave a magic wand? He… Y'know, you can go out there and you say these things.
OBAMA: For those folks who've lost their job right now because a plant went down to Mexico, that isn't gonna make you feel better. And so what we have to do is to make sure that folks are trained for the jobs that are comin' in now because some of those jobs of the past are just not gonna come back. And when somebody says — like the person you just mentioned who I'm not gonna advertise for — that he's gonna bring all these jobs back? Well, how exactly are y'gonna do that? What're you gonna do? There's no answer to it. He just says, "I'm gonna negotiate a better deal." (stammering) Well, how…? What…? How exactly are you going to negotiate that? What magic wand do you have? And usually the answer is, he duh'n't have'n answer.
RUSH: This is why I say that, if Obama is ever able to escape his ego and narcissism, he's got to just feel tiny — to remember that he said this back in June. (impression) "How you gonna do it? Can't be done! What? About the only thing you can do…" This is so classic liberalism, by the way.
The only thing you can do is have "job training" for people for the new jobs that we're gonna create after the job you have leaves for Mexico. Job training? Are you kidding? That's what schools are! That's the never-ending promise of liberalism.
All these job training centers all over the country? It's a bunch of malarkey. The point is Obama didn't care that the jobs were leaving, folks! Trump's not the only guy that can figure out how to make this happen. He's just the only one who tried. Obama didn't even try! It wasn't even on his radar to make the effort. He didn't think it was necessary for his political viability. He didn't think it was necessary for these people, because it doesn't matter. If you lose your job, we've got a government program for you.
And if you lose your job, we've got a government training center for you. If you lose your job, we've got a government food stamp for you. If you lose your anything, we got a government this for you. You lose that, we've got a government program. "Just give your life to us and stop worrying about things," is what Obama's message is, and people don't want to do that. So Trump's not even president and Carrier is going to keep half the jobs in its air-conditioning plant in Indiana, in Indiana. I know there are caveats. We'll get to it in time.
RUSH: Did we not just win the election? Does that mean we are on offense, or should always try to stay on offense? Okay. So let me give you an example of what I'm talking about. So we're gonna keep, what, 1200, 1500 jobs at Carrier. All during the campaign Trump said that he was gonna talk to Carrier. He was gonna talk to Ford. He was gonna make sure that he kept these jobs here. You just heard Obama back in June on PBS say it's not possible. We gotta realize that these jobs leaving are old-fashioned, out-of-fashion jobs and we need job training centers to train people to do the new jobs that are gonna replace these.
Now, theoretically, there's nothing wrong with that. But the problem with it is that people like Obama think you are incapable of doing anything yourself. They need to set up regional job training centers. Job training center? Anybody that has a decent job or career has it because they love what they do. Liberals, communists, socialists, look at people as workers. They look at 'em as ants, worker ants, worker bees and so forth, and they just plug 'em in to do jobs that need to be done. There's no thought given to the individual because there aren't any individuals in socialism; everybody's the same.A job training center is not gonna train anybody for the future. What trains somebody for the future is education and passion and desire. I mean, if you really, really want to help people, stop denying them their dreams when they're young. Let kids dream! Let them fantasize. Let them plan all these great things they want to be. Stoke it, instead of limiting what you think people can do and limiting what you think their capabilities are. And liberals, by definition, do that. They don't think anybody's capable of much. That's why government's need.
That's why Big Government, that's why all this bureaucracy is needed. And this whole notion of job training centers with the government in charge of making sure you know what to do when certain jobs are lost and new jobs come along? That's not how people have meaningful lives. People's lives, meaningful lives derive from desire, from passion, from education, from knowledge, from growing up being inspired by people and believing that you can do things and that you should want to do things. And people encouraging you to try to do things.
Not looking down on your desire. Not looking down on your self-assessment of your abilities. We wouldn't need any job training centers if our education was working in the first place. I've always said, "What is it? What the hell is a job training center? What…? What do we have schools for?" Anyway, so President Obama didn't even want to try to keep the jobs at Carrier, for whatever reason. Maybe he didn't want to even roll up his sleeves and work with the people there. Maybe he resents them 'cause they're a corporation.
I mean, liberals hate corporations, folks. Corporations are not people. And the more people that are out of work, the better for the Democrat Party. I know you might snicker at that, but it's the damn truth. The more people in need, the better the Democrat Party is, in their minds, 'cause that's their source of power. It's all blown up on them, though, because it's now been demonstrated. They can't provide, they can't take care of, they cannot provide prosperity for people. The false promise has been realized again. But we have to keep teaching it.
So now Trump decided that he's gonna try to keep these jobs, and Carrier is an example where he's done it. And I think we need to focus on the fact that he did it. Now, a lot of people are coming along and criticizing it, trying to. "Well, yeah. Well, Carrier got $7 million in tax breaks. Of course they're gonna stay!" Wait a minute now. Go back to what I said at the top of the hour. We won! We are on offense. Nobody got "tax breaks." Carrier got "tax relief." The language is key. Carrier didn't get a tax break.
We didn't give Carrier a loophole so that they can now be criticized.
We gave them tax relief. We have the highest corporate tax rate in the world. One of the reasons why companies have so much money offshore is because it's cheaper! It's simply cheaper to operate the business offshore than it is domestically because of the tax rate, 35%, which is higher than anywhere else in the industrialized world. And one of the things the Trump team says they're gonna do is lower that to 15%. And if they do, folks, you haven't seen anything yet. If they succeed in that — and you watch.
The Democrats are gonna be in there opposing it, at least at the outset, as stridently as they can. The economy working — the economy growing, corporations growing and hiring people and wage increases occurring — is the worst thing that can happen politically for the Democrat Party. That's why they have to constantly rewrite the history of the 1980s. That's why they constantly tell you the eighties was an illusion that was all built on debt, and they use the analogy that we overspent on the credit card and we have these big deficits and so forth and have to pay it back.
They wanted you to believe anything but that it was legitimate. If Trump and his team are able to lower the corporate tax rate to 15%, you look out. The left have told people that corporations are gonna hide the money or shelter the money or keep it for the CEO. They're not gonna give it away, they're not gonna sharing it, it isn't gonna trickle down. You watch. And this Carrier situation is a great example. They were gonna leave for Mexico. They have been given $7 million in tax relief, or is it billion? I forget which. The number doesn't matter.
I think it's important for us to properly characterize this. The left, the media are gonna try to call this "tax breaks," favoritism, loopholes. They do it all the time. In high-tax New York, in high-tax California, the governors of those states are constantly offering tax breaks, tax exemptions to any number of companies if they will locate in those states. The left does it all the time. We point it out every time we learn about it because it's hypocritical.
It's always a teachable moment when they do it. Now that it appears to have happened here — and by the way, it's not the sole reason Carrier is staying, either. It's one of the factors. I'm sure that Mike Pence and Trump together talking to the people at Carrier were very persuasive. All they had to do was remind 'em of the election results. All they had to do was remind them of where the mind-set of America is right now. I'm sure all they had to do was remind Carrier of the great public relations awaiting them after the announcement the jobs are staying here.
There's all kinds of factors that go into this, but there's no question some tax relief was offered. One of the reasons Carrier was moving was for economic reasons. Folks, these are businesses. They are not organizations that are started up to provide health care. A business does not start up because it needs to provide jobs for a community. That's not why it happens. It's another example of how woefully inept our economic education is. The left would have you believe that a corporation exists for health care.
A corporation exists to provide jobs for the community. A corporation exists to make charitable donations to the symphony or the homeless shelter or whatever it is. That's not why businesses exist. Everybody ought to relish profitability. Profitability is where growth takes place. Profitability is where job creation lies. Profitability is where wage increases are. Profitability is where the country grows and everybody rises up with it.
We should want small business, large business all doing well. We shouldn't want to punish them for the simple reason that they've gone into business, which is what the Democrats do. Go into business, sell a product, sell a service, you're automatically a suspect to people like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — unless you donate to them, and then you become their closest friends, and then we get cronyism.
But if you don't donate to Obama and you're a major corporation like Big Oil, then they're gonna blame you for climate change, destroying the planet and they're gonna get everybody turned against you and hating your guts and so forth, and that's how they operate. That's not how Trump operates. That's not how Mike Pence operates. They understand the simple mathematics of economics. Economic growth, profitability, prosperity, jobs, increased jobs, increased wages, they're able to get that tax rate down to 15% and we're gonna call it tax relief, not tax breaks, not tax loopholes. It's important to control and reclaim the language here.
There's nothing good, there's nothing moral about taking money from people who earn it. The left wants you to believe that true morality is defined by how much money you give the government, how much money you pay the government, how much money the government gets from you, because only the government does good stuff, only the government does good works, only the government cares about people. It's bogus.
We want people to take care of themselves. We want people to provide for themselves. We want people to enjoy the fruits of their labors. We want people to enjoy reaching out and making their dreams come true. We want people to realize their life's dreams and passions. You need a growing economy for this. You need a positive attitude nationwide. You need a can-do spirit everywhere. You don't need a blanket of can't do this, that's illegal, that's unfair, that's unjust, all of these can'ts, all these won'ts never helped anybody.
Everybody's complaining about all of Trump's cabinet members, how rich they are, that's horrible. I'd rather have that than a bunch of people in Obama's cabinet that have never spent a minute making a payroll, creating a job, or a service, or inventing a product. What the hell is there about academics from the faculty lounge who don't know what they're talking about other than theoretically. Why not have a bunch of people who have succeeded wildly, sharing what they know, implementing what they know nationwide? I would much rather have that.
But this Carrier example is a great example of how this can work. Now, not every corporation's idyllic. Not every corporation is a great bunch of people. Like in any group of people, you're gonna have bad apples, bad actors here and there. Some corporations over the years, after having been granted tax relief, have packed up and left anyway after a while. Don't misunderstand me. I'm not singing the virtues of corporations simply 'cause they exist. But by the same token I'm not gonna be like your average liberal and condemn them just because they exist.
The PR value here — hell, it's more than PR. This is substance. Jobs have been saved. A president-elect is able to fulfill a promise even before he assumes office. Do you realize what something like this can do for the national psyche? This is great for the national attitude. This shows people that things can happen for the good. It shows people that things can be done. Contrast this to Obama and the health care summit he did on ABC way back in 2009. I'll never forget this.
It's the early days of Obamacare. It's still being discussed. It hasn't been implemented. And Obama's got this live hour on ABC TV where people from across America are being allowed in to ask Obama questions about his forthcoming health care plan. A woman stands up, says that her mother's approaching a hundred years of age, still has the will to live, still has all of her faculties but needs a pacemaker.
She asks Obama, "Under Obamacare, will my mother get a pacemaker?" Stop, just that alone, imagine, in the United States of America, a citizen asking a president if her mother will get a pacemaker. Why should it be up to the president whether somebody gets a pacemaker? And you know what Obama said? He point-blank said probably not. Probably not. At that age it might just be better to give her a pill and let her live out the rest of her life pain free. He actually said that.
Now, contrast that to Trump and the Carrier rescue and the jobs saved and the positive energy attached to it and the can-do characteristics of it. Here's a candidate who said he was gonna try to get this done, and even before he's elected he gets it done. You can take the theory and throw it away. You can talk about the tax breaks, but if you do, talk about tax relief. Make sure you tell people that we have the highest corporate tax rate in the world and it's gonna change and Carrier's just getting an advance on what will be a reduced tax rate.
Let's go to the audio sound bites on this 'cause some people reacted to it. Drive-Bys very nervous about this, by the way, Drive-Bys, Democrats. This is the kind of stuff not supposed to happen, not supposed to be possible. Democrats tell people that we can't stop this from happening, that corporations are evil. The Democrats want you to lose your job. They want corporations to shut down and move, because it allows them to tell you how rotten and mean corporations are. You may think, "Well, Rush that's really tough." I'm telling you, it's the truth, folks. I have been, for 25, 29 years here trying to explain to people who liberals are. They never, ever should be back in power. Never.
They literally do. If a corporation shuts down and leaves, they don't care. It gives them an enemy, it gives them a villain, they love to criticize them and it's got people in need, people out of work. Hello 99 weeks of unemployment benefits and the Democrats get credit for caring. Big whoop. Well, you can do all that, but you're not gonna grow an economy, you're not gonna grow a country, and you're not gonna have a nationally positive attitude about anything. So, last night and this morning, a montage of Carrier employees talking about Trump's deal to save their jobs.
MAN: People were actually hand shaking, hugging. He's not even been sworn in yet, is already showing us that he is a worker.
MAN: I was not a huge Trump supporter. You know, I didn't really know how to take Mr. Trump, but I'm glad that he actually lived up to a promise and stuck with it.
MAN: I would like to tell him thank you for going out of your way and taking your holiday away from your family and working on the Carrier and employees deal and sticking to your word.
MAN: Weeks after he gets elected he makes the announcement he done what he said he was gonna do with the Carrier.
RUSH: Now, doesn't that sound better than a bunch of people whining and moaning and complaining about whatever? I'll take this any day. And we will be right back.
RUSH: Well, I'll answer my own question. One of the reasons Obama would have had trouble doing anything with Carrier is Mike Pence. He's the governor. It's a state thing that happened here, and Pence would have had to have been involved and that would have stopped Obama from operating.
Fox News: Carrier Employees Glad Trump "Lived Up to a Promise"