If We Don’t Raise the Debt Ceiling, Will the Apocalypse Really Occur?

RUSH: “On Feb. 4, 2010, when the House of Representatives voted to increase the legal limit on the national debt by another $1.9 trillion (lifting the limit from $12.394 trillion to $14.294 trillion), not one Republican voted for the increase.”

It’s amazing how this tracks. It’s like I just said: If you go back to 2006, not one Democrat voted to raise the debt limit in 2006. Republicans ran the show then. One year ago, not one Republican voted to raise the debt ceiling when they didn’t run the show, of course. Just a year ago, one year, the debt ceiling has gone up by $2 trillion. Now, “Then-Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R.-Va.) rose on the House floor that day and declared that it was ‘beyond comprehension’ and ‘a travesty’ to talk about raising the legal debt limit to $14.294 trillion.

“Last week, the Republican House leadership agreed to a deal with President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) to spend $3.7555 trillion in this fiscal year — even though at the close of business Friday, as the deal was being struck, the Treasury reported that it could borrow only an additional $80.85 billion before hitting the $14.294-trillion debt limit Congress set last year.” So the debt ceiling increase of last year, we’re bumping up agin’ it now — against it. We need to raise it again.

https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2011/04/13/if_we_don_t_raise_the_debt_ceiling_will_the_apocalypse_really_occur/

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
February four, little over a year ago, when the House
of Representatives voted to increase the legal limit on the
national debt by another one point nine trillion dollars that
lifted the limit from twelve point three trillion to fourteen
point two trillion. Not one Republican voted for the increase.

(00:24):
It's amazing how this tracks. Like I just said, if
you go back to two thousand six, not one Democrat
voted to raise the debt limit. In two thousand six,
Republicans ran the show. Then one year ago, not one
Republican voted to raise the debt ceiling when they didn't

(00:45):
run the show. Of course, just a year ago, one year,
the debt ceiling has gone up by two trillion dollars now.
The Majority whip at the time was Eric Canter of Virginia.

(01:05):
He stood up on the House floor that day and
said that it was beyond comprehension and that it was
a travesty to talk about raising a legal debt limit
to fourteen point two trivion dollars. Last week, the Republican
House leadership agreed to a deal with President Obama and
Den Harry to spend three point seven five five five

(01:30):
trillion dollars in this fiscal year, even though at the
close of business owned Friday, as the deal was being struck,
the Treasury reported that it could borrow only an additional
eighty billion before hitting to twelve point to nine four
trivion debt limit Congress that last year. So the debt
sailing increase of last year, we were bumped up again.

(01:52):
It now against it. It's we need to do it
again in this In the first six months of this
fiscal year, which would be October through March, according to
the Treasury Department, the debt increased seven hundred eight billion.
Even if you subtracted the thirty eight and a half
billion of this deal from that number, the federal government

(02:16):
would still be on a pace to increase the debt
by about another six dred and seventy billion dollars in
the remaining six months of this fiscal year. Just to
put that thirty eight and a half billion dollars into
further perspective, simply put by the way these numbers, these
have Terence Jeffrey and a piece he has at the

(02:38):
cyber Cast News service to put this in perspective. To
consummate the spending deal, the Republican House leaders cut with
Obama and read on Friday, where is page too stupid predator?
To concentrate the deal, our commensate can consummate the deal,

(02:58):
Republicans would need to lift the debt ceiling by hundreds
of billions of dollars just so let the government borrow
the money the Republicans have already agreed to let the
government spend between now and see. Back in February, when
the then Democrat controlled House of Representatives voted to lift

(03:19):
the debt ceiling up to the fourteen point to nine
four trillion is when Cantor delivered a scathing speech against it.
He said, it would be recklessly naive to go about
our business in Washington pretending there won't be severe consequences
for the mountains of debt that we're piling up. Yet
today it is evident that this kind of wilful ignorance

(03:43):
is sweeping across Washington. We are set to lift our
nation's debt burden to fourteen trillion dollars. I would ask
my colleagues in this chamber if they know how many
zeros fourteen trillion has I would ask the American people
if they know how many zeros are in fourteen trillion.
It's fourteen trillion. It's beyond comprehension to be talking about

(04:03):
numbers this big. More precisely, the limit is and then
he read it out one nine zero zero zero zero
zero zero zero zero. It's a travesty, he said. The
writing is on the wall, said Cantor, Congress needs to
wake up and realize the future of American prosperity is

(04:23):
in dire straits moral danger. And he was right then.
But if you go back to two thousand six when
the Democrats, sorry, when the Republicans had control, When you

(04:44):
go back in two thousand and six, it was the
Democrats saying almost identical word for word what Cantor is
saying here. So what we've learned here is is that
the party out of power is always opposed they're raising
the debt limit. And they used the same arguments that
the that the previous time of another party was out

(05:06):
of power used. It's it's it's uh, mind boggling. Here.
It's all about who's running the show. And if you're
not in charge, if you're not in control, you're not
the majority, you're gonna oppose raising the debt ceiling. Except

(05:28):
we're kicking it. We're gonna kick the can down the road.
This is why Terrence Jeffrey has written the piece. If
you're just joining us, the Republicans are sending a signal
out that they're not going to fight the debt ceiling increase,
that the Ryan budget deal that really should be our
area focus. That's what they're saying. From the political today,
Republicans are growing increasingly concerned about the impact a bruising

(05:52):
fight over raising the nation's uh uh fourteen trillion dollar
debt sailing could have on US financial markets. Speaker Bayner
has had conversations with top Wall Street executives asking how
close Congress could push to the debt limit deadline without
sending interest rates staring and causing stock prices to go lower,

(06:12):
people familiar with the matter, said Bayner. Spokesman Michael Steele
said last night he was not aware of any such conversations,
But the media is reporting that Wall Street execs are
warning Bayner, you guy, you better, you better, you better
not fight this fight. So that's where we are. You know, folks,

(06:34):
we're getting the same kind of hysterian about the need
to raise the death sailing we got about the government shutdown.
We're getting the hysteria is the same as we got
for TARP. We better do this. If we don't do this,
we could be a whole collapse. If we don't do this,
the financial system of the world could come clumba with everything.
Remember that it's still unspent TARP money. And then the

(06:56):
same thing with with the stimulus bill. I mean, we
had to do that right there. We couldn't. We had
to bail out General Motors. All that stuff in the
fall of two thousand and eight had to be done
right now, And we're getting the same kind of hysterium
about the need to raise the debt ceiling. Washington knows
how to do this. Why shouldn't they got what they wanted,

(07:19):
every bit of it in two thousand eight playing us
this way. So the Democrats and their copy boys in
the media are saying that it would be an apocalypse
if the debt ceiling is not raised. Michelle Bachman was
on Fox and Friends this morning. She pointed out that

(07:39):
it would probably take six to seven months before the
debt ceiling would force the government to shutdown, if ever,
and that's the bottom line, A genuine shutdown of the
United states government isn't going to happen. It's simply will

(08:01):
not happen. Revenue would still be coming in. People are
still working and paying taxes. Revenue is still coming in.
The worst that would come out of it is that
we would have to prioritize our spending. In fact, it would,
she pointed out, to be almost like a de facto
balanced budget amendment, which would be a good thing. But

(08:25):
we're getting we'll get the same kind of hysteria. Oh
we can't well, no no, just like we can't have shutdown,
can't have shut Oh no, no, we can't, can't. We
gotta raise the death It's the same damn way focus,
the same damn procedure, it's the same strategicy, it's the
same promise of calamity apocalypse, and it's not true. There

(08:47):
is not imminent disaster on the other side of failing
to raise the dead limit. You see, what's guiding all
this is that which I believe is our biggest, single
problem too well, and that's hard to really categorize. But

(09:09):
if it's not the single biggest problems very close, and
that is the notion that not one meaningful thing in
this country can happen unless the government is involved in it.
That's destroying us. The notion that kids can't eat, that
people can't learn, that products can't be manufactured, that services

(09:32):
can't be performed, nothing, nothing can happen unless government is
open and actively involved in it. And folks that that
whole premise is fallacious, and yet it is destroying us.

(09:53):
What would happen if we don't raise the net sailing? Well,
we couldn't borrow any more money. It's a good thing, right.
If the United States government were a person or a family,
would anybody loan them any money? Nope, just the sharks,
just the predatory lenders out there. Wouldn't that force the

(10:19):
government to find and make some real cuts, set some
priorities if it couldn't borrow any money. Yeah, we keep
hearing that government like family. Family sits around a kitchen table,
although I don't think families do that much anymore. Family
sit around a kitchen table, they pour over the monthly bills. Yeah,
you can just see that, mom, dad, the two point

(10:39):
eight kids, and family dogs poring over the family. You
do that with your daughter's down. You sit down and
go over the bills with your daughters. I didn't think so. Yeah, okay,
the college bills, but I mean the whole No, you
don't at any rate. What would be so bad for

(11:00):
the federal government couldn't borrow any money? Uh see, this
is my whole point. We are falling for this. It
would destroy the confidence and that there isn't you know,
the fastest way to destroy confidence in the United States

(11:20):
is to have Obama succeed and everything he wants to do,
we're gonna become a laughing stock. Well, Obama wants to
take this country is precisely to where it has no
respect around the country and around the world because it
isn't any special. But we've been there, said that, done that.

(11:41):
This whole notion here that any time the ruling class
in Washington desperately wants something, the same tactic is employed.
If they don't get it, it is the apocalypse. It
is an utter, unthinkable disaster. And in none of these

(12:03):
cases has that been true. As it turns out, as
I say, they're still tarp money that hadn't been spent.
Excuse me, there's still stimulus money that hasn't been spent. Hell, folks, Heck,
for those of you offended by hell, some of the

(12:24):
thirty eight and a half billion dollars in the budget
cuts is simply money that hasn't been spent yet from
previous budgets. It's not new cuts, it's all kinds of
money that hasn't been spent. Let's look at this realistic.
You mean to tell me that this government cannot get

(12:48):
along on a measly fourteen point three trillion dollars We
got a budget of three point seven three point nine trillant.
We can't get by on that. This is absurd. We've
lost all perspective, We've we've lost all connection to rehable here.

(13:12):
A real debt limit seems to me to be exactly
what we need here. And you know what, I think
the rest of the world would actually be happy that
we are beginning to act like adults for once where
our debt is concerned. Look at the I m F.

(13:32):
Not particularly fond of the I m F, but let's
look at them anyway. They and everybody else telling us
that we need to get our house in order, Well,
wouldn't it be a real cap on our borrowing be
a big important first step to getting our house in order? Right? Folks?

(13:57):
Might we've got to resist this. We have to resist
that there's a disaster in the next twenty four hours,
there's a disaster in the next month. The disaster is
in the Oval office. The disaster is going to be
making a speech here in about seven and a half minutes.

(14:20):
The disaster is going to be making a campaign speech
on winning the future with tax increases. Let me grab
a quick phone call here with Hendersonville, North Carolina High Kurt.
I'm glad you called. Welcome to the program, Rush. I
appreciate you taking my call, and my question is regarding
the death celling. But before I asked that, I just
want to compliment and thank you for um you educating

(14:43):
us and for keeping us informed. It's very difficult for
the average barn animal to to weed through the maze
of misinformation, and I appreciate it. Appreciate very much farm
animals due to well, the question I have for you is,
just before I actually clicked on your pro rahm on
the news, I saw that that there are some congressmen
senators that were saying, in essence, we are not going

(15:06):
to up the debt limit until we vote or until
we get a handle, until we and there is a
bipartisan consensus that we must um agree to spending um
that will be responsible and and so and so forth. Well,
if that happens, then why why do we need to

(15:26):
increase the debt limit? If if those things have been accomplished.
I mean, that's not a rhetorical question. I'm matching. I'm
really serious. I don't understand if they've already pre agreed that,
all right, we're gonna you know, we've come. We realize
that we we can't spend more than we're taking in Dadada,
but we still need to increase the debt limit. What
am I missing? What you're missing is yeah, what you're

(15:52):
missing is it. I don't know what you think you heard,
But nobody has agreed to stop spending, and nobody has
agreed to spend anything less than what we're spending now.
I don't know what you think you heard. If you
did hear, that they're lying to you. Let's return to
the audio. Sunbite this this morning, this morning in Washington,

(16:15):
Airic Cantor, the majority leader for the Republicans in the House.
Sis speech is coming a full two months after the
president's original budget proposal and speech to the nation of
the State of the Union. You know this is vintage Obama.
He's been standing on the sidelines expecting the rest of

(16:35):
us to make the tough decisions to lead this country. Yep,
that's what he does. Sits around that other people do, it,
comes in a thing into the day, and takes credit
for it if he thinks there is credit to be taken. Now,
there was a a p story and we quoted from
it widely yesterday, but there was this little nugget buried
in their Treasury Department reported Tuesday that the deficit already

(17:00):
totals eight hundred and twenty nine point four billion dollars
through the first six months of the budget year, a
figure that until two thousand nine would have been the
biggest ever for an entire year. For March alone, the
government ran a deficit of a hundred and eighty eight
billion dollars. The George W. Bush annual deficit in two

(17:24):
thousand and seven. I think two thousand five was a
hundred and sixty some odd billion. Oh. I know, they
were howling like a bunch of werewolves in a long
Chaeney movie. They were just how are they trying to
create the notion of a of an economic collapse? Uh? Unemployment.
Unemployment was around five percent to so in one month,

(17:48):
Obama has given us a budget deficit larger than Bush's
annual budget deficit. That is an astonishing fact. That staggering.
The amount of depth that's been piled up just since
Obama was immaculated, doubly so at the a P would
print it there for one at all to see. That

(18:09):
was kind of buried. As I say, it took highly
trained broadcast specialist talents and I as the spot it.
And if there was a Republican in the White House,
it would have been the top news story of the week.
Paul Ryan was on with George Stephanopolos Good Morning America Today.
Stephanopolis question, do you accept what Secretary Geitner says that

(18:31):
it will be a financial catastrophe if the debt limit
is not extended. Default is not our option or strategy.
But we also want to make sure that as this
debt limit increases, which is based on past spending, we
get something in place to address with future spending, spending,
cut spending. Possibly you will still vote to make sure
the country doesn't go into defall. Now I think it
is possible. I don't. I don't accept that premise of

(18:52):
that question, which is, we need to have real spending cuts,
real spending controls in combination with the debt limiting increase.
And I don't accept a notion that that's not possible.
I think it. Yeah, that's great, going Paul Ryan the question,
so you'll you'll vote to make sure the country doesn't
go to the fault, right, I'm not what is it
priv going to default? We're not going to go into default,

(19:12):
just like we weren't going to destroy the world's financial
system last October two. Why wouldn't we go into default?
Why should we go into default? You see how it's
easy it is for these themes to attach themselves to
everybody and just be accepted. Chuck Schumer yesterday in Washington

(19:35):
on the Senate floor, the Ryan budget has all the
wrong priorities. The House Republican budget puts the entire burden
of reducing the deficit on senior citizens, students, and middle
class families. At the same time, it protects corporate subsidies
for oil companies let's waste it, the Pentagon go untouched,

(19:55):
and would give even more tax breaks to the millionaires
amongst us. In short, the Ryan budget puts the middle
class last instead of first. As a result, it will
never pass the Senate. And you have Senator Chuck you
Schumer in New York knocking down the the Paul Ryan budget,

(20:18):
which will be the focal point because the debt ceiling. Apparently,
if you're just joining us, the Republicans have decided that
they're not going to try to take the hill on
the debt ceiling five now it's too iffy. Uh, We're
going to be We're going to really focus on the
Ryan budget. That's that's where we are at the at

(20:39):
the latest. Mike and Columbia, South Carolina Hiser, welcome to
the program. R Rush Dittos for all you do. Thank you, sir.
If if the death ceiling increases so important to Obama
and to the nation as he would put it, and
if the Ryan plan is so important to the GOP

(21:00):
as I think it is, why cannot why does not
the GOP make the deal? You want the death ceiling increase? Fine,
here's here's Ryan. Here, here's Ryan's budget. It's a Twofer
deal in a sense. You need this so bad, that's great.
We're going to ensure that the cap that we put
in place in this new ceiling is adhere to three

(21:21):
Ryan's budget. Okay, let me ask you a quick comment
question in all candor, what makes you think? What have
you seen lately? It makes you think the Democrats want
to compromise with the Republicans. I don't think they do,
but I think they have to the death ceiling. They're
portraying and the media is portraying as having their backs

(21:42):
against the wall. The nation is at risk. But the
Republicans are already out there today saying, you know, we're
not We're not gonna find him on the death ceiling.
We're not gonna find it. We're gonna We're gonna focus
on the Ryan budget. Now, there's too much at stake here.
We can't afford the US default. The Republican leaders are
are are using the same words that the Democrats are

(22:03):
in talking about the danger here in in uh, you know,
not raising the depstities. I think the Republicans have already
caved on it. I don't think we've heard it from
a more officially. So let's give him a chance. Well,
we'll see