People Are About to be Hosed by the GOP Again

April 20, 2012

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – This is what ought to bother you listeners out there, and it ought to bother your buddies and your friends on Facebook, and your buddies and your friends on Twitter, and your buddies and your friends and your relatives in the Tea Parties. This should bother you. There is no recent history. You don’t have a shred of recent history to point to that engenders any confidence that this prevailing wisdom that we’re going to swap Obama out for Governor Romney and everything is going to be all right. The Republicans are going to get in there and roll their sleeves up like they did in 2002 and 2006. Just wait and see…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike: This is what ought to bother you listeners out there, and it ought to bother your buddies and your friends on Facebook, and your buddies and your friends on Twitter, and your buddies and your friends and your relatives in the Tea Parties. This should bother you. There is no recent history. You don’t have a shred of recent history to point to that engenders any confidence that this prevailing wisdom that we’re going to swap Obama out for Governor Romney and everything is going to be all right. The Republicans are going to get in there and roll their sleeves up like they did in 2002 and 2006. Just wait and see, they’re going to get in there. Let me recant one part. There is one sliver of hope. There were the three balanced budget years of the Gingrich Congress. There is one sliver of hope. There is no Newt Gingrich in charge. I don’t know if you’re keeping score, and I can’t wait to talk to Michael Walsh about this next week, but John Boehner is not going to get the job done. He is not your guy. He is not a budget balancer. His hand-chosen balance budgeting guru dude doesn’t balance a budget for 30 years.
There is no history, none, to support this mythological hope. I suppose it’s human nature to look for hope, and I’m not saying you shouldn’t always look for it. It’s almost like there’s a surrender. People are just, [mocking] “All right. We tried the old sound money, Constitution, limited government, Ron Paul. That was okay for a little while, but now we got to get about the business of getting our guy elected and you just wait and see.” I don’t believe that a 20 percent reduction in President Obama’s damages is adequate to fix the problem, Mr. Gruss, do you?
AG: I guess the hope is that come November, there’s enough of a groundswell of support and ultimately electoral change that Paul Ryan can have a more impactful budget that flips the course of the country around quicker, in the same kind of vein that we had when we talked with Rand Paul on Wednesday and speaking with Senator Coburn yesterday. Maybe it’s a little bit of youthful naivety with Ryan —

Mike: I’m glad you said that so I didn’t have to.

AG: From seeing him in the hearings during ObamaCare, I feel much more confident that if he were to be given more free rein, then he would pull back spending even more so than his budget does now. I guess that’s the disappointing part, in that he can’t fully commit to a budget, or at least what I think he would fully commit to.

Mike: Let me put my cowboy boots on here and saddle this horse and ride him for a little bit. Boehner and Ryan, their intentions may be grand. They’re not going to get it done. I don’t believe that Ryan is the guy, even without Boehner there. I think we know the guy or guys. I think they’ve told us what is necessary. With all due respect and admiration, even to Senator Coburn, Senator Coburn doesn’t go far enough. We have, as my good friend Andy McCarthy can bear witness to and hopefully will write about this weekend, we have all the evidence that we need, listeners, audience, friends of mine, acquaintances, we have all the evidence we need that the programs known as Medicare and Social Security are Ponzi schemes. They are not funded. They did not work as they were advertised. If they were corporations, they would have bankrupted themselves long ago. It is bad fiscal and bad economics and bad public policy to continue them.
I realize that, [mocking] “Mike, what about all the people that are depending on them?” Congressman Paul has actually dealt with this. He’s dealt with this in the only honest manner I’ve heard anyone deal with it. You can’t just kick them off. Those that are committed to it, you have to pay them. You got to find a way to try and make good on that debt. For everybody else, sorry; you’re screwed; it’s over. Yeah, you’re going to have to pay into it for a little while longer, because we have to pay these other people off, but you’re not getting any benefit. You’re not going to be responsible for it anymore.

My point is, we don’t have any evidence that any of this stuff works. We’re sitting here talking about how to fix it, or some people are talking about how to fix it, instead of how to end it. It’s bad policy. Medicare is an awful deal. It’s horrendous. Lord knows the damage it has done to the medical profession. It may be undoable. The thought processes are all just out of whack to me. I understand people wanting to have hope. You’ve got kids. You have to have hope.

Ladies and gentlemen, what’s behind door number one that’s already open? We’ve been meandering about what’s behind door number one for almost 100 years now. That’s not the way to go. What evidence do you have that that’s going to change? Either you believe that government concocted schemes to provide for people’s retirements and wellbeing and what have you are just consecrated by God and they’re going to work if you have the right people running them, or you just believe in the exact opposite, which is that if you can’t guarantee it, how can a government guarantee it?

Mike, that’s a really good way to put it. Let me restate that and then I’ll go to the phone. Andrew, you’re as frugal a young man as I know. By the way, kudos to your parents for teaching you frugality and thrift. They did a good job. Even as good as you are, and as careful as you are with your money, even you can’t guarantee that to all your planning and all the things you’re doing here, you don’t have a 100 percent guarantee that that’s going to work, do you?
AG: I do not.

Mike: You do not.
End Mike Church Show Transcript