Critics of the Republicans who rode the so-called Tea Party wave into office often argue that the new congressmen don’t offer specifics on one of their key goals — reducing the size of government. But those who have made concrete recommendations are demonized for wanting to cut or privatize entitlement spending.
Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh has his own answer to the question on cuts, and it’s rhetorically similar to what Nancy Pelosi said during the 2010 health-care debate.
“You know what my answer would be if I were John Boehner – and of course I’m not John Boehner,” Limbaugh said. “If I were John Boehner and I was constantly being peppered by the press corps, ‘What are you going to cut, what are you going to?’ You know what I would say? ‘We got to pass the bill first to find out what’s in it.’”
According to Limbaugh, if the media was satisfied by that answer from Pelosi, it should be good enough for Boehner.
“Well, that’s what Pelosi said about health care – you guys didn’t give a wit about what was in the health-care bill,” Limbaugh added. “The Republicans said, ‘What’s in this thing? It’s 2,000 pages.’ Pelosi said, ‘We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it.’ Oh, OK – well fine. Republicans have a budget cut bill – we’re not going to tell you what’s in it until we pass it. How does that feel? You like doing business that way when the Democrats ran the show on health care, how about it for spending cuts? We got to pass the bill first before we’ll tell you, before you can find out.”
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Limbaugh offered his listeners areas where he would propose cuts were he in charge.
“Let me just give you an off-the-top-of-my-head ballpark list of things to cut,” he said. “We’re going to cut ObamaCare. That’s going to save several trillion. We’re going to cut the EPA. We just had a budget increase of about 130 percent over the last two years and the EPA is getting in the way of the private sector. The EPA now has dictatorial powers over carbon dioxide emissions. The FDA is getting close to having that kind of power on drugs and the things they oversee. So cut the EPA – not eliminate, just cut in. We’re going to cut the number of bureaucrats by 20 percent. We’re going to cut their salaries to bring them more in line with the private sector. We’re going to cut government across the board by at least 10 percent.”
He also suggested areas where he would eliminate areas of government altogether.
“We’re going to abolish the FCC and the reason we’re going to abolish the FCC is because the FCC is getting into the control of free speech business and that’s not their charter,” Limbaugh continued. “We will abolish the Federal Election Commission. There is nothing more worthless than the FEC. They deal with complaints after the fact and if anything, a slap on the wrist happens. All the policing power, all the intimidation that they claim to have doesn’t intimidate anybody into anything. Besides that, the FEC seeks to control political free speech. You get rid of all of that. We’ll abolish Obama’s ‘czars.’ They’re not even constitutional. We will abolish stimulus spending and TARP. We’ll sell off 20 percent or more of the federal land mass that the federal government owns. The federal government owns about 25 percent of all the land in the United States.”