GLENN BECK PROGRAM
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

GLENN: One of my favorite guys, love this guy, Stephen Moore. He says it the way it is. He's an economist. He is the chief financial editorial opinion whatever -- I don't know what it says on his business card but he's a smart dude and he writes for the Wall Street Journal in the editorial page. He's got an editorial coming out, is it tomorrow, Stephen?

Stephen Moore

MOORE: Probably tomorrow.

GLENN: Probably sometime and it is -- I love this. I talked to Steve yesterday. I called him up and I wanted to talk to him about something but unlike right now, you usually can't get a word in edgewise with Stephen. And because he was so excited yesterday, he's like, I've got to tell you something, I've got to tell you about the tax cuts. Stephen, lay it out. This is fantastic.

MOORE: Well, Glenn, thanks for having me on again. By the way, I love your Woodstock story.

GLENN: Yes.

MOORE: I've been combing through these appropriations bills, you know, and you think the Woodstock earmark is bad, there's a million dollars to build a minor league baseball stadium in Billings, Montana and one of my favorite, a $600,000 grant for the Charles B. Rangel School of Public Service at New York University.

GLENN: Wow, Charlie Rangel.

MOORE: It goes on and on.

GLENN: That's great, but we can't afford the tax cuts.

MOORE: Right. Well, this is the amazing part of the story. If you look at the new data that just came out last week from the treasury department, hold onto your hat, folks. The wealthiest Americans, that evil top 1%, Glenn, is now paying a larger share of an income tax burden than at any time in recorded history since we've been keeping track of these numbers. George Bush has soaked the rich with his tax cuts more than any other President in history.

GLENN: Okay. A couple of things. First of all, how much do you have to make to be the wealthiest 1%?

MOORE: To be in the top 1%, you have to earn over $350,000 per year.

GLENN: That's the wealthiest 1%? Over $300,000?

MOORE: $350,000.

GLENN: Wow. Well, I don't mean the $350. I mean the people who are like, you know, make billions of dollars a year. It's those evil people we should soak.

MOORE: We have seen -- I mean, one of the things that's good about this country, although liberals think it's bad, is we have seen an explosion of wealth in this country in the last 10 or 15 years.

GLENN: That's evil, isn't it, Stephen? That's evil. I know when people can go from, you know, nowhere to being wealthy and live their dreams.

MOORE: Do you know how many millionaires there are in this country today?

GLENN: How many?

MOORE: Nine million. Nine million Americans have an income of more than a million dollars. Is this a great country or what? Now, I know this is making liberals hyperventilate that there are nine million people who make a million dollars but it's true. There's now one out of eight, every eight American households, one out of every eight makes more than $100,000. I'm old enough to remember when making $100,000 was a big, big deal!

GLENN: I remember when a Mercedes, I remember when I was growing up, a Mercedes was like $20,000 or $19,000 and I remember thinking, oh, my gosh, who could afford a car like that. I mean, that was a big deal.

Stephen --

MOORE: By the way, what's happening, Glenn, and this is what liberals don't understand. We're seeing a phenomenon where the middle class is not shrinking. A lot of people in the middle class are becoming rich. It's the great American dream story.

GLENN: Here's the thing. I've got a book coming out in about, I don't know, four weeks and it has something about, you know, the rich getting richer and it talks about the poverty in America. We have added -- Stu, what was the stat? It's in like the last 30 years or 20 years? We added 30 million people to our country and the homeless problem has actually been reduced by I think about 100,000 people. I mean, I'd have to get the book out to look it up again, but the homeless problem has actually been reduced by 100,000 and we've added 30 million people -- oh, it's only a decade? It's in a 10-year period. Added 30 million people into our country.

MOORE: Right.

GLENN: So I mean, what happened? What happened?

MOORE: I mean, it's so true. I mean, there's such a negativity about what's happening in America today. I really believe the left in America really is rooting against America and they don't want America to succeed and so they hate good news about the economy. But we now have, Glenn, the lowest unemployment rate in the industrialized world. There's all this talk about, oh, my God, all these people can't find jobs. Can't find jobs? Where I live in northern Virginia, the employers can't find workers.

GLENN: I mean, if you can't find jobs, what about all the jobs Americans just won't do? I mean, what are they doing? If we have a low unemployment rate and there's all these jobs that Americans just won't do, where are these invisible Americans that can't work?

MOORE: But here's what's scary about this picture and the one thing that can blow this all up. If you listen to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and John Edwards, it's everything they say at the campaign trail is pure class warfare. Their agenda is not to make poor people rich, Glenn. It is to make rich people poor.

GLENN: Okay, hang on. Steve, hang on just a second. I've got to go into a break. I'd like to come back and I want to talk to you about the top 20% and how much is the top 20% or 10%. How much, how much of the income tax burden of people over $80,000 a year carrying on their back.

(BREAK TRANSCRIPT)

We have Steve Moore from the Wall Street Journal and he's the guy who started Club For Growth. Growth, what is that? Growth, what do you want growth for?

MOORE: It's a dirty word.

GLENN: Aren't those things that you have doctors go in and remove? Of course they are, Steve. Now we've got politicians doing their best to remove the growth in a surgical procedure after the election.

How much -- you just said that, now, the wealthiest 1%, it's up from, what, 37%, 36%, something like that?

MOORE: If you've got a pen and paper handy, I'm going to give you a couple of these numbers.

GLENN: All right.

MOORE: They are great ammunition against liberals. I'm not going to blizzard you with statistics but just a couple. The top 1%, Glenn, the richest 1%, they now pay 39.4% of all the income taxes.

GLENN: Unbelievable.

MOORE: So it's like if you have a room with 100 people in it in a banquet and the richest 1 person out of those 100 have to pay 40% of the bill.

GLENN: That is -- just, please, America, just let that wash over you for a second and think about how they are always saying that the wealthiest need to pay their fair share.

MOORE: Fair share.

GLENN: If you were in a room and you said, who is the richest guy in here and they -- one guy raised his hand and you said, okay, you've got to pay for 40 out of the 100 that are now having lunch, would that be fair at all?

MOORE: And the thing that's amazing about that story is that liberals look at that and they point out that one guy and they say, you know what, this is unfair; you're not paying enough.

GLENN: I know!

MOORE: Now let me give you the next statistic, all right? Are you ready?

GLENN: Yeah.

MOORE: Top 5%, the richest 1 out of 20, they pay 59.5% of the income tax.

GLENN: They pay how much?

MOORE: 59.5. And here's the most amazing statistic of all. The bottom 50%, every American household below the median income, you want to take a wild guess at how much -- what percent of the income tax they pay?

GLENN: The bottom how much?

MOORE: 50%.

GLENN: 50, the bottom 50%.

MOORE: Take a wild guess.

GLENN: I don't even -- it's got to be something ridiculous. 5%? 10%?

MOORE: 3, 3%.

GLENN: 3%. So 50% of this country, 50%.

MOORE: Pay 3%.

GLENN: Unbelievable.

MOORE: One more statistic.

GLENN: Hey, wait, wait, wait, wait. Do you happen to know what is the percentage that lives at 200% of the poverty line?

MOORE: You know, I'll look that up for you. I'll get it the next time I'm on your show.

GLENN: Do you have any guess? Because those are the poor in America.

MOORE: I think that the percent -- wait, what's the question again? What --

GLENN: What is the percentage of the American population that lives at 200% above the poverty line.

MOORE: I would guess that's about 40% of Americans. Maybe 35.

GLENN: Okay. And what is the median income?

MOORE: The median income in this country today for a family is about, somewhere in the neighborhood of $50,000.

GLENN: $50,000 for a family.

MOORE: Yes.

GLENN: Okay.

MOORE: That's not poor. I mean, $50,000 is pretty good income.

GLENN: Yeah, unless you are living in New York City.

MOORE: Right.

GLENN: Or in Los Angeles or San Francisco or any of these weird liberal cities.

MOORE: If you are in New York City, you deserve it.

GLENN: Thank you. All right. So you've got the top 1%, 39.4, the top 5%. Where is the cutoff on the top 5 income-wise?

MOORE: Somewhere around $175,000.

GLENN: 170 -- so at $175,000 on up, they're paying almost 60%?

MOORE: Yes.

GLENN: So anybody who makes $175,000. And that really could be a small businessman.

MOORE: Oh, yeah. That's an important point, Glenn. I'm glad you mentioned that. You know the people who pay the highest income tax rate in this country, people who make over $200,000 a year, those are the people that, you know, Hillary and Obama say they have to pay higher tax rates. Now, here's the crutch on this. Two out of every three of those people are small business owners. Those are the people who hire people and employ people in this country. Now, if you're going to raise their tax rate, folks, they are not going to be able to hire as many workers. I mean, this seems pretty simple. You raise their taxes, they don't have as much money, they can't have as much investment in their business. So the people who get hurt by raising taxes on the rich are oftentimes the middle class and lower income people who don't get jobs.

GLENN: Well, you don't -- I mean, you know, what people don't under --

MOORE: Is that too complicated?

GLENN: No, it's not. It's too --

MOORE: But Ted Kennedy just doesn't get this.

GLENN: It's too complicated for people who don't care about the actual facts. You know, I mean, I see this in my -- I see two things in my own business. One, I'm doing a very expensive project next year that is probably the most expensive project that I have personally taken on, and it's just, I mean, it's insanity what it's going to cost. And we sat around a --

MOORE: It's a big risk.

GLENN: Big risk, big risk. Could be a big reward but it's going to be a big risk. And we sat around the table and we talked about the cost about whether or not we could do it and how we could do it, et cetera, et cetera. And I said jokingly, but it was such a great point, I said, don't worry about the cost; I'll just write myself an IOU and I'll pass that debt on to my children and so my children will have to pay for what the risky scheme was that I did today.

MOORE: Right.

GLENN: And nobody in their right mind would do that if you were really actually in your own place. The other thing that kills me is if you raise my taxes, I don't -- unlike the federal government -- and that's the problem. I think most of these politicians that have ever been in business. Unlike the federal government, I don't have a printing press downstairs.

MOORE: Right.

GLENN: So I have to lay people off or not do projects that I was going to do because I can no longer afford them because I'm giving more of my money away to the government. How is it, Stephen? Do you ever just want to grab people by the throat and just go, wake up!

MOORE: Well, you know what the problem is, Glenn, and I've been in Washington now, I'm embarrassed to say, for 23 years. So I know these politicians pretty well. And one of the big problems is we don't have businessmen, people like you and, you know, your listeners who actually run a business, meet a payroll. Most of these members of congress have never met a payroll. They don't have any idea what it means to have to, you know, have to make a profit and to have to sweat and wonder when the next customer is going to come in the door and so they don't -- they just don't get it because they've never had to do this. They are all lawyers and accountants and politicians and so they live in a kind of parallel universe.

GLENN: Yeah. Who do you think -- have you picked a candidate yet?

MOORE: What?

GLENN: Have you picked -- have you looked at the candidates and said this is the best guy for -- and I don't --

MOORE: I don't have one. I mean, I don't think -- unfortunately there's not -- look, there's only one politician in my lifetime who I really loved and that was the Gipper. I mean, the Gipper got this. He understood how wealth is created, how you make people rich, how you make this a great country. Quite frankly, Glenn, I don't see any of them out there right now that have the Reagan vision of a great America.

GLENN: No, it's amazing how they all, how they all say they're like Ronald Reagan.

MOORE: Right.

GLENN: But they don't get it. I mean, you know, they denigrate Reagan, not the Republicans but liberals denigrate Reagan because they say, oh, he only believed in, like, five things. It doesn't take a lot of things. You just understand -- I'm looking for a candidate right now and I only need two things from a candidate: One that will not compromise with socialism.

MOORE: Right.

GLENN: And one that will not compromise with evil. I only need two things. That's it.

MOORE: Is that asking so much?

GLENN: I mean, jeez. All right, Stephen, we'll talk to you again.

MOORE: Okay, see you. The American dream is alive and well, folks.

GLENN: God bless you, man. Hopefully that will be in The Wall Street Journal editorial section tomorrow.

END TRANSCRIPT