RUSH: Liberals are up in arms over my analysis of Keynesian economics, and when they cry like stuck pigs over something like this, you just know I've gotten it exactly right.  Last night on Hardball Chris Matthews spoke with TIME Magazine senior correspondent Michael Crowley and Chicago Trib columnist Clarence Page about the unemployment rate and the Tea Party.  And Matthews said, "Michael, the stimulus program, about $800 billion to 900 billion was a waste, it didn't bring the economy back, and they got a good argument with that because when you have a nine-plus percent unemployment rate, how can you claim you turned the economy around?  It's simple crayon level thinking.  It works, doesn't it, the Tea Party argument?" CROWLEY:  The experience of the stimulus was a big setback for Keynesian economic theory because it's hard to explain to people that it might have really prevented things from getting a lot worse and so the Rush Limbaughs of the world point to the unemployment rate and say that the thing was a complete waste that didn't work, but I think there's also another trademark there, it's a kind of conspiratorial aspect.  It's that this is a cover story for eliminating capitalism and big government running amuck.  It's a lie, basically, it's a valid economic theory, but Rush Limbaugh is turning it into -- they're trying to hoodwink you and lie to you. RUSH:  No, no, no.  All I said was that Keynes is being bastardized by you people.  Keynes didn't set out to destroy the US economy.  Obama is.  Keynes, his idea was not to destroy capitalism.  Obama is, Obama's professed as much.  Crowley finished with that, Clarence Page jumped in, said this. PAGE:  Rush is making up facts like he often does.  The fact is we didn't spend enough money on the stimulus.  So what's the Tea Party solution?  Pull more money out of the economy, obviously that's gonna bring more recession, possibly depression, and Rush Limbaugh is completely oblivious. RUSH:  Where is the Tea Party saying pull more money out of the economy?  You know what he means by that?  He means spending cuts.  To him, spending cuts are taking money out of the economy.  He is.  I'm telling you he is that wrong.  He is that uninformed.  The Tea Party wants the private sector flooded with money.  Their own.  They want to keep what they are earning, and they want more people to start working and keep what they earn.  The Tea Party is desperate for the private sector to have gobs and gobs of money.  They don't want to take more money out of the economy.  It is the government taking money out of the economy.  But to Clarence Page -- remember, this is the discussion of Keynesian economics -- to Clarence Page and this Michael Crowley guy, government spending is money in the private sector, and it's not because for government to put it in the economy it has to first take it from the economy, because government doesn't produce anything.  Government doesn't have a dime until it takes it from somebody.  So maybe they're this stupid.  I just profess to believe that they have been ill-educated, they're just wrong and don't know it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT RUSH: So my analysis of Keynesian economics has thrown these people for a loop. You just heard Clarence Page basically say that the Tea Party wants to take money out of the private sector, and he means by that the Tea Party is for spending cuts.  Money in the private sector equals government spending.  I don't know where Clarence Page went to school but this is what he was taught.  I know it's unfathomable, Snerdley.  That's what he believes.  The government's God, the government's the beginning and end, it's the end-all to all the problems.  But haven't we just found out, we just learned today with government numbers that the gross domestic product was far worse in the last two and a half years than what we have been told?  The GDP has been revised down hugely. So how did government spending of more than a trillion dollars work?  And all they have left to say is, well, we didn't spend enough.  It's like saying the Soviets didn't spend enough, and they say that FDR didn't spend enough.  If he had spend more, it wouldn't have taken World War II.  The New Deal didn't get us out of any depression.  It made it worse.  You and I both know, you take money out of the private sector -- look, this is fundamental.  This is not even arguable.  The government doesn't have a dime until it either takes it from somebody who's earned it or prints it.  The government doesn't produce wealth.  The government redistributes it, confiscates it, taxes it, what have you.  But for the government to put a dollar into the private sector -- i.e., government spending -- it has to take it from the private sector first.  It's a wash. What the Tea Party's opposed to is precisely that.  The Tea Party wants tax cuts, an end to burdensome regulations, you know, get the EPA out of everybody's hair, end the drilling moratorium, basically turn the entrepreneurs of this country loose and let 'em start producing things.  And you will get economic growth and you'll end up with more government revenue to boot because you'll have more taxpayers paying taxes, therefore the federal Treasury will swell.  Ronald Reagan cut taxes.  Liberals hate this.  Ronald Reagan cut taxes, and the amount of revenue to the Treasury doubled in eight years, taking the top marginal rate from 70% down to 28%.  It really isn't complicated, but these people have been taught wherever they went to college, wherever they went to school, people they have been hanging around with, the government is the center of the universe, that whatever the private sector has is because government's good graces put it there, and that's what they genuinely believe.  And so any time you make government smaller, you are making the country smaller, you're making the economy smaller.  This is what they believe. That's why there's no compromise.  The only thing is reeducation camps for them or defeating them, and I'm not a big fan of reeducation camps.  We don't have the time.  We just have to defeat them.  Here, listen.  Let's go to CNBC.  We got a montage here.  The unemployment numbers came out and these people are singing the praises of Obama and the government and of course CNBC and the government are corporate cronies, Jeff Immelt and so forth.  Now, listen to this montage.  It's stupefying.  None of the stimulus has worked.  The GDP today is smaller than it was in 2007.  We have had QE1, QE2. We've had the Fed spending money. We've had the government spending money. We've had stimulus after stimulus after stimulus, and it hasn't worked, and listen to this montage. INSANA:  We need more stimulus. TERRANOVA:  There is some fiscal policy stimulus that can be enacted. PISANI: Some kind of stimulus will be happening. GRIFFETH:  The markets could look to the Fed for more stimulus. GEIST: Pass another stimulus plan. O'HALLORAN: Some type of stimulus program. TODD:  They would like to throw in some stimulus. VELSHI:  There should be further stimulus. ROUBINI: We should have additional fiscal stimulus. STEIN: The fact that the tea partiers have taken away any stimulus is a bad thing. RUSH:  So there you have it.  This is what they believe.  So now this unemployment news today, "All right, we're coming back, the stimulus worked, now we need more."  Folks, again, if the job universe were the same size today as it was when Obama was inaugurated, the unemployment rate today would be 11.3%.  This is a tweet factoid from Jim Pethokoukis at Reuters.  The unemployment rate is 9.1% because there are simply fewer jobs in the country to fill.  That's the only way you can report an unemployment rate going down and that is to say there's a smaller universe of jobs. BREAK TRANSCRIPT RUSH:  If government spending works, if Keynesian economic works, how come our economy is smaller today than it was in 2007?  How many trillions more in government spending have we had since 2007?  It's like Obama actually said today at the Navy yard with the veterans, he actually said -- I'm gonna quote him -- said, "Extending unemployment benefits will create jobs right now."  It will do the exact opposite.  It is a disincentive.  People now are unemployed for a record amount of time in this country, over 40 weeks.  A month shy of a year is the average time people are unemployed, and they're all on unemployment benefits, except those who have expired.  Somehow this is creating jobs right now.