This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," February 23, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: And welcome, everybody, to day number 35 of false hopes and loose change, our headline this Monday night: "Feigning Responsibility." Now earlier today the president announced his plan to cut the federal deficit in half by 2013, and he did so at a White House summit about fiscal responsibility.
Now that's pretty arrogant from an administration that continues to spend the people's money on every possible liberal initiative that it can think of. Now in order to pull this off the president is acting under the assumption that the economy will begin to rebound by the end of this year before hitting a pretty fast pace in the next two years of 4 percent growth.
But few economist are willing to bet on such a quick turnaround. Not even the Congressional Budget Office is willing to say that. And how did the stock market react to this today? By dropping another whopping 250 points to fall to an 11-year low.
Now, in order to pay for all of this, the president is promising spending cuts, a roll-back of the Bush tax cuts, and the return of U.S. troops from Iraq, but at the same time the administration is pushing health care reform at who knows what cost, and they're sending more troops to Afghanistan with no end in sight, and, of course, well, we're all about to talk about this, you know, 40 percent ownership of Citibank?
So fiscal responsibility from the White House? That's a little hard to swallow.
And joining me tonight is the author of The New York Times best seller, another one, "Guilty," Ann Coulter is here.
Ann, good to see you.
• Video: Watch Sean's interview with Ann Coulter
ANN COULTER, "GUILTY" AUTHOR: Good to see you.
HANNITY: All right, so the Dow, 11-year low.
COULTER: Right.
HANNITY: President doom and gloom and collapse and malaise is now talking down the economy here. Why is Wall Street reacting so negatively to everything he does?
COULTER: Well, A, it serves them right since they supported him. Unfortunately, poisoning the banks is like poisoning the water supply and it hurts all of us. But I support capitalism, that doesn't mean I like capitalists. I've had it with these rich bankers donating to Obama, fine, nationalize the banks.
HANNITY: For that reason alone, pay back.
(LAUGHTER)
COULTER: But no, it's curious that every time the government says we're stepping in because otherwise the market will collapse. They step in, and the market collapses.
HANNITY: Yes. Well, what's amazing to me, I don't know whether to laugh or cry because fiscal responsibility.
COULTER: Right.
HANNITY: ... on the heels of the single most irresponsible act that has ever been passed in the history of this country.
COULTER: Right.
HANNITY: Now last week it was $1.3 trillion. This week it's $410 billion, and 9,000 earmarks.
COULTER: Right.
HANNITY: So.
COULTER: Right. And the important thing — I mean I know to many people including myself this topic sounds as sexy as, you know, accelerating the amortization of private equities.
HANNITY: But no, you want to know why? Every American out there has.
COULTER: Right.
HANNITY: Their 401(k) is now half.
COULTER: Right.
HANNITY: Americans have lost half the value of their retirement.
COULTER: And what I think everyone can understand especially my new hero, and whom I want to run for president, Rick Santelli is.
(LAUGHTER)
HANNITY: I talked to him today.
COULTER: I heard that. I heard that. That was great. Is that whenever the government gets bigger and bigger, it does become — the politically powerful get ahead, the finaglers, the con men.
We saw it with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Politicians get involved. They tell banks OK, you must abandon all business practices and give loans to the poor. Now we hear about how we need to bail out the poor? Well, is it really the poor who got those loans? Or were they yuppy scum house flippers? I think it was the lobby yuppy scum house flippers. You have Barney Frank.
HANNITY: Yuppy scum house flippers.
COULTER: Flippers, yes.
(LAUGHTER)
COULTER: Well, because we're supposed to be feeling sorry for the poor, the poor, and one guy fell on hard times, can't pay his mortgage. I don't think that's what we're dealing with. They won't tell us that. It's the finaglers who get ahead when the government.
HANNITY: Well, that might some of it.
COULTER: . is imposing politically correct rules. You have Barney Frank. That's an important one where he's getting a completely useless bank, but it happens to be in his home state. We're going to send them money because they have political connections.
HANNITY: All right, as Ornstein said at the American Enterprise Institute, this orgy of massive spending last week, there's a reason they had this so-called fiscal responsibility summit here today. They have no desire to change anything. They still want to nationalize health care after this.
COULTER: Right.
HANNITY: This week they're going to have an omnibus, you know, $410 billion budget, with 9,000 pork projects.
COULTER: Right.
HANNITY: They're talking about nationalizing the banks, health care, and then silencing critics with back door fairness — censorship doctrine.
COULTER: Right. Right. Right. No, it is like the fairness doctrine, calling this a fiscal responsibility summit or whatever — it is out of Orwell's "1984."
HANNITY: You know what I thought was pathetic today — what did you think when you saw Hillary Clinton going over to China and begging the Chinese government, please buy our treasury bonds?
COULTER: Right.
HANNITY: I was almost embarrassed.
COULTER: Right. Well, that's what it has come down to. I mean China does have to own the United States now, and one other thing about the fiscal responsibility of these Democrats, the virus in all of these banks is housing. We need to foreclose on the housing.
HANNITY: Well, you need.
COULTER: The yummy scum house flippers.
HANNITY: Well, what about — look, I feel sorry for people that didn't read what was in the mortgage deal, but I also feel bad for the banks that were forced by the government. Everyone forgets this...
COULTER: Right. Right. Right.
HANNITY: The banks were forced to lower their standards, make the loans. And so —
COULTER: Right. But if you bought a house that you couldn't afford and you got foreclosed on, well, great, you got to live in a house you couldn't afford for a few years.
HANNITY: Right.
COULTER: If you — you just fell on hard times, I promise you the bank will work it out with you. They don't want to be in the business of being landlords. And if you're a yuppy scum house flipper and the housing price went down and the music went off before you could resell the house, well, too bad. You need to clear out the house.
Democrats keep saying oh, the value of your house goes down if the houses next to you are foreclosed. It turns out Americans don't care.
HANNITY: All right.
COULTER: It's the only way to save them from foreclosure is to pay the mortgage for your neighbor, which is what the government is forcing us to do.
HANNITY: You know for all the talk — we did accumulate in the eight years President Bush was president, we had two wars, negative impact of 9/11, he inherited a recession, $3.2 trillion in debt.
COULTER: Right.
HANNITY: In 30 days $8.4 trillion according to the Heritage Foundation. We're robbing our kids and our grandkids' future.
COULTER: Forget our grandkids, who cares about them? I care about me and the money in my bank is worth nothing.
HANNITY: She, obviously, has no kids here. I have kids. I'm thinking of them.
COULTER: Nobody cares about our grandkids. That's why nobody cares about global warming. Who care about that? They can get their own planet. The point is we are all losing money.
HANNITY: I agree, we're losing half of our retirement.
COULTER: ... and the government won't — I mean they're letting this virus of the subprime mortgages wreck all financial institutions.
HANNITY: All right.
COULTER: Let the houses go into foreclosure. Thank you.
HANNITY: Congrats on the book, Ann Coulter. Thanks. This is good. Say it again, yup — forget it.
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