Video: Did Pres. Obama Fail Business 101 at Briefing?

RUSH: Jake Tapper says, look, these business guys are not expanding because they don't know what's coming at them down the road, what do you say to that? Blame Bush, blame Bush, blame Bush, blame Bush. And so Tapper said: "A small business, not affected by the regulatory reform, a small business. You have proposed, you would acknowledge, a bold agenda, and a small business might wonder, I don't know how the energy bill will affect me, I don't know how the health care reform bill will affect me, I better hold off on hiring."

OBAMA: The small businesses I've talked to and I've been talking to a lot of them as I have been traveling around the country, their biggest problem is right now they can't get credit out of their banks, so they're uncertain about that, and they're still uncertain about orders. You know, do they just have enough customers to justify them doing more? It's looking better at this point, but that's not the rationale for people saying I'm not hiring. Let me put it this way. Most small businesses right now, if they've got enough customers to make a profit and they can get the bank loans required to boost their payroll, boost their inventory and sell to those customers, they will do so.

RUSH: Oh, man, you don't borrow money to make payroll. He really does not have a clue. He is absolutely clueless. Of this I am certain. It's dangerous because he's got these people in his crosshairs but he is clueless, small business people -- I want to play this again. Recue it, Mike. Let me put it this way. "Most small businesses right now, if they've got enough customers to make a profit --" No, they don't. Where in the world does this come from? "-- and they can get the bank loans required to boost their payroll, boost their inventory and sell to their customers, they will do so." You don't borrow to meet payroll except as a last resort. You lay people off. This is dangerously naive, ignorant. Coupled with his overall view of business anyway, he doesn't like profit. Folks, the sheer ignorance combined with a cockiness and an arrogance is just unbelievable. "The small businesses I've talked to and I've been talking to a lot of them, they can't get credit out of their banks," and then later on he says they can get credit to boost payrolls. Here listen to it again, I mean you small business people, you need to hear this. This is a guy who's telling you, you don't know what you're doing. This is the president of the United States saying, no, you're wrong. It's not that you're waiting to see what punitive policies of his come down the pike, no, you just think you can't get credit...you don't borrow money to make payroll. That's business 101. That is tough to get a loan to do that. I mean you go into the bank, "I want to expand the payroll, can you get me a loan?" the bank will say, "No, no, no, that's not how it works. Grow your business and let your profits pay for new hires." I am aghast. I mean this is sheer unadulterated, undisguised idiocy. This is promoting, folks, the same tactic that put us in the mortgage crisis, the subprime mortgage crisis. Borrow money to make payroll and then go on the road to put yourself out of business and not pay the bank back, or loan money to people who have no hope of ever paying it back in the form of a mortgage because a government regulator is telling you you must and Janet Reno is promising you you'll be investigated if you don't, and then Barney Frank and Chris Dodd come along and say you better do this, this is affordable housing. And Obama wonders why the value of houses has plummeted, so many people are underwater, it's because so many people, God love 'em, who had no business getting a mortgage, got them.