RUSH: Marco Rubio has had it, and it hasn’t taken long for Marco Rubio to have had it. Marco Rubio says, (paraphrasing) “What is this continuing resolution crap? I didn’t come in here to fund the government every two to three weeks and cut six billion here and six billion there. What the hell is going on here?” I wish the guy would run for president. Marco Rubio.
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RUSH: This ongoing continuing resolution business? It’s a ploy by Harry Reid to avoid having a budget. This is going to allow Boehner to stand by this notion he’s not gonna break the rules. If he had a budget, this is part of a budget deal they could defund it and vote on it. Boehner doesn’t want to do that because it’s part of the continuing resolution. Well, this is about the $105 billion that Pelosi snuck in the bill that are implementation costs every year. There’s a chance to wipe it out. It’s what the election was about in November. And yet it seems like fear over shutting down the government and the aftermath of that is of far greater concern to the Republicans in Washington than actually getting rid of this monstrosity.
AP has a story: “Conservative Republicans on Capitol Hill began Monday to come out against a measure to keep the government running for three more weeks while the White House and Republican lawmakers seek a longer-term agreement on spending cuts. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who chairs the Republican Study Committee, which makes up a sizable majority of House Republicans, said the measure should include a ban on federal funding for Planned Parenthood and that Congress needs to do better than cutting spending a few billion dollars at a time. … In the Senate, a tea party favorite, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., also announced his opposition to the upcoming measure, saying that ‘Washington politicians of both parties (are) scrambling to put together two- and three-week plans to keep funding the government, while not fundamentally changing the behavior that has gotten us into this mess to begin with,'” and he doesn’t want any part of it. Here’s a little bit, audio sound bite 17, of what he had to say yesterday.
RUBIO: Why didn’t Senator Reid and then Speaker Pelosi and the president get together and pass a budget when they were in charge here with, you know, no opposition a year ago? And that’s the reason why we’re facing a shutdown — and more importantly America is facing the ultimate shutdown, and that is the day when this country cannot continue to borrow money to continue operations. That’s facing us right in the face, and no one wants to deal with it.
RUSH: Amen! He does. That’s why he went to Washington. Allen West is another from Florida that’s on this. Rubio went on to say, I don’t want to be part of this, this is not why I came to Washington, to do this piecemeal, $6 billion at a time here. Everybody’s afraid of a government shutdown on our side. If that’s what’s necessary to fix this, then so be it. Mike Pence, Fox Business Network, Lou Dobbs Tonight last night, had a discussion about the budget, and Dobbs said, “You’ve said the time to pick a fight may be now. Is this the issue, this three-week extension of the continuing resolution?”
PENCE: Harry Reid took to the floor to defend the, what was it, the Cowboy Poetry Institute? It just convinced me, look, it’s time to pick a fight. If we’re ever gonna fundamentally change the fiscal direction of our national government, it’s important that this new Republican majority draw a line in the sand and say, “This far and no farther.”
RUSH: I’m like you. I look at it, and it doesn’t seem that that line is being drawn for a host of reasons.
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RUSH: I got an e-mail from a subscriber at RushLimbaugh.com. The subject line is: “‘Rush, you are being too nice’ — Rush, I don’t believe the Republican leadership is afraid of being blamed for a government shutdown. Maybe they don’t want to defund Obamacare. Maybe Orwell’s book Animal Farm applies to the Republican leadership. Maybe Marco Rubio, et al, are beginning to realize the truth.” The e-mailer is from Plano, Texas. Interesting. Maybe they don’t want to defund Obamacare, the Republicans? They said they do. (interruption) They most certainly do, Snerdley. They most certainly do say they want to defund Obamacare. Why are you giving me that hoity-toity nose-in-the-air look for? Some of them said it. I’m talking about the leadership. Anyway, we were talking about this and I didn’t get all the sound bites in. Here is Boehner last night on the Kudlow Report on CNBC. Kudlow said, “On Friday, you unveiled a new continuing resolution, I guess to stop a shutdown this Friday. You got another $6 billion of budget cuts in there towards your $61 billion target. Can this one get through?”
BOEHNER: The continuing resolution this week will pass for another three weeks, keeping the government open. And yet, though, cutting some $6 billion, which means that over the last several weeks we’ll be able to accumulate $10 billion worth of real savings, all of this because the Democrats did no budget last year. They did no appropriation bills and dumped this mess in our lap. I want the continuing resolution through September 30th finished as soon as possible, but that’s going to mean real cuts. It’s going to mean real limitations on what this administration can do for the balance of this fiscal year. And I’m hopeful that we’ll get it finished as soon as possible.
RUSH: All right. So we’re gonna have another extension here, and we’ll then have accumulated $10 billion worth of real savings. Let me try a different perspective. We spent, for all intents and purposes, $1 trillion on Obama’s stimulus. How about getting at least 10% of it back with spending cuts? How about just a hundred billion? Wasn’t that the original figure used, by the way? Even the 61 looks good compared to now ten? But here, the thing is that we now know that stimulus was nothing more than a money laundering operation for public sector employees in the various states run by Democrats. Nothing about that stimulus was to stimulate the American economy, nor private sector jobs. Okay, so we’re now gonna accumulate $10 billion worth of real savings, because the Democrats did no budget last year. Yeah, and they’re not paying any price for that at all. They are getting exactly what they wanted by not passing a budget. Boehner said they did no appropriations bills, and they dumped this mess in our lap. He says, “I want the continuing resolution through September 30th finished as soon as possible.” That’s gonna mean real cuts. That’s real limitations on what this administration can do for the balance of this fiscal year.
Now, the Republican leadership has said, it might have been Cantor, that their original idea of a hundred billion was given a full budget year, not a continuing resolution period of time. So they’re saying that that hundred billion in cuts, that’s on the table for next September when that budget gets implemented. And that budget is what Obama has submitted. Of course his is just required by law. But how about repealing that which must be repealed? By not passing a budget the Democrats have locked in their programs, and that’s the real spending, and that’s the trick. By not doing a budget, and going on the continuing resolution, and having our leadership remain loyal to the rules, Democrats are getting exactly what they want. No cuts. No cuts in any spending whatsoever. All of this new spending, all this stuff that happens is now locked in. Ten billion dollars worth of real savings. (interruption) I know they don’t like us, Snerdley. At the end of the day, I know they don’t like us.
I’ll bet you that in the deepest, darkest corners of Washington, DC, the Democrats and the Republicans get together and start bellyaching about the respective outside agitator influences they all have to deal with. The Democrats complain about the kooks on MSNBC. The Republicans complain about the kooks on talk radio. (laughing) There’s too much democracy going on. I wouldn’t be surprised if that were an opinion held by some. Let’s see, one more Boehner, and then we have Steve King. Kudlow says, “Do you believe that President Obama has turned pro-business? I get this question all the time. He had a charm offensive. He spoke to the Chamber of Commerce, and particularly his new Chief of Staff, Bill Daley. Have you spoken to Mr. Daley? Have you heard from him that they want a pro-business, pro-growth agenda?”
BOEHNER: Talk is cheap. Actions speak louder than words. I haven’t seen any new actions yet.
RUSH: What kind of question is that? Pro-growth, pro-business? Pro-specific business, pro-Chrysler, pro-GM, pro-General Electric. Not pro-ExxonMobil. Steve King yesterday on ABCnews.com webcast Top Line, the host Amy Walter. Steve King, a Republican from Iowa. “You’re circulating a letter right now with Congresswoman Bachmann saying that if we do not see in the continuing resolution being able to cut off the funds for the health care law implementation, that you will vote against this continuing resolution, this short-term budget fix. How many people do you have signed on right now and how much support do you think you’re gonna get? Enough so that this might shut all talk down of a short-term budget deal?”
KING: We have a leverage point, and it is the funding for the government for the balance of fiscal year 2011. This is the place to pitch the fight. If we shut off the funding to implement Obamacare and the Senate or the president refuses to go along with it, that is their decision, not ours.
RUSH: I don’t want to sound naive here, folks. I do understand it but I mean in real-world terms, I don’t understand our side having any argument whatsoever about wanting to defund Obamacare. That’s why they are all in the majority. Mr. Boehner is Speaker because people want Obamacare defunded. Ryan and Cantor have leadership positions because people want this spending stopped, they want it checked, they want it rolled back, they want Obama’s presiding over the decline of this country stopped, and they want Obamacare repealed. That’s why they have the leadership position. How can there be any confusion about this? You got an opportunity, $105 billion, you got an opportunity here to shut it down. You don’t take it. And, of course, the prevailing explanation is, “Look, that will cause a government shutdown. The Democrats aren’t gonna agree to Obamacare being defunded and we get the blame.” And then I’m back to my e-mailer: “They don’t care about a government shutdown, Rush.” Elmer was his name, from Plano, Texas. “They don’t care about that, Rush.” Now, I’m just gonna tell you, I don’t know whether Elmer is right, but Elmer’s one of us, and if there are Republicans four months after voting for Republicans starting to think the people they voted for don’t want to defund Obamacare, whew, we have problems. We’ve got problems.
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RUSH: John in Cheshire, Connecticut. One minute, but I wanted to get to you. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, how you doing?
RUSH: Good.
CALLER: You know, we used to have a saying at a factory I worked in, in one of the most productive factories: “The longer you’re in the presence of a problem, the less likely you are to solve it.” You know, when I look at Speaker Boehner, that’s kind of what comes to mind. Really the way I view it is the guy’s been on the job now for four months, really November 2nd that’s when we shoulda hit the ground running, and that’s what the Democrats do. Obama, you know, after the presidential election, man, decisions left and right were being turned over to him. And so we’re four months into it now, and, you know, I’m just starting to get the feeling that this man is not up to the job. You know, at what point do we start to look to fix our own backyard again? I mean people complain about Holder and about the joke going on with Clapper and all this, but, you know, in our own backyard, if this guy’s not up to the task maybe he should just ought to consider stepping aside.
RUSH: Well, I understand what you’re saying but he doesn’t think he isn’t up to the task so he’s not gonna resign. I doubt that he thinks he’s not up to the task. Anyway, John, thanks much. I appreciate your call. I just have no time. I’ve got to get outta here.
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