RUSH: Let me find the story. What does it matter of that the Democrats are shutting the Republicans out? Try this headline from the Washington Times today: “GOP Willing to Back Democrats’ Key Bills.” Amnesty and changes in Social Security that bar you owning your own money, and the Republicans going to go along with it.
“Leaders of both parties say that Democrats in Congress are likely to win bipartisan support for many…” Bipartisan. What does it matter if the Republicans are let in? Even when they’re shut out they’re going to vote with the Democrats. I told you, both of these issues, I warned you back in December, were already done. Amnesty for illegals, and the Social Security tax increase. You know how they’re going to do this. They’re going to save Social Security the old-fashioned way. There’s no reform. There’s no private accounts, none of that. It’s just the old-fashioned way. They’re going to raise the ceiling on taxable income. Right now it’s in the nineties, I think. It might go as high as $150,000 that people will have to pay Social Security taxes on.
Well, that’s a sizeable, sizeable chunk of change. (interruption) What do you mean, “Wait a minute”? I already told you about this. Don’t act surprised today. You’re supposed to be listening. You are the program observer. You can’t (interruption). What? What? The seniors will not have a riot. They didn’t have a riot when Clinton raised their taxes in 1993. Clinton raised the amount of Social Security benefits that the seasoned citizens get. He raised the tax rate on that; they didn’t complain. As long as they think that there’s a tax increase on the rich coming, all they care about is that Social Security is solvent for the rest of their lives. They couldn’t care less about the future. So if the rich get a tax increase, ostensibly to pay for Social Security — everybody else is — they’re not going to care. Show me one time where seasoned citizens have raised a stink about tax increases of Social Security? Show me that one time, and I’ll show you the gas passing.
Here are the sordid details here on the GOP willing to back Democrats’ bills. “Leaders in both parties say Democrats in Congress are likely to win bipartisan support for many of their signature issues, including passage of an immigration reform package that critics have derided as amnesty. Republican lawmakers also offered cooperation for a raise in the federal minimum wage and changes to Social Security that do not include privatization.” Well, why in the world does it even matter if the Democrats include Republicans in the first hundred hours? The Republicans are going to go along with it anyway. They think the people have spoken. 
Mitch McConnell on Fox News Sunday: “What I’ve said to the new majority leader,” which would be Dingy Harry, “‘You won the election fair and square. You’re in the majority. It’s not my first goal every morning to get up and make you look bad.'” That’s Mitch McConnell quoting himself, speaking of Dingy Harry. Now, that’s a clear distinction in the way the two parties operate, because the whole purpose of the Democrats the past six years has been to thwart every aspect of the Republican agenda they can. That has been their express purpose for breathing, but this is sort of the way Republicans deal with Democrat president judicial nominees.
“Well, you won the election. You want Ruth Bader Ginsburg, card-carrying member of the ACLU? Fine. We’ll only mount token opposition of four or five votes. You can have her.”
McConnell said that “the Democrats will likely pass a minimum wage bill, but he also supports offsetting tax cuts. McConnell said he also expects cooperation on other issues, including Social Security.” He’s talking about Republican cooperation. He said, “In fact, I’ve been challenging the New Democrat Majority not just to do the easy things in the beginning of this session. There’s some relatively easy issues that we were close to passing last year. Let’s do some important things. Let’s fix the immigration system. Let’s save Social Security. We can do that before this Congress is out.” So here are three things: immigration reform that looks like amnesty, raise in the federal minimum wage — I’ve been telling you that’s a done deal. That’s over with. It’s going to happen. Most of the states have a higher minimum wage already to what the new federal minimum wage is going to go to. We’ve lost the argument on that — and “changes to Social Security that don’t include privatization.” They’re going to go out and save it the old-fashioned way, they’re going to raise taxes, and they’ll do it in the fashion of raising the ceiling on which Social Security taxes — you know, FICA on your pay stub there, where the employer “matches your contribution.” (Laughing.) Yeah, that one. That’s going to go up big time.
RUSH: Give me get to this guy from Victoria, Texas because this is next in the stack anyway, so it will work. Next is Gary in Victoria. Nice to have you with us, sir, on the EIB Network.
CALLER: Good morning, sir. How are you this morning?
RUSH: Fine, sir. Couldn’t be better.
CALLER: Good. Listen, I am totally ticked off at what Governor Schwarzenegger is doing.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: You know, this crap about —
RUSH: Did you say “crap”?
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: I just wanted to make sure I heard you right.
CALLER: Yeah. This crap about him opening up and that they’re going to take and give illegal aliens and all the kids free health care.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: You know, California complains like hell that they’re being, you know — I don’t know, everybody is against them on this thing, and yet they’ve gotta governor, he’s a closet liberal. This guy shouldn’t… You know, he ran as a Republican, and, man, not only did he break his left leg, I think he broke his brain.
RUSH: Well, we (Laughing.) No, it’s not that. It’s something else. I’ll save it for another time. Look, we talked about this last week that this is his proposal that every child in California have health insurance, even the sons and daughters of our great illegal immigrant workforce, but Gary, that’s just tip of the iceberg.
CALLER: The thing is, though, is what I wanted to say is, if he’s going to do that, it ought to be on the ballot, because every taxpayer, it’s going to come out of their pockets.
RUSH: Well, they’ve already had it on the ballot, and the judge ruled the results unconstitutional! This has already been on the ballot. This practically same initiative of Arnold’s was a ballot initiative called Prop 187 in which the people of California said we’re not going to pay health care, welfare, child care, and all this for the illegal immigrants and their children. It won overwhelmingly, and the federal judge said it was unconstitutional.
CALLER: You know, that’s the land of fruits and nuts. I’ll tell you.
RUSH: Well, you’re in Texas, it’s no big deal.
CALLER: Well, it is, if you look at what.. You know, if this passes through California, being the largest population in the United States, I mean, this is —
RUSH: Gary, I just want to warn you and everybody else: we’re going to get amnesty and the Congress and the president is going to sign it. It’s a presidential election season coming up, and those are voters, those are potential voters, especially after they’re given amnesty, and for the Democrats, they’re voters now, illegal. This is only going to increase. Now, by the way, we can’t build the fence. We can’t build the fence. This is San Francisco Chronicle, I think, maybe the LA Times, one of those two Left Coast papers. We can’t build a fence because, guess what? The cost projections are going to be five to eight times higher than what they were originally thought to be. I’m sorry, five to 25 times. The cost of the fence will be five to 25 times more than they thought. Now, that was never enough to scrub the war on poverty. That was never enough to scrub the Great Society, but it is plenty to scrub the fence.
So we’re now going to scrub the fence. But get this. “Governor Schwarzenegger wants to cut almost $500 million from walfare programs next year and impose new rules aimed at pushing recipients off public assistance and into the workforce,” kind of a state version of welfare reform, while at the same time giving every child health care insurance in California. “He wants to end the practice of providing warfare grants to children whose parents are chronically unemployed and failing to participate in return-to-work programs.” Now, would you like to hear how the San Francisco Chronicle characterizes this? Let me find the exact quote? Let’s see. Actually it’s not the Chronicle, it is assemblyman John Laird, Democrat, Santa Cruz, chairman of the assembly budget committee. He said, “The governor is trying to balance the budget on the backs of the poor. I think we will want to negotiate more of a post-partisan solution that reflects more of our values.” So this idea that Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed is portrayed now as a blow to bipartisanship by Democrats in California.