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Explanation: Bachmann and King

Mar 11, 2011

RUSH: There’s an ongoing debate within the Republican caucus in the House over the $105 billion allocation to implement Obamacare that Pelosi snuck in there. There are a number of Republicans. Steve King led this ball rolling, Michele Bachmann has now picked it up. King’s still on it. He’s from Iowa. They say, ‘Hey, look what we just found here. Here we are, we’re trying to repeal it — we’re trying to roll it back, we’re trying to at least incrementally defund it — and there’s $105 billion that is authorized every year to be spent to implement this.’

It’s just nefarious. It’s just $105 billion of spending. The thing is, the Republican leadership doesn’t want to do anything about it. The Tea Party Republicans in the House want the leadership to take it out, have a vote to take it out. That would require a suspension of the rules. We are operating under a continuing resolution, not a budget — and the rules stipulate that only discretionary spending can be taken out (or talked about, dealt with) during a continuing resolution, and this is not discretionary. It is authorized. It is hard-wired. So it would require a suspension of the rules to even go debate it, talk about it, and take it out of there.

The position of the House leadership is: ‘We are going to obey the rules, unlike Pelosi. We’re not gonna turn this place into a lawless organization where we as the majority just do anything we want to do regardless of the rules. We’re not going to show the kind of disrespect to the place.’ The Michele Bachmann-Steve King wing says, ‘You could get rid of it without breaking the rules,’ and they’ve explained how this could be done. The leadership says, ‘We’ve already voted to repeal this! We’ve already voted to repeal it in total. Don’t accuse us of not caring about this, but we have the rules.’

It really hasn’t changed, folks. From the first time we started talking about this when Steve King first brought it to everybody’s attention, the House leadership has made it plain that they’re going to remain loyal to the rules of the House. They’re not gonna just willy-nilly ignore them or what have you, and that’s where we are here. And it’s gonna lead to problems. It’s going to lead to problems, because the people who voted for the Republican majority in November fully expected this to not even be an argument. You got $105 billion? Look, Obamacare and everybody on our side agrees got to go. It has got to be repealed, or the country as we know it is over!

It’s got to go. Okay, we found $105 billion of spending described as necessary to implement the law. Well, we’re trying to stop the implementation, and if we’re not gonna try to get that $105 billion taken out, then does it mean we’re really not serious? I don’t think it means that. I think this is all… If you just want my two cents, I think this is all about a government shutdown and some people are just a little nervous to pull the trigger on one. I don’t think there’s anything more to it than that. So the argument would then be, among people, ‘What do you mean? Look at what happened to Wisconsin. Why are we afraid of a government shutdown?

Who the hell perceived shutting down the government in the first place? The Democrats! And what happened? They didn’t get one question about it here at the Obama press conference today. Not one question. So the Democrats do not want to talk about what happened in Wisconsin. That’s only because they’ve lost. They’ve lost in the court of public opinion and they lost for real. So what is this tepidness here in the government shutdown? The polls all say that the Democrats would take the burden of criticism here, far greater burden of criticism than Republicans if there was a shutdown.

Well, you got a lot of Republicans there who were around in 1995 and saw what happened — and don’t forget, folks, it was just yesterday that I brought to your attention that I had seen… Names are not important here. You wouldn’t know the names. I wouldn’t know the names, but it was a conservative website, and it was about Wisconsin, and it was a blog post. And the blogger was distressed that we’re losing the headline battle, Twitter and Facebook, over what happened in Wisconsin. ‘Yeah, it was a great victory, but how come it’s not being reflected? How come the fact that our side won isn’t in the news? How come?’

And I’m thinking, ‘How old is this young blogger?’ ‘Cause that’s never happened. Our victories are not celebrated in the press, or Facebook, or Twitter. So all I know is that the Tea Party caucus and the Tea Party voters, great percentage of the people last weekend the Republican majority in November are not going to forget it. They expect to see the same kind of energy that they have themselves on stopping this, and to be told, ‘Look, we got the rules and all that. We’ll get to it. You know, we can’t do everything here in the first three or four months. We’ll get to it.’ All they know is that if they were there, they’d be getting to it. So how this is gonna turn out is anybody’s guess.

By the way, there’s been a new earthquake. I’m just told: Magnitude 6.6 earthquake strikes central Japan causing buildings in Tokyo to sway. So I don’t know. It’s an aftershock, maybe, or a new earthquake altogether. Anyway that’s what’s going on with $105 billion, as best as I can explain it to you. Those are the lines of demarcation here — and to strip it all away, I really think it’s about some who just don’t want to get anywhere near a government shutdown, and others who wouldn’t mind at all a government shutdown ’cause it’s worth it in their view to stop this any way and every way they can — Obamacare — and the people who are urging it don’t care about their press coverage anyway, which is the way you have to be.

In my view, the most successful politicians on our side are going to be those who don’t care what the press says, because we already know what they’re gonna say. No matter what we do, we know what they’re gonna say. So you might as well do the right thing. That’s where it is. That’s the answer to the question. Everybody’s been asking me, ‘How come you’re not talking about it?’ It’s because we did. I explained all of this over the course many of many days. (interruption) What, Snerdley, what? What now? (interruption) Well, no, we explained it first. But there hasn’t been a resolution to it, and Michele Bachmann is still on television. She’s still trying to drum up support for this and explain what’s going on. It’s Open Line Friday. I promised you got a question, I’ll answer it. That’s a large number of questions in the e-mail.

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