RUSH: I want to move on to immigration, because the Democrats are trying to make it look like they’re fighting among themselves. Byron Dorgan submitted an amendment yesterday that we want down in flames. His amendment would basically strip the guest worker program from the bill. Now, Dorgan and Barbara Boxer led the — no, it wasn’t Dorgan’s amendment. It was a compromise, and Dorgan and Barbara Boxer, San Francisco, led the charge to kill the key part of the bill, and all they could muster was 34 votes. Now, Barbara Boxer wants guest workers for her state but she doesn’t want them for anywhere else. She got in a little tiff here with Senator Kennedy. They have this big disagreement on the guest worker program. Here on Capitol Hill during a press conference is some of what Barbara Boxer had to say.
BOXER: Why would anyone bring this kind of a program to the floor of the United States Senate? Why do you need this pull, except as, as I said, a way to keep our workers down, keep their wages down, keep their benefits down, keep them weak, and, in my view, at the end of the day, destroy the middle class.
RUSH: Wow, did you hear that, Barbara Boxer worried about the guest worker program destroying the middle class. Now, there is a story later on in the stack. She’s all for guest workers, or at least some number of them in California because the agriculture business, we must make certain exceptions, she says all down the line. This did not sit well with Senator Kennedy.
KENNEDY: If I listen carefully to my good friend from California being opposed to temporary workers with the exception of temporary workers in agriculture.
RUSH: Oh, so we’ve got some contretemps going on between Democrats, Barbara Boxer and Senator Kennedy, who, by the way, it’s important — you know, in that conversation yesterday about the elites in both parties thinking that you and I and people like us, we’re too dumb and stupid to understand all of this, and so they call us names and they impugn us. Ted Kennedy hasn’t been right about this in 43 years. Ted Kennedy is one of the elites, and everything he has said about three previous immigration bills to this one, every time one of those bills has been signed into law, he’s gone out and made a statement, he’s been dead wrong about everything that’s happened. Now, make no mistake, Senator Kennedy and the Democrats that want this bill want it because they need a new pool of victims, they need a new pool of dependents, and they need a new pool of voters. And that’s what this is. Boxer then responded to Kennedy, jamming her a little bit about temporary workers, with the exception of temporary workers in agriculture.
BOXER: Senator Kennedy has a full right to his opinion, and I have a full right to mine.
RUSH: And then Senator Kennedy said this about the guest worker program.
RUSH: ‘Crawl across the desert and die.’ Some are, I mean some are crawling. Most are in the backs of vans. Some just, you know, grab a little backpack and cross the border. At any rate, Byron Dorgan, also speaking about the guest worker program.
DORGAN: We’re talking about a proposal that says, by the way, there are millions more who are not now living in this country that we wish to invite in on this basis to assume American jobs. We are told that’s necessary because you can’t find Americans to assume those jobs. That is fundamentally false.
RUSH: I hate to agree with him, but he’s right about that. In agriculture, that’s the largest area where illegal immigrants work, and one of the things we’ve been told over the years to justify all this is that the agriculture business is jobs, in large part, that the American people just refuse to do anymore, beneath them, the American people won’t do them. Well, what percentage of agriculture jobs do you believe are held by illegal immigrants? Well, it’s 24, 26, depending on where you look. But way to go, H.R. 24, 26%. Let’s round it off and say 25. That means that 75% of the people working in agriculture are Americans, does it not? Which means what? It means they’re willing to do those jobs, does it not? Finally, here is Dingy Harry, the Senate majority leader, about the guest worker program.
REID: One of the things that I like about this bill is there’s so much disagreement. And I say that because no one’s happy, no one’s taking advantage of anyone else. That is how we should build consensus and compromise.
RUSH: That’s really dangerous. It’s bad and everybody doesn’t like it because it’s bad. I love this notion. ‘Why, hey, if it makes everybody mad, it must be good.’ That is sophistry, and that is small-time thinking. You look at the history of legislation that was this controversial and it ends up getting passed, it’s horrible. It’s bad because it’s bad. Democrats would love for you to believe we’re doing this to come up with consensus and compromise. There are all kinds of stories in the stack today, New York Times, Washington Post, ‘What’s so bad about compromise?’ I’ll tell you what’s so bad about compromise. When you’re compromising your principles; when you’re compromising what you believe; when you’re compromising the country; when you’re compromising the future of the traditions and the institutions that made the country great, it’s worthless. Compromise in and of itself is not a virtue! They pass it off as a virtue. And it’s not! Consensus is not a virtue. ‘Consensus is the absence of leadership.’ I wish that I could say that is my quote, but it isn’t. Margaret Thatcher said that in a speech I heard, a lecture she gave at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel after she had served as prime minister of Great Britain. ‘Consensus is the absence of leadership.’ On this that’s absolutely true. But let’s get to the politics of this.
What are we, ladies and gentlemen, to make of all of this supposed infighting among Democrats on the guest worker program? Even Dingy Harry turned around and voted against the guest worker program. The unions don’t want it in the bill. Even with Dingy Harry and the unions supporting this amendment, it only gets 34 votes from the Democrats. How can this be? The Senate majority leader and the unions can’t get this passed, can’t get enough votes for this amendment? Only 34 votes? What’s going on here? I’ll tell you exactly what’s going on. These amendments are just political cover. Don’t be fooled by any of this. They wouldn’t have put this amendment up had they known it was going to succeed. Dorgan put this amendment up knowing it was going to be defeated so that they can run around and talk about how extreme the bill is; how they tried to moderate it; Democrats are on the right side of this, they had no intention of stripping the guest worker program out of this. I’m just telling you, this is political cover from the get-go. It’s designed to give them talking points later on in the negotiating process when they’re talking to the media, trying to reach you or when they’re in their next reelection campaign, ‘Well, I had several problems with that bill. As you know, I offered or as you know, I supported an amendment that would have stripped the guest worker provision.’ They just want to be able to say they supported it with full knowledge it had no chance of passing.
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RUSH: I wonder if these Democrats are concerned here as they push this immigration bill forward about the effect it’s going to have on our own poor people, is going to be taking jobs away from them. ‘Ah, Rush, you don’t understand, the American poor will not do those jobs, either.’ Wrongo, folks. I’m not going to repeat everything I’ve said about this, but it’s a disaster all the way around. This is Greg in Louisville, Kentucky. Nice to have you, sir, on the EIB Network.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. How are you?
RUSH: Fine. (Muttering.)
CALLER: Well, I’m just sorry to hear you siding with Pat Buchanan and Byron Dorgan and the right and left coming together on this issue is unfortunate. I think, first of all, that the immigrants have been a very positive thing for our country. Milton Friedman’s great book, ‘Free to Choose’ talks about how we were better off when we had free flow of immigration. We have makers and takers. What we need to do is have a constitutional amendment to keep the takers from getting our welfare in public because the courts have ruled that they’re entitled to that. We need an amendment to that. The makers, the people who come here and work harder than anybody else and struggle to make a good life and have family values, we need to encourage that. I don’t understand this hostility from the left and the right to oppose immigration.
RUSH: Because it’s not about immigration. This is a political move by the Democrat Party and some elites in the Republican Party who think they’re going to get the votes of these people. The Democrats will end up with them, although the Republicans, some of them think they’re going to find a way to persuade these people to vote Republican. You can’t attach the free market to this. You can’t take any other free trade example and apply it to illegal immigration. We have never had open borders. We have never said anybody who wants to come in, come in. We do not allow nations around the world to flood our country with products, whether we’re not paying attention to them, that we’re not trying to find out if they’re good or bad.
CALLER: I would urge you to read Milton Friedman’s book. He talks about through the nineteenth century, except for maybe some disease —
RUSH: I guarantee you —
CALLER: — we had open immigration and the country grew like crazy.
RUSH: We’ve always had immigration quotas.
CALLER: No, that’s not true.
RUSH: Yes, we have. We have them today. On the legal immigration —
CALLER: We have today, but we didn’t have them a hundred years ago, and the country grew like crazy, is what I’m telling you.
RUSH: We did have quotas in the sense you had to be healthy —
CALLER: Yeah, except for disease screening.
CALLER: No. He said that for years before he died, sir. He certainly did. Immigration has been — we just need to cut off the welfare from the takers and encourage the makers.
RUSH: See, I’m not arguing against immigration, is the one thing. You keep talking about Milton Friedman and free markets and so forth. I am the free market guy of American radio. This isn’t about immigration, and I made this point eloquently yesterday. I resent having to say everything multiple times here because you people choose when and where to listen. You need to listen three hours every day. You need to make this a commitment. I say this with a smile on my face. (Laughing) Seriously, this is not about immigration. That’s just the word. This is a political movement which is two things. It is the Comprehensive Destroy the Republican Party Act of 2007, or you could call it the Comprehensive Import More Democrats Act of 2007. This is about welfare payments. You want a constitutional amendment to stop transfer payments? Good luck. Hold your breath, because it isn’t ever going to happen. That’s precisely what this program’s about. This program is about bringing poor, uneducated workers in here for their cheap labor and then having wealth transfers to them so that they have health care and education for them and the members of their families that they can bring along with them. It’s going to cost gazillions. I want to give you some numbers. I actually am glad you weren’t listening yesterday. I take it all back. Because now I have added information.
Billion with a B. This is from the website ImmigrationCounters.com, and just listen to these numbers. The number of illegal aliens in the country according to this group is 20,807,645. The amount of money wired to Mexico since January of 2006 is $22,213,000,000. The cost of Social Security services for illegal aliens since 1996 — are you listening? — $397,450,739,563 dollars. That’s how much we have spent on Social Security services for illegal aliens since 1996, and that spending has been mandated by the courts, and it’s only going to go up. Now, let’s talk about what these numbers represent. You can say 397 billion, billion this, billion that, and people can’t comprehend it. The next time you hear somebody use the word billion in a casual manner, keep these things in mind. A billion seconds ago it was 1959. A billion minutes ago, Jesus was alive. A billion hours ago, our ancestors were living in the Stone Age. A billion days ago, no one walked on the earth on two feet. A billion dollars ago was eight hours and 20 minutes at the rate our government spends money. A billion dollars, eight hours and 20 minutes ago. Yet a billion seconds ago it’s 1959. Three-hundred-ninety-seven-billion, and the purpose of this bill, Greg s to have that number increase. It is a way for the Democrats to raise taxes, grow the government, create more dependents that will vote for them, and at the same institute on a grander scale even than today, the redistribution of wealth. This is pure liberalism on parade just like global warming is. This is not immigration. This is not the traditional immigration that you and Milton Friedman and everybody loved where people came here to become Americans and to assimilate in our culture and help build the unique American experience. This has nothing to do with that whatsoever. Don’t be fooled by the claim that this is about immigration.
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RUSH: To underscore my point, I’m going to throw this idea out. There might be a Republican senator willing to do this, to illustrate the point that this is not about immigration, that it is about increasing the size of government, increasing the redistribution of wealth, importing new Democrats, and destroying the Republican Party, and the conservative movement, by the way. And it’s this. I know that the courts have ruled otherwise. But just for the fun of it, because this guy, the previous caller from Louisville said, ‘If we just bring these guys in, these illegal workers, immigration made America great, da-da-da, and pass constitutional amendment baning transfer payments, everything would be hunky-dory.’ Okay. Senator Sessions, Senator Bunning, propose an amendment that would limit transfer payments to all those being made legal. Limit the amount of access they have to health care, Social Security, and so forth and so on. You watch what happens to that amendment — you watch. The fur would fly the minute, the Democrats would come, ‘Ah, they want to take food out of the starving mouths of babies,’ and so forth. If some Republican would propose that, or just talk about it — I know it’s not going to happen, but the Democrats would be forced to give away what the real purpose of this is faster than I have to go to commercial break here, which is now
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