Porkulus: The Depressing Details

RUSH: Now, yesterday Dingy Harry goes out there with — and he’s got his RINO Republicans with him, got Susan Collins, who I remember telling, I watched what she said yesterday. It was pathetic. It was embarrassing. Of all the brain cells that she has, the ones that are the size of an amoeba were the ones working yesterday.

It was just pathetic to listen to what she said. I didn’t hear what Specter said, but people told me what Specter said and it was not much better. I did hear what Senator Daniel Inouye from Hawaii said, and that was… We are being rolled and we are being smoked like nothing we have ever seen happen before. This is just such an outrage. Dingy Harry is there. He wanted to get all the credit. He wanted to bask in all the lights and the cameras. So he goes out there, and he announces the deal, and when my red flags went up, my antenna went up is when Dingy Harry started in with some of the most sickening praise for Nancy Pelosi I have ever heard. He said, ‘We couldn’t have gotten this done without her. I have spent a lot of time on the phone with Speaker Pelosi today, and I want to thank her for her great contribution. She’s not here with us right now.’

Well, the reason she wasn’t there was because she was blowing her stack over in her office. It was not a done deal, and she felt like she was being rolled. She felt like she was being pressured into supporting the Senate version of the bill, when she had no intention of doing so, ’cause there were some things in it that… Look, it’s liberal Democrats arguing with each other, so don’t get your hopes up here about significant changes. Liberal Democrats are the ones bickering with each other about this. But then the Pelosi office yesterday put out a story, ‘Hey! It wasn’t Pelosi that got rolled, we purposely stayed out of that meeting. We’re the ones that played Reid like a violin.’ Well, whatever the case, the bottom line is the House didn’t vote yesterday, and the house isn’t voting today, and there is a story here today from Heritage, the Heritage Foundation, our good buds at AskHeritage.org.

‘The anticipated vote in the House of Representatives on the [Porkulus] bill has been delayed, and will not occur today as scheduled. Reasons for the delay were not given but the decision does follow a morning of debate, where Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) complained that Members were being asked to vote on a bill they had still not seen. Speaker Pelosi had distributed an overview, but not the actual bill text, and to our knowledge, still has not shared the details of the bill with her Republican colleagues. The text of the Nelson-Collins ‘compromise,” that’s Ben Nelson and Susan Collins, ‘had been roughly 778 pages, but the now ‘agreed-to’ conference report has DOUBLED to a whopping 1,434 pages.’ There is not a living, breathing soul elected to office who has read every one of those pages. ‘But, in possibly the most bizarre parliamentarian argument ever made, according to National Journal’s Congress Daily; ‘Democratic lawmakers fired back that Republicans didn’t need to see the bill anyway, since none of them voted for the stimulus when it moved through the House the first time and would probably stand in opposition.”

So they said, ‘You guys didn’t vote for it. Why do you need to see it? Why do you need to see what’s in it?’ There is a ‘loyalty oath’ being demanded from Pelosi, on down to her Blue Dog Democrats and others — and the fight that’s going on really doesn’t even involve the Republicans. What’s going on here is that Pelosi is miffed that some things that she wanted were not in the compromise and she’s bound and determined to put ’em in there. (interruption) I don’t know why they still use paper, Mr. Snerdley, in the era of advanced IT, information technology, computerized. It is computerized. I mean, you can go to the… Oh! Oh! That reminds me. There’s another provision in the bill. No, no, no, wait. There’s provision in the bill that requires the public (or allows the public) 48 hours to look at it on the website before it’s voted on. So a provision in the bill is even going to be violated.

So if they can violate that provision they don’t have to listen to anything. Now, I’ve got a list of things that are in the bill. I really don’t even feel like wasting time going through it. (interruption) You want to hear some of them? Okay. Snerdley wants to hear some. Folks, it’s pathetic. It is a disaster. There are ‘Billions of dollars in spending exclusively devoted to benefit federal employees, $5.5 billion for making federal buildings ‘green’ …, $198 million to design and furnish the DHS headquarters, $200 million for workplace safety in Department of Agriculture facilities, $75 million for the Smithsonian Institution, $300 million more for hybrid and electric cars for federal employees.’ That’s on top of the $600 million that was previously authorized. ‘$180 million for construction of Bureau of Land Management facilities, $500 million for wildland fire management, $110 million for construction for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, $522 million for construction for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, $412 million for Centers for Disease Control headquarters, $500 million earmark for National Institutes of Health facilities in Bethesda, Maryland, $100 million for constructing US Marshalls office buildings.’

You want me to go on? There’s ‘$300 million for constructing Federal Bureau of Investigation office buildings, $800 million for constructing Federal Prison System buildings and facilities, $307 million for constructing National Institute for Standards and Technology office buildings, $1 billion for administrative costs and construction of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration office buildings. That spending,’ that I just shared with you, ‘was added to an earlier version of the bill, which also benefited federal employees by splurging on things such as the following.’ So, in addition to what you just heard, what we just heard was added to what was revealed in the bill, ‘$600 million to buy hybrid vehicles for federal employees,’ now $900 billion, ‘$125 million for the Washington, DC sewer system, $75 million for salaries of employees at the FBI, $6 billion to turn federal buildings into ‘green’ buildings.’

That’s now $11.5 billion,’$88 million for renovating the headquarters of the Public Health Service, $5.5 million for ‘energy efficiency initiatives’ at the Veterans Administration’s ‘National Cemetery Administration’, $60 million for Arlington National Cemetery, $75 million to construct a new ‘security training’ facility for State Department Security officers when they can be trained at existing facilities of other agencies, $110 million to the Farm Service Agency to upgrade computer systems, $200 million in funding for the lease of alternative energy vehicles for use on military installations.’ So the second list I read you is what was already there. The first list is what’s been added to it. Then there’s ‘Wasteful spending that is not directly targeted at federal employees.’ That’s this list: ‘$2 billion for a FutureGen near-zero emissions powerplant in Mattoon, Illinois, $2 billion for manufacturing advanced batteries for hybrid cars.’ Speaking of which, have you seen the latest figures from Ford?

Ford Motor Company may have bottomed out. Ford Motor Company is adding shifts and employees to build the F-150 pickup, and their SUV hybrid sales are in the tank. It’s the pickup trucks! The people are not buying the cars that Obama wants them to buy. They’re buying hog pickups, and it’s so much that Ford’s having to retool and reemploy. Meanwhile, they’re spending $2 billion to manufacture advanced batteries for hybrid cars. ‘…$650 million for the digital TV (DTV) transition coupon program, $1.2 billion for summer jobs for youth, $200 million for public computer centers at community colleges and libraries, $750 million earmark for the National Computer Center, … $850 million for Amtrak (on top of its regular subsidy), $100 million for lead paint hazard reduction, $275 million for flood prevention…’ It just goes on. It never stops. Now, I could tell you in… What has this taken me? This has taken me seven minutes just to read a list. I could tell you the tax cuts in 45 seconds.