Stupak Says No to Obama’s Bill

RUSH: Now, to illustrate something, we’ve all heard, ad infinitum (sobbing), ‘It’s those damn Republicans! The Republicans are the party of ‘no.’ That’s why Obama can’t get his monument! That’s why Obama can’t get health care, because the Republicans are the party of ‘no.” We heard Evan Bayh say, ‘I can’t get along here, too much gridlock. There’s no bipartisanship,’ and I was pulling my hair out. You guys have all the votes! Up until Scott Brown came along, and that’s just a month ago, you guys had 60 votes in the Senate and who knows what kind of a majority in the House! The Republicans couldn’t stop diddly-squat. So the purpose of this little meeting tomorrow, this theater, is to shift the blame to the Republicans.

That’s all it is. That’s all the effort is about. This is an easy call. But the dirty little secret is that Pelosi doesn’t have the votes for a reconciled Senate version of health care. Eric Cantor is out there saying so. The Democrats, Pelosi and Obama, have asked too many of these guys to walk the plank for this, and a lot of them don’t want to walk the plank because they don’t think it’s worth it. What’s Obama done for them? Obama has done nothing but make their lives miserable. Their political lives are miserable. Here they thought they were going to enter the happiest time of their lives, supermajority control of the Senate, big time majority control of the House — and, look!

This place is no different than a den of thieves and a pack of wild dogs. There’s nobody on the Democrat side having any fun doing anything, and it’s all Obama’s fault. Yet he’s asking them to fall on the sword, to take a bullet so he gets this health care thing passed. Well, they’re not all on board. His problem remains the Democrats. Here’s Bart Stupak. I don’t know if he’s going to go to Obama’s summit, I don’t know if he’s going to speak, but this was this morning on America’s Newsroom. Bart Stupak with Bill Hemmer. He’s a Democrat from Michigan and Bill Hemmer said, ‘As it stands now with all these moderate Democrats saying, ‘Hey, this is not the place we want to go right now,” meaning the health care bill, ‘could it even pass the House, do you think?’

STUPAK: Despite the abortion language, no, there’s other problems with this bill. The president has tried to bridge the House and Senate bill. But at least to the House members I’ve talked to — probably about 15 or 20 of them in the last 24 hours — they’ve said there are other problems with this bill. Remember, the House rejected the idea of passing health insurance plans. We just totally rejected that idea. But yet that’s part of the bill. Parts of the bill doesn’t kick in until 2018. We’re saying, ‘Well, why are we passing the bill now that’s not going to kick in for another eight, nine years?’

RUSH: You just heard a Democrat, Bart Stupak, not to be confused with Joe Sestak. This is Bart Stupak from Michigan. Sestak is from Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is run by ‘Fast Eddie’ Rendell and Michigan is being destroyed by Jennifer Granholm. This is a Democrat, Bart Stupak (paraphrased), ‘Nope, not voting for it! I know fifteen or 20 others not voting for it and it’s got to do with a lot more than just abortion. It kicks in for 2018? Why are we rushing to do this now?’ They are beginning to realize it’s all about Obama, and they’re the ones that are gonna pay the price for it. He gets whatever credit there is.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Don’t forget, the Republicans can’t stop anything. They’re not going to get health care in the House because they don’t have enough Democrats who are going to vote for it this time. They do not. Murtha is gone, Abercrombie is leaving. Remember they only had three votes more than they needed. They had 218, they needed 215. Murtha’s gone, he’s not been replaced, Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii is retiring. Oh, yeah, Cao the Republican, he’s not voting for it this time. He was the Republican that did in Louisiana. If you do the math right now it does not look like they’ve got the votes. And Stupak’s not going for it and he says there’s a lot of guys not going for it along with him not just because of the abortion stuff but because they don’t even know what they’re doing yet, it’s going to be implemented in 2018 and they don’t understand the reason they got to do this — well, they do understand it. They have to fall on their sword for Obama. They’re not going to say so publicly, it’s all about giving Obama something to run for reelection, it’s all about him and they’re starting to resent this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

John Boehner was with Megyn Kelly on Fox this afternoon about Republicans going up to this health care summit tomorrow. This was the question, the first of two: ‘When I listen to you talk, I think to myself, all right, so nothing’s going to get done, it sounds like nothing new will take place at tomorrow’s summit, he’ll say what he’s been saying, you’re going to say what you’ve been saying?’

BOEHNER: I guess we’re going to have to see. I can’t predict what’s going to happen tomorrow. I mean the president invited the Republicans and Democrats to come to the White House. I think Republicans need to go. I don’t see any reason to allow the president to have a six-hour infomercial about his bill.

RUSH: It’s theater, it’s nothing more than theater. It’s more talk. So the next question: ‘Well, one Democrat source came out today, predicted this would be a, quote, ‘career-ending vote’ for those who vote ‘yes’ in favor of the bill that winds up coming out of the House or Senate, a Democrat source said that anyone voting ‘yes’ is ending their career. Do you agree?’

BOEHNER: I do. This is an issue far beyond any issue that I’ve seen during my legislative career, an issue that all Americans understand and have some feelings about. And after everything I’ve seen over the last six or seven months, the American people have been very loud and very aggressive about how bad this bill is, and the fact that we’ve got all these entitlement programs that are going broke and here they are wanting to create a new entitlement program that’s going to cost a trillion dollars right at the beginning.

RUSH: That we don’t have. So that’s John Boehner on Fox this afternoon. Bill, about this, in Beaumont, Texas. Welcome, sir, to the Rush Limbaugh program. Bill, are you there?

CALLER: Yes, I am.

RUSH: Well, welcome to the program, sir.

CALLER: Thank you very much. By the way, I wanted to tell you that you really had some great moves at the pageant.

RUSH: Oh, the dancing at the pageant. Yes, I won the judges dance contest. Absolutely. Thank you.

CALLER: You did good. It’s the perfect timing, I wanted to follow up with this thing that you just did from Boehner.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: You know, I get the feeling that everybody is just hoping that the Republicans — that here we go, the Republicans are going to a nice little party at the Blair House, da-da-da-da-da. I hope as a Republican, independent, as conservative, my more than wish, my demand of the Republican Party and the people that represent us in Washington is that they have been rehearsing, that they have been playing out the scenarios. I mean, these guys are pros at this. This is what they do for a living. They know what’s going to happen, they know what Obama’s gonna — you know, generally how his game plan is going to run.

RUSH: What do you think Obama is going to do?

CALLER: I don’t know, but I think it’s pretty clear what he’s going to do. He’s got a plan, he’s going to say this is it, and he’s going to try to start the negotiation with this thing that he’s produced, this outline that he’s produced. I hope they’re Republican representatives have prepared their version of what they would like to see, and I hope they go in there and they are tough, they don’t do what’s politically correct, they do what’s necessary to convey the position of the conservatives in this country. This is a very, very — it’s just insanity that we’re talking about adding the kind of money to our deficit that this bill will add, under any circumstances, be it for the good of 31 million people that aren’t covered by health care or anything else. This country is going down the tube financially. This is the greatest country in the world, we’ve got the greatest people, I just can’t say enough positive things about the citizens of the United States.

RUSH: Look, here’s what this is all about. And the answer can be found in what I just told you. Congressional approval is 10%. Obama wants to shift the blame for this not getting done to Congress. That’s what this is about tomorrow. The Republicans and Democrats both know there’s not going to be anything coming out of this summit tomorrow that’s going to end up as a piece of legislation that a majority of Congress or the Senate will vote for. This is an attempt — Obama is going to say, ‘I listened to what the Republicans said, I put some things in there that they want, this is a fully bipartisan –‘ he’s going to say it, he knows he’s got an echo chamber to repeat it, Republicans are going to be on defense, ‘No, no, no, the things we wanted are not in there,’ blah, blah, blah. I don’t know how they’re going to handle it, but I know what the objective is, and the objective is to shift blame to them and take the heat off of the Democrats. The only problem with that is that a lot of Democrats like Stupak are out there saying they want no part of it anyway. So I think the whole thing is a joke, it’s theater, this is where Obama thinks he shines, it’s an attempt to raise his poll numbers. Six hours here, six hours of Obama in campaign mode? That’s the way they’re looking at this. The Republicans know what they’re getting into. They’re just like Democrats. How could they not know?