Cramdown, Not Reconciliation

RUSH: It just keeps getting worse, ladies and gentlemen. ‘Democratic Congressional leaders struck a tentative agreement on Thursday that breathes new life into President Obama’s proposed overhaul of federal student loan programs.’ Listen to this. ‘The deal would bundle the bill into an expedited budget package along with the Democratic health care legislation, which would allow for both measures to be passed by the Senate on a simple majority vote.’ Cramdown. Reconciliation. ‘Without the deal, the student loan bill would have been unlikely to pass because it lacked the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.’ So everything they can’t get legally they’re going to put into this reconciliation bill.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they have time on this that they try to cram amnesty into it. Why not? Why not? If you’re trying to get everything done in the Senate with 51 votes, why leave anything out of this? Why not just put amnesty in there? Why not put cap and trade in there? Why not put card check in there? All of these things. Get rid of this March 18th deadline and just put everything in this reconciliation bill. It only needs 51 votes in the Senate. What are we talking about here? Why limit this to the government takeover of the student loan process? I probably shouldn’t have said that because I’ve given them an idea. Oh, well. (interruption) No, Snerdley, believe me, I don’t have to give these people any ideas. I don’t have a corruption gene in me. I don’t have a pollution gene in me. These people are defined by their corruption genes.

Bart Stupak last night On the Record, Greta Van Susteren, she said, ‘Let me give you a hypothetical. Suppose it goes this way: House passes the Senate bill, goes to the president for signature, comes back for reconciliation. Is that a procedure you could live with?’

STUPAK: Members don’t like the Senate bill, especially with the special deals in it. Why would we vote for it, send it to the president so he could sign it, it becomes law, then the special deals are law, and then trust that they’re going to fix it later? It’s not just me, many members said they don’t agree with that process. Those of us who’ve been here for a little while know that tomorrow never comes. You know, we’ll fix it tomorrow. Never happens.

RUSH: Actually, it does. But it takes a while. Do you remember welfare reform that Clinton signed in 1996? I’ll never forget the Reverend Jackson and a number of others were demanding he fix it. Well, Clinton didn’t have time to fix it, but welfare reform has significantly been rolled back, has it not? The requirement to work is not near what it was. You can repeal things. You can change it. You can roll things back. But it does take some time. So Van Susteren then said, ‘Nobody can seem to agree on these deadlines, and this doesn’t seem like it’s going to actually happen.’

STUPAK: We’ve been having a lot of caucuses. We’re here tonight. We finished up, but they’re going to make us stay so they can have another caucus tomorrow morning.

VAN SUSTEREN: What happens at these caucuses? What do you do?

STUPAK: Oh, nothing. The same people get up and talk.

VAN SUSTEREN: And say, like, what, though? I mean, like, what, do you guys all sit in a room?

STUPAK: And we think this will happen. And we’ll say, ‘Well, can we see the score from CBO? You say it’s going to cost this much, has anyone independently checked those figures?’

VAN SUSTEREN: And what’s the answer when you say ‘When?’

STUPAK: ‘Oh, we’ll get it to you.’ That that’s the standard answer. Will they get it to us? Sure. But when? Members are not going to accept that. We’re not going to accept this, ‘Trust me, we’ll fix it later.’ There has to be something more.

RUSH: So there’s Stupak describing your average caucus meeting. Now remember, I’ll go through this briefly, I have a spy who told me what went on in this morning’s Democrat caucus meeting. The Democrats in a meeting this morning were told that there will definitely be a House vote in the next week on health reform and that all the members need to be prepared to stay in next weekend and through the following week until the vote happens. They were told that the rule would be closed, providing for one vote. That one vote would include the reconciliation provisions, the amendments to the Senate bill and the Student Aid Bill, along with the Senate passed bill. Everything would be tied into one vote. Now, the Senate bill will not be separate. They’re going to go ahead, but they haven’t seen the language for this yet. That’s why they’re being told to stay in town. They’re going to vote on something they haven’t seen. They’re going to vote on something they haven’t voted on. They’re going to put all this together.

It’s going to be like they’re going to do their own one-House conference. They’re going to take the Senate bill and the House is going to add their stuff to it with the Senate having no input. Then they’re going to vote on it, and that’s what’s going to go to Obama. And then supposedly after he signs it it’s going to go back to the Senate where the Senate will say okay or whatever. It’s a convoluted process. But what they were told today was that the Cornhusker Kickback is gone, and that the Gator Aid is gone. They were told something different yesterday. Michele Bachmann said in the caucus meeting yesterday that the White House people actually got booed by members of the Democrat caucus when they were presenting what Obama wants in this thing. It was Pelosi that came out after the meeting and said, (imitating Pelosi) ‘Oh the leadership from the president, why, we wouldn’t be where we are. This is the most competent leader, this man’s vision. We’re going to get this done.’

So they’re saying things in public, but you listen to Stupak. Stupak says there’s nothing going on in here, it’s just a bunch of BS. But they come out of these meetings every day, Pelosi and Reid have these trumped up lying sacks full of stories about how wonderful and rosy it is in there and how everybody is up and it’s close and we never felt better about this. It’s clear that what’s going on behind closed doors is not at all the way it’s being portrayed by Pelosi and her gang.

This is Michael Leahy and the Washington Post. It appears, folks, that having a black president is not all it was cracked up to be. The headline here: ‘A Frustrated Caucus Keeps Complaints Quiet — A year ago, members of the Congressional Black Caucus openly wept at Barack Obama’s inauguration. Slowly, that euphoria has given way to frustration that his administration has not done more for black America. Questions about how to elect him have been replaced by questions about how to prod him. For many, it is the surprise of a political lifetime that they find themselves wrestling with such quandaries.’ They thought a black president was going to lead to all kinds of magic for the black community, and they think the Obama administration is taking them for granted. But they have to keep quiet about their criticism. They can’t complain now, because that wouldn’t look good.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I’m being accused of using a slur by accusing the Senate of ‘Indian giving’ by taking back the Cornhusker kickback. People said I should have said ‘Native American giving.’ All right, it’s ‘Native American giving.’ I’m being accused of a racial slur by using the term ‘Indian giving.’