Be Bold Every Day, Republicans

RUSH: You know, folks, I’m reading all this stuff, getting ready for the big show today, listening to Alan Simpson Babe and all these people talking about the tax cut negotiations and the deficit commission and so forth, and I got to thinking, if the government were a person, we would consider it a bum, a failure, a troll living underneath the bridge, somebody that can’t get a job, can’t hold a job, can’t live within its means, all it can do is ask for another handout. The government’s a bum, and the supposed smartest guy in the room is never in the room. It’s Obama. He’s always telling the adults to go solve the problem while he heads out to shoot some more hoops, and he appoints guys like Geithner to negotiate with Republicans on the Bush tax rate deal.

Anyway, great to have you here, folks, Rush Limbaugh. Already Wednesday. Can’t believe that. Fastest week in media. Our telephone number if you want to be on the program, 800-282-2882, e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.

The deficit problem is amazingly clear, straightforward. The federal government spends too much money, pure and simple. If we increase taxes, they’re just gonna spend that. The history of the world is you give government more money, they spend it. There’s no lockbox on anything. There’s no paying down any debt. It never happens. There shouldn’t be any discussion of raising taxes, none, zip, zero, nada, particularly after this election. There ought be no discussion whatsoever of raising taxes. If there’s anything that last month’s election told us, and every poll has been saying for years, it’s read our lips, no new taxes, and there are the Democrats at practically every turn trying to raise taxes on everybody, on anybody. They are tax addicts, and they want to do all this under the supposed rubric of bipartisanship and common ground and compromise and all this. I mean it’s enough to tick you off. It’s enough to put you in a bad mood. I’ve been fighting being in a bad mood all day. I really have.

I got a story here from Fox News: ‘Senate Republicans Vow to Block Dem Legislation Until Tax Cuts, Budget Pass.’ Now, on the face of it, this is excellent. This is pretty bold. ‘Every Senate Republican has signed onto a letter vowing to block all Democratic-backed legislation until the chamber extends the Bush tax cuts and approves a spending bill to keep the government running, Fox News has learned. Throwing down the gauntlet, all 42 members of the GOP caucus are sending the letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid warning him that they will bring matters to a standstill unless he swiftly brings those tax-and-spending issues to the floor. That means putting on the backburner a push to repeal the military’s policy banning gays from serving openly in the military, a bill giving illegal immigrant students and military members a pathway to legal status –‘ that’s the DREAM Act ‘– and an extension of long-term unemployment benefits.’

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Back to this Fox News story: ‘While there are other items that might ultimately be worthy of the Senate’s attention –‘ this is the letter that the Republicans sent to Dingy Harry ‘– we cannot agree to prioritize any matters above the critical issues of funding the government –‘ ’cause there’s not a budget, folks. Don’t have a budget, and it’s required by October 1st, and there isn’t one. We’re just using a series of patches to keep things running. ‘– and preventing a job-killing tax hike.’ Until those two issues are dealt with nothing else on your agenda is gonna happen here in the Senate. That’s what the Republicans are saying. ‘Given our struggling economy, preventing the tax increase and providing economic certainty should be our top priority.’ Then you read to the very end of this story, and I had a couple people send me this today,’ Rush, this is great, I can’t believe it. The Republicans are really great, this is superb.’ And this next paragraph is the reason.

‘The filibuster threat –‘ which is what I guess this letter is, ‘– increases pressure on the White House to offer a more realistic agenda for the remaining weeks of the year. For example, if Congress doesn’t act on the tax cuts, it means Republicans will be in position to enact their own, retroactive plan starting Jan. 1 without having to make any concessions to Democratic demands for upper-income earners.’ Now, I had to read that paragraph backwards, forwards, sideways over and over again to try to see what was the good news in it. Let me read it to you again, because it was cited to me as excellent news. Three or four people sent this to me today, ‘Hey, this is really great. They’re not backing off.’ ‘Cause I guess it’s such contrast to the original reporting we got yesterday about the House Republicans coming out of their meeting with Obama, ‘Yeah, he liked us. He was a nice guy, very civil. He gave us a cookie, yeah, he liked us.’ And we were all, ‘What was that matter?’ So this paragraph stands in stark contrast and I understand why people were so excited about it.

But here it is again: ‘The filibuster threat –‘ again, that’s the Republican letter that all 42 were gonna sign onto ‘– increases pressure on the White House to offer a more realistic agenda for the remaining weeks of the year,’ i.e., the lame duck. ‘For example, if Congress doesn’t act on the tax cuts, it means Republicans will be in position to enact their own, retroactive plan starting Jan. 1 –‘ My problem is the Republicans can’t enact anything. Yeah, they did sign it, and they’ve already sent it to Dingy Harry. He’s reacted to it and of course we know what his reaction would be. All of this is predictable. The great thing is that they are holding firm. They got all 42 to sign this. And that is bold, and that’s the good thing. This appears to be part of a strategy. That’s what’s good about this. They’re implementing a strategery. Now, they gotta do this every day. They’ve got to make the case day in and day out. I hope it continues. I mean this is actually an upper. This is laying the foundation to take over the Senate and the presidency and persuade skeptics to our principles. It’s a long process, and it requires boldness each and every day.

So here’s one day, and this is good, and this is all about the next election, 2012, taking over the Senate, ‘Okay, here’s where we are; here’s who we are. This is what we heard in the election results. We know what the American people want and we are here to stand up for it.’ So, in that sense, this is good. But we can’t enact anything on our own. So if any of the rest of you have seen this story, if you’ve heard it on Fox News, I just wanted to not throw cold water on it but this finite little element here of enacting their own tax plan if this one fails, they can’t enact anything. They have to pass legislation, and they’re the minority in the Senate. And then Obama would have to sign it. He’s not gonna sign it. We don’t have the votes to override a veto here. So they can’t rely on waiting ’til January to enact their own and propose their own. Now, they will, no doubt, do that as a means of setting down a marker, as a means of saying, ‘Here’s who we are,’ as a means of saying to voters, ‘We heard you; this is what we stand for. You can count on us the next two years to fight for this.’

It’s like the health care overhaul. We kind of got off track here — well, not we. It’s very easy for the Republicans to get off track unless they remember one thing. If our strategy is to repeal it — and apparently that has not changed despite the confusing reporting yesterday in The Hill — then we have to send a bill up to him as often as possible to make him veto it. The whole point is here make them stand for this, make them daily, weekly, whatever, as often as possible, make the Democrats defend what they want, make ’em defend these tax increases, make ’em defend it. It’s not what the American people want. It’s not what the American people voted for. They’re on the wrong side of everything. You make ’em stand up for the wrong side of everything. You make ’em defend it. That’s the value of sending a repeal bill up. It doesn’t do us any good to say, ‘Well, we don’t really want to repeal it, there are a couple things in there we like.’ So Cantor’s mid-course correction here is we do want to repeal this, and then as another side matter there are a couple things here that we do think are good that we want to preserve, i.e., insurance for preexisting conditions and keeping the crumb crunchers on the parents’ policy up to age 26. I think both of those are bogus but that’s another matter for a different portion of the program.