RUSH: So John Boehner did his first press conference today. It was like an interrogation. It was like he was a suspect. And every lie and misrepresentation that you find about the new Congress in the 
New York Times and the Associated Press served as subject matter for questions for Boehner. By the way, the latest mantra here, the latest narrative, the latest template, ladies and gentlemen, on the repeal of health care is that why waste time with this. Even if you do manage to have it passed in the Senate, everybody knows that Obama is gonna veto it. Why waste your time? Why waste all this precious time when you could be focusing on jobs? I mean that is a bile-inducing narrative, as far as I’m concerned. Focusing on jobs, Obama has promised it four or five different times. Look at the time he’s wasting. Actually he’s not wasting time; he’s succeeding in his path and swath of destruction.
Why didn’t anybody complain about all the wasted time while they put this piece of garbage health care together? How come nobody mentioned it when Congress was passing all this nonsense that they rammed through during a lame duck session? What about all the time wasted there? Or how come nobody ever asked this at any point over the last four years when the Democrats had complete control of both houses of Congress for the last four years? Now all of a sudden the media and the rest of the Democrats are terribly worried about the debt and jobs and wasted time. Oh, this is just truly hilarious. Forget for a moment that the reason all of these new electees, all these new members of Congress are there is primarily to do two things: cut spending, roll it back, and repeal health care. That’s why they’re there. It is not a waste of time to the people who elected them. Let me tell you, the objective here, after he vetoes it, you send it up to him again the next month, and you make him veto it again, and then you keep debating it and you send another bill up and you keep making him veto it, and you keep making these people defend this horrible, rotten piece of legislation. This is not a show thing; this is not one time. This is an overall effort to get rid of this.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: A couple sound bites from Boehner and his press conference today. He led off reading his portion of Constitution, and he and Eric Cantor went back there for a press conference that was an inquisition. It is what it is, but I don’t recall a press ever treating Pelosi the way I saw Boehner treated today. Just an observation. Dana Bash of CNN (nastily), ‘You promised an open process, but you’re taking health care repeal to the floor without committee hearings or Democrat amendments! You promised a hundred billion dollars in spending cuts at least the first year, but now we’re being told it will be less! Democrats are saying there’s hypocrisy going on here! It’s Tea Party activists! They’re saying Republicans are already backtracking promises. What do YOU say?’
BOEHNER: We made clear in our Pledge that we want to go back to 2008 spending levels, and if we had been able to move on September 24th, we would have been able to go back to 2008 spending levels, but we’re halfway through the year. I will say this: We will meet our commitment to the Pledge in this calendar year. There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
RUSH: Will somebody explain to me…? I know I’m just a kid from Missouri and I don’t understand all the intricate workings of our august legislative bodies. Will somebody tell me why you need to add amendments to something you’re getting rid of? We have audio sound bites of Barney Frank. We’ve got other audio sound bites here of Democrats upset that they’re not being allowed to offer amendments to the Repeal Obamacare Bill. (laughing) Now, this is why I could never work there. I wouldn’t last a day. As a resident of Literalville, one consumed with common sense and logic, I could not keep a straight face.
I could not observe proper decorum when faced with that allegation, because I don’t know why in the world you need to offer or have amendments to something that you’re trying to eliminate. They want to add some earmarks to it? (laughing) You want to add some new spending to the repeal Obamacare? (laughing) What’s…? It can be one sentence: ‘We are getting rid of this sucker,’ or however it’s structured. The next reporter, unidentified (nastily): ‘You got the votes in the House to repeal health care but in the Senate it’s pretty clear that you don’t. In fact, the Senate doesn’t even have to take up the bill. Obama could veto it, even if somehow you could muster the votes. What’s the point?’
What’s the point, Boehner, in going through all this?
BOEHNER: We made a commitment to the American people. We’re listening to the American people. They want this bill repealed, and we are going to repeal it, and we’re going to do everything we can over the course of however long it takes to stop this, because it will ruin the best health care system in the world; it will bankrupt our nation; and it will ruin our economy. I do not believe that repealing the job-killing health care law will increase the deficit. CBO is entitled to their opinion. I don’t think anybody in this town believes that repealing Obamacare is going to increase the deficit.
RUSH: This came up later in the interview, too, ’cause a reporter went back to it. (nastily) ‘What do you mean! The CBO says that it will increase the deficit. Who are you to disagree with the CBO, the nonpartisan CBO? Who are you, Boehner?’ He said (summarized), ‘All right, you want some details? There’s double counting in this. The CBO can only score what they are given, and everybody knows that the assumptions they were given were not right,’ blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They’re on the warpath out there. By the way, the repeal bill that Eric Cantor wrote, it’s a page long. It’s all it is, and this is an up-or-down vote. Repealing Obamacare is up or down. There’s no point, there’s no sense in having amendments to this. Now, there will be a replacement bill, if I understand these guys. They are offering a bill with ‘common sense reforms’ and what have you. That will be presented next week, and that will allow the proposal of amendments.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: To the phones and Boston. This is Adam. Nice to have you on the program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Mega dittos, Rush, and thanks for having me on.
RUSH: You bet.
CALLER: Earlier you were talking about the health care reform and how they’re trying to repeal it, and you asked, ‘Why do they need another bill to repeal the bill?’ (sic) and there’s actually a pretty simple answer to that. Essentially when the Founders wrote the Constitution, they did it that way so that the original bill would stay in the Constitution, or on the books. It’s sort of like an act.
RUSH: Uhhhh. Okay, just a second. I just lost the battery here in my cochlear implant.
CALLER: Oops!
RUSH: So I’m gonna have to read what you say until the break when I go figure this out. I think the battery might have died. So let me go back and see if I understand what you said. You said, ‘[T]he Founders wrote the Constitution. They did it that way so that the original bill would stay in the Constitution, or on the books. It’s sort of like an act.’ Okay, what we were talking about was repealing health care and the Democrats are upset because they want to add amendments to it. I asked the question: ‘Why add amendments to something that’s being repealed or wiped out?’ So even if — and I’ve never heard what you’re saying. But even if the original bills stays, it’s being repealed. Why add amendments to it when it’s gonna be repealed? What’s the point?
Okay, go.
CALLER: Well, I assumed you were asking why they need another bill to repeal the original bill, and the reason for that would be so that the original bill stays on so future generations will still see the poor health care bill and learn from it in the future. (pause) Unless I misunderstood.
RUSH: Okay, no. That was not it. Yeah, you did misunderstand. My question was: Why add amendments to something that’s being repealed? What I said was that they are going to offer repeal. Boehner, in this whole conversation about repealing, says, ‘We want to replace it with a bill of common sense reforms,’ and so forth. So I’m gonna have to find out if there’s a provision that says, ‘Bills, even repealed, have to stay there so people know what was there,’ but they have a bill, and it’s a repeal bill. It’s one page long, and it just totally strikes out the existing bill. And, see, the whole argument… Democrats are trying to gum up this works. They want to add amendments to a one-page bill that says we’re getting rid of something. It’s kind of a rhetorical question, because there’s no reason to amend something. This is just to get more earmarks or spending or what have you in there. It’s a trick, pure and simple, that they want the media to go along with.
CALLER: They want to get that pork in there, but essentially the other bill is gonna have to be written because you can’t technically repeal the original health care reform bill. Essentially you have to counteract it with new laws that basically cancel out all the amendments in the original health care bill.
RUSH: Weeeell, no. If that was the case then you’d need a similar-page bill. This is over 2,000 pages that will be repealed with one page, and it’s an up-or-down vote. They don’t have amendments to up-or-down votes. So I think… It’s probably my fault, but I think you’re a little mistaken, because you misunderstood; obviously due to my clack of clarity about what I was raising question about.