RUSH: Senator Cruz, I know you have limited time here. Thanks very much for joining us. How are you today, sir?
CRUZ: Rush, I’m doing terrific, and it is always a real privilege and honor to join you.
RUSH: Well, I’m glad to have you here. There’s a big argument. Let’s just cut to the chase here on Obamacare. The arguments are: Delay it/defund it. You’re part of the defund it side. You think it can happen via the continuing resolution debate the end of September. The delay crowd and the people opposed to this say, “No, no, no! A government shutdown’s part of this and look what happened the last time the government was shut down in ’95. Look what happened to Republicans then.” How do you deal with this? What do you tell people that raise these objections?
CRUZ: Well, part of the problem with the delay crowd is they don’t have a plan to actually get it done. When they say they want to delay it, what they really mean is they want to take a symbolic vote on a delay but not tie it to anything that has to pass. So the House can take a thousand symbolic votes if they want. Harry Reid will not allow any of them to pass into law. So it becomes an exercise of just political cover rather than actually fixing the problem.
Look, Rush, Obamacare, as you know, is the biggest job killer in the country, and the wheels are falling off of this thing. I mean, there is bipartisan agreement it’s not working. The unions are jumping ship. People are losing their jobs. They’re having their hours forcibly reduced. Just last week UPS told 18,000 employees, “You’re losing your spousal coverage. Your husbands and wives are losing their health insurance because of Obamacare.”
And unfortunately right now, Republicans are still not ready to stand up and do what it takes to stop this law, to listen to the American people and say, “Listen, let’s get rid of this job killer.” The only plan that has been put forward that has any realistic prospect of success, of actually stopping Obamacare, is using the continuing resolution on September 30th and saying, “We will not fund one penny of Obamacare.”
If we can get 41 Republicans in the Senate to do that, or 218 Republicans in the House, we have the votes to do it, but we gotta get those votes — and right now, far too many Republicans are scared of this fight.
RUSH: Now, I have people I know who are on the delay side, and they have sent me notes saying, “What are you doing supporting this defund business? Don’t you know that’s nothing but a fundraising effort? Those people don’t stand a prayer of accomplishing what they want to accomplish.” It’s just another division in the Republican Party. It’s really kind of disappointing that we can’t even come to some sort of unified purpose on something as radical as this.
CRUZ: Listen, I agree that the division in the Republican Party is unfortunate and it’s disappointing. For months Mike Lee and I and others have been pressing, saying, “Okay, what are you doing to stop Obamacare?” And for months the answer has been crickets. It has been, “Well, we want to take lots of symbolic votes but we’re not gonna do anything to actually stop it,” and as you know the exchanges are gonna be up and running shortly. On January 1st, the subsidies are scheduled to kick in, and President Obama’s strategy is very simple. He wants to get as many Americans as possible addicted to the subsidies, addicted to the sugar, because he knows that in modern times, no major entitlement has ever been implemented and then unwound.
RUSH: That’s right. He gets as many people signed up to those exchanges as possible, and it makes it all that much more difficult to take it away from them.
CRUZ: That’s exactly right.
RUSH: The IRS came out with their schedule of fines, and this is another thing. I mean, the first year, the fine is $95 or 1% of your income, whichever is greater. I don’t care which one you go for, you’re nowhere near the price of an insurance policy.
CRUZ: Right.
RUSH: You’re gonna have more people choosing the fines, and what’s that gonna do to the insurance business? They’re not gonna be selling policies. They’re gonna go out of business, and that’s part of the design of this, too.
CRUZ: That’s exactly the intent is to destroy the private insurance business, to cause people to lose their private health insurance and be forced, essentially, to move to single-payer, government-provided health insurance, which was Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama’s plan from day one. The Republicans who are saying, “We can’t win this fight,” they don’t have an alternative strategy — and, you know, Rush, you lose 100% of the fights that you begin by surrendering, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the Republicans all say, “We cannot win this fight,” they will eventually prove themselves right.
RUSH: How much of that, though, is Republicans not even wanting to engage in it, and they just offer that as an excuse? I mean, really, ’cause this budget shutdown argument, the government shutdown argument, if you go back to 1995 — and I know this has become somewhat cliched — the only place that the Republicans suffered really great damage was in the media.
CRUZ: Yep.
RUSH: But, in reality, the Republican Party gained a couple seats in the Senate after that shutdown; didn’t lose all that many in the House. But they were able to set the stage for policy advances that came later such as welfare reform. You’ve got Senator McCain. In a story today, he said that this divide on this effort to defund Obamacare means that it’s time to have an open and honest debate about the future of the whole party. We’ve gotta sit down and figure out just who we are, where we are, and where we’re going.
What about this shutdown business?
What are your thoughts on the real dangers of that, and if it would happen or could it really happen? Would it be taken that far?
CRUZ: I think you’re exactly right about the history of 1995, that there was some short-term political pain. But, at the same time, because Republicans stood together, we saw year after year of balanced budgets which never would have happened if Republicans had folded like they’re trying to fold right now. And, listen, I think what should happen is the House should pass a continuing resolution. It should fund every bit of federal government except Obamacare.
It should explicitly prohibit any funding — federal funding, discretionary or mandatory — for Obamacare, and then if President Obama threatens to shut down the federal government, he may well try to do that. If that happens, we gotta stand up and do something we haven’t done in a long time: Win the argument! Say, “Listen, we have voted to fund the government. We want to keep the government open. Why is President Obama threatening to shut it down? He’s granted waivers to giant corporations. Why is President Obama threatening to shut the federal government down in order to deny those same waivers to hardworking American families?”
RUSH: Well, you have a lot of Republicans who think they’ll never be able to sell that, because it’s gonna be the media saying you shut it down.
CRUZ: Look, the mainstream will all read word-for-word the talking points from the White House. But the beauty between cable and Fox News — and, Rush, between you, between talk radio, between the Internet — is we can get the message out. But let me concede one thing right now, which is if the ordinary rules of Washington apply, we can’t win this fight. We can’t get 41 Republicans [in the Senate] or 218 Republicans in the House. The only way we will be able to win this fight, is when we see a grassroots tsunami.
There is a national website: DontFundIt.com. DontFundIt.com. In just a few weeks we have gotten 725,000 signatures from all across this country. You know, two nights ago I was on Hannity’s TV show, and within 24 hours of getting on that show, we had 100,000 added to that list. What I would say to every one of your listeners is if you’re fed up with politicians not listening to the people, if you’re fed up with politicians not having the courage to stand up and fight Obamacare, go to DontFundIt.com.
Pick up the phone. Call your representative, call your Senator. Put Facebook comments on their Facebook pages, and get 10 of your friends to do the same. You know, I feel confident — given your leadership, given the passion of the American people — that we can break a million signatures on this list. If we get a million and then two million and then three million Americans standing up, holding our elected officials accountable, that’s how we change the rules. That’s how we get 41 Republicans in the Senate, and that’s eventually how we get Democrats and actually stop this train wreck that is Obama.
RUSH: Now, is it DontFundIt.com?
CRUZ: DontFundIt.com.
RUSH: Is there an apostrophe in “don’t”?
CRUZ: There is no apostrophe.
RUSH: No apostrophe in DontFundIt.com.
Okay.
Now, we have a history here of shutting down websites. I have no doubt that this is gonna be shut down for a while because you’re gonna have millions of people going there to check it out. So you’re gonna get some more signatures, Senator, out of this. DontFundIt.com (without an apostrophe in “don’t”). Now, one last thing before you have to go. It’s not really related to this, but it’s related to the Republican attitude. Last night on the Fox Business with Lou Dobbs, a Democrat consultant named Mary Anne Marsh was on. They were talking about Syria and whether or not the president should have to go through Congress like they demanded Bush do it.
CRUZ: Right.
RUSH: Mary Anne Marsh said, No. Why should we have to go through them? “There is a special Congress that weÂ’re dealing with right now that has the lowest popularity rating in history and Republicans who overwhelmingly would oppose [what we’re trying to do]. The president of the United States cannot be handcuffed by the same Republicans that are holding the rest of the country hostage on every other issue.”
This is an imperial presidency.
You have got a consultant speaking for a president saying (summarized), “Who needs Congress? They don’t agree with us, so we’re gonna bypass ’em.” Now what strikes me, Senator, about that is, you’ve got the Republicans who are doing everything they can right now to make the Democrats love ’em! They’re talking amnesty. Whatever Democrats say they have to do, the Republicans are doing it. Look what it’s getting them! I think they’re respected less than they have been in my lifetime right now.
CRUZ: Rush —
RUSH: So I don’t know. Why not just stand up and fight ’em? ‘Cause going along with ’em is not getting anywhere.
CRUZ: You are exactly right. This has been an imperial presidency. It has been a lawless presidency. You look at what’s going on in Syria. Right now, in the UK, they’re having an emergency session of parliament to consider Syria. In Israel the Knesset is considering an emergency session and yet President Obama apparently wants to go to the UN but can’t be bothered to go to United States Congress or the American people and make the case.
Look, you know, the authority to declare war rests in Congress, not in an out-of-control president. And, you know, I thought it was striking, actually, a comment Dennis Kucinich made of all people that I agreed with. He said, “I wonder if President Obama realizes that he is acting as Al-Qaeda’s air force right now.” You know, the idea that we would be arming rebels, many of which are affiliated with Al-Qaeda — of the nine rebel groups, up to seven of them may have affiliations with Al-Qaeda — doesn’t make any sense.
RUSH: Well —
CRUZ: If President Obama is not looking to US national security instead —
RUSH: From their standpoint, arming Al-Qaeda is a … lesser danger than agreeing with the Republicans on anything.
CRUZ: And fundamentally, actually, these two issues, you look at Syria, you look at Obamacare. They’re tied together. They’re tied together by an arrogance of this administration, that they don’t believe they’re accountable to the American people, and they are going to jam their agenda down the throats of the American people. And on both of them, the answer is the same as it was on guns; it’s the same as it is on stopping amnesty, which is the American people have to rise up and hold every elected official accountable, Democrat and Republican. Every one of us, including me.
RUSH: Well, you’re right, but the American people ought to have a political party that’s willing to stand up and join them in stopping this, too, and right now they don’t think they do. They’ve got you, they got Mike Lee, a couple or three others. Everybody else they see is caving.
CRUZ: Well, I agree. Sadly, right now, the people who are leading the fight to stop the effort to defund Obamacare are Republicans. It’s not Democrats. That’s a sad state of affairs. I hope it changes. I hope the Republicans stop trying to prevent us from defunding Obamacare and instead we come together — and the only way they will is if millions of Americans go to DontFundIt.com, speak up and demand that our elected officials listen to the people.
RUSH: Senator Ted Cruz. He had to be out by 2:22, and you’re out, sir. Thank you so much for joining us, and I looked forward to next time.
CRUZ: Absolutely. Thank you, Rush.
RUSH: You bet. DontFundIt.com. Now, remember, it’s the Internet, so there’s no apostrophe in “don’t.” So think of it as “dont.” DontFundIt.com. No apostrophe in “don’t.” If you go there, and you like what you see, maybe you sign it. Thanks to Senator Ted Cruz.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: The website Senator Cruz spoke about, you can get there at DontFundIt.com. That is an alias. The actual name of the website is DontFundObamacare.com. That’s the full-length name. DontFundIt.com is an alias. He tried DontFundIt.com; I didn’t get in ’cause I shut it down. I tried back a little later at DontFundObamacare.com and did get in. But I think we have generated something like 15,000 signatures during his interview, before his interview was even over.
So if you’re having trouble at DontFundIt.com, try DontFundObamacare.com. But if you don’t get in, it’s not been shut down. It has been overloaded, and you should keep trying. Just because you can’t get in doesn’t mean it’s damaged. It’s just being overloaded now. So keep trying. I mean, I did get in when I tried DontFundIt.com, but DontFundObamacare.com works. That’s an alias.
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