RUSH: I do not know how the president can sign this budget. Wait ’til you hear — and you may have heard some of it. But wait ’til you hear what’s in this budget. When you hear what’s in this budget, it will become crystal clear what the purpose of this budget is. Think of this budget as a branch office of the Mueller investigation trying to throw Trump out of office.
JOHNNY DONOVAN: And now, from sunny south Florida, it’s Open Line Friday!
RUSH: Well, I’m telling you, it’s the deep state, I don’t care where you go, it’s the establishment trying to get rid of Donald Trump any which way they can. And there is no question — just wait ’til you hear it. You know what? I’m gonna stop characterizing it and I’m just gonna give you some stuff, and you will understand why I, practically alone yesterday, was suggesting that this thing be vetoed. And do you remember why I said it should be vetoed?
Even before I had gotten time to get into the nuts and bolts of this it was patently obvious to me that this budget is designed to separate Trump voters from Trump. This budget is designed to make Trump voters think that Trump’s presidency is irrelevant. This budget is designed to make Trump voters concluded, “You know what? There isn’t gonna be a wall and there isn’t gonna be anything serious on immigration and so having Trump be president is meaningless.”
That’s what this budget is designed to make you think, but after it’s signed into law. It’s 2,200 pages. There is no way anybody could have read all of it and digested it in the limited time they had before the vote.
Greetings, folks. Rush Limbaugh, Open Line Friday. Whatever you want to talk about is fine. Telephone number, 800-282-2882. And if you want to send an email, it’s ElRushbo@eibnet.us.
So the president is threatening to veto the omnibus budget deal over the lack of funding for the wall and the fact that the Democrats don’t care about the DACA fix. Their baby — and they don’t care about it. Mr. President, that’s chump change compared to the other reasons why you should veto this thing.
Now, the Drive-Bys and a number of people, “He can’t veto, he can’t veto it. Many members have already gone home and are traveling internationally on the beginning of their two week recess vacation.” Oh, that’s why he can’t veto it. Folks, this budget is a slap in the face. This budget is the Washington establishment, both parties, telling Donald Trump to go to hell, is what this budget is. And they’re doing it with smiles on their faces.
There was an appearance on the Fox Business Channel today by Dave Brat, Republican from Virginia. Grab audio sound bite No. 1. I want this to be the first kickoff point of the recitation of things in this budget. I’m not gonna characterize ’em because you’re gonna figure ’em out the moment you hear them, but here’s Brat. He was tacking to Stuart Varney, who said, “Now, you’re gonna say, yes, Mr. President, veto this thing because it’s a beast. Is that right, sir?”
BRAT: This is the premier issue he ran on, and he’s getting nothing at the end of the year. And this is our big leverage moment, and the folks back home may not know, the Senate put in the last budget that they’re not even gonna do a budget next year. So no chance for wall funding, no chance to get the Goodlatte bill in. The major immigration piece of legislation in the House that addresses the DACA, brings the kids out of the shadows, but in exchange for rational policy going forward that the president believes in. So, yeah, he ought to end this thing until he gets something of what he asked for as president when we have the House and the Senate. It’s quite amazing.
RUSH: The main thrust of this bite, people may not know, the Senate put in the last budget that they’re not even gonna do a budget next year. So no chance for wall funding, no chance to get the Goodlatte bill in, Meaning this budget is gonna last a lot longer than the six months we’re being told it’s gonna last. But let’s go through some of the details in the bill. Because, folks, I’m gonna have to characterize here before I start reciting some of these things. It’s so obvious what this is.
This is the Washington establishment, and they’re doing everything they can to destroy Donald Trump, to block his agenda using the budget as a means of doing so by making sure that none of his agenda is paid for and that efforts to implement that agenda are going to be blocked by virtue of things they have added into this budget. The Republican Party is not aligned with their elected president. They are not helping him advance his agenda. They are stonewalling it.
And it’s time to stop thinking of the Congress as made up of Republicans and Democrats. This remains what it always has been, establishment versus outsider, ruling class versus Trump and his voters. And we’ll have an exclamation point on that because I’ve been holding on to something that I ran into in the past couple of days that just opens the floodgates on the Russian collusion side of all of this. And I’ve been waiting for confirmation of what I have discovered, and I got some of it today so we’re gonna be able to go with that, but all things in due time.
This budget is an absolute disgrace. Apart from the absence of any dealing with the DACA kids, the immigration aspects of this budget are nothing more than a huge victory for the open borders people! A huge victory for the anti-enforcement of immigration law people. Nancy Pelosi was gloating on the floor of the House. She said to the president, “If you want to think you’re getting a wall, you just think it and sign the bill.”
I mean, they’re openly challenging. They’re openly mocking Trump. “Oh, you think you’re gonna get a wall? Well, go ahead and sign the budget, see if you get it.” They think they’ve got the guy. They think they have hoodwinked him. They think that they have tricked him into basically making the rest of his presidency irrelevant.
The administration wanted an increase in the number of ICE agents. This budget rejects that request. Many of those agents were supposed to work on work site enforcement, meaning making sure that companies were not hiring illegals and hiding them and sheltering them.
Those agents are not going to be hired. They’re not paid for. The Democrats have made sure that American employees who profit off illegal immigration are gonna have less to worry about because there aren’t going to be hardly any agents at all running around trying to find people, illegal aliens who’ve been hired.
“In addition, the amount of space for detention of apprehended illegal aliens has been reduced to less than what is currently being used,” meaning we’re gonna face an overcrowded situation to the point it’s gonna be of no use arresting illegal immigrants because there will be no place to hold them. There was a Trump administration “request for added space,” additional space, “especially important given the continued high levels of ‘unaccompanied’ minors and family units still” pouring into the country.
So essentially, the House “has voted to continue a policy of catch-and-release, where illegal aliens, as under Obama, are apprehended and then let go into the U.S.” That is not gonna change. There is no mechanism to detain additional numbers. In fact, the space has been reduced. Sanctuary cities? Measures that would have restricted money to sanctuary cities “were stricken from the budget bill.”
Sanctuary cities will continue to thrive. Measures that would have taken money away from sanctuary cities were rejected, meaning the money from the budget in Washington will continue to be spent and allocated to support sanctuary cities. When you get to the aspect of the budget dealing with the actual border wall, the budget provides money for 33 miles of new fencing on the Texas border. You ready for this?
This budget “specifies that none of [the budget and none of the construction] may resemble the wall prototypes that the Border Patrol has been testing for the past few months.” The budget put together by the Republicans in the House of Representatives specifically states that whatever limited funds are used on fencing for 33 miles in Texas cannot “resemble” anything to do with “the border wall prototypes” that Trump went out and looked at the other day.
In other words, the budget does everybody it can to erase the whole concept of a wall, paying for a wall, and anything that looks like those prototypes that Trump went out to visit. “The [budget] bill prohibits any kind of border barrier in the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, a bird sanctuary on the Rio Grande in South Texas. A fence or wall wouldn’t interfere with the birds, of course, since they could fly over it; the objections to building there have centered on the fact that it would restrict access to bird-watchers.
“The bill provides funding … to the secretary of defense ‘to enhance the border security of nations adjacent to conflict areas including Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Tunisia…'” In other words, the United States budget is going to provide money to the secretary of defense to build walls and to enhance border security in Jordan, in Lebanon, in Egypt, in Tunisia, but not here. Not in the United States. And that’s, folks, just a smidgen — this whole bill with the spending, the lack of anything done on DACA, which remains unconstitutional.
We know that the Washington establishment wants open borders. We know that they want no end to illegal immigration, and this budget pretty much encourages an open-borders policy because it limits the ability of ICE to apprehend and detain illegals crossing the border. We’re going to only build a 33-mile stretch of cheap little fencing that is not allowed to look anything like an actual prototype of a wall that Trump had commissioned to be designed and that he went out to look at in California.
The overall spending itself is an abomination, with no recognition that there’s any restraint whatsoever or any calamity could result from it. The Democrat Party is doing handstands. They are happy as they can be. The only reason for that is that they’re getting everything they want because it appears to me that the opposition to Donald Trump is being defined by the Democrat agenda. Opposition to Donald Trump is being defined and implemented as the Democrat agenda, and that agenda is being paid for.
That agenda is being aided and abetted by this budget. And with Dave Brat, Republican representative from Virginia, saying that there’s a little sneaky provision snuck in this thing at the last moment claiming that this is it for a while… You know, Paul Ryan went out and said, “It’s only six months! Come on, folks. Back off. Six months! It’s the best deal we could have gotten. It’s only six months. It’s better than two weeks.”
Grab sound bite No. 1, the first part of it anyway. Here’s Dave Brat again on the Fox Business Network just this morning…
BRAT: This is the premier issue he ran on, and he’s getting nothing at the end of the year. And this is our big leverage moment, and the folks back home may not know, the Senate put in the last budget that they’re not even gonna do a budget next year. So no chance for wall funding. No chance to get the Goodlatte bill in, the major immigration piece of legislation in the House that addresses the DACA, brings the kids out of the shadows, but in exchange for rational policy going forward that the president believes in. So, yeah, he ought to… He ought to end this thing until he gets something of what he asked for as president when we have the House and the Senate. It’s quite amazing.
RUSH: It’s… I don’t know. It’s amazing how we’ve gotten to this point. Now, I know that Paul Ryan felt a sense of panic earlier this week on Wednesday and had to race up to the White House. ‘Cause apparently Trump learned some things in it that he didn’t like, and so Ryan had to race up there and assure Trump everything was okay. And he did. He raced up there and assured Trump that everything is okay. But all of this is why I suggested yesterday that this thing has to be vetoed.
It’s the only leverage the president has.
It’s the only way.
Ronald Reagan had the same circumstances. He didn’t have 60 votes in the Senate, and Reagan did veto, and there were government shutdowns. But this… The best way to describe this is this is the Washington establishment basically dissolving the Trump agenda, just eating it up, just eliminating it. By not only not funding it, by funding other things in the budget that are going to directly assault the Trump agenda on many of the things that got him elected — immigration being No. 1. It looks like it is not realistic that Trump would actually veto this now, but that’s the only choice he’s got.
Because, I’ll tell you, the timing on this… Whatever happens, this is the last piece of significant legislation that’s gonna happen before the midterms. So this is gonna be the thing that is the last big congressional action that will serve as informing American voters of what’s been going on. This is designed to make Donald Trump look ineffective. It’s designed to make it look like his presidency doesn’t count for anything, that, “All the lies he told during the campaign, it turns out he can’t deliver on.” It’s really designed to make him look isolated, alone, and ineffective.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I’m serious, folks. This is an emergency and it is a tragedy. This budget is, in effect, the legislative division of the Mueller investigation, the purpose of which is to get rid of Donald Trump. The Washington establishment remains the Washington establishment. The Washington establishment remains… They’re angrier than ever, by the way. They’re angrier because they haven’t been able to get rid of Trump up to now.
They are livid, they are at their wits’ end, and it’s about to come crashing down on ’em on the Russian collusion side of this, on the corruption of DOJ and the FBI. That’s about to come crashing down on them. I’ll explain that in the next half hour. But what this is is nothing more than an attempt by the Washington establishment to neuter Donald Trump. If they can’t get rid of him, then they’re gonna make sure his presidency accomplishes none — from here on out — of any part of his agenda.
This is the Washington establishment standing up and daring Trump to take them on. This budget not only doesn’t fund his agenda. This budget makes it practically impossible for his agenda to be implemented, particularly on the primary thing that got him elected, which is dealing with the border and illegal immigration. Stop thinking of Congress as Republicans and Democrats. You’ve got to think of that as one unified group of people, establishmentarians who are working in a coordinated way to thwart and nullify the election and agenda of the Trump presidency.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: It’s — folks, it’s not just the immigration aspects of this, which — man, I’m looking for the right words to describe this. I keep coming up with “screw job.” This is — the more you get into it and the more you learn, this was a purposeful sabotage of the Trump agenda, for a whole lot of reasons. Included among those reasons is you.
If you are a Trump voter or anybody else, for that matter, concluding that Trump really can’t get anything done, that we just can’t have an outsider come in and reform the system and change it, it just isn’t gonna happen, just isn’t gonna work. They’re trying to separate you from your support for Donald Trump on the basis that he just can’t do it. It can’t be done is what you are to conclude, and you’re just supposed to give up and go away and let the establishment run things regardless what happens in elections.
This is supposed to frustrate you and in the best-case scenario you’re supposed to blame Trump for this, for being unable to follow through on his promises. Over the course of his campaign, his administration, Trump has targeted 19 actually pretty small federal agencies to be eliminated under the guise that this is a total waste of money and the things that they do are already done elsewhere in the budget and therefore they are redundant.
The African Development Foundation, an independent agency that establishes targeted development programs in underserved parts of Africa is gonna get $30 million through September 30th, 2019. Trump wanted to eliminate it. Trump wanted to eliminate the Corporation for National and Community Service, which runs AmeriCorps, Vista, and other volunteer programs. It’s gonna get $1 billion, an increase of $34 million. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting — this is something that Republican presidents have been promising, slash, threatening to eliminate and defund for as long as I’ve been alive, including Donald Trump.
Well, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which partially funds PBS is gonna be fully funded, $445 million both this year and next. No change. You may as well realize that this is the federal government paying the radio equivalent of CNN to continue their daily bash of Donald Trump, which they couldn’t do without your taxpayer dollars. They wouldn’t exist without your taxes. CPB, PBS would not exist.
Your tax dollars are being authorized and appropriated by a Republican-led House of Representatives to continue to pay for the public broadcast version of CNN. The Delta Regional Authority, a partnership that supports job creation and development in rural Mississippi and Alabama is gonna get a $10 million increase rather than being shut down.
The Denali Commission created in 1998 to provide economic support throughout Alaska and in 2015 assigned to be a lead coordinating agency for relocating villages in rural Alaska, will see its budget doubled. It’s getting $30 million. These are, by comparison, tiny amounts of money, but these are all things Trump wanted to axe as unnecessary and redundant. And in practically every case they’re either being fully funded or being given increases.
The National Endowment for the Arts, the budget traditionally aligns with that of the National Endowment for the Humanities, is going to get $152,849,000 while the National Endowment for the Humanities will only get $152,848,000, $1,000 less. So $300 million, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, a $7 million increase for each endowment.
The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, which calls itself the nation’s key nonpartisan policy forum for tackling global issues through independent research and policy dialogue will get $12 million. It’s a think tank! It’s a think tank which houses a bunch of people that study and scholar the Middle East and always end up blaming Israel. I didn’t even know the government — I didn’t know we paid for the Woodrow Wilson. I thought the left funded themselves on this.
And that’s just a partial list. These are all things that Trump had targeted and suggested we wouldn’t miss them, they’re being paid for, many of them in other areas of the budget. And each of these areas that Trump specifically targeted, each of them that he specifically targeted were singled out for similar levels of budgetary spending or increases. It’s a slap in the face, appears to me.
Here is Rand Paul, senator from Kentucky. He was on with Chatsworth Osborne Jr. last night on the Fox News Channel. Question: “We asked the people who wrote this, over a dozen Republicans, to come on our show here and talk about this budget.” And Chatsworth says, “Not a single Republican invited who wrote or participated in writing the budget would come on and talk about it.”
PAUL: As far as the content of the bill, this could have been written by President Obama and liberal Democrats. When I ran in 2010, when we had that Tea Party tidal wave, we were opposed to President Obama spending, we were opposed to President Obama’s trillion-dollar deficits. This is why people are so upset with politics, because when the Republicans are out of power, when they’re in the minority, they are the conservative party. But then when they get in the majority, there is no conservative party.
RUSH: Yeah, but it goes deeper than that. And he’s right and that’s become one of his favorite lines: When the Republicans get the majority, there is no conservative party. But it’s especially true in this sense because what’s happening here is an alignment throughout the House and the Senate against Donald Trump. And as I say, it is legislative branch or legislative division of the Mueller effort over there in the judicial branch to get rid of Trump and/or nullify the 2016 elections.
Jim in San Francisco. Let’s grab a phone call heading into the first break of this half hour. Jim, great to have you. Welcome to the program.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. Rush, Trump absolutely cannot, cannot sign this bill. And it’s crazy that he would even consider it. Let the government shut down. Rush, I worked 30 years in the military, and, you know, I’ve been through government shuts downs, and it’s no big deal. You know, after two weeks, you don’t even know that you’re shut down. You always get paid, essential services go on, the military goes on, people forget about it.
Republicans are so afraid, their knees get weak, they start quaking in their boots, “Oh, oh, we’re gonna get blamed for a government shutdown.” I don’t care. You know, at this point the American public are fed up with the shenanigans. Let government shut down. The sky’s not gonna fall, the world’s not gonna end. And, I tell you what. He vetoes this bill and Washington goes crazy over it, let them override the veto. Let Congress override it.
RUSH: They don’t have the votes. As it stands now, this is a very important point, glad you mentioned that. They don’t have the votes to override it. I haven’t seen anywhere where they have the votes to override it. There’s not that unanimity. There’s not that much unanimity on this. Got 40% of the House and 40% of the Senate who oppose this, on average.
As for the government shutdown, yeah, the Republicans are traditionally scared of what the media’s gonna say about ’em. But don’t forget, the last government shutdown, Trump engineered the Democrats getting blamed for it. Remember the Drive-By Media, Politico, Washington Post dumping all over Chuck Schumer? “How could you dare lose on a government shutdown deal when we have your backs?” I’ll never forget it. It was last December. And Schumer and the Democrats got creamed, Trump engineered them getting blamed. Drive-Bys dumped all over Schumer, Pelosi, and others.
This is not even about the government shutdown. What Trump needs to do is go on television. Trump needs to call a national address when he announces he’s gonna veto this, and he needs to go through this! And he needs to explain to his voters and the American people what is in this budget that undermines the agenda that got him elected! He needs to do that. Just vetoing it, fine, that would be great, but if he could do this as part of a national — I know I’m pipe dreaming here, but I’m telling you this is what should happen.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This is Marcia in Peoria. Welcome.
CALLER: Yes, Rush. Yesterday you asked the question of why we hadn’t heard from the Never Trumpers, why were they silent. And it’s because they knew that if this bill went through and he didn’t veto it, that he would lose his people faster than anything they could do or say to separate us from Trump. And it worked. He will lose me. He will lose just about everybody I know that’s a Trumper, and we can’t figure out why he suddenly changed so quickly, it seems like.
RUSH: That’s what they want you to think, and the reason the Never Trumpers… The reason I brought it up yesterday is if Trump weren’t around and this budget happened to be proposed, the Never Trumpers would be all over it! They’d be ripping it to shreds. They would look at it as an insult to their life’s work. The Never Trumpers would be dumping all over it. But they’re not saying a word. Now, there’s another aspect. You remember, ladies and gentlemen, over the course of many, many recent months I’ve made mention of the fact to you that legislation in Congress is not actually written by members.
The actual putting it to paper maybe, but I don’t even think that. Today’s legislation — including budgets like this — is written by the so-called special interests: Lobbyists, donors. They are the ones that get what they want because they donate and spend so much money. And so their lobbyists and representatives on K Street and wherever else they work actually are the ones that provide the input to legislation. I know it may be a big shock to those of you who took Civics and Government 101 in junior high and high school, but the vast majority of legislation originates outside of Capitol Hill.
Representatives and senators simply get the data and they incorporate it. Their staffs actually assemble it for proper legislative presentation, but the whole guts, the concept of this stuff is written offsite by special interests. Now, Sharyl Attkisson has a tweet out there that if this thing gets vetoed, you’re gonna see an explosion like you can’t believe among the special interests and the lobbyists and so forth, not to mention the establishment elected class who is aligned with the special interests here.
Because in Washington, in the establishment, they are all unified and on the same team when it comes to overturning the election, nullifying the election, rendering Trump irrelevant and impotent and (in the best-case scenario) getting rid of him. They are totally… I mean, it’s their team. Trump is the great challenger. And nothing’s changed. This is the point. Even after all of this great economic turnaround — the tax cuts and the American people having newfound economic confidence — none of it matters to the Washington establishment because what they do has nothing to do with you or me!
They don’t care to have a bond with you. They don’t care that you’re responsive to them or they’re responsive to you. They are above all of that. Electoral politics is for the plebes that actually get elected and all that. But they’re nothing without the money that’s given to them via the special interests. So you don’t have a seat at this table. The closest you have to a seat at this table is your election of Trump. Now, the seat that you’re supposed to have at this table is your congressman and your senator.
They are elected by you. They are — Civics 101 — your representatives. But you have been aced out by the big money. It’s not new, by the way. Don’t misunderstand. It’s been the way business is done in that town for quite a while, with the illusion every election year that voters actually matter — which they do. If the clowns weren’t elected, all the rest of it would be academic. Jim Jordan from Ohio — who has been railing against this bill from the first moment he saw it — was with Stuart Varney on the Fox Business Network today, and Varney said, “You know, I’m pretty sure, Jim, that Trump saying he might veto this is music to your ears. What about that?”
JORDAN: It sure was. In fact, we had sent the president a letter two nights ago from the House Freedom Caucus encouraging him to do this very thing, because as I said yesterday: This is the worst bill I’ve seen in my time in Congress by far. Because it spends $1.3 trillion. The fact is we only had 15 hours to read it — 2,232 pages — before we voted on it. And the president is exactly right. It doesn’t fund the things we told the American people we were gonna fund — like the wall — and it does fund things we told them we weren’t going to fund — like Planned Parenthood, like sanctuary cities and those kind of things. So I do hope the president vetoes this thing. Go back to work and do things we’re supposed to do.
RUSH: Stop and think of this. The president’s out there actually tackling and taking on these sanctuary cities — he’s calling them out — and over here in his party’s budget is increased spending for them and a reduction in spending for detention centers and fewer agents for ICE! Meaning, if they apprehend illegal immigrants, there’s less space to house them, detain them. So catch-and-release is going to return as the order of the day. There won’t be any space to detain apprehended illegal immigrants.
This, by the way, is exactly what the establishment wants. You know it as well as I do. They are still after comprehensive immigration reform — amnesty — for everybody. Not just the DACA and the DREAMer kids, but for everybody. So here’s the president. He’s out there trying to do what he was elected to do, and he’s taking it to ’em, and he’s fearless talking to these sanctuary city people — and his own party is participating in an effort to undermine him via the budget process.