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RUSH: Let me first get started with what’s happened. There’s a major, major, major breakthrough. Oh, everybody, you should have seen it! Frist went to the cameras today, the microphones, just this morning about an hour ago to announce this big breakthrough, and Frist finishes and all these other senators started elbowing each other out of the way to get up to that microphone to be in plain view of the camera. The upshot of this is that illegal immigrants, this new breakthrough bill — oh, McKinney is expressing sincere regret for the altercation on the floor of the House right now.
That means the Democrats have taken her to the woodshed. John Lewis told her to shut up and get over this, and Steny Hoyer told her to shut up and get over this. Well, she’s a distraction. They’re out there trying to prove it’s Republicans that are the SOBs, and here she’s taking all the oxygen out of that room. I’m going to get into that in due course, because there’s a great story here in the Washington Post</a>: “An internal document prepared by top Democratic strategerists warns that a majority of African-American voters in Maryland are opening up to supporting Republican Senate candidate Michael Steele, and they advise the party not to wait to knock him down,” which means take him out.
Now, when I saw this, this is great news. I’m looking at Cynthia McKinney. Look at the black Republicans here seeking office. You’ve got Lynn Swann. You got Michael Steele. You got Ken Blackwell, and you go to the Democrat side? You got Cynthia McKinney, and that’s why they had to get her on the floor and apologize and try to move this behind them, because she’s the wrong face, at all times, at any time for the Democratic Party. Now, I’ll get back to the immigration story. All right, big compromise announced today, big breakthrough. “It would require illegal immigrants who have been in the United States between two years and five years to return to their home country briefly and then reenter as temporary workers. They could then begin a process of seeking citizenship.
“Illegal immigrants here longer than five years would not be required to return home. Those in America less than two years would be required to leave without assurances of returning and take their place in line with others seeking entry papers.” It looks to me that everybody in the illegal alien population is going to be put on a citizenship path, and just some of them are going to be put on a slower path than others. The whole thing is pathetic. There still isn’t any enforcement. We’re going to make an announcement? What are we going to do, put billboards up, PSAs on radio and TV, “If you’re illegal you gotta scram. You gotta leave.” We’re not going to fine the employers that hire ’em.
I am told that basically five Republican senators were holed up last night trying to put together some sort of face-saving compromise. Those senators are McCain, Hagel, Specter, Mel Martinez and Frist, and the other Republican senators had no idea what they were doing. The initial bill that came out of this committee was 500 pages long, and they’re trying to push it through today without anybody having had a chance to read it. That’s why you’re seeing stories that Republicans are prepared to filibuster their own bill. Yes. Republicans are preparing to filibuster this thing if it comes up for a vote, because they don’t know what’s in it and they weren’t included in the hole in the wall gang that was working on this last night to put this together.


So you look who worked this out: McCain, Hagel, Specter, Martinez and Frist. You have to ask: Where was George Allen in this meeting? Where was Jon Kyl in this meeting? Where was John Cornyn, George Allen? Where was Jeff Sessions in this meeting? Where were some of these other Republican senators? As I said at the opening of the program, I am as big a cynic when it comes to elected officials as anybody. I don’t know that I have ever seen anything like this. Security is secondary. The rule of law is secondary. All these clowns are doing is blatantly buying votes by making more citizens here.
Basically what they’ve done here is found a way to turn illegal into legal, because we can’t deal with it; they don’t want to deal with it, and then these idiot Republicans going along with this think they are buying peace with the Democrats and with voters. Harry Reid is stuck so far out on a limb he could be destroyed politically if the Republicans had the guts, because of his statements back in 1993, about his bill in ’93. He is lying through his teeth! He went to the floor of the Senate yesterday to explain that he didn’t mean that bill five days after he introduced that bill in 1993, said, “That was the lowest point of my life.”
That’s BS, because months later he was out giving a speech defending that bill! There’s a Washington Times</a> story today: “Mr. Reid yesterday disavowed that bill and his statements in support of it. And in an unusual, rambling confession on the floor of the Senate yesterday, he said it was the ‘low point’ of his career. A few days after introducing the bill in August 1993, Mr. Reid said in a near whisper as many senators looked on in amazement, his wife — the daughter of immigrants — confronted him after a meeting in Las Vegas and scolded him about his anti-immigrant views. She and other associates of his ‘pointed out the errors of my way’ and ever since, Mr. Reid said, he’s favored a more inclusive approach to immigration reform.”
So he went to the floor yesterday, gave a long, rambling speech, “lowest point of my career was that ’93 bill. My wife came to me and she told me the truth, she read me the riot act, she’s the daughter of immigrants,” blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, it’s a lie. Seven months after he introduced the bill, Harry Reid introduced it again. Seven months after he made the original introduction of the bill, he introduced it again, according to Senate records. “That bill was referred to the judiciary committee in March of 1994. Later that summer, Reid testified before the judiciary committee and advocated cutting legal immigration from one million people annually to 325,000.” He lied through his teeth on the floor of the Senate yesterday talking about his wife, in “a barely audible whisper.”
He was out still trying to sell this bill a year after he introduced it in 1993. The Associated Press reported and quoted Harry Reid at the time: “A gluttonous admission of new people every year will have a pernicious effect on our infrastructure and our environment. We cannot continue to feed, clothe, house, educate, and employ unlimited new populations.” States News Service quoted him saying, “Mr. Reid’s office said last night his conversion occurred after the second time he introduced his bill but couldn’t give an exact timeline.” Yeah, that’s when his wife said, “I can’t believe you’re doing this.” Folks, my point is that Harry Reid is out there waiting for political embarrassment. We should have taken his ’93 bill and made it ours.
The Republicans should have done that, but no, no, no, nooooooo! They’re in a battle here to buy votes. They gotta make sure we don’t make the Hispanic community mad. It’s a big myth. The Hispanic community is 6% of the American voting public. Six percent! I looked it up! It’s not this giant block. It may be the largest minority now in the country but in terms of the percentage of them that vote. It’s 6%! Anyway, it’s too late to stop any of this anyway. It was too late in 1965 with Ted Kennedy. He’s another guy sticking out there waiting to be politically embarrassed and destroyed because he introduced a bill, immigration bill in 1965 and made promises that that bill would make sure that none of what is happening today would happen, and it is.


The Democrats are just getting away with the kind of things that they could be defeated at the polls over if it were pointed out to people. Talk about blatant hypocrisy. These are the same politicians who have failed to secure our borders, to get a handle on illegal immigration, and now they’re up there this morning patting themselves on the back for fixing the problem. They haven’t fixed anything. It doesn’t change a thing that is occurring in the country right now. They have made legal, illegal behavior. Illegal behavior has just become legal, and that is their reform. I’m going to take a break. But I want to go back and touch on this Harry Reid bill 13 years ago and his floor speech yesterday pretty much summed it up.
Barbara Boxer. Wait ’til you hear this. She actually came up with a bill called the Boxer National Guard or something. I’ll get the details for you here in a minute. She wanted to deploy the National Guard at the border. They were all concerned about it back in the nineties. They are just so off the wall, so inconsistent, and the Republicans don’t call ’em on it. It’s just amazing. Beyond the politics of it, the end result here is that we’re all being pandered to, we’re all being treated like we’re a bunch of idiots and I don’t even know if this bill is ever going to actually pass. You know, they gotta conference it with the House. The House has a much tougher bill. But I don’t even think they care about that, when you get down to brass tacks. They just want this press conference today, and they want their statements so they can run around when the reelection campaigns for this November begin in earnest and they all claim they were on the right side of the issue for a one particular voting bloc.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Twelve to 13 short years ago, Barbara Boxer and Harry Reid and everybody else complained that illegal immigration was out of control. Barbara Boxer wanted to send the National Guard to the border. In fact, let me find that little story here. It’s in the Los Angeles Times</a>. The Date of this is August 6 of 1994. “Ten months after Senator Barbara Boxer secured federal funds to deploy National Guard troops to hinder illegal immigration, the program hasn’t been implemented anywhere in the country, and the Department of Defense has no plans to do so. Last year, the first-term California senator hailed her so-called Boxer National Guard plan as an innovative solution to the state’s illegal immigration program. Supplementing federal Border Patrol agents with, ‘well trained, well equipped,’ military personnel, Boxer said at the time could prove the most cost effective way to bolster enforcement at the California border.”
I have just treated you to the absolute lies that are being told by Harry Reid. Harry Reid introduced an anti-immigration bill in 1993 that is exactly what’s needed today, and then he went out and made a speech about it — and I’ve got a copy of the speech here. He talked about how wonderful the bill was and what a problem that the immigration issue poses for the country. It goes on and on and on, and then called on this yesterday, he goes to the Senate floor and says, “Well, that was a low point in my life.” He told this tear-jerking story that his wife really reamed him, and of course who’s going to doubt that? That’s what wives do.
So his wife reamed him for being anti-immigrant since she was the daughter of immigrants, and he said it was the low point of his life after introducing that bill. The problem is he introduced it again seven months later. So when asked about that, “Oh, no, the low point was after I introduced it the second time.” He’s out there trying to dissociate himself from virtually everything he has said or done; so is Ted Kennedy, and they’re getting away with it. Twelve to 13 years ago they’re going on and on and on about the evils of illegal immigration. Suddenly everything is just fine. Illegal immigration is terrific. We need more of it. They’re the backbone. They’re the future! They do jobs Americans won’t do.
What’s happened here is that the Republicans and Democrats have both gone out and claimed victory! They had their massive little press conference today. They’re happy as they can be, and everybody else in the country is going to get screwed over this. This is one of the best examples of Washington inside the Beltway versus the rest of the country that I have ever seen. There is a complete gap between the people in this country and their representatives, a complete disconnect, and the people in Washington know it, and they are still in a defiant mode. They know full well that this is not even a debate about immigration. We’re not even talking about immigration.

These people, the two groups of Hispanics, the one’s following the traditional path of legality, don’t think they’re not upset. Don’t think everybody else in the pipeline doing this illegal is not going to be burning up when they hear about this, and there are American citizens who are trying to sponsor immigrants in the legal pathway, and they got to jump through hoops. I got an e-mail from a guy who described what he’s going through to try to get an associate of his through the legal pathway to become a citizen, and it’s incredible, and while all this is going on, he’s watching the hoops being jumped through by these people in Washington to basically exonerate the illegals and find a way to turn them legal as quickly as possible.

You couple that with this May Day march that’s coming up and the continued marches even after, you watch, despite this magnificent agreement, this ‘breakthrough’ today, there are still going to be the marches. There are still going to be the protests, because this isn’t about immigration. The left, loony left and the fringe left has gotten hold of this movement and is going to turn it into a tool for its own purposes. What’s happening here is our politicians are looking ten years down the road. They’re creating circumstances in which illegal immigrants will grow. There are no disincentives whatsoever, and they see future generations of voters that they don’t want to make mad and they’re selling out security and the rule of law.

They’re slobbering all over each other to appear as leaders of some courageous effort here. Now, let’s be honest: businesses love this. We’re not being fooled by this. They avoid the tax and entitlement contributions that all legal businesses have to pay so that they can build their profits a little bit at the expense of our taxpayers who subsidize this. Now, you know me. I’m not against profits, but this isn’t a level playing field. Let me go out and try to hire a bunch of illegals. If I fire all you guys in there, train some illegals, not pay Social Security, not pay any health care benefits on them so I make more money, and find out what would happen to me if I tried that.

What would you do? You guys would be leading the charge against me, and you should be if I did it. I’m not going to do it. I’m not even oriented that way. There’s nobody in a leadership position here, Democrat or Republican, willing to take this on, willing to show any guts, willing to stand up and put a stop to this. The Democrats, they’re even selling out their union and minority communities, which are clearly harmed by illegal immigration. Even the Democrats are selling out their boys. The Democrats are selling out their gold-star supporters, the unions and other minority communities. They’re clearly harmed by illegal labor exported to this country. The Republicans are selling out their grassroots to appease the Chamber of Commerce, the agribusiness crowd and other interests that profit from this.

So they want a comprehensive reform plan that does not include punishing anybody in this illegal chain, it doesn’t build enough detention facilities to detain illegal immigrants coming across the border. We don’t have any disincentives to stop this flow coming into the country, in fact just the opposite now. They want a comprehensive sellout, and they got it. And this bill has everything in it but real security measures. So if an illegal doesn’t learn English, what are we going to do about it? Nothing. This is all window dressing intended to dupe people, and I’m telling you, they’re going to tout their enforcement mechanisms, but if they’re afraid to make ’em mad then they’re not going to enforce anything. Maybe a couple of show cases here to show that they are, but aside from that — can you tell I’m steamed? Yeah, I don’t often get this way. I’m steamed, folks. My intelligence is insulted with all of this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Yes, ladies and gentlemen, here we are in the home of the brave and the land of the screwed. You know, ladies and gentlemen, if I’m Zoe Baird today, or if I’m Kimba Wood today or Linda Chavez, I’ve got to be burning up. Kimba Wood and Zoe Baird were denied high profile government jobs because they had illegals working for them and didn’t pay Social Security taxes on them. You see the hypocrisy in all this? ‘Well, Rush, it’s a different scenario. They are government workers. They must be above the law.’ Why? Why is somebody more liable to be within the bounds of the law than anybody else? I just so despise pandering. I despise arrogant condescension.

I despise people who are telling us that we’re getting a bed of roses when we’re getting a crown full of nails. The insult to the intelligence and the fact that the problem is not being solved while they claim that it is, is beyond me, but this business, there’s another aspect of it, and I’m sorry to keep beating this into the ground here, but Harry Reid and Barbara Boxer and Ted Kennedy are just set up to become the next Cynthia McKinney, on this issue, particularly Harry Reid. There just doesn’t seem to be any desire to play the game that way, at least among the five Republicans holed up last night trying to put this together. Again it was McCain, Hagel, and since McCain and Hagel, Mel Martinez, Frist, and there’s one other in there. Who was it? Specter. Yeah. I guess this group runs the Republican conference in the Senate, runs the caucus. Anyway, Kathy in Weymouth, Massachusetts. You’re up.


CALLER: Hi, Rush.
RUSH: Spell me a bit here. Give me a chance to cool down. How are you?
CALLER: Oh. I can’t tell you how I feel, but the Republicans think we can’t do anything, you know, that we’re just going to have to put up with what they do because our only choice is the Democrats, so what can we do? Well, if you’re a Republican out there, what I say for you to do is to go down to your town or your city hall and un-enroll and that’s it. I mean, I’m not going to wait in the next election, enroll again? No. It’s like a woman who, you know, your husband’s cheated on you six times, and then you’re going to take them back the seventh? No, no. They’ve done this over and over. They make all these promises, and then they do nothing. They let people like Pat Leahy say, “Oh, let’s stop the ethic and racial slurs.” I think I know what that means. He’s a Democrat and that’s us? That’s not what — the Republicans I know aren’t like that, so let’s all get down; let’s unenroll, and let’s do it today. Let’s start a movement. Un-enroll.
RUSH: No, no, no. I have a different theory. I think we should all go and register four or five different times and vote four or five different times. We ought to start everybody behaving illegally and get to the point where they can’t do anything about that. My tax reform movement is to have a giant movement of 40 people not pay taxes, not file their returns, and after awhile, have that number get so big that they have to reform the tax code in order to collect because they don’t have enough jails to put us all in. I mean, that’s the message that’s being sent here. Go rob a bank and then say, “Hey, you’re not enforcing other aspects of the law; why are you enforcing this?”
CALLER: Why not an amnesty for people who haven’t paid their taxes? Americans. Americans who haven’t paid their taxes, let’s have an amnesty for them.
RUSH: That’s a good one.
CALLER: Right. Why should they have to pay?
RUSH: That’s never going to happen. Without your tax money, they don’t have any job. I mean, their job is spending your money, right?
CALLER: On illegal immigrants, on their health care, on their food, on their tutors —
RUSH: Kathy? I just want to caution you here, this is not just the Republicans. I mean, you are a Republican, and their actions here might upset you more than Democrats because the Democrats are a known commodity and so forth, but this is a joint effort. In this bill there are no Democrats and Republicans, there are just senators. Now, there’s one aspect of this, folks, and was reported earlier today, and I referenced this earlier. Some Republicans have been talking about filibustering their own immigration bill today in the face of steadfast refusals by Democrats to allow amendments to the bill that a lot of conservatives consider to be amnesty.
So as an alternative to this threat to filibuster, Senator Bill Frist “reached an agreement last night with fellow Republicans on a new comprehensive immigration plan that includes increasing border security to the guest worker plan but does not resolve concerns about amnesty.” Meaning there are still some Republicans in the Senate who were left out of this; they were not part of that hole in the wall gang that met last night to put this together, the McCain, Hagel, Martinez, Specter, Frist group — and who knows what they’re going to do once they see this.
It’s not over because there’s still the House side and that bill is far different than this and they have to go to conference to reconcile the two bills. That’s why I said yesterday, “I will not be surprised if this never really becomes law,” and that’s another reason I’m cynical about it is because these guys that were all on television today and have a role in the language of this current “breakthrough” bill really don’t even need it to become law to campaign and reelect. All they have to do is go out and say, “This is where I stood on this issue.” The idea of getting something done on this is the last thing on anybody’s mind, and that’s the thing. This is pure electioneering, posturing, and it’s all based in fear, which also offends me.
END TRANSCRIPT

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