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Rush Limbaugh

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RUSH: The president was on fire today. He did exactly what I hoped he would do. The only thing he didn’t do was do it in prime time, but he did it. He fired both barrels at the Democrats today in the House and the Senate. I was reading a bunch of news stories last night. Nobody expected this to pass in the Senate. I don’t know how they can say that. The plan was for it to pass! But it was close. Cheney was sitting in there waiting to break the tie, but Dingy Harry went out and he convinced the two Senators from Nebraska, Ben Nelson and Hagel to change their minds on a troop withdrawal date, something they had previously opposed just weeks ago.

So the Democrats in both the House and the Senate have now made me a prophet. They own defeat. That’s what the House passed. The Senate passed it yesterday. It is a bill for defeat. The president responded today very forcefully. We have three sound bites coming up here in mere moments, but first I want to go through some of this with you. The Democrat majority in Congress, to anybody paying attention, has made it abundantly, obviously clear: they are for defeat. They’re doing this under the guise that the November elections ‘had meaning,’ and that this is what the American people want. I haven’t been able to find this on the wires yet, but a couple of the cable networks are reporting today that there’s a 10% up-tick in a poll of the American people in terms of how Iraq is going a 10% increase in the percentage of people that think that it’s improving and has gotten better.

Do you remember the old days back in November (or you don’t have to go back that far, go back to last month) and the subject of timetables and withdrawing from Iraq was discussed? Last September, candidate Jim Webb said this: ‘Anyone who tells you we can set a timetable for withdrawal, doesn’t understand war. Anybody who says that nothing can be done to speed a secure peace, doesn’t understand America.’ On March the 8th, 20 days ago, Senator Ben Nelson, Nebraska, ‘I’m bothered by dates. I think you still have to go on conditions for staying.’ Dingy Harry got to him yesterday. He changed his mind. On March the 12th Indiana Senator Evan Bayh wrote the following: ‘I, for example, am not in support of circling a date on the calendar and saying, ‘No matter what, we’re out on that date.” But he changed his mind, with pressure being brought to bear by Dingy Harry. Dingy Harry went to these guys and said, ‘Hey, the elections in November meant something. Besides, we gotta be concerned about our poll numbers at MoveOn.org.’

Nancy Pelosi spent $28 billion taxpayer dollars in one week to round up the bare minimum of 218 votes that she needed, the exact number to get her majority. It works out to $130 million or so per vote. The president detailed some of this, but I’ve got the laundry list of the pork that is in the bill that the Senate passed yesterday. As we all know, there’s $25 million for a spinach farmer, $24 million for funding for sugar beets, $3 million in funding for sugar cane going to one Hawaiian co-op. There’s $20 million for insect infestation damage reimbursements in Nevada, Idaho and Utah; $2.1 billion for crop production losses; one and a half billion for livestock production losses; $100 million for dairy production losses; $13 million for ewe lamb replacement and retention; $32 million for the livestock indemnity program; $40 million for the Tree Assistance Program — speaking of this, the Tree Assistance Program is going to really need some help now. In San Francisco, have you heard about this? They’re banning the plastic bags at the grocery stores.

Now, do you remember why they put those plastic bags in the grocery stores in the first place? Anybody got an idea? Quick. To save the trees! Exactly right. To save the trees, a renewable resource, we had to get rid of the paper bags and go to plastic bags. Now we gotta get rid of the plastic bags because they cause pollution and they are made from the petroleum industry. I’ll guarantee you that the next plastic bag is going to be these compact fluorescent bulbs. Already scientists are starting to get concerned of all the mercury in these babes, and pretty soon everybody’s going to go out and buy these little curly cued compact fluorescents and not long down the line somebody is going to say, ‘You know what? This is an environmental disaster waiting to happen.’ So the compact fluorescent’s going to be the next plastic bag of the grocery store. Mark my words.

There’s a hundred million dollars for small agricultural dependent businesses. Look at how much pork is in this bill for farming- and agricultural-related industries. Six million for North Dakota flooded crop land; $35 million for emergency conservation programs; $50 million for the Emergency Watershed Program. This is in the bill that the Democrats in the House and Senate passed yesterday to pull troops out of Iraq in March of 2008 and not fund the surge. One-hundred-fifteen million dollars for the Conservation Security Program. Now, it sounds like a dupe, but it’s not. It was earlier, $35 million for the Emergency Conservation Program, and then another $115 million for the Conservation Security Program, which proves much of what I have said constantly: the redundancy in all these federal programs is pathetic. There’s $18 million for drought assistance in the upper Great Plains and in the Southwest; $6 million for the North Dakota flooded crop land and $18 million for drought assistance in the upper Great Plains in the Southwest (a provision that extends the availability by a year); $3.5 million dollars in funding for guided tours of the Capitol is in this bill.

Also, it has a provision that allows transfer of funds from holiday ornament sales in the Senate Gift Shop, and $165.9 million for fisheries disaster relief funded through NOAA. This includes $60.4 million for salmon fisheries in the Klamath Basin region; $12 million for forest service money. There’s $425 million for education grants for rural areas. This is the Secure Rural Schools Program. There’s $640 million for something called LIHEAP; $25 million for asbestos abatement at the Capitol Power Plant; $388.9 million for funding for backlog of old Department of Transportation projects; $22.8 million for geothermal research and development; $500 million for wildfire fire management; $13 million for mine safety technology research; $31 million for a one month extension of the Milk Income Lost Contract Program. Have I lost the audience yet, do you think? (Laughing) Low Income Energy Assistance is What LIHEAP is? Okay, what was that number on LIHEAP? Gosh, this list is huge. That’s $640 million for Low Income Energy Assistance. I thought Hugo Chavez had taken care of that. Winter is over! (Laughing)

Let’s see. Fifty million for Fisheries Disaster Mitigation Fund; $100 million for security at the presidential candidate nominating conventions; and $2 million for the University of Vermont. Plus, get this: $6.4 million for the House of Representatives Salaries and Expenses Account, and President Bush said, ‘I don’t even know what that is.’ So you tell me, folks, that we don’t have all the money in the world to run five wars at the same time. This is absolutely absurd. This is what’s in the bill — the Democrats Own Defeat Bill — that was passed yesterday in the Senate that the president has promised he’s going to veto. Now, this was the strategery all along. The president wanted to get this thing passed as soon as possible so that he could veto it, and then get going on it.

But Dingy Harry said, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa! Wait a minute. We’re in no hurry here.’ Dingy Harry wants to delay the conference on this. The Senate and House have to get together and come up with a reconciliation of their two different bills, although they’re pretty similar. Dingy Harry wants to put that off, I think, until after the Easter recess. The money is needed by April 15th. The signal this sends to our enemies is loud and clear. So here is your Democrat Party in action in front of the world for everyone to see. They have signed on to de-funding the troops. They have signed on to defeat and pulling us out of Iraq on March 31st of 2008, which will secure victory for the insurgency and the amalgamation of enemies currently in Iraq.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I can’t help but think back to the campaign last September, last October, and all the angry calls I got from Republicans, ‘We gotta get the Republicans out because of earmarks! All these earmarks, all this spending! They’re spending us blind. It’s not what we sent them to do.’ So we sent the Republicans out. Now we’ve got pork. It’s sizzling. We have all kinds of pork. Here’s the thing about this. The one thing about Democrats is everybody expects them to spend. So I wonder if you Republicans and independents who abandoned the Republican Party last November will take out similar anger the next chance you have at the ballet box against the Democrats who are outspending Republicans, and who are adding massive tax increases.

I haven’t gotten to the tax increases in this Get-Out-of-Iraq Bill. In fact, this bill needs to be titled something entirely different: ‘The Defeat in the War on Terror Bill,’ authored by the Democrats. That’s really what this bill is. It’s going to be fascinating to see this unfold. Even though the president wants to veto this and set up a showdown, the Democrats have passed into law in both houses a certain deadline — March 31st, 2008 — to get out of there. Now, how are they going to compromise on this? You know, the troops are going to have to have money even to get out. This doesn’t authorize any of that. The money is going to run out, the commanders say. By April 15th, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said.

Even if you pull out of there, it’s not going to happen overnight. It’s going to require funds to do it. I think the Democrats will probably authorize that, but how do you compromise now on this pullout date? This is why I’ve been telling you over and over again that whether it’s 2010 or 2012 or ’08 or whenever, they are sowing the seeds of an eventual landslide defeat for their party. This they don’t even see. They think that they’re returning today as a valor and history and tremendous success, as they attempt to recreate the circumstances that were in existence in the period in the Vietnam War. Let’s listen to the president here. He was speaking to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association today in Washington. (Transcript) We have three sound bites. Here’s number one.

THE PRESIDENT: I want to read something that Army Sergeant Major Chris Nadeau said, guy’s on his second tour in Iraq. He says, ‘I’m not a Democrat or a Republican. I’m a soldier. The facts are the facts. Things are getting better. We’re picking up momentum. These are hopeful signs, and that’s positive.’ Yet at the very moment that General Petraeus’ strategy is beginning to show signs of success, the Democrats in the House of Representatives have passed an emergency war spending bill that undercuts him and the troops under his command. If the House bill becomes law our enemies in Iraq would simply have to mark their calendars. They’d spend the months ahead plotting how to use their new safe havens once we were to leave. It makes no sense selecting for politicians in Washington, DC, to be dictating arbitrary timelines for our military commanders in a war zone 6,000 miles away. (Applause.)

RUSH: Hubba hubba! Right on, right on, right on. He was reading a note from Army Sergeant Major Chris Nadeau. Here’s something else. The president mentioned General Petraeus. General Petraeus was confirmed unanimously by the Senate to go head the surge. Now he’s just been de-funded essentially, for all intents and purposes, by this vote in the House and in the Senate. Here’s the president hammering the Democrats on the pork in the bill.

THE PRESIDENT: The bill includes $74 million for peanut storage; $25 million for spinach growers. These may be emergencies, they may be problems, but they can be addressed in the normal course of business. They don’t need to be added on to a bill that’s supporting our troops. There’s $6.4 million for the House of Representatives Salaries and Expenses Account. I don’t know what that is, but it is not related to the war and protecting the United States of America. (Applause.)

RUSH: Yeah, remember here are the numbers. Twenty-four to $25 billion of pork in this bill. That’s the price Pelosi had to pay in order to get the bare minimum of 218 votes in the House for passage, which comes out to $130 million a vote. That’s about what it cost for her majority. The slim and the bare-essential number she got was 218, and that’s it minimum you needed to win, and it cost $24 billion to $25 billion. The Democrats have named their price for defeat now, and they’re taking advantage of the opportunity here to be in the majority and put all this pork in it. I want to say to all of you who were just fit to be tied over what the Republicans were doing last November thinking you were going to get a change. You got worse.

Now, it will be interesting to see if there’s any interest to hold Democrats accountable in November of 2008. Here’s the bottom line. This is the president promising the veto.

THE PRESIDENT: Here’s the bottom line. The House and Senate bills have too much pork, too many conditions on our commanders and an artificial timetable for withdrawal — and I have made it clear for weeks, if either version comes to my desk, I’m going to veto it. If Congress fails to pass a bill to fund our troops on the front lines, the American people will know who to hold responsible. (Applause.)

RUSH: Yes, they will. Yes, they will. The Drive-By Media will do their best to camouflage all that’s happened here because it’s not going to be something helpful to the Democrats. They’re feeling their oats right now. Here’s Nancy Pelosi this afternoon. She spoke to the press after the Senate vote and all the hubbub after the president’s speech this morning.

PELOSI: Calm down with the threats. There’s a new Congress in town. We respect your constitutional role. We want you to respect ours. This war must end. The American people have lost faith in the president’s conduct of the war. Let’s see how we can work together.

RUSH: Well, there’s not a whole lot of meeting ground. This is a great, great, great example of compromising in order to get along. The Democrats pass $25 billion of pork to secure a bill that promises and requires the removal and the retreat of troops by March 31st, 2008. The president says, ‘Nope. I need another hundred billion dollars for the troops to stay and for the surge. Now, where do you compromise on this, folks? Where do you work together? Now, if you’re one of these newfangled Republicans that thinks that you have to get along with the opposition in order to serve the American people and make the American people happy, does anybody think it’s going to be the Democrats compromising here, at least right off the bat?

How are they going to compromise on this? They have a date certain to get out, and it’s passed into law now, March 31st, 2008. How do they compromise? Well, there are areas they could. They could move the date, say, to April 4th, 2008. They could move it but the point is, they’re feeling their oats. They think that they have done what the American people want done, and if they compromise at all on this, they’ve got problems. They’ve got political problems. Where does the president compromise on this? All of you people who think compromise ought to happen in Washington, you tell me where the ‘middle ground’ is here, because on one side there’s defeat and on the other side there’s the chance for victory.

Now, where is there ‘common ground’ there? Somebody explain this to me. All of you — and I don’t know how many of you are in this audience, but I know there’s a kit and caboodle of linguini-spined wimp people in this country who just want to get along — who say, ‘Mr. Limbaugh, we must compromise! We must work together. We must solve these problems.’ Well, how do you solve this one? I want to know what the compromise is here. There isn’t going to be any compromise here. One side’s going to win and one side’s going to lose. That’s going to be fascinating to watch to see how this plays out. This campaign’s going to be marshaling the support of the American people, to see who can pull this off.

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