RUSH: Our friends at Heritage have done some more insightful research into all the pork that is in Harry Reid’s spending bill. Here are some examples: $18 million in spending for charities named after Senator Ted Kennedy. There’s also a Kennedy Education Center totally funded by this bill, in the 
billions, I think ten billion. Three and a half million dollars in research in Louisiana, two and a half million dollars for a new runway in North Dakota, $300,000 for swine waste management. There’s a bunch of these little $300,000, $500,000, $800,000 projects. They add up easily to eight to ten billion dollars in earmarks. Actually, 10% of the bill is earmarks. Ten percent of the spending bill is earmarks.
As I’ve said, you just don’t write a 2,000-page bill in a week’s time. This has been long in development. Talk about strategic thinking. Now, here’s the key, folks. If the Senate does not adopt it by Saturday night… This is why the getaway day was Friday. Reid dumps this yesterday. If the Senate doesn’t adopt this by Saturday night, the government supposedly shuts down due to lack of funding. So people have been asking me in e-mail, ‘How can we stop it? How can we stop it?’ We call their bluff! We shut it down! We won the election. We shut it down. Folks, I don’t care. ‘But, Rush! But, Rush! With the media and the Democrats we’ll get blamed for it!’ I don’t care. We won’t be held accountable ’til November of 2012.
Folks, remember what I just said: They know that they’re not gonna be held accountable for anything ’til November 2012, and we won’t be, either. If there is a shutdown, it’s gonna be short-lived and the government will get running again and everything will be hunky-dory. What would you rather do, accept all this? This is blackmail. This is pure and simple extortion. It’s blackmail. So call their bluff. Reid is saying, ‘I’m prepared to keep us here ’til January 4th.’ Fine, you can stay. We’re leaving. The session is over. Whatever doesn’t get done, if this stuff isn’t adopted…
Because the current spending bill that we’re living under expires on Saturday. That’s why he introduces it yesterday. Four days here to decide what to do about it. That’s why everybody should call his bluff. Shut it down! If you want to see all of the details, every one of these little nitpick earmarks… The government is being held hostage by the Democrats. That’s the way to put this. You could do a continuing resolution to keep spending levels until next year. You could. You could do a continuing resolution ’til next February. You can do one for as long as you want. You don’t have to do one for all of next year.
That’s my point, Snerdley, it’s exactly right. Do a CR through the State of the Union show! Do a CR up until Obama’s State of the Union. We hold the cards here. If we’re willing to shut this thing down, call their bluff. That’s what this means. AskHeritage.org, that’s the website be you can see all of these earmarks, every penny of it, where it’s going, all these Democrat plans — and 99% of these earmarks are Democrat earmarks, folks. 99% of them. Byron York has a big story in the Washington Examiner on this today.
Here’s Paul in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. It’s great to have you on the EIB Network, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Good to speak with you, Rush. Earlier in the program you mentioned that some had characterized you as an old fuddy-duddy for pointing out that some unconstitutional provisions are in the so-called Obama tax cut plan.
RUSH: Well, exactly. I just saw something on the screen that reinforces it. ‘The tax bill has just passed the Senate, and now heads to the House.’ Sorry. That’s back ass-wards. It starts in the House and goes to the Senate but Obama sent Biden over to talk to Mike Mitchell about this — I’m sorry, Mitch McConnell about this — and so we’re doing things 180 degrees out of faze.
CALLER: Yeah, you’re absolutely correct. Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution says, ‘All bills for raising revenue will originate in the House of Representatives,’ quote, unquote. Well, we’ll find out I guess whether the Constitution is in fact the supreme law of the land as it says in Article VI. In addition to all the other outrages that are in the continuing resolution, there’s one particular outrage that hasn’t gotten much attention that I’d like to bring up —
RUSH? What is that?
CALLER: — that should be a deal breaker, and that is the virtual takeover of the US agriculture and food industry in this country as well as related food supplements in what has been euphemistically called the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act. Okay, this is a piece of legislation that originated in the House back early last year, went into committee. It never got out of committee because there was no support for it, even amongst the Democrat dominated committees. And yet at the last minute the Senate version of the bill is slipped into this continuing resolution, literally at the last minute. It was passed last Wednesday and in an hour and a half or so before the bill was voted on, and it comes — and with party discipline, of course, the Democrats voted to pass the continuing resolution, but here’s the point. Not a single Republican voted for the continuing resolution, all 171 Republicans — I think there were eight that didn’t vote — voted against it, and 35 Democrats voted against it continuing resolution. So the thing barely passed, 212-206, with a piece of legislation in it that had been sent over from the Senate, that couldn’t get outta committee in the House, and yet here we’ve got the virtual takeover of agriculture, food, and food supplements in the country that is now going to become law unless this appropriations act is either stopped cold or they strip out this S-510 provision.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: So this is more than an outrage. It’s also unconstitutional, to get back to another unconstitutional fact. Again, getting back to revenue, the S-510, this takeover of the food and agricultural industry also contains entire sections devoted to collecting fees, all kinds of fees — and that’s revenue, and we know from Article I, Section 7, that all revenue bills have to originate in the House.
RUSH: Exactly right. Now, if the requirement… Let me just play this out. If the requirement to buy health insurance is a tax, as the government’s insisting, then the bill’s unconstitutional because the Senate does not have the power to lay taxes. All tax bills must start in the House of Representatives. So it’s unconstitutional because it is a Senate bill. All taxes have to originate in the House. So none of this is constitutional. None of it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We really don’t negotiate with hostages, do we? And the Democrats are a bunch of terrorists, and they’re holding this country hostage to their silly little plans. Now, this Food Safety Modernization Act that the caller was talking about, it even has seven Republican cosponsors: Lamar Alexander, Judd Gregg, Orrin Hatch, the usual suspects. Now, the House tried to attach the Senate bill to the continuing resolution last week, and it failed 212-205 with no Republicans voting for it. That’s what he was talking about. So, yeah, I’m dead serious. Shut it down. We run outta money on Saturday. We run out of money. What alternative is there to go on what Harry Reid and the Democrats want and a budget all the way through next year, that contains some of this outrageous unconstitutional stuff in it?