RUSH: Wait ’til you hear what it was. You’ll remember when I remind you. Wait ’til you hear what it was that brought those runaway Texas legislatures back home. Wait ’til you remember what it was. No, it wasn’t sex. But it was if they had sex, who was gonna pay for it, or if they ate, who was gonna pay for it. It’s interesting here, Wisconsin state senate rules require 20 lawmakers to be present for spending bills, but a simple majority for other measures. So if, for example, the senate in Wisconsin wants to go ahead and pass a bill restructuring the way union contracts are negotiated, they can do it. It’s not spending. Well, these guys are out of town. They can do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, stick with me, details on both of those are coming up, but I promised phone calls.
Let me go to Pittsburgh quickly. Joyce, hi. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. Mega Polamalu dittos from Pittsburgh.
RUSH: Thank you very much.
CALLER: It’s an honor to talk with you, sir.
RUSH: Great to have you here.
CALLER: Well, my question, sir, I’m a small business owner, and previous to that I had been a banker by tradition here in Pittsburgh, and if I had any employees that did not show up at their jobs, it was considered to be job abandonment and they were immediately terminated without unemployment. So why would Governor Scott Walker not do this for both the teachers and the legislatures?
RUSH: Well, I don’t know if he’s got the authority to fire the teachers. Reagan had the authority to fire the air traffic controller workers because they were forbidden from striking. I don’t know that there’s a similar law in Wisconsin forbidding the teachers from taking this action. He could fire them if he —
CALLER: I mean not showing up for work and then now we’ve got doctors —
RUSH: Fake doctors.
CALLER: — giving falsified, you know, excuses for being sick.
RUSH: Now you’re talking about just cause. I’m sure that these are things that they’re thinking about.
CALLER: Well, the other thing that bothers me, Rush, about all of this is just simply this is just this whole social justice, wealth redistribution. I mean the individuals paying the taxes which are paying for these public workers are the ones that currently now are paying for a lot of this health care themselves as well as their own 401(k)s and their own retirement plans, as I pay for my own insurance being self-employed. So they want everything for free, yet at the hands of the people that are making less money than they, and also paying —
RUSH: Exactly.
CALLER: — for their own contributions. I just don’t understand where their minds and their — I hesitate to use the word —
RUSH: You said it yourself. It’s because they love redistribution. The redistribution of wealth is fun because it doesn’t require anything to be made. It doesn’t require anything to be produced. It requires no hard work. It requires no production. It just requires power and an ability to spend money that isn’t yours that you haven’t had to earn. And it’s easy. I guess, you know, these doctors that that are writing these fake excuses, folks, I mean we’re talking doctor fraud here. Some of these people may not even be doctors. I wouldn’t put it past the left to have a bunch of people in there posing as doctors to write these excuses. We know that they’re now creating fake identities on all these social media websites.
Here’s the answer to the first two questions I posed. Texas Democrats, what was it that got ’em home? In 2003 Texas Democrats fled to Ardmore, Oklahoma, in a rented bus. Now, Governor Rick Perry sent the Texas Rangers after ’em. And the Democrat governor of Oklahoma would not allow the Texas Rangers to cross into his state. So Governor Perry informed those Democrats that they would not be allowed to use their state credit cards to pay for their trip, nor would they be reimbursed for their expenses in Oklahoma, including the bus that took ’em there. Now, once the runaway Democrats in Texas realized that they had to pay their own way that was the beginning of their caving in and coming back home. So I’m wondering if Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin has thought of pulling the plug on the credit cards of the runaway Democrats. ‘Cause make no mistake, I’m sure they have them. I mean if we’re gonna have welfare debit cards, you know damn well that members of the state legislature have a state credit card as well. He-he-he-he.
RUSH: That’s right. If they’re not doctors and they’re passing out these phony excuses, that’s even worse. Now, here we go. State Senate rules in Wisconsin require that 20 lawmakers be present for spending bills. However, a simple majority for other measures is all that’s needed. That means the 19 Republicans in the Wisconsin Senate can pass things on their own while the Democrats are in hiding. Now, to me, as one who advocates being on offense, this sounds like a golden opportunity for the Republicans in Wisconsin to go on a tear and pass everything that they have ever wanted. Pelosi would do this; Reid would do it. But of course the Republicans, they’re gonna act like responsible adults. They don’t want to irritate the media. They’re not going to want to irritate the people, they’re caught up in all this civility stuff. Well, maybe not, though. Maybe not, ladies and gentlemen.
‘Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald says his chamber of the Wisconsin legislature will convene to pass non-spending bills and act on appointments on Tuesday even if minority Democrats remain out of state.’ One of those bills could be the union aspect of the budget bill. Could it be taken up in a separate vote tomorrow? ‘Democratic state Sen. Jon Erpenbach told The Associated Press on Monday that Republicans could attempt to attach the part of the proposal taking away collective bargaining rights to an unrelated bill and pass it Tuesday. ‘I told them, ‘Listen, Senator Miller, we’re marching forward with our business. I am setting the calendar for tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. I would expect that the Democrats will be there, but we will be taking up a resolution. We will be passing a piece of legislation, and we will also be confirming one of the governor’s nominees to their cabinet position,” said Republican State Senate President Scott Fitzgerald. … The 14 Democratic state senators have left Wisconsin to make sure a vote on Walker’s budget cannot happen without the required 20 members for a quorum. One of those senators said that issue needs to be resolved before they return to Madison.’ Well, it will be resolved when it’s voted on. 
Here’s the bottom line. If the Senate Republicans in Wisconsin want to they can go ahead and pass part of what Governor Walker wants. In addition to the 5.8% he wants the teachers to spend on their pensions and the 12.8% on their health care, he’s advocating for the limitation of collective bargaining rights in exchange for doing the contract every year or something like that. Well, that’s not a budget item. The Republicans could pass that tomorrow. The Republicans could simply take it up tomorrow and pass it while the Democrats are in Illinois having run away, having fled the scene. Now, were it me, I’d start passing everything. What was the election for? ‘Hey, look, we’re here working. The Democrats can’t stop us anyway. Even if they were here, they don’t have the votes. There are things that we ran on, agenda items. Those guys leave town, fine, we’re gonna continue to work.’ Look at the golden opportunity they’ve got here. Don’t think the Democrats don’t know it. This is an AP story that I have shared with you here, and one of the reasons for the AP story I’m sure is that there is concern on the left that this may be exactly what Governor Walker is gonna do, that and a number of other pieces of legislation.
Doug in Adams, Wisconsin, I’m glad you called. Great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. I just wanted to talk about what’s happening locally amongst the libs here. They’re trying to get this refrain to resonate, that Governor Walker is not showing leadership, but there’s two reasons why this isn’t gonna make it. One is obvious. This was a campaign promise, to get the budget balanced and not to raise taxes. The other one is, he’s not acting like Obama and blaming his predecessor. Governor Doyle, what he did was misuse the highway construction funds which come out of tax monies and also the medical malpractice funds and he pushed that into the regular budget to help his government union buddies, his major supporters, and Governor Walker’s not saying that his predecessor is to blame and I really like that about him. You know what’s not resonating is the business about these poor teachers, because the Wisconsin Taxpayer Alliance has put out a lot of numbers showing just how really well off the benefits are for Wisconsin teachers.
RUSH: I’m sure, they’ve bragged about it. I’m sure that this is one of the selling points, ‘Look at how good we do for our teachers.’ I’m sure they’ve bragged about how great the teachers in Wisconsin have it. There isn’t a whole lot of public sympathy. The reason why the union head, the teachers union leader in Wisconsin suggested they go back to work is precisely because they’ve done some polling data, they know exactly how the public feels about this, and they are not supporting the teachers. And they don’t like the fact that their kids are not in school. But I need to ask you something out there, Doug. Is one of the mantras locally in Wisconsin, in the media and the Democrats, that this governor is not showing leadership? Are they actually saying that?
CALLER: They say it. I’ve seen it in e-mails. I’ve seen it in the newspapers. I hear it —
RUSH: What in the world do they mean?
CALLER: They don’t. They don’t specify because they cannot.
RUSH: It’s the opposite.
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: So they’re just trying to create an image here of a guy not leading. It is exact opposite.
CALLER: Hm-hm.
RUSH: This is leadership on parade here.
CALLER: They say he’s uncivil and he won’t talk to these people. Well, never mind that they’re not even in the state. I send them Heritage.org stuff and send ’em Wisconsin Taxpayer Alliance Stuff. They ignore it.
RUSH: Well, of course. This whole point of talking, that’s a straw dog, too. He’s not talking to them? In fact we heard that last week. One Democrat senator, ‘If he would just talk to us.’ There wasn’t anything to talk about. They knew this was coming. What do you mean, talk about it? Okay, some stats and then one additional item before we go to our next obscene profit time-out. Wisconsin spent — we ran the numbers here — $10,791 per pupil, per student, in its public, elementary, and secondary schools in fiscal of year 2008. That, again, the last year for which numbers are available from the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics. Now, that $10,791 per pupil, that Wisconsin spent, was more than was spent on public schooling by any other Midwest state, including Illinois, Minnesota, and Iowa. This means, in effect, Wisconsin is spending more on teachers and administrators than any other state in the Midwest. So nobody’s getting short-changed. The average salary for a state employee in Wisconsin was $53,700 a year, 4.3% higher than the US average for state employees. But that’s some years ago because now that number is up to $65,000. That’s the national average in a lot of cases.
Now, Scott Walker sat down with our buddies at the Heritage Foundation. This is from the Morning Bell, the Heritage Foundation daily blog. ‘Teachers’ unions and representatives of every liberal interest group in the country may have taken over the streets of Madison for demonstrations, marches and speeches, but inside the Wisconsin governor’s mansion its chief tenant remains calm and resolute. The Badger State’s budget will be balanced, Walker said. The stakes in Wisconsin are high not just here, but across America. ‘I’ve said all along the protesters have every right to be there, but I’m not going to let tens of thousands overload or overshadow the millions of people in Wisconsin, the taxpayers of the state, who want us to do the right thing and balance the budget.” This is an interview with the Heritage Foundation. In fact, we’ve got some audio sound bites. I think he was on Fox News Sunday as well, excerpts of that coming up.
‘Gov. Walker is aware of just what Wisconsin — and the rest of the country — stands to gain or lose with the ultimate outcome of this debate. That’s precisely why he insists the outcome be a balanced budget. For that, he’ll endure personal insults, the comparisons to deposed Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak and Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. He’ll face days of chanting outside his window and threats to his safety.’ But they run around and say he is Hitler-like, which they’re not supposed to be doing as you know because Barack Obama sent a memo out, not supposed to do that anymore, we have a new era of civility.