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Dingy Harry Wants a Shutdown

May 18, 2011

RUSH: I want to go back to this business of the continuing resolution, the House rule, the $105 billion that a bunch of Republicans think ought to be attacked and taken out, but it can’t be because a continuing resolution doesn’t allow discretionary — only discretionary spending can be dealt with and that $105 billion in the health care bill is not discretionary, it is authorized, so according to the rule it can’t be dealt with. Therein lies the answer why the Democrats don’t want a budget. It’s why they want just a never-ending continuing resolution. It’s obvious. It’s patently obvious now. And, in fact, Dingy Harry has ended the Senate. He’s gaveled it closed.

Ten Republican senators have sent him a letter, and they are warning Dingy Harry that they will block any bills that don’t address fiscal issues until the current impasse on spending is resolved. But Harry Reid doesn’t want anything that deals with spending dealt with here. The letter says this: ‘While there are certainly many issues that warrant the Senate’s consideration, we feel that the Senate must not debate and consider bills at this time that do not affirmatively cut spending.’ Well, Reid doesn’t want those bills. He doesn’t want to cut spending. So he’s using the ongoing continuing resolution as a way of not having to deal with that, and also if the Republicans in the House are gonna maintain that they gotta be loyal to this rule, then guess where Dingy Harry’s taken us? He’s taking us to a shutdown. I have to assume that Boehner and the guys in the House understand that this is what the objective is, that the Democrats want this shutdown. For whatever reason, they are forcing the shutdown.

Now, the ten Republican senators are David Vitter of Louisiana, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, John Ensign of Nevada, who’s retiring, Mike Lee of Utah, DeMint, Rand Paul, Roger Wicker of Mississippi, Marco Rubio of Florida, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. And they’re hell-bent here on having everybody understand where Harry Reid is taking this, is right to a shutdown. That’s what Reid wants. So I say, especially coming here on the heels of Wisconsin, let’s have at it. Let’s pick a fight. They’re the ones picking it. Obviously they somehow believe that they can relive 1995 and win everything. They didn’t win a thing after ’95, by the way. The Republicans still won the House of Representatives, and Clinton still ended up signing welfare reform. What happened in 1995 was the headlines were not nice. That’s where they got creamed in 1995 was the headlines. You remember all that. Some of you might too young, you weren’t paying attention back then, but the big deal of the 1995 budget battle was Republicans want to starve kids. They were gonna cut the school lunch program, which they weren’t. There were no cuts anywhere. There were some reductions in the rate of growth.

But the Democrats had little kids from New Orleans with crayons writing letters to Republicans in Washington. ‘Please, Mr. Gingrich, I can’t learn if I don’t have lunch. I won’t learn anything if I can’t eat. Please don’t take away lunch.’ Of course this stuff all makes the media. It’s on the evening news at night. Remember, in 1994-1995 there’s no Fox News, there’s no blogosphere, it’s just El Rushbo and CNN. And no, we didn’t lose the majority at all. We didn’t lose the majority ’til 2006 when we started spending out the wazoo, and of course the Mark Foley thing. Don’t ever think that wasn’t a factor in losing in 2006. Nobody wants to talk about it. Everybody wants to say spending did it. But you take the Foley thing out of there and it’s still not guaranteed the Republicans would lose. The bottom line is the government shutdown in ’95 — and this is another thing. It won’t shut down. Social Security checks will still go out, all those things are still gonna happen. The government shuts down a lot when it snows. They do it voluntarily. Not often enough as far as I’m concerned. But clearly, given that $105 billion and it’s Republicans in the House saying we can’t touch it because we’re dealing with a continuing resolution here, not an actual budget. Well, Reid doesn’t want an actual budget. He wants a shutdown for obvious reasons.

So that’s where this is all headed. And Dingy Harry, he really can’t do much. He doesn’t have 60 votes. He could block Republicans in what they want, but he really can’t advance his own agenda, and what he’s doing right now is blocking Republicans. You know, they want to cut spending. He’s got the votes to stop that. They’re 47 votes in the Senate and Dingy Harry has his 53. You know, speaking of all this talk from Dingy Harry and the liberals in Congress about a government shutdown if a budget isn’t passed, I think, and so do the people at Heritage, by the way, is just a scare tactic. Now, you’ve seen the majority of the House have agreed on $61 billion in cuts in the next budget, which is like eliminating the equivalent of six days from a year’s worth of spending. I mean it’s not much. It’s a start. And it’s something that people might say, ‘Hey, look what we did, we cut spending,’ but it’s six days’ worth, if that. The loudest voices in Washington on being fiscally conservative include those from the Heritage Foundation, especially their president, Ed Feulner.

Now, he’s put his points out today in a letter to every Heritage member, all 710,000 of us. And he makes a good point. He says this is much bigger than the first $61 billion in budget cuts. It’s about changing the culture of Washington. And that’s what’s at stake here. Dingy Harry knows it. He knows that the Republicans in the House are scared to death of a shutdown. He knows it, and he’s using it, pure and simple. Now, the Heritage Foundation, they exist and they work without a dime of government support. They are entirely supported by membership contributions to get the word out and to continue to fight these kinds of battles in Washington. It’s times like this that the Heritage Foundation shines, and it’s as good a time as any to become a member.

Look at that wall of debris in that tsunami! If that doesn’t make you feel powerless and insignificant, if that doesn’t put in perspective things on this planet, that’s just unbelievable.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: All right, look, it’s this simple, folks. The Democrats do not want a real, normal budget (particularly right now) simply because in a continuing resolution — meaning a temporary piece of time to keep the government running; that’s all a CR is: Just enough money to keep it running — you can’t cut funding. Not in a continuing resolution. You just can’t, and that’s what these ten Republicans are saying. ‘Look, Dingy, get in gear here, pal. We’re gonna cut spending, that’s what we’re here to do,’ blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. A continuing resolution automatically prevents cutting any spending. That’s what Dingy Harry’s up to.

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