RUSH: I want to talk about the debt limit deal, because it’s happening all over again. And, frankly, I think this is all an exercise in futility anyway. We don’t have the numbers — but more importantly, we don’t have the will — to stop Obama here in what he wants to do. He hasn’t presented a budget in four years. Well, the Democrats in the Senate haven’t done a budget. Obama presents a budget every year that’s dead on arrival.
No Obama budget in four years has even gotten a single vote, folks. Not one vote, including from Democrats. And just yesterday, the regime told Congress that they’re not gonna be on time with this year’s budget, which is February 4th. By law, the administration’s budget has to be submitted by February 4th. They’re gonna miss it. But it’s all an academic proposal because Obama’s budgets are never passed.
They never see the light of day. They’re all dead on arrival. They don’t get one vote, and the reason is they’re not intended to. Obama submits budgets that were instantly thrown out. The reason that the Democrats have not proposed and presented a budget is because they’ve tried to shield from the American people and the low-information voter community what their real plans are.
The Democrats know full well that if they were to be up front and honest about their plans, they would not win very many elections. So the reason… Everybody thinks it’s a strategic or tactical reason for not presenting a budget. And to a certain extent it is because they allow, then, the budget to be funded with a continuing resolution, followed by another continuing resolution, which gives us this never-ending budget crisis for three years.
Every time we near the end of a continuing resolution, we have a crisis. “We’ll reach the debt limit! We’re about to run out of money! We’ve gotta authorize new spending!” It’s a never-ending crisis, and all hell is gonna break loose if we don’t do something immediately. So the proper way to budget the expense of the country has not been done for four years, and the real reason for it is that the Democrats have been trying to shield their plans.
The secondary reason is the creation of this crisis mentality that never goes away, that they have used exceptionally well to get what they want. So, we had the fiscal cliff deal. And all throughout month of December there was hand-wringing and a crisis and, “Oh, my God, what’s gonna happen if we don’t deal with this cliff? Oh, gee, defense cuts and Medicare cuts and tax increases! Oh, no! Oh, no! What are we gonna do? Woe is us.”
Obama wouldn’t negotiate. Boehner was negotiating in private. Obama was lying. Boehner couldn’t get anybody to agree with him. None of it worked. It was a mess. Finally at the last minute, as is always the case, we caved in on the premise of taxes. We caved by agreeing to raise taxes on the rich. For the first time in 20 years, the Republicans gave up a core value. They agreed to raise taxes on the rich, and thereby allowed Obama to claim that that’s the problem.
Tax cuts for the rich all these years is the reason why we have a budget problem. It’s why we have a deficit. It’s why we have national debt so big. The Republicans acquiesced so that they wouldn’t be blamed. They said they did it to make sure that taxes on the middle class didn’t go up. The Bush tax rates for the middle class were etched in stone. They were made permanent. They score big points for that, but there weren’t any points scored because people’s taxes didn’t go up.
So there was no change.
You don’t get points for no change, and I don’t care what the rhetoric is beforehand.
By definition, the low-information people aren’t paying enough attention to know what’s going on. The only way you’re gonna get their attention is if taxes go up — then, “Oh!” — which they did, by the way, with the payroll tax cut not being continued. So despite all this talk about nobody’s taxes going up, everybody’s taxes have. Including the rich, which the Republicans expected to get some credit for, which, of course, is never gonna happen.
Anyway, you get the drift.
Crisis to crisis, Republicans always cave, but it’s a never-ending cycle. It’s a constant shell game that is played, and we are the suckers. We look to the budget and Obama’s budget and then the Democrats and will they present a budget, and they don’t. And then Obama’s budget’s voted down. Then it’s to the continuing resolution and, “Will we fund the new one? Are we gonna run out of money? Will Social Security checks still go out? Oh, no! Will Medicare payments still be made? Oh, no.”
And then we solve that.
And then we’re back to the debt ceiling.
“Oh, no! We’re about to run out of money. We can’t spend any more! Oh, my God, we’re gonna face default! Oh, that would be terrible.” We fix that and we go back to the fiscal cliff, then we go back to the budget, then we go back to the debt ceiling, then we go back to the budget and then we go back to shut down the government, maybe. It never stops! It is a constant, never-ending shell game, and here’s where we are in it today: At each stage of this shell game, in recent years, the Republicans have been the ones to cave in.
The Republicans have been the ones to give up things that are important to them like tax cuts and spending cuts. The Republicans cave (so that people will like them, so that people won’t think that they’re mean, so that people won’t think that they’re extremists and racists), and even after the Republicans cave and they give away everything, they’re still racists and sexists and bigots and homophobes and creeps and lechers and purse snatchers and rapists and muggers.
And that’s on a good day.
So here we are. Up next in the shell game, since we fixed the fiscal cliff, is the debt limit. Now, do you remember one of the strategies during the whole debt ceiling deal? You heard it, I heard it, and I passed it along to you. The Republican Wizards of Smart said, “Look, let’s just cave. You know, this is not the field to fight this battle. Let’s go ahead and let’s do the fiscal cliff and let’s take it to them on the debt ceiling! That’s what we’ll fight, on the debt limit.
“That’s where we’ll fight the battle! That’s where we’ll take it to Obama! That’s where we’ll make ’em pay! That’s where we’ll get the spending cuts.” Remember that? That’s where we were. Well, we’re now at the debt limit, and guess what? “This is not the time to fight this battle. We can’t win anything on the debt limit. Let’s not even fight this battle here. Let’s go ahead and avoid this. Let’s authorize a new debt limit and let’s fight on the budget in March, and let’s focus on that.
“That’s where the real spending is. This debt limit, that’s just the full faith and credit of the country. We don’t want to mess with that. We don’t want to mess with the bills not being paid. Let’s go ahead and have the bills be paid. Let’s authorize that. We’ll take it to Obama on the budget, and that’s where we’ll make him accept spending cuts. We’ll make him engage in cutting in March. That’s where Social Security checks will be threatened, and that’s where we’ll make our stand.”
And they’ll go back to government shutdown. That’s where we are. “Breaking with the GOP, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said in an interview published Tuesday that she does not think the debt ceiling should be political leverage to cut government spending. ‘If you incur an obligation, you have a responsibility to pay for that,’ Murkowski told The Fairbanks-Daily News Miner.” Murkowski doesn’t think the debt limit should be used for “political leverage.”
Now, it was just less than a month ago that the strategy was, “Hey, look, this is not the hill to fight on. This debt ceiling, fiscal cliff, that’s not the hill to fight on. We will take it to Obama during the debt limit fight.” So here we are, and the proposal has been made now to ignore this and give away another vestige or core belief. Newt Gingrich, by the way, agrees. On CBS This Morning, the cohostette Norah O’Donnell was interviewing the former Speaker. She said, “You say that fighting over the debt ceiling is a bad idea for congressional Republicans. Why?”
GINGRICH: Because in the end it’s a threat they can’t sustain. No one is going to default. No one is going to allow United States to not pay its bills. No one is gonna accept the economic costs. It rallies the entire business community to the president’s side, and the fact is the Republicans have two much better arenas in which to fight over spending. They have a continuing resolution which funds government which comes up at the end of March, and they have the sequester which automatically cuts spending unless it’s dealt with. On those two fronts they can fight, and they have much less resistance from the average American, and it’s much harder for the president to oppose them.
RUSH: And when we get to March and the continuation resolution argument comes up, do you know what will be said then? “This is not the hill to fight on. We don’t want to be responsible for people not getting their Social Security checks. Well, we don’t want to be blamed for it. We won’t be responsible, but we’ll be blamed. We don’t want to be get blamed for Medicare cuts.
“No, this isn’t the place to fight,” and they’ll delay fighting Obama ’til the next thing, and the shell game continues. I’m telling you, less than three weeks ago everybody was saying, “Okay, let Obama have it on the fiscal cliff and we’ll take it to him on the debt limit. We’ve got him right where we want him! We’ll marshal our forces and we’ll really take him to the wall on the debt limit,” and now here we are. I know Lisa Murkowski doesn’t speak for the whole party, but it’s out there now.
But Newt’s coming out and saying (summarized), “This is not the hill to fight on,” and I’m just telling you that every stage of the shell game, the same thing happens. “This is not the time. We don’t have the American people behind us. The low-information voter won’t understand. We can’t run the risk that we’ll be blamed for Maude’s Social Security check not arriving. Ah, we’ve gotta cave. We’ll save this fight for the summer. That’s what we’ll do, and we’ll really take it to Obama when the new iPhone comes out. That’s the plan!”