RUSH: The Department of Homeland Security thing, there’s some inside baseball politics about this that I should inform you of so as to be able to put more in context this whole notion of a GOP flop on this. I can’t tell you the number of people who’ve sent me frustrated e-mails, “Rush, why can’t they do budget reconciliation to stop this, just like the Democrats did in Obamacare? Why can’t they do it?” They could. The question is not why can’t they; the question is why won’t they.
The Department of Homeland Security thing, there’s some inside baseball politics about this that I should inform you of so as to be able to put more in context this whole notion of a GOP flop on this. I can’t tell you the number of people who’ve sent me frustrated e-mails, “Rush, why can’t they do budget reconciliation to stop this, just like the Democrats did in Obamacare? Why can’t they do it?” They could. The question is not why can’t they; the question is why won’t they.
“The Republicans made such a mess when they ran the show! Bush and all that? Bush and Reagan? They made such a mess that Obama is just trying to correct those mistakes, and it’s gonna take longer than we thought and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” So to many Millennials, I said, there is no opposition. The opposition’s a bunch of kook nerd freaks. “The GOP? Give me a break! They’re not cool; they’re not hip.” But yet in the midterm election, look what happened, 2010 and 2014, it was a Republican landslide. There are still millions of people in this country who expect the Republican Party to be the party to stop Obama, that they are the legitimate opposition. Despite the efforts of the Democrat media and the Obama White House to destroy the Republican brand, they’re still winning midterm elections in landslides, and there’s one reason. The people voting want this stuff stopped and they want it fixed. The Republicans don’t seem to notice, or they notice it and are ignoring it and making excuses for why they can’t do this or do that. So the inside baseball stuff happens to involve… Remember the “trick” that the Democrats were worried McConnell had run on them? The Democrats were demanding a “clean” bill in the Senate to fund the Department of Homeland Security. Just a clean bill, all the way through the end of the fiscal year in September. No carve-outs. No lack of money for Obama to implement his amnesty. There’s then a conference report, where the Senate and the House meet to reconcile the differences in the two bills, the clean bill and whatever amendments the Republicans added. But Harry Reid refused to allow the Democrats to go to conference, and I didn’t know he could do that. This is a first for me. I continue to learn things. I did not know that a party leader could stop a conference committee from convening to reconcile two different bills. But Harry Reid said, “You need 60 votes! You need 60 votes here to get to conference, and you don’t got ’em.” So he simply refused to let the Democrats go to conference. So the Republicans bill, it didn’t matter what it was, and that’s where the Republicans caved. That’s when it became a one-week funding bill where they’re gonna figure out what to do after this one week goes by. We’re back to the same place: Republicans shutting down government. Part of the whole process of destroying the GOP brand is: “Republicans = Government Hate! Republicans = Government Shutdown! Republicans = Government Not Helping People! Republicans = Kids Starving Because No School Lunch, Because Republicans Shut Down Government!” In fact, the left has been so successful in that, they use all of that as the reason their bills are necessary. “We gotta fix what Republicans did! Republicans, last time they were in charge, they threatened to starve every kid! That’s why we gotta provide enough money to school lunch program to survive the next Republican onslaught.” So it’s been working. BREAK TRANSCRIPT RUSH: “Congress Averts Homeland Security Shutdown With One-Week Extension.” And as I say, those of you on hold who want to talk about this, just hang in there because you’re coming up next. “The deal came together after a whirlwind day of negotiations in which the House Republican leadership suffered a humiliating defeat when its 20-day funding bill was rejected.” Humiliating? The White House is calling it a humiliating defeat for the House leadership, and so this Washington Post story dutifully calls it the same thing. “Earlier in the day, the House collapsed in failure when a last-ditch attempt to fund the agency for an additional three weeks died at the hands of most Democrats and dozens of Republicans who voted against it. The defeat was a major blow to Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), whose struggles to get unruly members to fall in line have continued in the new Congress. More broadly, it was an early black eye for the unified Republican majority that had vowed to govern effectively.” What a bunch of pap that is. This is exactly the kind of thing I was addressing in the first hour. This is how the entire GOP brand gets destroyed. They don’t help it any, but this is exactly how it happens. The GOP is the alternative to the failure after failure after failure of policy of the administration. And they have destroyed that alternative. They have destroyed the brand. The Republicans have helped a little bit in that regard themselves, but nevertheless it’s been a concomitant failure that has occurred here. Now, the next story, AP story on this, textbook journalistic malpractice. The AP completely fails to report what’s actually going on here. I mentioned this just a moment ago, and last week. Once the House passes a bill funding Homeland Security, which they did on Friday, the 27th, clean bill, funds it all the way through September, that bill goes back to the House, where the House could add amendments. And the Democrats thought they might get tricked here, because once a bill has amendments to it, gone is the cloture vote requirement, and that bill then gets sent back to the Senate where there’s a conference committee where the House and Senate get together to reconcile the differences, negotiate, come out with a compromise based on the two bills. But Harry Reid refused to allow any Democrat senators to go to conference with the House. And the explanation given by parliamentarians is, well, if they can’t get 60 votes, then Reid doesn’t have to send somebody to conference. Now, in any case, folks, bottom line, this is exactly where budget reconciliation was used to ram through Obamacare. When no Republican votes could be found for Obamacare, when there were no Republican votes necessary, and when the Democrats couldn’t get the required number of minimum votes, they threw out the normal budget process and went to budget reconciliation. That removed the need for 60 votes and returned it to 51 votes and that’s all it wrote. This is exactly in the timeline where budget reconciliation was used to ram through Obamacare. The Republicans in the Senate could have used budget reconciliation to ram through the House’s amended Senate bill. And the Democrats would not have been able to stop them. But they didn’t, and I can’t tell you the number of e-mails I got from frustrated people over the weekend asking me, “Why won’t they do it? Why won’t they use the same tactics that the Democrats used? Why won’t they go nuclear, filibusters, why won’t they use budget reconciliation?” And again, the answer, folks, you’re gonna hear it in our calls. Most people don’t think the Republicans caved. Most people don’t think it was a flop. Most people think that this is exactly what the Republicans want because that’s what their donors want. The Republican donors want amnesty, and so the Republicans have to go through the motions of making it look like they oppose this and they have to go through the motions of making it look like they’re trying to stop the Democrats when at the end of the day they don’t do as much as they could to stop the Democrats and the theory is because they don’t really want to stop them because they all want, the establishment in DC, all wants Obama’s executive amnesty because that is what all the big money donors want. I think that’s true, and I think even if that element were not part of this, I think the Republicans are in such a state of fear over any aspect of opposing Obama, I think it’s getting worse. I don’t think the passage of time is lessening that fear. I think it’s enhancing it. BREAK TRANSCRIPT RUSH: This is John in Salt Lake City. Hello, sir. CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thanks for bringing me aboard. RUSH: You bet. RUSH: So you think the whole thing is rigged, almost scripted from the outset, designed to make it look like they’re really trying and really trying, and maybe even getting close, but at the end of the day the evil villain triumphs again? CALLER: Yeah, they’re just too slick for us. Oh, they just outmaneuver us. RUSH: Do they not realize how hapless and ineffective and absolutely worthless they look in carrying out this charade? CALLER: They don’t care. They’re getting what they want. They’re getting reelected. They have safe districts. Who cares? What happened to the — you know, I go back to 1994, when they came in with all the bluster. What happened to the end of the Department of Commerce, education, energy? It’s the same claptrap. We get it every year. RUSH: Well, I’ll tell you what happened there was the school lunch program and the budget battle of 1995. That’s when the neutering and the deballing of the Republicans began. CALLER: I don’t think they ever had ’em. I think they were just shooting their mouths off and didn’t expect to win and then they won and didn’t know what to do. RUSH: Well, I don’t think that’s the case. I think they thought they were gonna win. I think they wanted to win and I think they had their contract. They did balance the budget. They did do some reform things. They scared the hell out of Bill Clinton in 1995 and ’96. CALLER: I want to bring up somebody that you — the hand grenade with a bad haircut said that was gonna happen all by itself if no changes were made to budget or spending by 2002 anyways. RUSH: Wait a minute, what did the hand grenade with a bad haircut say? CALLER: He was that the budget — numerous times in ’92 he said if no changes to the budget were made, if no changes to spending were made, the budget was gonna balance itself by 2002. RUSH: That would be — that was ’96. CALLER: That was ’92. RUSH: Oh, that’s right, that’s right, that’s right, I forgot. The hand grenade with the bad haircut, that’s right, ’92. By the way, in addition to that, there were a lot of people who said, and I remember asking a bunch of leftist economists this on Charlie Rose, just to buttress your point, a bunch of people said if we freeze the budget but allow for inflationary increases in every budget item, it would balance in five years. CALLER: That’s exactly right. So they’re taking credit for something that was gonna happen by itself, and then it was gonna go nuts again, and the Republicans did nothing to stop that. RUSH: Well, I’m cutting them a little bit more slack than you are in that era, but it didn’t take long. I will agree with you that they didn’t do hardly anything with that victory. I think the mistake they make was assuming in that victory that the whole country had automatically become conservative and they stopped explaining who they were and why they were doing what they were gonna do, and they stopped explaining their agenda. CALLER: And that may be true. Great being on with you. I’ve been with you since ’88. RUSH: Anyway, John, I appreciate the call. I didn’t mean to steal your thunder. But remember who’s host here. BREAK TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Dave in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, welcome, sir. You are next on the EIB Network. Hello. CALLER: Hi, Rush. This dovetails a little bit with what you were just saying. This morning during the top-of-the-hour news break a couple times I heard the story that John Boehner is being criticized ’cause he can’t control the conservative wing of the Republican Party. I’m thinking, what hasn’t he controlled, and why don’t they ever say that about Harry Reid can’t control the liberal wing of the Democrat Party? RUSH: Exactly. Exactly. And the idea he can’t control the conservative wing of the party, what do you think that means? CALLER: You got me, because to me they haven’t been able to do anything — RUSH: It means if there weren’t any conservatives, Boehner would have signed on with McConnell weeks ago to this deal to fund the Homeland Security. There wouldn’t have been any talk about defunding amnesty, but because Boehner doesn’t control those extremist radical conservatives, we were taken to the brink. That’s what it means. If Boehner had total control over the Republican caucus, why, we wouldn’t even have been talking about defunding a part of Homeland Security, and the fact that we almost did just shows that Boehner has lost control. Now, why don’t we ever hear that Pelosi lost control of the liberals in the House or Harry Reid? Because that’s all there are in there. But as far as the Drive-Bys are concerned, the liberals can never be extreme. They’re never out of line. They never pose a problem to the leadership, and they’re not embarrassing to anybody. But in their world, the conservatives are extremists, they’re embarrassing, and, you know, Boehner’s afraid of them and he can’t control them and so forth. It’s just evidence of the double standard which everybody is well aware of. BREAK TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Take it for what it’s worth, but I just got an e-mail from somebody who just came out of a meeting with some staffers to Republican congressmen, and the reason that the House did not pursue defunding those three small areas of Homeland Security to prevent Obama having money to implement his amnesty was criticism from the media for shutting down the government. It’s almost becoming a bit too pat, if you ask me, but it’s believable at the same time. This is the excuse, this person was in a meeting, some Hill staffer, said, “Yeah, they’re just scared to death of the media criticizing them for shutting down government.” You know, it’s amazing what have become the formative events in the modern Republican Party. There are two of them. The nomination and election of Ronald Reagan counts for nothing. Instead, the Republican establishment, when confronted with the possibility of a conservative nominee, thinks Goldwater. They equate conservatism with landslide defeats. They do not equate conservatism with Reagan and two landslide wins. The second thing is this. The government shutdown in 1995, I’m telling you, it’s become more obvious that that is one of the single most formative events in the Republican Party’s life, recent life. The shellacking they got, school lunch program, shutting down the government, has paralyzed them ever since. They are living in abject fear of having that said about them again. It’s just mind-boggling. BREAK TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Okay, now, listen to this. This is Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary. Don’t you know, Obama’s livid at the House for this silly seven-day extension of the Department of Homeland Security funding bill. Just livid. It was Obama who arranged it. It was Obama and the Democrats who arranged this seven-day thing when you get down to it, right down, because what this is going to permit — you mark my words. Let’s see if I’m not right about this. The end of seven days, before this seven days is up, the next time this is voted on, the House is gonna be voting on the Senate bill. The seven-day extension takes care of one bill. Now they’re gonna go back and they gotta do it all over again, right? And here will come a clean Senate bill. And if the House Democrats — Pelosi sent ’em a note Friday night. Pelosi sent the House Democrats a note urging them to sign the seven-day extension because doing that would permit a brand-new full Senate bill, clean Senate bill to come back to the House after seven days, and on that one they think it’s like just be rammed through because the Republicans will be finished trying to please and appease their base. So here’s Earnest going through the emotions of explaining how livid Obama is and how unfortunate all this was and how cheap it makes the Republican leadership look. EARNEST: The president certainly was disappointed to have to sign that one-week extension. That’s bad policy, and it reflected a bad choice by the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives. The fact that the president had to sign a seven-day extension doesn’t just reflect a bad decision made by the Republican leadership in the house, it reflects the failed leadership of the Republican leadership in the house. RUSH: See? EARNEST: And we are hopeful that Republican leaders will do what they should have done last week, which is allow the House of Representatives to vote on a clean full-year funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security. RUSH: And, voila, that’s exactly what’s gonna happen when these seven days expire, a brand-new Senate bill, could be the same thing, but it’s clean, no carve-outs, no defunding of these three little areas to fund amnesty, a fully funded bill will come back and this time the House will have a chance to vote on the whole thing and they’ll do it because they’ve demonstrated their effort to stop this. They failed, but they gave it everything, to appease you. You mark my words and see if this isn’t what the grand design has been. And all of this orchestrated by the Democrats. This is a Democrat idea, to get the Senate bill ultimately passed in the House. We will see.
Why won’t they take every step available to them to stop this? It’s not why can’t they; it’s why won’t they. (interruption) Yeah, 2009 is exactly rightly.
Then that bill would be sent to the House. The Democrats were demanding that the House pass the identical bill, a clean fund of the Department of Homeland Security, and send it up to Obama and sign it. Democrats began to worry that maybe they had been victimized by a trick. Pass this clean bill, and then it goes to the House, where (they feared) the House could add amendments. After the House added amendments and changed the bill, that requires that changed bill — the new bill — to come back to the Senate.
“Congress managed at the last minute on Friday night to avert a partial shuttering of the Department of Homeland Security, passing a one-week funding measure for the agency. President Obama signed it shortly before the midnight deadline.” That was too close folks. Breathe a sigh of relief here. We came that close to not having our border sealed and be completely protected from violent extremists acting in the name of Islam. Actually, the borders are wide open. This is a bunch of hoo-ha.
Two things have been happening at the same time. The Democrats have been implementing their agenda all the while blaming the Republicans for the fact the Democrats’ agenda’s failing and getting away it. Then The Politico: “White House Gloats Over GOP’s DHS Flop.”
CALLER: You kind of stole my thunder there because this is the point I wanted to make. I think we are getting sandbagged once again by the Republican leadership. They want this. They’re playing the role, if I may spin an analogy, of the pro-wrestling jobber here. The guy who’s obviously overmatched by the headliner, comes in, goes through the motions, gets flopped to the mat and choked on within the specified time limit, and I think they’re just drawing the time limit out a little bit farther this time.
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