How the Budget Deal Paves the Way for President Hillary Rodham Clinton

Wednesday - October 28, 2015

RUSH: So how does the budget deal pave the way for Hillary Clinton?  Folks, it's real simple.  Over half of any Republican candidate's campaign arsenal has just been neutered.  The Republican Party cannot campaign by running around blaming the Democrats for destroying budget, for overspending, for threatening the very fabric economically of the country.  They can't do it.  This is the Republican budget deal that Barack Obama cannot wait to sign. 

So the idea that the Democrat Party and their nominee, most likely Hillary Clinton, pose a grave threat to this country's future because of their runaway spending, their expansion of the welfare state, the expansion of the entitlement state, the creation of more and more dependents, we can't say that anymore.  A Republican presidential candidate is not saying that anymore.  All the Democrats are gonna have to do is say, "Wait, wait, whoa, you're accusing us of doing what?"  And they just have to go back and cite this budget deal, which is coming up for a vote today. 

That's how over the top this is.  It's how far the Republican Party has abandoned its own principles in putting together this budget.  The fact that they make it a two-year budget takes it out of the presidential campaign as having any relevance.  And if the Republicans happen to win the presidency, the new president already has his first fiscal year budget signed into law by Barack Obama.  Now, these things can be open 'cause budgets are actually one year.  I understand all that.  But the effort here is to take this off the table for two years so there will be no fights on the debt limit, therefore no potential government shutdowns. 

In other words, the Republicans are looking at it as though they are taking themselves totally out of any political risk circumstance.  And that may be, but the way they did it was to essentially act like Democrats in putting together this budget.  When you can't go after the Democrat presidential nominee for who she is and what she will do and why you don't want that to happen because you've already made sure it will happen, what in the world are you gonna campaign against her on?  That she's incompetent, Benghazi, secretary of state, Huma Abedin, Bill Clinton?  What's gonna be the primary campaign message when all of this is off the table? 

So I will be eager to see.  This just argues more and more for a presidential candidate that's not part of this apparatus.  And eventually it may even happen tonight, if there's some bright-eyed, bushy-tailed debate moderator tonight.  "Can I see a show of hands of candidates who agree with the Republican budget and support it?"  That's a sitting duck.  That's just waiting to happen tonight.  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  Here's another thing.  Another thing I'm sick and tired of hearing about is the "dysfunction in" Washington.  I'm sick and tired of hearing about how Washington's not working together.  The hell they're not!  The two parties in Washington work together all the time.  They work together. The only thing they're not working together on, and didn't, is Obamacare.  I could spend the next half hour going through all the pledges and promises the Republicans made in the campaign in 2010 to give them back the House, all the pledges that have just been blown to smithereens in just one deal, this budget deal that they did. 

The way to look at this budget deal is, Barack Obama just got his ninth year.  If you want to know what this budget deal is, that's how you look at it.  We have a two-year budget deal that blows through every spending cap that we had previously won.  It gives the Democrats and Hillary and Obama every spending measure they want.  It raises the debt limit a trillion dollars, so we're looking at a $20 trillion national debt the next couple of years.  It's a two-year budget that takes the budgeting process out of play and no work on it for two years 'cause it's a done deal. 

That's how we get the ninth year of Barack Obama, and he didn't have to do a damn thing for it other than be there -- which, apparently, scares the Republicans to death.  Like I said earlier, I can't explain what the Republicans are doing.  There is no common-sensical, common-sensible reason for what they are doing politically.  What they're doing is not helping their presidential campaign.  What they're doing is filibustering the election of Democrats, either Hillary or whoever.  Just to repeat this again, the reason this greases the skids for Hillary is because over half of the reason to oppose her we just agreed to! 

Government spending and government growth as far as the eye can see. 

We can't campaign for the presidency on how we're gonna be in favor of reduced government, how we're gonna make it smaller, how we're gonna be responsible and we're gonna reduce the debt, the deficit, what have you. We can't say any of that with credibility because our party just engineered a two-year budgeting that blows the smithereens out of any kind of spending discipline whatsoever!  It gives Barack Obama, philosophically, his ninth year.  Whoever is president, starting in 2017, is gonna be saddled with an Obama budget. 

You tell me the parties aren't working together?  You tell me they're not crossing the aisle?  Governor Bush, we don't need any more of that.  Governor Christie, we don't need any more crossing the aisle.  Senator McCain, stop!  We've got enough of it.  That's not the dysfunction in Washington.  The dysfunction in Washington is they're acting like there's no Constitution.  And it's not just Obama.  Because when Obama violates the Constitution and nobody holds him to account, it must be nobody cares. 

I know what they're all saying.  "You remember the budget battle of '95, Rush?  Remember what happened to us? We tried to fight Clinton back then.  Look what happened.  We can't."  Yeah, I know.  I know exactly why.  The conservatives that won the House in 1994 immediately stopped teaching conservatism.  They stopped explaining it as they went. They did not respond to the Democrat media efforts to tarnish them, to trash them, because they figured, "Nobody's gonna believe this stuff." 

So now all you have to do is ask Mitt Romney about contraception and (stammering) "Bah bah bah, what do you mean, George?"  War on Women is what we get next.  Oh, yeah, that's another thing! Mitt Romney was responsible for the War on Women, and these are the people he wants to work with!  I'm tired of so much of it.  I'm tired of my intelligence being insulted.  This business of, "I need to be the guy you elect because I can work with the other side."  No! We already have plenty of people doing that.  The party lines have been sufficiently blurred inside the Beltway.

All right, well, here.  Let me read to you the pledge, the part of the pledge. Republicans in their campaign in 2010. This is the leadership, now, the people who put this together.  This is part of the pledge that they gave us.  They actually said this.  I mean, I'm reading it verbatim.  You're probably not gonna believe it, but here it is.  "Washington's out-of-control spending spree needs no introduction. Our debt is now on track to exceed the size of our economy in the next two years. The lack of a credible plan to pay this debt back causes anxiety among consumers and uncertainty for investors and employers.

"It isn't just that we need to stop spending so much -- we need to stop spending so irrationally. The spending process in Washington is designed to make it easy to increase spending and raise taxes and difficult to cut spending and lower taxes. The deck is stacked against limited government and fiscal responsibility. This must stop."  Four years ago they wrote this.  Four years ago they promised to do just this.  "Over the past three years, non-security discretionary spending (the spending that is approved each year by Congress outside of the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of Veterans Affairs) has increased a staggering 88%."

Discretionary spending, 88%. 

Everything about defense and Homeland Security, basically. 

"As a result," they wrote, "we now borrow 41¢ of every dollar we spend, much of it from foreign countries, including China, and leave the bill to our kids and grandkids." What have we just done? We have just raised the debt limit! The people that wrote this just orchestrated a $1 trillion increase in the debt limit.  And in their minds, this program is the problem, and Fox News is the problem, and everything that's not the old three networks. Everybody in the New Media is a problem, 'cause we point this stuff out. 

You're not supposed to remember this pledge.  They gotta get this done before Ryan sworn as speaker so his fingerprints aren't on it.  That's the leadership's gift to him, give him this budget deal so he won't have to get his hands wet doing a budget from couple of years. He's already got it done but he didn't have anything to do with it.  Ahem.  The pledge goes on.  "Economists have warned that all this borrowing runs the risk of causing a damaging spike in interest rates, which would cripple job creation. If our economy remains debt-driven, it will not be in a position to support a lasting economic recovery."

Right.  So let's add another trillion dollars to it, why not? 

This pledge is actually 2010.  That was the election year.  In that pledge, they promised to "Cut Government Spending to Pre-Stimulus, Pre-Bailout Levels," and then a paragraph on how they're going to do it. They promised to "Establish a Hard Cap on New Discretionary Spending," and then a paragraph on how they're going to do it. They promised to "Root out Government Waste and Sunset Outdated & Duplicative Programs," and then a paragraph on how they're going to do it.

They promised to, "Reform the Budget Process to Focus on Long-Term Challenges." They said, "We will make the decisions that are necessary to protect our entitlement programs for today's seniors and future generations. That means requiring a full accounting of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, setting benchmarks for these programs and reviewing them regularly, and preventing the expansion of unfunded liabilities."  I guess that stopped being operative some time ago.  So what happened after the voters read this pledge and believed it and trusted the Republicans to do what they said they were gonna do and elected them to run the House?

What happened? 

"Upon taking control of the House in 2011, Republicans approved a budget with $1.3 trillion in deficit spending, pushing the national debt to $14.7 trillion (this is the officially recognized debt, not taking into account tens of trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities)," which are in the $50 trillion to $60 trillion range. "Today, after four years of GOP control of the House, during the last ten months of which Republicans have also controlled the Senate, the debt stands at $18 trillion." It was $14.7 trillion when they took over in 2011. Now, wait.  I know some of you might be shouting, "Obama! Obama!" 

Remember that they didn't follow through on stopping Obama. 

Oh, yeah, we got some spending caps, but they took care of that.  And the sequester. We took care of that.  Those obstacles are out of the way.  Obama hated 'em anyway and they're gone now. 

During the last 10 months, Republicans have controlled the Senate, the debt stands now at $18 trillion, up from 14.7 in 2011.  In his last official act, Speaker Boehner, along with Senate leader Mitch McConnell, will accede to Obama's demand to push the debt limit up to 19 and a half trillion dollars in the next two years, which is an attempt to remove the threat posed by deficit spending as a 2016 election issue.  This is how the road has been paved for the Democrats to win the White House again.  We have removed the threat posed by deficit spending, which is what Democrats traditionally have been known for. 

We cannot run a campaign for president now accusing the Democrats of deficit spending, big spending, dangerous spending, destructive spending.  We've done it.  That's half the arsenal against your Democrat presidential campaign every four years, and we just took the arrows out of the quiver.  So $5 trillion nearly added to the national debt since the 2010 pledge to end control out-of-control borrowing and spending.  And it's not because we're not crossing the aisle and working with Democrats.  It's not because of dysfunction in Washington.  Well, there's dysfunction, but the dysfunction is not that we aren't working with the Democrats.

That's one of the biggest smoke screens. That's one of the biggest insults they fire at us, as though somehow it's our fault, by the way.  We, you and I, we've elected people that won't cooperate.  We need to work with these people, we're told.  It seems to me that's exactly what's been happening.  And for all of this to happen, something has to take a big, big hit, and that is the Constitution of the United States. 

Now, in the 2016 campaign, I fully expect the Republicans are gonna try to blame all of this on Obama and the Democrats.  And they're gonna continue to hope that you don't realize the spending that's contained in this budget deal.  They're gonna have their friends and allies in the media tell you it's a great budget deal, that we beat Obama at his own game.  We got a two-year budget and we've taken a government shutdown off the table, and that's the biggest threat to our winning the White House, and that's what they honestly think. 

So that's what they're gonna tell you.  We beat Obama. We got a two-year deal. We forced our discipline on this country and on Obama, and we've eliminated the threat of a government shutdown, and then they're gonna go out and start trying to blame Hillary for all the spending she wants to do, the destruction that will happen if she gets to do it.  They will hope that you don't remember any of this and realize that they promised to stop it and not only caved in stopping it, they joined and worked with and crossed the aisle to make it happen.  We will probably continue to hear, "If you'll just turn out and vote for us, we're not gonna do business the way the Democrats have been doing it for the eight years of Obama."  So just my two cents. 

But, folks, all of this, these monologues here in the past hour, all of this is why the idea of writing these books for children was so appealing to me, for young people to learn the truth of how this country was founded.  At some point the people of this country are going to have to become learned enough, educated enough on how this country works and how prosperity happens, how growth happens, how freedom is maintained.  People are gonna have to understand this.  They're not being taught in schools.  They're not being taught of the greatness of this country.  They're not being taught the Constitution.  They aren't being taught the sacrifices.

Instead they're being taught of all the racism and the bigotry and the social injustice and the immorality of the early days of this country, and how we've gotta pay the price for that. That's why we have to open the borders, because we've been so selfish.  We have stolen all the resources of other people all over the world to enrich ourselves, and those days are over.  We've got to pay it back.  This superpower status of ours, that's not legitimate.  We didn't work to own that.  We stole that from people.  We stole their cultures. We stole their resources, their diamonds, their minerals, their gold, whatever, we've gotta give it back. 

We've got people who have been deprived for 200 years ago because of the existence of the United States finally have to be permitted to get theirs.  That's the compassion of this immigration thing all wrapped up.  And it's bogus, and so the opportunity to -- I mean, young kids are not gonna listen to this show.  They're just not.  When you were eight, 10, 12, 13, you didn't listen to talk radio.  But I sure wish they did.  I wish they were able to comprehend.  I know the parents try to explain it as best they can, but that's why writing these kids books is so appealing.  You know, the old "make a difference" thing.  And that's why the fourth one in two years is out, Rush Revere and the Star-Spangled Banner.  

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  Here is Brian, St. Augustine, Florida, great to have you on the EIB Network.  Hi.

CALLER:  Thanks taking the call, Rush.  I just wanted to say for ten years Harry Reid and the Democrats ran the country on continuing resolutions because they didn't want to be blamed with deficit spending and now the Republicans go ahead and make a back door deal with them, a backroom deal to do just that, and --

RUSH:  You know, that --

CALLER:  -- they take the blame for it.

RUSH:  Let me tell you, that is a fascinating point.  We haven't had budgets.  We've had continuing resolutions, and one of the reasons for continuing resolutions is that you always get to get what you want really at the point of a political gun.  It's hard to say there's deficit spending with continuing resolutions.  And so the Democrats didn't want that moniker, they didn't want to be labeled as deficit spenders, so the continuing lubrication.  It also enabled them to say the Republicans were not cooperating, it's the only way they could go. And so now the Republicans have gone ahead, "Hey, okay, we'll take the deficit spending label ourselves. We'll do it, we'll do it. We'll give you two years.  Lay it off on us, happily."