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March 17, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:12
March 17, 2006, Friday, Hour #2
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All right.
I I stand corrected.
Ray Davies is not dead, and I'm happy about that.
I but I I tell you, I I thought Sherrod Brown was black.
I thought Ray Davies was dead.
Russ Feingold thinks that Bush wants to assassinate American citizens.
Are we really even here today?
You know, I Live from a Southern Command in Sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
All right, folks, line up.
Whatever you want to talk about, fine with me.
800-282-2882 is the phone number.
I really did.
I could have sworn.
Sometime this past six or eight months that I saw a story that Ray Davies had passed away of an illness, and I remember being devastated by it.
And I know who Ray Davies is, it kinks.
He once had a fling.
He might have been married.
No, watch this be wrong too.
With Chrissy Hind, who does my theme song.
You know, the pretenders, they they I think they had a I don't know anything anymore.
You know, I just don't know anything.
Now uh the what kind of moments?
Uh uh I t I guess maybe it is.
Maybe you know, I turned 55, and maybe there's just a gap somewhere in the memory, and I I've got a memory, I got memories of things that aren't.
You know, this is scary.
I remember things that didn't happen.
Uh I know that Ray Davies was uh well, no, I didn't know this.
Ray Davies was shot in New Orleans on January.
Maybe no, because I I'm not gonna belabor this.
No, no, no, no, no.
I don't it's not ready to untie the other half my brain.
I'm not ready to do that yet.
I I but that would be an act of desperation.
If I did that, there that would ever it would just be hopeless for everybody else.
Okay, well, anyway, uh folks, we move on.
This is the uh award thrill packed.
Watch this be a major.
In fact, Ray Davies has a concert tonight in uh in uh Atlanta.
We hope somebody's gonna show up as Ray Davies.
We we we know that.
All right, I wanna I want to go to the audio sound bites.
That's probably the safest thing to do today, is let other people talk.
So we've got a whole slew of sound bites here on Operation Swarmer and the drive-by media and their attempt that we noted yesterday.
Uh their attempt to portray this as a political act, that George W. Bush is sending American servicemen and women into battle to risk their lives just to get his poll numbers up.
That's the thrust of the charge.
That they just a politically motivated attack running out there just to try to make Bush look powerful in a war on terror and a war in Iraq look like there's some good things are happening, and the media is just talking amongst themselves about how this is just all a it's all a trick.
It's just designed to counter these bad polls.
So this morning, live from uh Iraq, Lieutenant General Peter Chirelli, who is the multinational corps commander, held a press conference.
An unidentified female infobabe asked him this question.
Can you explain to us?
There are some people who say there is a political subtext here.
Couldn't the only people saying it are you?
People in the media.
Why don't you ask the question this way?
We in the media think this is a trick.
And we don't think there's a subtext at all.
We think you're doing this because you want the president's poll numbers up.
We think the president ordered you.
They don't ask the question that way.
As though others are speculating, and they have to explore it.
They have to ask because others are bringing it up.
So here's what uh here's what uh uh Lieutenant General Chiarelli said.
There was no attempt on anybody's part back here to time this to anything other than the intelligence that was coming in.
Uh it was an operation that we had been working uh for a couple of months.
Actually, the question I have is where's this been?
Where's this been last year?
Why isn't this done every two weeks or so?
But I'm not a general.
Uh and I'm not a you know, I'm not on site over there, but that's the question I would have.
But so there he is.
No, no, no.
There's not this been going on for two months.
We're doing this timed with the intelligence.
Now, of course, the the subtext with the drive-by media is well, of course he's lying.
He's part of the Bush team.
If he doesn't, if he doesn't lie, he got fired or he'll get demoted.
Maybe sent to run Abu Grab.
So let's now go to the media.
MSNBC this morning, host Amy Roeboch talked with Craig Crawford, Pat Buchanan, and about Operation Swarman.
Buchanan said there's a there's a feeling here on the part of some Americans that somehow this is all some cynical thing, putting something over on someone, and if the press can't get in there and report bad news, then there is something is wrong.
The administration generates a certain amount of cynicism with the way they handled the alerts uh with uh the old alert system.
Uh the Tom Ridge after he left as Homeland Security Chief said the White House meddled in that, uh wanting to goose up alerts when they needed attention.
We saw three days after the Democratic Convention, they put out an alert about financial institutions under attack.
Turned out that was based on four-year-old intelligence.
There's a pattern here of using some of these things.
Oh, there it is.
There's a pattern.
There is a pattern of the administration doing things like this, the Democratic Convention, they have the alert levels.
That was Craig Crawford, by the way.
I don't know where he writes anymore.
Okay, we go to uh stick with the same show here.
After Crawford said that, he added this.
I think the White House is seized upon this event to to to make as much of it as they can and to put out all this video to try to do this.
I think if the uh these images of uh that are government produced, uh these videos that we are seeing, uh indicate and and there's no bad news out of this, which I don't know how we'll find out about it if there's no coverage.
Uh that's how they covered their bets, I think.
Uh you know, as if people see us taking action, but I don't think it's uh it's a long run uh beneficial uh event unless uh there's a pattern here that emerges that we're in charge in Iraq.
You know, fifteen hundred people in an action like this uh for a couple days uh isn't gonna prove over the long run.
Did you catch this?
I unless there's a pattern here that emerges that we're in charge in Iraq.
A pattern here that emerges.
These are buzzwords and buzz phrases and the drive by media.
So Craig Crawford is this is he's he's convinced this whole thing's made up.
Uh that uh that there were that no reporters along, there are no embeds, we're getting government pictures.
We're not getting any bad news, uh, which means there probably is a lot, uh is what is what he's assuming.
Um I just wanted you to hear this because it's a see I told you so predicted this yesterday.
Now I got a couple here from Wolf Blitzer, and uh you know, you you people, some of you people out there have been really mad at me this week for defending Wolf Blitzer, or at least not not ripping him.
Well, we put together uh uh a couple of sound bites here to uh to illustrate uh, you know, why we say he's not a bad guy.
And you'll hear it in these two bites.
He's got he's got Madame Albright on.
And uh Wolf says the uh the aerosol operation underway right now, Operation Swarmer, joint U.S. Iraqi military campaign to try to deal with the insurgents north of Baghdad.
I assume that you think this is uh good that Iraqi forces uh now may be up to speed, getting ready to cooperate with U.S. forces in these kinds of operations.
They so far haven't found insurgents, so I hope very much that the coincidence of this being the third anniversary of the beginning of the war and the finding of intelligence to launch this swarmer operation uh really produces the insurgents.
All right, so you hear she doesn't believe this.
She thinks this is politically timed.
Uh and that we haven't found any insurgents, it's a bogus operation, and Wolf just could have let her he just could let her roll over on that and uh and get away with it.
Wolf said, are you suggesting or implying that there may be some political motive in launching this operation?
No, I just think it's a very interesting day.
Uh the operation.
Stop the tape.
Course she means that.
She is suggesting or implying that there's some pl how can you read that previous answer any other way?
Of course she's suggesting it.
Out of the national security strategy, the president going out.
Uh I admire the coordination.
So it's sort of like changing the subject.
Is that what you're saying?
I I hope that this all works because I have great faith in our military.
But it would be pretty uh uh devastating if the U.S. military and American lives were put on the line, put endangered to try to help the president politically, because that's the implication of what I hear you saying.
No, I am I am not saying that.
I think that uh they have managed to have a an important day in terms of putting out the national.
Stop the tape stop.
Now she's trying to slither out of this.
See, Wolf Wolf wolf put her on the up against the wall on this.
Here's what I hear you saying.
This is purely political.
He's putting American soldiers risks at lives for his own political fortunes.
No, no, no, no, no.
I'm not saying that.
I like it.
It's a very interesting thing.
She's trying to slither now.
Here's the rest of the squirming.
Security strategy and putting this uh operation swarmer into place.
I hope that the intelligence matches what they are trying to do.
I admire the military.
That will not, that last comment will not endear her to the Democratic Party base.
They despise the U.S. military.
We will be back in mere moments.
The best of this is yet to come, though.
Stick with it.
Okay, it's open line Friday.
I just checked, by the way, with the staff to make sure that it is indeed Friday.
Didn't want to be mistaken about that.
So let's grab a phone call.
Naples, Florida.
This is Sarah.
Nice to have you on the program, Sarah.
Thanks, Rush.
Uh happy St. Patrick's Day.
Um I my point is um I don't really think it does a whole lot of good to keep asking the Democrats to come up with solutions for Iran or any of the other problems that we're we're facing, because we're in charge.
We're in charge of all of it.
And if we're making a mess of things, I don't think the Democrats are going to step up and start trying to help us.
I think that when they do, that's when you kind of make fun of it anyway.
So I do think that it it's it's a mess that that's been made in the last five years.
And I do.
I do.
It's been getting worse.
Well, actually, the Democrats have come up with a plan.
It's called censure and impeachment.
I mean, that's that's what they're running on.
Uh uh, they don't want to be a very good thing.
Fine gold Pardon?
Just fine gold, right?
Well, yeah, but I mean that's the whole party.
I mean their their strategy that the reason they want the House, I've got the story here in a stack.
They're ready to go with their subpoena power.
They're they're already they're ready to call witnesses on impeachment.
Uh once they win the House of Representatives back, they're they're ready to go.
That's what you think they'll win?
You think we'll win the House back?
Uh no.
Uh not at all.
Well, so I I mean I don't think I think it's kind of a paper tiger.
I I don't think they've got any power.
I I think that they can complain all they want, but they're not in charge.
Sarah, it's an election year.
And the Democrats are out like you saying what you just said that everything's been botched by the Bush administration.
Okay, when you run for office.
Now I know this is a little idealistic.
When you run for office, you generally have a reason why you want to win.
When you have a reason why you want to serve, and you generally go out, you tell people that so that when you win, you have a mandate.
When you win, you can say, I won because I said X, Y, and Z, the people voted for me, and so we're gonna do X, Y, and Z. Right.
The de The Democrats are afraid to really say what they're gonna do because they'll lose even bigger than they're gonna lose already.
So they have to mask it and camouflage it.
That's why they're not gonna come out with an agenda.
They're also living under the illusion that the rest of the country hates Bush as much as they do, and all they've got to do is sit around and wait for the voters to throw Republicans out.
And that's that's that's their that's arrogance and it's condescension, and it's not going to work.
Well, I still don't think they're about to play into your hands about, you know, tell us what your strategy would be, because why would they do that?
I'm not sure.
Why would they interrupt their strategy?
It is interesting that that's your perspective that you think that I'm trying to lure them into a trap.
No, I think.
I don't need to lure them.
They're already in the trap.
They've been in the trap for five years and they can't get out of it.
They just don't know they're in it.
I've already lured them in in your way of thinking.
Well, it just makes us sound like we want them to help us.
That's how I read it.
No, no, no.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I don't think they're capable of helping the country right now, Sarah.
They're too interested in restoring themselves to power.
They'll destroy whatever they have to to do that.
I just want them to be who they are because I want people to see it.
And this fine gold step is exactly that.
This censure and impeachment movement coming on the heels of the port deal where they try to tell us they're big on national security.
Now they want to impeach the president for trying to find out if Al Qaeda's going to hit us again.
It's no more complicated than that.
That's a gift.
I say give us more.
But it's I I find it I find it interesting that you think that they would weaken themselves because I would shred their plan to a million pieces, and so they're not doing it because they're afraid of me.
Well, they might be.
They might be.
Of all you pundits who, you know, they they they don't need the scrutiny now because they're they're just sitting back and and watching everything happen.
Um it would be nice if they could come up with answers for everything.
But obviously nobody has answers for everything.
And that's what's kind of frightening is that you're not going to be able to do it seems to know what to do.
That's not true because I do.
Well, why don't you run for office?
Well, I don't know what the pay cut.
I've I've I've answered this question.
I don't know how many times.
I couldn't get elected anything in this country.
Getting an audience and getting votes are two different things.
You know, you got to know your place.
Uh you got to know what you love and what you don't.
I I don't want to have a coat and tie every day.
I don't want to go kiss babies.
I don't want to have to fundraise.
I don't want to hold my hand out and beg people to put money in it and then expect something in return.
I hate those kinds of obligations.
I don't I have no taste for that.
Uh but look, Sarah, I'm I I'm glad you called.
I uh uh it's an interesting perspective that you bring at the the and I think she's right, folks, in the general theme, they're afraid.
They are afraid to come out and say what they're otherwise otherwise when when Mertha calls for this vote to get us out of Iraq, they what three people voted with with it, they ran from it.
When Feingold tosses this little bomb of censure on the Senate floor, bam, they all run and he runs away too and from from a debate of it, then gets on his his buddies in the Democratic Senate for cowering uh in fear and running away from his brilliant proposal.
Uh they, you know, they don't I I don't think that they're actually interested in doing anything.
They're just talk.
You know, the the the Democratic base, as I saw uh said so profoundly earlier uh this week in a stellar broadcast, I believe on Wednesday, might have been Tuesday.
The Democrat voters, this this kook fringe out there, emotional satisfaction now substitutes for winning, as is evidenced by the Paul Hackett debacle.
They were ecstatic.
I mean, you you would you would have thought they just won the country back.
He lost.
But that was a moral victory because Hackett told it like it was.
Uh the Democrats in the Senate, they'll be glad to talk all this stuff up.
We killed the Patriot Act, but they don't actually kill anything, and they don't ever act on their ideas.
He throws that censure bomb out there in the Senate, but nobody's doing anything about it.
They're just all talking no action.
And they think that's gonna be enough.
And the things they're talking about are are just oh hell, folks, they're insane.
You know, it just it it it it I don't know why I'm spending so much time trying to analyze insanity.
It makes me insane.
Sandy in Red Bluff, California.
Welcome to the program.
Hey, Ross.
Hi, Sandy.
How are you?
Pretty good.
When we were kids, our guy was Wolfman Jack.
I mean, he did more than just play records.
He was like a friend to us.
Who when you were growing up, who was your favorite DJ, and who influenced you the most in terms of um not in terms of business, but in terms of um quality of production and stuff.
Well, uh the the the I had a lot of influences on a on the quality side.
There they're basically two.
Uh yeah, one of them I got to listen to uh in the winter time when the sun went down early, and then there'd be Larry Lujack at uh the big 89 WLS in Chicago.
I I w I wanted to be Larry Loujack.
Uh and and then when I heard tapes of Robert W. Morgan at KHJ, he was the morning guy at KHA in Los Angeles for a while.
I thought this guy is superb too.
So I I would and there was a guy, there were about four or five of these.
I think uh the Johnny Rabbit was the nighttime DJ at KXOK in St. Louis, uh 6.30 A.M. It's not there anymore.
I think the frequency is, but that's that was the local station uh in St. Louis grew up listening to.
But the Johnny Rabbit, I don't remember what his actual name was.
There are like two or three of them.
It was a franchise this station had.
But uh I thought I still think uh for what I've heard, the best DJ, the best personality in top 40 radio ever has been Larry Luja.
Back after this, stay with us.
That's exactly what we do here.
Make the complex understandable.
It is open line Friday.
We're gonna go back.
I got four great one, two, three, four great sound bites here.
More on this whole notion of the media trying to say that Operation Swarmer is a political stunt.
But first, our buddies at Newsmax just flashed this story.
Failed presidential candidate John Kerry, who once served in Vietnam, offered a startling prediction this morning.
If the United States doesn't change its global warming ways, New York City and Boston will be destroyed by flooding by 2036, by 2036.
He was on the radio this morning.
He said, I can I can say to an absolute certainty that if things stay exactly as they are today, absent some unpredictable change in what's going on, within the next thirty years, the Arctic ice sheet is gone.
Not maybe, not if the Arctic Ice She is gone.
Uh there I had a story in the stack earlier this week, and I didn't get to it.
Uh but it was all about we're at the tipping point.
That was we're at the tipping point.
There's nothing we can do anyway.
It we've gone past the point of no return with global warming.
We m it's over.
We missed it.
We're finished.
And I read this as well, hell, it may as well then go out there just you know, start smoking by the SUVs, uh running all over the place.
If there's nothing to do, live it up with the time we've got left.
Uh sort of like being diagnosed with a fatal disease.
Keep doing what gave you the disease until you die.
Enjoy it.
This is uh I'm not making this up.
I this is this is not this is not a parody story.
This is some old buddies over at uh at Newsmax.
He said, already you have the Greenland ice sheet beginning to melt.
If that melts, you have a level of sea level increase that wipes out Boston Harbor, New York Harbor.
I mean, it's just stunning what we're looking at.
Carrie blamed the Bush administration's environmental policies for the coming destruction of New York and Boston.
He said Europe and other countries are responding.
The U.S. remains oblivious.
At least the administration remains oblivious.
Uh despite the dire warning, Kerry hasn't done much to change his own global warming ways.
At last report, he and his wife still owns several SUVs, a gas guzzling yacht, five BTU gobbling homes and a private jet.
Carrie doesn't own diddly squat of that.
It's all his wife's.
Like fellow environmentalist Waco RFK Jr., Carrie continues to withhold his support for the proposed construction of a wind farm in the waters off Nantucket, where he and his wife own one of their five mansions.
Speaking of that, speaking of that, there is a story here about uh is this it?
Yes!
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
The Air Force wants to build a wind turbine on the Massachusetts military reservation that would power the base's groundwater cleanup.
The initiative, which cleans millions of gallons of polluted water a day at eight treatment facilities, spends more than one million dollars annually on electricity.
The contamination at the base is from normal military activities.
Air Force officials told a Cape Cod Times that the turbine could save 170,000 per year, paying for itself in eight to ten years while using a cleaner energy source.
We are an environmental organization, said John Davis, manager of the Air Force's installation and restoration program.
We do anything we can to lessen our impact.
The turbine would be no more than 300 feet tall, Would be built in the southwestern corner of the base, where the average wind speeds 20 miles per hour.
The project must still be approved by several groups, including the FAA and officials uh overseeing the nearby military uh radar facility there.
Cape Cod.
Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, all these various places.
Uh we'll see if this thing has a chance.
So there you have it.
New York and Boston flooded, destroyed by global warming in 2036 because of the last five years of the Bush administration, and nothing we can do about it.
Unless something totally unpredictable happens to reverse global warming.
All right, to the audio sound bites.
CNN's Larry King live on the panel, Katrina Vanden Hoovel, uh Hurricane Katrina Vanden Hoeble of the Nation, Senator Diane Feinstein, California, Christopher Hitchens, columnist at the Vanity Fair.
And uh Larry King says, Hurricane Katrina.
Don't you uh don't you count it important, if true, that this was an Iraqi concept, an Iraqi idea there, but isn't it a great idea?
I think this is a sign of desperation.
A sign of desperation, uh war that is unwinnable, that is unlawful, unnecessary.
And also, you know, you're dealing with the slaughter, possibly, of innocent women and children, and you possibly create more insurgents, the resentment against America so deep.
I think it's very important to understand that we are now the United States is in a brutal occupation, has is in the middle of an Iraqi civil war.
So I think this is a sign of desperation, and it is a very important moment to assess the need to begin to find a way out with honor and dignity for Iraqis and for Americans who are serving there.
You're listening here to a genuine space cadet.
You know, you really are.
I mean, there's no other way to describe it.
Hitchens can't even put up with it.
Here's here's what Christopher Hitchens said.
It's not an attack on Iraq at all.
It's an attack on the enemies of Iraq who are trying to poison its uh life and destroy its democracy.
And it's absurd to talk about this being an occupation.
Would anyone around this table look into the eyes of President Jalal Taliban and say he's occupying his own country?
The United States is very nobly acting as the militia now for those who don't have a militia, for those who don't have any thuggery or I.E.D. at their disposal, it's the best thing we've ever done, and a shame on people who snare at it.
Yeah, just put uh Hurricane Katrina in her place.
Uh Larry King says, uh, do you you agree with that, Senator Feinstein?
When Mukhtara al-Sadr went to Basra and blamed the Americans for the bombing of the Golden Mosque, that for me was the straw that broke the camel's back.
I now believe that we're in the third year, that Iraq has to begin to really take over, and that we've got to begin to redeploy our troops.
We have a war on terror.
We need more people in Afghanistan.
There are other places in the world where it's where it's very problematic.
And Iraq at some point is going to have to be for Iraqis, and we're going to have to be very careful.
We don't place a target on the backs of our men and women in the middle of a civil war.
Okay, so at this point, uh, our old buddy Christopher Hitchens is about to lose it.
He goes after Hurricane Katrina Vandenhoovel again and move on.org and uh and and the entire left for blaming Iraqi deaths on America, and he also takes a little swipe at Senator Feinstein.
It is quite disgraceful to hear anybody saying that the deaths involved in this are our fault.
Bob Herbert today in the New York Times describes hideous atrocities committed by sectarian fascists of the worst type, and he says these are the casualties of Bush's war.
As if the president was killing them, as if our armed forces were doing these murders instead of trying to kill and capture the people who are committing them.
All moral sense is now being lost, it seems to me, by the fans of Moveon.org and by the people who come on your show and spout their speakers' notes, and it's appalling to me that a senator from the great state of California can come and say that her broadback was broken by the straw, I quote her, of Mokada Sada.
Is that not something?
Is that not fabulous?
He basically said, move on.org is a bunch of kooks.
All they've got is a bunch of talking notes.
He can't believe the lack of morality on these people's parts, and he's Any and and I can't believe that a senator from the great state of California's back was broken by Mukhtada uh uh Muki Al Soder.
That was uh Larry King live last night.
My friends, I predicted this to you.
I warned you way back when I first heard what the Maryland legislature was planning on doing with Walmart.
I said they're not gonna stop at Walmart if this thing happens.
This is the one they you know, they passed an extortion scheme.
They told Walmart you gotta spend at least eight percent of your payroll on health care, and if you don't, you gotta send us the balance.
Well, now that Walmart is required under Maryland law to spend at least eight percent of its payroll for employee health benefits, some Maryland state lawmakers want smaller businesses to pay up too.
So all of you people out there that were rubbing your hands in glee, yeah, glad they got Walmart.
Just remember, these people will eventually get around to you too.
Legislation introduced Wednesday in Annapolis would require all that's AL.
All businesses to spend four and a half percent of their payrolls on health care for both full and part-time employees.
As with the larger employer law, the money would either have to be used for company provided insurance or paid to the state.
The bill sponsors say the eight hundred thousand Marylanders without health insurance could benefit from the proposal.
Small business owners say it'll cost them too much, but Prince George's county delegate James Hubbard's says the legislation will include grants for some businesses to offset the cost.
Oh, how big of them.
A hearing on the bill is set for um Thursday.
So that was uh I guess that's next week.
So the uh it it it's uh folk, there's no other way.
This is this is this is just pure uh you almost call it fascism.
This is just pure fa this this is the state telling businesses, and this is just to start.
If you're gonna tell them what they have to spend on health care, it isn't gonna be long before they start telling them what they have to spend on other things, like wages, or like uh i you name it.
Once they start getting away with this sort of stuff, uh this is liberals, this is who they are, and they are showing themselves and this is also gonna spawn a bunch of copycat action in other states around the country, so keep a sharp eye.
Uh you can't escape it.
You can't escape it now by downsizing your workforce to escape the law, because now they're just gonna pass a law to affect every business since they got away with Walmart.
Back after this.
It's exactly as I've told you folks, the Democrats are invested in defeat.
Diane Feinstein, you just heard her admit on Larry King Live that she wants to cut and run because of something a terrorist said.
Muki Al Sader.
So we gotta get out of this is horrible.
It's all falling apart.
We've got to get out of this because of what a terrorist said.
This is why I'm telling you, the these people cannot be trusted with this mission.
They just can't.
Here's David in Nashville.
David, glad you uh called open line Friday.
Hi.
Hey, Rush, thank you very much.
You have said that the um Democrats are not willing to put their plan for forth because the American people will not take to it.
I am curious, what is the Republican plan?
I know that they, without question, I believe in the Iraq plan that we have it, but other than that, all we have seen is increased spending by um in the Democrat in the Republican Party for the past six years.
They just signed off on a nine trillion dollar debt ceiling.
And I'm curious where we are going forward with what is the Republican agenda for for us to truly want to vote for them this year.
Well, uh, you know, that's actually an excellent question.
I can tell you what the Republican agenda always is when they win, and that's conservatism.
The problem is when they get elected, they often abandon it and and moderate uh uh so I in terms of the Republican Party uh agenda, I I think the the the obvious centerpiece of it right now is the war on terror and national security.
But when it comes to uh uh comes to other issues, you can't can't make up their mind what which way they want to go on immigration or illegal immigration.
Uh correct.
Well, I throw a rock and a war on terror in the same thing.
I I I think it's all part of the the same the the same thing.
It's that's that's the the the national security issue.
Iran is gonna be uh uh part of that mix too uh at at some point.
But let me know Peggy Noonan has a piece today in the Wall Street Journal about this this out of control spending, and and she quotes the same story I quoted uh in Wednesday's USA Today, that that federal spending in the last five years has gone up faster than at any time since the the programs that that were created to sp to spend all the money, the Great Society.
And she asks her readers, did anybody really think when George Bush ran for office in 2000 that he was going to cut spending.
He ran as a compassionate conservative, and he was out there talking about how we should not balance the budget on the backs of the poor.
And I I remember raising hell about that myself.
They said that during the uh during the campaign.
So there I know the the spending is out of control.
It's ridiculous.
Uh uh and he hadn't vetoed one spending bill, period.
Uh but let me just ask you, is she right in as far as you remember in that campaign, did you think you were getting a budget cutting president?
Somebody was gonna submit smaller budgets and be serious about it.
I never expected a smaller budget because as history has shown, they have never spent at a smaller level this year than the previous years.
What we did not expect to see was such an increase on spending that had nothing to do with defense, the out of control other spending, the um 60 or the 60 or 6,000 plus earmark spending, the amount of earmark spending has been through the roof.
I think.
But you know, so hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.
Just on that.
See, you've you have I want to correct you uh because you have been caught in the trap that that the drive-by media and everybody else is laid.
They've got you focused on earmarks as the reason the budget's ballooning, and they're not.
I'm not defending earmarks.
But if you want to know where the budgetary pressures exist in this country, take a look at entitlements.
There's a government report out or a congressional report, somebody's put it out.
I'll find it here in the stack.
And as this has been coming.
I mean, we have warned of this on this program for years.
Not too far down the road, if something isn't done, households in America uh will each have to take on an additional tax burden of $7,000 just to pay for it.
$7,000 in additional taxes for the average household in a very relatively soon period of time.
And that's not earmarks doing that.
And uh, you know, the the and we're back to having this debate over the line item uh veto, and and you know uh the way the way the president's proposed this, I'm not even sure that it's constitutional.
Uh it's I care about the constitution.
Now I don't get into the details of it right now, but I'm not trying to avoid your question.
I I I think it's a great question.
I don't think that the Republican Party itself has much of a uh it's not if they do.
They always, when it comes down to campaign, they always turn into conservatives, and that becomes the and they win on that.
But if they abandon it, which they've done, uh not just the president on domestic issues, they abandoned it in Congress and so forth, and especially over in the Senate, you know, then they end up where they are now uh with uh all this talk running around about the Republican Party base staying home, being upset.
Uh and uh there is a lot of that uh upset.
Uh but you know, I could tell you what the conservative agenda is.
I could go down item by item, I could do it philosophically.
Uh the Republicans per se uh they'd be a little bit more difficult to do.
It can be done much easier than the Democrats can do it, but it would still not be easy.
Quick timeout, we'll be back.
Stay with us.
Speaking of the budget and everything, the Senate just blew through.
Bush, for all of his faults in this, Bush did submit a uh a budget this time around with some spending caps in it.
Uh he did, and the Senate just blew right past them.
Just the the Senate is led by Republicans, and it just blew past these caps as they don't exist.
I'll give you the details on this and we uh come back.
This is a story that never changes, too.
18 years.
This is the same thing.
Every but every year.
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