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July 14, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:33
July 14, 2006, Friday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Thank you, Johnny Donovan.
And what a pleasure and a privilege it is to be able to spend this part of the day with you.
I am Paul W. Smith, fellow student of the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, coming to you today from the Midwest campus in Detroit, Michigan, the motor city still, and the growing life sciences corridor with Google choosing Ann Arbor, Michigan for their next mega Google Plex.
So we're excited about that.
We have so much to do today.
And, you know, Rush is the master, which is why I am also, like you, a student of the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, where there's never a final exam, but we are tested every day.
He comes to us and not only informs us and teaches us, he entertains us as well.
But right now, I have to tell you that with what's in the news, it's going to be, we'll be hard-pressed, but the team is in place.
We still want to not only inform you, we do want to entertain you.
After all, it is Friday, which means we'll have some sort of, a kind of open line Friday.
We do want your phone calls always on the Rush Limbaugh program at 1-800-282-2882.
1-800-282-2882 or RushLimbaugh.com.
But we also have some guests, some experts I like to bring on to hear their point of view on some of the news of the day.
And there's just so much of the news of the day.
Obviously, the Israeli warplanes continuing to hit the Lebanese capital.
Hezbollah rockets hit northern Israel.
And this is all because of its Israeli retribution for the capture of a couple of Israeli soldiers.
And Lebanon, you may find this hard to accept and believe, but it's as if Lebanon is caught in the middle here.
Because the deal, the conflict is not the typical Arab-Israeli conflict.
This is a Hamas-Hezbollah-Israeli conflict.
The problem is Lebanon hasn't done enough to get Hezbollah out of Lebanon.
And they can say that they're not powerful enough, they're not strong enough, whatever.
But I do feel sorry for the people, the Lebanese people, who are stuck in the middle here, and they're getting pounded for it, let me tell you.
Now, Israelis in and around the port city of Haifa are in their community bomb shelters or bomb-proof rooms in their homes.
The Israeli army won't say why it's issued yet another take cover order.
At least one militant rocket fell on Israel's third largest city yesterday.
No one was hurt, and there's still concerns about what's going on there.
UN resolution, Security Council is debating a resolution about this Israeli-Lebanon situation.
We've got these Mideast concerns spiking oil going toward 80 bucks a gallon.
I'm hearing it may be close to $354 a gallon of gasoline.
Who knows?
Yeah, there's so many stories that we're going to touch on as we go along.
Don't forget, too, there are 25,000 Americans that are in Lebanon, and there's talk of American soldiers having to go in there to get them out.
And now, I'm assuming these are people who have to be there, because I also presume there's still a travel advisory from the State Department.
HR, Kit Carson, executive producer, on duty today, and Mike Maymon, Director of Engineering, HR, can check that out for me.
But I believe the State Department has had a travel advisory on Lebanon for a very long time.
But still, 25,000 Americans apparently are there.
Other news includes the Big Dig.
This is the, you know, I always think of it as the Kerry Kennedy big dig in Boston, a multi-billion dollar boondoggle that has been hit with overruns and now horrifically problems that took the life of a woman in that tunnel.
Who can possibly feel safe going through that thing now?
So you've got Kerry and Kennedy and their big dig, and it's going to take the governor and presumed Republican candidate for president, who in fact was on the Rush Limbaugh program with us one of the times we sat in, Mitt Romney.
It's going to take a Republican, Mitt Romney, to get to the bottom of that disaster and try to fix it.
And there's going to be all kinds of horrible stories that come out regarding the big dig, that multi, multi, multi-billion dollar boondoggle in the backyard of Mrs. Kennedy and Kerry.
That will be a horrible story before it's all over.
And then, of course, unless you've been living in a cave, you have found that Valerie Plame and her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, remember, these are the people who want to stay covert.
If you listen to them and talk to them, and they're continuing their efforts to stay covert after many magazine covers, feature stories, television and radio interviews, including one with me, things have actually gotten a bit quiet.
And Valerie Plame, not being used to truly being covert and undercover, is starring in many press conferences today.
She is suing these United States that she so passionately loves and went to work for.
She's suing the United States government and Vice President Dick Cheney-Karo Rove, Scooter Libby, and like 10 other people, accusing them and other White House officials of conspiring to destroy her career.
Now, if we do a check of the W-2s, I would just guess, I'm guessing that all of this has been a career booster financially, I presume, don't you think?
They seem to have done a lot better since that whole covert thing went by the wayside.
But, you know, they actually had become covert again, and it must have been driving them crazy.
There are a variety of stories that we will get to a little later in the program.
Coming up in just a moment, Congressman Mike Pence will be here, the Republican from Indiana.
And we're going to speak with the Congressman because he at least is trying to fashion a compromise between the House and the Senate and the White House on immigration reform.
Is it over?
Is anything going to happen?
Well, we'll see what Congressman Mike Pence has to say, and you'll be able to speak directly with him, I believe, at 1-800-282-2882 on the Rush Limbaugh program.
We'll also be hearing from Ariel Cohen, who is Senior Research Fellow of Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Heritage Foundation, USA.
We're going to talk about U.S. relations with Russia in light of some of the big issues facing the U.S., North Korea, Iran, Israel.
We'll also talk about the state of democracy in Russia, which has recently come into question, most notably with Vice President Cheney's broadside against curbs on the press, political opposition speech in the former Soviet Union.
Matter of fact, President Bush will be having dinner in Russia tonight with Putin before the start of the G8 summit with the other world leaders, no doubt talking about North Korea and the Middle East.
We'll also welcome in George Friedman, the CEO of Stratfor.com, apparently the nation's largest private intelligence firm.
And George Friedman will discuss the tactical side of what's involved in the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict now raging in Lebanon.
So we'll look forward to some more expert opinion on some of these things that are happening.
And in the final hour, we're going to talk a little bit about a study that came out that said that the American dream is not possible, is not probable, is not possible.
The American dream, they say, at the Aspen Institute is closer to a hallucinatory hope than a reachable reality.
Now, we're going to have to do a reality check.
And though all of the news I've just gone through with you is not so good, things are pretty dog-gone good in this great country of ours.
So we might have to go back and look at what the American dream is, or maybe what it should be.
But I got to tell you, there are a lot of us who are smack dab in the middle of living the American dream.
You know, it was Will Rogers who said, we Americans are really the only people who drive to the poorhouse in a brand new car or something like that.
When I tell people that the American dream is reachable and that life is pretty good, and they say it isn't, and then you ask them, what do they have?
The things that they take for granted now, oh, two cars, three television sets and DVD players and cell phones and home entertainment systems, and the list goes on and on, and they don't remember, and I'm not that old.
I'm actually a little younger than Rush.
I remember when the family had one phone in the house, one car that we waited for it to come home before we went out and did anything, because that's just the way it was.
Wasn't that long ago?
And boy, have we come a long way.
I think that I'm living a part of the American dream, and I bet you are too, and maybe we just need to be reminded of that from time to time.
So we'll talk about that a little bit in our final hour.
A couple other notes, not since Sea Biscuit.
Has a horse captured the hearts of so many as has Kentucky Derby champion Barbero or Barbaro, if you prefer, developing now a severe case of laminitis, a potentially fatal disease.
After everything this horse has gone through, after the catastrophic injuries in the Preakness on May 20th, they're now saying that Barbaro's chances of survival are poor, bad odds, as they say.
No pun intended.
And that's sad.
It's been a horse that has captured the hearts of so many because it was such a champion.
We'll also keep track of a couple of other lifestyle stories to ease us into the weekend.
But first up, more on immigration reform with Congressman Mike Pence joining us right around the corner on this, your favorite radio station.
I'm Paul W. Smith, in for Rush Limbaugh.
As we continue on the Rush Limbaugh program at 1-800-282-2882, that's 1-800-282-2882 or rushlimbaugh.com.
I'm Paul W. Smith, fellow student of the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, where there is never a final exam, but we are tested every day.
More news headlines.
Now the number 70 people in Lebanon, 10 in Israel have now been killed in three days of fighting.
Israeli warplanes today again striking at runways at Beirut's airport, also destroying mountain bridges on the main highway to Syria.
Dozens more rockets have been fired from Lebanon into northern Israel, and Lebanon's leader saying he got a promise from President Bush that he'd urge Israel to limit civilian injuries in its attacks.
But the Prime Minister says he could not get President Bush to call for a ceasefire.
You can't ask.
You cannot ask Israel not to defend itself, period.
We'll get back to that story coming up in just a bit with Ariel Cohen and also George Friedman, some special guests, and with you on the telephone at 1-800-282-2882.
But first, back to immigration.
And this came to my attention from USA Today, USA Today, talking about how many illegal immigrants we have here.
If you picture the Rose Bowl, something we like to think about here with Michigan, with University of Michigan football, Michigan State for that matter, would like to get there too.
Everybody has a college team that would like to get to the Rose Bowl.
Well, there's 93,000 fans there on New Year's Day.
They say, picture 130 Rose Bowls filled to capacity, and you're looking at the number of people you have to deal with with the immigration issue.
Congressman Mike Pence, a congressman from Indiana, has put together a compromise between the House and the Senate and the White House on immigration reform.
We want to hear what he has to say.
Congressman, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Program.
Well, Paul, it's a great honor to be on with you and special honor to be on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm a longtime listener, first-time caller.
Well, hey, that's not too shabby.
First-time caller being the featured guest.
Not too bad at all, Congressman.
Very humble.
Thank you.
Tell us how your plan is different from all the other plans that we've heard.
How your plan is not going to offer amnesty, which a lot of our listeners certainly are absolutely against.
How your plan is not going to reward people who have broken the law.
Well, as the headline in that USA Today editorial said, I believe amnesty isn't the answer.
I think we have to come up with legislation that puts border security first and exclusively.
And under my proposal, we would, for the first two years, do nothing but border security, at the end of which, Paul, the Secretary of Homeland Security would have to verify that the border security measures included in the legislation had been substantially completed.
And at that point, and only at that point, could we initiate a no-amnesty guest worker program that would be operated by private sector firms outside the United States of America?
We would ask the 11 to 12 million illegal immigrants in America to leave the country and apply outside the United States for the legal right to be here.
And that's why I call it a no-amnesty guest worker program.
And a program, from what I can tell, the Pence Plan, if you will, embraces the House-passed bill and rejects the amnesty that the Senate wanted.
In every way.
That's right.
Basically, my proposal, which is available at lots of places on the Internet in its entirety, embraces all that we passed out of the House of Representatives last December with a couple of minor fixes that the House leadership has already agreed to do.
We basically do all the tough border security, again, exclusively for the first two years, Paul.
And then also we embrace all of the very tough employer sanctions that the House of Representatives passed.
To me, that's the essential piece here.
Get control of the border first, put tough employer sanctions on the books that will drive people into a process of deporting themselves to go to these privately run, what I call, Paul, Ellis Island centers outside the United States of America.
Well, I want to learn a bit more about that.
Representative Mike Pence with this Republican from Indiana, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, on this idea that you are going to ask that all 12 million of these illegal immigrants actually leave the country and then come back.
How in the world can that be done?
Well, I think it can be done first and foremost if If we use the private sector to do it, you know, I'm not endorsing any companies, but that great Troy, Michigan company called Kelly Services comes to mind.
You know, that's been making the rounds on the internet, the Kelly Services Program.
Well, sorry about that.
Kelly Services, a great company that puts hundreds of thousands of Americans into jobs every year.
Monster, it is a great company.
But asking here is that you would go to people that literally place millions of Americans in jobs every year, and you would say, look, we want you to bid on the right to run these centers.
Now, the Department of Homeland Security would still oversee it.
The Justice Department would still do all the background checks.
The State Department would still issue the visas.
But I think it's a powerful idea.
You know, Paul, the free enterprise system kind of got us into this mess.
We ought to look to the free enterprise system to help us get out of it by administering and managing this private placement program outside the United States at these Ellis Island Centers.
Well, and I'm glad that you recognize the fact that we do have to hold employers responsible.
These 12 million people did not just come over here and then find jobs.
They came over here for jobs that were looking for them.
And we have to be aware of that.
We also have to be aware that these are low-paying jobs.
I'm not so certain that the people who hire these people are going to hold that place for them, hold that position while they go through a whole process of leaving the country and then petitioning to come back, then coming back.
And what about the, I don't know how many, two or three million at least children of these illegals that were born in America that are now American citizens?
Right.
I think you make a great point on referencing whether or not people would hold jobs.
And I want to make it very clear.
We just simply are committed to saying we needed a guest worker after we've got border security done, Paul.
need to set up a new guest worker program but we have to do it without amnesty and what we say to employers and the people who are in this country i want you i want you i want you to hold that thought because i want to hear what you say to employers and to people who hire those people who are here illegally and to the people who are here illegally I want you to be able to say that here with plenty of time.
And I want our callers to be a part of it at 1-800-282-2882.
You may have a question or two coming up here that will be very useful and very important, something that hasn't come up.
If you've wondered aloud why people haven't asked this question, it's your opportunity to ask this question of Congressman Mike Pence with his efforts to fashion a compromise between the House and Senate and the White House on immigration reform.
You can be a part of the Rush Limbaugh program by calling right now, 1-800-282-2882.
That's 1-800-282-2882 or go to rushlimbaugh.com and you'll be a part of the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
I'm Paul W. Smith, fellow student of the Institute, coming to you from the Midwest campus in Detroit, Michigan and taking your calls at 1-800-282-2882 with Congressman Mike Pence coming up next.
Stay with us.
Thanks, Johnny Donovan.
A pleasure and a privilege to be with you on the Rush Limbaugh program at 1-800-282-2882, 1-800-282-2882 to your calls in just a moment.
Congressman Mike Pence is with us, a Republican from Indiana, and talking about his efforts to fashion a compromise between the House and Senate and the White House on immigration reform.
You were about to say something about the companies that have, in fact, hired these illegals and also the fact that if we send these illegals back, if those jobs will be held for them, or exactly how you think this is going to work out.
The onus really is on an individual in the United States who is here outside the color of the law.
What the Pence Plan essentially contemplates, Paul, is that we would say to anyone in our country illegally that, look, the only way that you can be in the United States of America, the only way you can gain access is legally.
And the way you do that is by applying outside the United States of America for the legal right to be here.
And so the onus is on that individual.
If they want to get right with the law, we would create a new system where they can leave the country and apply at these privately run Ellis Island centers.
If they choose not to do that after a certain period of time, as the House passed bill includes, there are very tough sanctions for their employers.
And I expect with those disincentives, these jobs would dry up for illegal immigrants in fairly short order.
There are those who would argue that the only reason that those jobs don't pay enough to get Americans to take the jobs is because there are non-Americans who are willing to take the jobs.
And if the jobs became available, they would have to pay more and they'd hire more Americans for the jobs.
On the other side, the agriculture, the folks, the farming folks and everybody who would use illegal immigrants oftentimes say that they'd be in big trouble because they couldn't afford to pay a better wage.
It goes back and forth.
But I do want to go back to the one and want to get to the callers here at 1-800-282-2882 on the Rush Limbaugh program.
But, Congressman, what about the 3 million or so U.S.-born children born to these illegal immigrants that are now American citizens?
We can't possibly ask them to abandon their children, and I'm not so sure that it's so easy for them to take them back.
Remember how many of these people got here?
Many of them got here by cover of night, going running through fields, paying smugglers, risking their lives to come to these United States.
Well, that's exactly right.
And those American-born children are since the Supreme Court decision in 1898, Paul, as you know, those American-born children are Americans.
And there would be no legal basis.
We don't want to do this to fellow Americans.
Right.
But here's the point.
One of the appealing things about having private sector firms that can do the confirming employment, do a background check, get a health screening done.
My proposal contemplates from the time an applicant walked into an Ellis Island Center outside the United States to when they could be cleared for a guest worker visa would take about three to five days.
And so instead of asking an individual to leave behind a job and maybe dependents in the United States for a year or two years, it could be for a matter of a week or so that they would have to leave the country to apply in this privately run system of Ellis Island centers.
It doesn't seem to me to be too much to ask an individual whose first act in this country was a violation of the law.
It's not too much to ask them to leave our country and apply outside of our country for the legal right to be here.
And then I call it no amnesty guest worker.
Yeah, and then eventually one would presume applying for citizenship or permanent residency, would you, under your plan, the Pence Plan, increase the quota?
Well, what I would say is certainly we have a backlog in a couple of different areas of 5,000 spots, I think, for unskilled workers a year.
Yeah, visas and green cards and the rest.
Let me say emphatically, though, there's no path to citizenship in the Pence Plan.
And I see the Senate bill as an amnesty bill, first because they allow people to pay a fine and get right with the law, but second, because they contemplate that if you become a guest worker in this country under the Senate bill, you're on an automatic path to citizenship.
My view is that once people leave the country and apply for the legal right to be here, that they ought to have, just like anybody else, have the opportunity to apply for permanent status or citizenship.
But we shouldn't make that automatic, Paul.
I think there's real evidence that an awful lot of folks, particularly the nearly half of this population that live and work around our border states, actually do just want to be guests here.
And if we gave them a legitimate way to come and go to contribute to the economy, to earn a living, but to go back home, that they would do just that.
So no automatic path to citizenship, but at the same time, no barrier to people who get right with the law by applying outside the country to apply like anybody else.
All right, let's see what some of our fellow students of the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies have on their minds.
1-800-282-2882, 1-800-282-2882, the Rush Limbaugh Program with Congressman Mike Pence.
I'm Paul W. Smith.
And it is Jim's turn from Lincoln, Nebraska.
Jim, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh Program.
Thank you very much.
I've got two things.
One is the first question is, how are you proposing to close the border?
Because I understand that 30 percent of the people incarcerated in the United States are illegal aliens.
And what are we going to do with them?
But I don't want to send them back if our borders aren't secure.
Yeah, let me respond that under my proposal, we embrace all of the border security measures, Jim, that were passed by the House of Representatives in December in the Border Protection Anti-Terrorism Immigration Control Act.
That's port of entry inspectors and the policy of catch and release, use American technology for unmanned aerial vehicles, and, of course, 700 miles of a security fence along our southern border.
What we added in, though, Jim, was we said, look, under my proposal, Congress would say to the administration, you have to spend the first two years implementing specifically all the elements of this border security plan.
And then at the end of that two years, you have to certify to Congress that these border security measures have been substantially completed, as Congress designated, before the first Ellis Island center outside the United States, before the first no amnesty guestworker visa is issued.
So that's the criteria.
But you can look at our proposal and know that all the border protection security measures that pass the House of Representatives are in our bill.
That's a very important point.
It's point number one in your plan, the Pennsylvania, border security, getting that fixed.
And let's face it, the problem in 1986, part of it, of course, was Congress didn't create a funds and did not come up with a viable enforcement system.
And that's what we need first before we do anything else.
Well, there's no question, Paul.
1986 with granting amnesty to 3 million illegal immigrants is kind of what got us here today.
But I think it was about two weeks ago I spent nearly an hour in the Oval Office with the President and Vice President Cheney.
And the point that I made to them was that from my perspective as a conservative in the Congress of the United States, as a Hoosier serving in Washington, D.C., is that we have to put border security first, and we have to certify to the American people that we have completed the border security measures before the very first no amnesty guest worker visa can be issued.
And I also made the point that in my way of thinking, if you can get right with the law, if you are an illegal immigrant and you can get right with the law without having to leave the United States, that's amnesty.
But if you leave the country and apply outside the United States at one of these Ellis Island centers for the legal right to work in our country for a two-year period of time, from my perspective, that doesn't include amnesty.
And I made both the points to the president and the vice president in the Oval Office.
Let's check in quickly with Bob in Roswell, Georgia.
Bob, you're on the Rush Limbaugh Program.
I'm Paul W. Smith.
You're with Congressman Mike Pence.
Bob, go ahead.
Thanks for taking my call.
I was one of the lucky ones that got through.
But let me tell you what, 20 million Rush Limbaugh listeners are screaming at their radios right now.
They're screaming, it's not going to happen.
Those 11 million aren't going to leave this country.
And if we can't deploy them now, if we can't find them and round them up now, what are we going to do two years from now when we suddenly decide, well, they didn't go?
Well, I'm on the edge of my seat for the answer, and we're going to get it up next from Congressman Mike Pence right here on the Rush Limbaugh Program.
I'm Paul W. Smith.
The EIB network, the Rush Limbaugh Program.
I'm Paul W. Smith in for Rush on this Friday.
Rush is back in the chair on Monday.
Thank goodness for that.
Congressman Mike Pence is here and on the hot seat right now.
And Bob calling from Roswell, Georgia, saying he's representing about 40 million Rush Limbaugh listeners who are screaming at their radio, Congressman, wait a minute, wait a minute, it ain't going to happen.
12 million illegals are not all of a sudden going to become law-abiding citizens and decide to follow the letter of the law, leave to come back.
And we're not going to get them.
What then?
Well, let me say, with great respect to Bob, I think it is going to happen.
I think if we spend the first two years doing exclusively border security and setting up private placement offices, we'll call Ellis Island Centers, run by the private sector, we educate people about the opportunity to go home and apply outside the country for the legal right to be here.
And we also educate employers about the huge sanctions and fines that they will be facing if they have anyone in their employ after a certain period of time that doesn't hold one of these no amnesty guest worker visas.
I think you've got a chemistry there that over time you would see people make appointments to go home, take a week or so to go through the process of a background check, a health screening, and to have their employment confirmed.
But can I say one other thing about that too, Paul?
I really do believe, there certainly are some bad apples in every ethnic group in the country, but let me say this.
I really do believe that the overwhelming majority of the people that we're talking about, described as illegal immigrants, are other than their violation of our immigration laws, they are good, decent, hardworking, God-fearing people who would jump at the chance to get right with the law.
They just look at a failed bureaucracy today.
They look at the yawning American economy with the opportunities you described so eloquently earlier, and they don't see a coherent way to be a part of it, even right now, to get right with the law.
I think as we close the border first, we genuinely have a moral obligation to create a new system where people without amnesty could return home and apply for the legal right to be here.
I believe with all my heart, as the grandson of one of those unskilled laborers who stepped onto the real Ellis Island back in 1923, I believe with all my heart that millions of people would jump at the chance to take a trip home to get right with the law.
1-800-282-2882-1-800-282-2882, and it's Susie's turn from Springfield, Missouri on the Rush Limbaugh Program.
Paul W. Smith, along with Congressman Mike Pence.
Susie.
Yes, thank you for taking my call.
And I'm glad to be able to ask a couple questions.
The first one is about the Ellis Island centers.
I know that the American taxpayers are paying billions of dollars a year to support these illegal aliens, and we don't even want them here.
Spanish is taking over our country.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, Susie, Susie.
Somebody does want them here, and we have to recognize that fact.
Somebody is putting them to work.
I'm not saying it's right.
I'm just telling you the reality is that there's 12 million jobs that they're taking.
Okay, but they're living on my tax money, and we could be using that for border patrol, for our troops, for other things for the benefit of American citizens.
That's what I'm saying.
That's what I believe.
However, okay, I'd like to know about Ellis Island, these Ellis Island areas, what is going to be, how that's going to be, and who's going to be supporting them during this time.
And also, are we going to...
Let me sum it up.
Let me sum it up.
The Pence Plan calls for it to be handled by the private sector, not a failed government bureaucracy.
And I guess that is a good question, Susie, that you're asking there, among others, is how's this going to get funded?
Who's going to pay for this?
How do those private sector companies who should only be doing it to make money make money?
And I want to ask him, too, if these, the ones that are made illegal here in the United States, we have a system where we allow all the family members to come over the border, too, and become citizens if they have a citizen, a relative who is a citizen, a legal citizen here.
Are we going to stop that law so that we aren't just flooded with Mexicans and people who are in the country?
Well, come on now.
Let's let the congressman answer because you've got a lot of questions and not a lot of time.
Yeah, Susie raises a great question about the cost of this.
It's one of the really great ideas behind this proposal, which has its origins in a Coloradan by the name of Helen Krebel, who first came up with it, Paul.
And that is that the employees, or the prospective employees, instead of paying a $1,500 fine, as the Senate bill contemplates, to the federal government for amnesty, they would pay a fee to these private placement firms to confirm or to place them in a job, to process a background check and to engage in a health screening and otherwise administer the monitoring of their employment.
Bottom line is this doesn't have the administration of this system is borne by the employee or even the employer.
It's not borne by the American taxpayer.
I also picked up a thought there with Susie had that I think is a profound point, and that is what sometimes gets called the external or welfare costs associated with illegal immigration.
They are enormous.
And one of the proposals that's included in this no amnesty guessworker idea is that people who possess these cards would in effect be barred from participating in public welfare programs, Paul.
They would not be able to come here and essentially live off of the welfare state.
And in fact, there would also be, and this is an idea that emerged in a good bill in the Senate, I would like to see us take a portion of their payroll taxes to offset the emergency room costs at hospitals in the, I think there's 23 counties directly on the border and in major cities that have huge emergency room costs related to this.
We need to focus the energy in those 12 million working people on supporting them and supporting the public systems that support them and otherwise make sure through this No Amnesty Guest Worker Program that they don't become welfare dependent and live off of a country of which they are not legally a part.
Final comments from Congressman Mike Pence.
It's the Pence Plan, No Amnesty Immigration Reform, here on the Rush Limbaugh Program.
I'm Paul W. Smith.
Rush Limbaugh Program, Paul W. Smith, Congressman Mike Pence's plan, and Congressman, I'll do it because I'm paid to talk fast.
The Pence plan includes all the tough border security and employer sanctions passed by the House of Representatives, does not grant a path to citizenship of any kind, does not include any form of amnesty, requires that illegal immigrants leave the country, does not favor illegal immigrants over people who have not broken our immigration laws, and you feel it will work because it relies on the private sector, not a failed government bureaucracy.
Did I sum it up?
You summed it up brilliantly, Paul.
No surprise there.
What I could add is that the likes of Newt Gingrich, Gary Bauer, Paul Weirich of the Free Congress Foundation, and even Chuck Coulson have endorsed our proposal.
I really believe it is a proposal that the conservatives ought to take a hard look at.
We need to get control of our border.
We need to put border security first.
But I think we also need to set up a new guest worker program without an amnesty by harnessing the power of the private sector to manage a new program outside the United States.
Tough employer sanctions, tough border security with a no-amnesty guest worker program in the middle, I believe, is an idea whose time has come.
Congressman, a pleasure meeting you and talking with you.
Good luck to you.
Honor to be with you, Paul.
Congressman Mike Pence here on the Rush Limbaugh Program.
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