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May 16, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:27
May 16, 2007, Wednesday, Hour #2
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The views expressed by the host on this program, not necessarily the views of the staff management nor sponsors or custodians of this station, but they should be, they ought to be, and they eventually will be.
I am your host, Rush Limbaugh, America's anchorman, real anchorman, truth detector, doctor of democracy, all combined here in one harmless, lovable little fuzzball.
Telephone number if you want to be on the program, 800-282-2882.
The email address is rush at EIBnet.com.
I've had some emails about this, and I want to go back and review something I said in response to the caller who was chastising me.
I wasn't chastising me, but he was talking about my lack of support for the congressional or for the Congressman Ron Paul, who's the presidential candidate.
And he pointed out something that I very rarely address, ladies and gentlemen, very rarely acknowledge.
It was a big moment in the history of this program when this man said that I have the power to move the Republican base toward a nominee.
We all know that's true.
I seldom acknowledge this because I am very humble about it, and I do not use my forum here to exercise such power in those ways.
The exercise of my quote-unquote power is not something I'm really conscious of on a daily basis, but it would be foolish and silly for me to deny that I possess it.
But the primary effort in the usage of my power is to educate and inform as many people as possible so they get in the arena of ideas and eventually go vote, because I believe in ideas, and ideas triumph.
And when elections are won, I want them to be won on ideas, not labels and other things that are devoid of substance.
This is a very responsible position that I must be cognizant of and use in a responsible kind of power, which is why it's not first and foremost on my mind.
But I did want to make note that I finally have now acknowledged what everybody knows, and it is one of the reasons that I am the biggest target of the American left, simply because of that power.
This is a power, my friends, it can be used for good or evil.
I choose to use it for good.
And so I just wanted you, because somebody, did you really say that?
Yes, I said it.
Did you really mean it?
Yes, I meant it.
Why?
It's the elephant in the room.
Why deny it?
You know, that would be false humility.
And there's nothing that grates on me more than a false, a person that engages in false humility and tries to laugh it off.
I mean, some people do this.
It's considered good manners, but you and I have always dealt with each other straight up and honestly.
And I'm not going to sit here and deny what you all know.
That would insult you.
And insulting you, the people in this audience, is the one thing that I don't do.
Now, I want to say something about Jerry Falwell.
I never met him.
I didn't know Jerry Falwell.
Early on, HR, you might remember the year this happened.
Falwell invited me to go give a commencement speech at his university, Liberty University.
And I didn't want to do it.
I wasn't doing speeches.
I had just gone two years of doing 47 speeches every year on weekends, and I was burned out.
I'd been there, done that.
And so we said no.
And he was persistent as he could be, kept offering more and more remuneration, money, for those of you who watch Channel 13 at Sacramento, during a TV show.
So I had to be 92 through 96.
He was just flabbered.
Then he offered to send a Liberty University jet up here.
No, no.
And at first it was thought that we were just gaming this for more money, and we weren't.
They just didn't want to do it.
It was nothing personal.
It had nothing to do with him.
I just didn't, I wasn't, I don't like doing speeches now.
Wasn't talking to anybody.
In fact, it was during this time somebody in Texas offered a million bucks if I would go down to make it.
I forget who that was, but that's how ridiculous it got.
And I just, I didn't want to do it, not even for a million dollars.
I just didn't want to do it.
Not that crazy about them now.
I have fun when they're over, and I have fun in the process of doing it, but leading up to it, it's just me.
But as I said, I never met him.
I didn't know him.
But I'll tell you something that you ought to note about what's happening.
The man has died.
And I am not surprised when I look at the reactions to people on the left.
They're celebrating.
They are throwing parties.
Folks, if you want to know, if you need evidence, if you need examples of just what kind of hate and low-rent character exists on the left in this country today, you just avail yourself of multiple opportunities out there on the internet or probably on radio to television of the, well, Christopher Hitchens last night on CNN was just brutal to Jerry Falwell.
The man's dead.
And all because he's a man of God.
I mean, atheists, I mean, well, some atheists are just threatened, like liberals are threatened by the truth.
People with no faith are threatened by people that have it.
They don't understand.
I got to tear it down.
And what is being said about Falwell today, Hitchens is brutal.
We might link the transcript as he was on Anderson Cooper show last.
I mean, it is brutal.
I read the transcript earlier.
I didn't bother printing it out.
And this is going, I'll tell you what, this is the kind of stuff that Falwell's family and all his friends now have to put up with and read upon the occasion of his death.
You're not going to find glowing tributes in the drive-by media.
All you're going to find is the usual criticism of the left coupled with their glee over his passing away.
It's not enough to say that it's classless.
It is worse than classless.
It is an indication of just how out of the mainstream of human decency these people can be, and in many cases are.
All of the prominent figures on the right, you know, they tried doing it with Reagan, and they couldn't pull it off because the American people showed up with an outpouring of love for that man that stunned the people on the left.
But when anybody on our side passes away who is prominent in either Republican Party activities or just conservatism in general, this is the sort of thing the left will do when their time comes.
It's just so full of hate.
It is, well, it's not mind-boggling to me anymore.
I keep saying that, but I'm basically just calling your attention to this.
They're saying things in public that no one would dare say personally, except to each other.
It's, you know, but they wouldn't go to Falwell's church and say this kind of stuff.
Well, I take it.
Maybe they would if they could get in.
I really don't.
I just find it horrible, mean-spirited, all these things that they accuse us of being.
Just listen to what the people who are commenting on the left of the death of Jerry Falwell are saying.
I get this.
Just came across a PR news wire.
Our old buddies at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
I think this guy's name is Michael Jacobson.
This is a guy who's taken coconut oil out of movie theater popcorn.
This is the guy who's tried to tell you that Chinese food will cause you to die.
Everything you eat, by the way, is going to cause you to die, as though you're never going to die.
They have just filed a lawsuit against Burger King because they use trans fat.
By using partially hydrogenated oil, Burger King is knowingly increasing its customers' risk of heart disease and early death, according to a lawsuit filed today by the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest.
They're asking a District of Columbia Superior Court judge to order the restaurant chain to stop using trans fats or at least require prominent warning notice on Burger King's menu boards.
According to the Center for Science and the Public Interest, Burger King is the biggest restaurant chain that is not fully committed to getting rid of the artificial trans fat found in partially hydrogenated oil.
Now, a number of things on this.
In the first place, we have this, now we've got a movement against trans fats in this country.
How did this get started?
It started like the left and liberals start everything.
And this is about power.
It's about control.
This is an assault on freedom.
It's an assault on private enterprise.
And it all comes under this umbrella or imprimater of health.
And they've tried this with a number of other things.
And many times their claims end up eventually being rejected like oat bran was going to be good for you.
It turns out it made no difference.
Coffee was going to kill you.
And I had to let that go because surveys indicated they've done it with secondhand smoke.
But this is just a nuisance organization made up of a bunch of miserable, unhappy little leftist activists who are engaging in their primary role in the world as they see it, and that is to control your life and to treat you like an absolute idiot.
You don't know what's good for you.
You don't know what's best for you.
You need nannies, mommies, and daddies, big government liberal Democrats, nonprofit centers.
And it just galls me when people start falling for this stuff.
And now, if you don't want to eat trans fat, that's fine.
And if you read about it and you find out you don't want to eat it, that's fine.
And if Burger King is using it, then go there.
It's simple.
It's called the free market.
But my thought is that most people don't have the slightest idea what the real details are on the so-called threat posed by trans fat.
Somebody just put it out there.
We live in a culture and a society that believes doom and gloom is around the corner.
If that's not going to kill us, this will.
And if that doesn't, something that we haven't heard of yet will.
And it's all part of this recipe they cook up every day to keep people themselves unhappy and miserable and looking for the worst, obsessed with negativism.
It incorporates so much of what liberals try to do, make you think that big anything is out to get you.
You realize people more powerful than you, all they want to do is screw you.
All they want to do is ruin you.
All they want to do is make you miserable.
They will kill you.
They will poison you.
That's what they want you to believe.
And they've got their little, you know, their compatriots and the drive-by media that dutifully report this stuff.
This isn't news when a nonprofit group comes up and says X, but it's treated as news and it's treated as a giant scientific discovery.
And it's treated as something that can help save and prolong lives.
Last I looked, the life expectancy in this country was getting bigger and better without interruption.
But if you listen to these little busybodies, you would think everything's going to hell in a handbasket and getting worse.
Things have never been better economically in this country.
Yeah, but you might say rising gas prices and now rising food prices.
True, but that always happens.
Do you realize there's nothing in the course of human conduct in the free market, in the oppressed world, in dictatorships?
There's nothing new.
There's nothing at all new.
And yet we all, in our generations, we all think that things are the worst they've ever been because human beings are predisposed to believe the negative.
Takes real work to believe positive stuff.
Takes effort.
Got to go work on it.
There's negative stuff.
And plus, it's easy to pass the buck.
Oh, I got sick.
Yeah, Burger King killed me.
I am going to lose five years off my life expectancy.
Burger King and TransFat didn't tell me about it.
They wanted me to die.
You're right.
These companies want their customers to die.
They go into business to kill you.
Does that make any sense?
What business kills off its customers?
The only one I can think of is tyrannical governments.
And that's if you get out of line.
Quick timeout.
Back with more after this.
By the way, folks, I meant to remind you this earlier.
We're going to have Tony Snow on the show at 1.32, just a few mere minutes from now, be on for a couple minutes, 10 minutes or so, from the White House.
Have you all ever seen this Michael Jacobson guy, the guy that runs the Center for Science and Public Interest?
My gosh, I've never seen a grayer, unhappier, frail-looking person in my life that's still breathing.
The guy is a cadaver.
He's a walking cadaver.
And he's got some babe with him.
It's not much different in that regard.
I guess two people in a fax machine.
You know, and they run out and do little surveys and nitpicking with everybody.
To the phones, who's next?
Bob in Columbia, South Carolina.
You're next, sir, on the EIB network.
Hey, Rush, Megadidos from USC Grad in Columbia.
Just wanted to talk a little bit about what I saw around the debate on yesterday.
I noticed for the last couple of months or ever since the Democrats took over Congress, they've been pounding it down our throats that the base is not energized.
And it's just a matter of time until they sweep into the White House and, you know, they have parade, ticker tape parade, New York, and, you know, they take over the country.
But from what I saw in Columbia, the Republican base is very energized, and they're looking for somebody to lead them.
There's thousands of people out.
This business about the Republican base not being energized.
Let me give you two words.
Hillary Clinton, if you want to energize the Republican base, make her the Democrat Party nominee.
I guarantee you, the Republican base is going to be energized.
I will see to it.
It's going to happen.
It's just hard to get.
All this energy now would be wasted.
People don't have that much.
They can spread it out over 500 days or longer.
But the base, you've got your anecdotal evidence and stories from what happened inside the hall last night in South Carolina.
But believe me, there's going to be passion about this.
If anything, if anybody's having trouble out there, and I got a couple stories we'll get to today, the Democrats are having some trouble.
Look at congressional approval.
I know Roger talked about this with you yesterday.
The approval for Congress is beneath Bush.
It's like 29%.
Bush holding steady, 33% out there.
Now, why do you think that is?
And by the way, the Iraq bill, the Iraq funding bill, failed.
The Senate today rejected legislation that would cut off money for combat operations in Iraq after March 31st of next year, less than a year from now.
The vote was a loss for Senator Feingold, it says here.
This is an AP story, and other Democrats who wanted to end the war.
But the effort picked up support from members, including presidential hopefuls, previously picked up support.
It went down to defeat 67 to 29.
It picked up support.
Only the drive-by media could look at it and see it that way.
And they say it picked up support because Mrs. Bill Clinton, a presidential frontrunner, it says here, previously opposed setting a deadline, but she said that she agreed it backed the measure because we as a united party must work together with the clarity of purpose and mission to begin bringing our troops home and end this war.
And then, of course, Barack Obama, another leading 2008 prospect, it says here, said he would prefer a plan that offers more flexibility, but wanted to send a strong statement to the Iraqi government.
These people were allowed to vote for this because there was no danger that their votes would count.
Believe the Democrats are not going to pull out of Iraq, folks.
If they win the White House, as I have said countless times, they're not going to do it.
They will not pull out of there and they will not engineer defeat unless they can hang that around Bush's neck.
But they're not going to hang it around their own.
There are somewhere in that party, there are some adults who are going to keep that from happening.
They're not going to pull out of there.
Again, if the Democrat base, and we know who they are, and it's a small, it's a bunch of kooks, but they're small.
They're thought of to wield far more power than they do because the elected Democrats listen to them and the drive-by media fascinated by them.
And their worldview is that that's the only action in town is what's happening in the Democrat Party and among their base.
There's no legitimacy to the Republican side, just in the worldview of the drive-by media and the American left.
So that's why their attitude about Republicans and the base, they thought the Republican base was a bunch of idiots and kooks, but probably think the Republican base is not going to vote because Jerry Falwell died.
I mean, they have the screwiest view of Republicans.
They still have not taken the time to learn who conservatives are, what they are, what they really think, because they don't think it's legitimate in the first place.
But I'll tell you what, they're running around telling us the American people want us out of Iraq.
Here's a chance.
Defund them, bring the troops home next March, and it goes down to defeat 67, 29.
And they try to tell us that that election last November was about the will of the people's desire to get out of Iraq.
And don't be fooled.
Hillary and Obama, they're just voting on this bill to shore up their credentials with the kooks in the Democrat base.
But they didn't have a chance of actually being held accountable because they knew the bill wasn't going to pass.
The last thing Mrs. Clinton wants, and I'll guarantee you the last thing Mrs. Clinton wants, I don't care if Obama may not care, but last thing Mrs. Clinton wants is for that bill yesterday to win with her voting for it.
That would be death for her.
And this vote proves where the American people are not on this whole notion of defeat and losing the war in Iraq.
All right, a brief time out.
We'll go out and make our obscene profits on the backs of no one, by the way.
And we'll be back with Tony Snow right after this.
And we are back, El Rushmo, serving humanity here behind a golden EIB microphone.
And we welcome back with much glee and excitement, Tony Snow from the White House.
Tony, great to have you back.
And how are you feeling first?
I bet you're tired of getting the question, but I have it asked and I want to know.
I am never tired of getting the question because I've got an answer I like to share with people, which is I'm doing great.
You know, had surgery a couple of months ago.
I'm now doing chemo, finished round number one a couple of days ago.
I'll go in for round number two next week.
But obviously it's not slowing me down.
I'm back at work and having a blast.
Really?
That much chemo, it's not slowing you down at all?
No, maybe a little tiny bit, but I can't tell.
It's really not that big a deal.
That's great news.
That's great.
You know, what did the doctors say about that?
Attitudinally, when you're told of the diagnosis that you were told of, and then you begin treatment and therapy for it, doctors tell you about your attitude going into it, that, hey, look, you can overcome some of the fatigue if you just don't think it's going to be that bad.
It is what it is, but is that something that you, because this is a unique story.
Most people don't tell this story when they're on chemo.
Yeah, well, I'm a couple of things.
First, attitude is a huge deal.
First time I went through chemo, I actually did 12 sessions, and the chemicals were tougher.
This time around, two of the three really don't have any side effects.
And the other one, which can make you a little bit tired, I take in pill form and spread over a week.
So it just doesn't kind of pack the kind of wallop it used to.
But look, attitude is a big deal.
You know, if you go in and you think, okay, I'm going to whip this thing, and you have a combination of attitude and your faith and love and prayers, you know, you watch your diet, you get exercise.
I mean, all those things contribute.
And what I'm trying to do is to, you know, put everything in the plus column that I can.
Yeah, that's great.
Everybody was shocked when they got the news the second time around.
And this is just, it's really great because you have so many people that love and appreciate what you've done and what you are doing.
And I'd like to get to that because I know one of the things happening in the Senate right now that's of extreme interest to people in the White House and out is this immigration bill.
And I've heard a couple things about it, and I want you to tell me if what I'm hearing is right or wrong.
One is that the Senate's trying to push this thing through without senators having a chance to read the whole thing.
It's 600 pages.
They're trying to move a procedural vote forward to get debate going or get a vote going without debate on this much because there's so much in it that is confusing.
And 600 pages is a lot of things.
And a lot of people are upset that anybody would sign a bill that they haven't read, even though that's more common than people know.
Well, a couple of things.
First, we're still in negotiations on this, but the fact is, folks are going to have time to read this, and they're going to have time to look at the fine print.
The other thing is, you've got to keep in mind one of the guys who's leading the charge on the Senate side is John Kyle, who himself has been skeptical of immigration reform in some senses.
So I think for conservatives, they ought to feel a certain level of comfort that a guy who has been with them, and let's face it, John Kyle is not the kind of guy who ever backs away from principles.
So this is the kind of thing that ought to be inspiring confidence.
For people who are worried about border security or figuring out how to be tough on people who break laws or coming up with a system that allows us to identify illegals who are already in our midst and come up with a sensible way of dealing with them, all of those things and a lot more are addressed in the legislation.
But as I said, it's a little premature for anybody to start talking about bills because none has really been drafted up yet.
But on the other hand, there are real negotiations taking place, and the guy who is kind of leading up the effort on the Republican side in the Senate is John Kyle.
Well, look, politics perception, you care about what public opinion is on this.
And I don't have anything other than anecdotal evidence, but there's a significant amount of it.
And it goes like this.
Well, not evidence, but a significant amount of anecdotal discussion about it.
And a lot of people say, John Kyle's a great guy, but they're not being convinced by this because the Republicans have a history of caving to Democrats, even when the Republicans run the show.
Well, they're not running the Senate now.
The Democrats are by a slim majority.
And so people think that this is still just, it's an end run to get an amnesty program passed.
Look, I'll push back in two ways.
Number one, Democrats, there's plenty of Democratic opposition to this, including by unions.
Number two, one of the frustrations we have is that no matter what we do, we got our own guys shooting arrows at us, not giving the president credit for having spent more money on border security than anybody before, having acknowledged that the 1986 bill, Simpson Mazzoli, signed by President Reagan, did have amnesty.
What's amnesty?
Amnesty is a way of saying, we don't care if you broke the law, we scrub your record clean, all is forgotten, as opposed to what we're talking about, which is you've got to admit you broke the law.
You've got to pay a fine.
It is not a wrist slap.
It's a felony-level punishment.
You do not get an automatic path to citizenship.
Instead, what you have to do is after you've acknowledged you've broken the law, after you've paid a debt to society, then you go to the back of the line.
If you break the law, you're out of the line.
That's the Z visa, right?
The Z visa, as it's being called in the news stories about this.
Right.
Z visa is one of these things where essentially what we're saying is, number one, you've got to admit that you broke the law and you've got to pay a punishment.
Number two, you've got to prove that you want to be the kind of American you and I would want to see a rush.
You've got to stay continuously employed.
You can't come here just to get welfare benefits.
You've got to obey the law.
You have to pay your taxes.
At the same time, also, you've got to learn the English language.
You've got to understand American citizenship.
In other words, you have to pass all the benchmarks that you and I would want somebody to pass.
Working hard, playing by the rules, obeying the law.
If you break the law, you're out.
If you cross the border illegally, you're not allowed back in again.
In other words, there are more provisions here to get tough on lawbreakers and also to set up a series of tests that say, at the end of this process, if somebody becomes eligible for citizenship, have they really demonstrated that they're going to be a model citizen in a way that you or I or the listeners to this program would consider an effective representation, effective way of demonstrating goodwill and the right kind of character and behavior.
If you don't, you don't become a citizen.
Well, now this sounds great, but there's this word that keeps bugging me in this, and that's enforcement.
First of all, what if they can't afford the fine?
Second, what if they don't bother to show up because the word's going to spread in their community?
It's just a deportation gimmick, and so they're not going to show up and report.
What enforcement measures, since we have lax enforcement now, what's new in this that's going to help?
Sure, we've been told we can't deport 12 million, and I'm not talking about that because we can't find them.
Now we're going to pass legislation that requires them to tell us who they are, then come in and pay a fine, then admit they broke, then go to the back of the line.
And if that doesn't happen...
Actually, no, we're a little more clever than that, because if it were simply self-reporting, come on out, tell us you broke the law.
Of course that wouldn't work.
But instead, what we have here is a requirement for a tamper-proof.
There are two things.
First, you've got to get the border straight.
I mean, one of the things that you've got to understand is a lot of things hinge upon whether you've got the borders secure and you can start monitoring it.
Now, what do we see?
We see that, in fact, our border efforts are starting to bear fruit and that you're actually getting less illegal flow and that's getting choked off.
That's a good thing.
But for those who are here, they don't have to report.
You know who has to report?
The people who are hiring them.
We're talking about a tamper-proof ID with biometric information on it.
Something can't.
I've never heard about that.
Now, here's the deal.
If you're an employer, you've got somebody illegal and they don't have their papers, you get socked with a fine, and you may have to forfeit assets.
As a matter of fact, we've done something no administration has done before, which is to have real criminal punishments against guys who are knowingly hiring or harboring illegals.
They got to have that.
If the employer doesn't have that verified ID, they're the ones who get caught holding the bag.
They're the ones who become liable for this.
So there are a series of powerful incentives for them to make sure that the people who are working for them are there illegally.
So furthermore, if you're somebody who's trying to collect benefits, sorry about this, but you've got to have it.
So I think what you find is that if anybody wants access to the benefits of citizenship or residency in the United States, they're going to need to come clean.
Otherwise, they're not going to get anything.
So we're going to handle this with a new law, essentially.
Now, here are the things that when the existing law people admit isn't working because that's why we need the new law.
So we have a new law to fix all this.
Here's the thing that based on my knowledge and experience and guided by my intelligence with Democrats, let's just say theoretically that this passed, or hypothetically, this passed.
I can hear Harry Reid and Ted Kennedy the next day saying, how can we be so unkind to charge these people who are working for two bucks an hour $5,000 they don't have?
That is cruel.
That's it.
And try to blame this on the Republicans politically going into the election because it fits the mold of mean-spirited, cold-hearted, and cruel.
The Democrats obviously want these people in to become voters.
They're looking at this in a political sense.
Well, go ahead and respond to that because I don't think that's a good question.
Well, there are two things.
Number one, keep in mind what I was telling you before in terms of the kind of profile you want, people who are working hard, who are paying taxes.
Guess what?
What we're really talking about is people who, in the end, ought to be Republican voters, who came here because they wanted to work, not because they wanted the sponge, who came here because they believed in the American dream, came here and now understand, have demonstrated that they want to be citizens by putting their money where their mouth is, by staying employed, by staying legal and lawful, by mastering the culture.
These are people who ought to be Republican voters because they do, in fact, share the conservative values, and they do look at this as a land of opportunity.
When it comes to this other, though, the fact is Democrats are going to have to be part of this, and we're working with them.
And my sense is that I think it's going to be less likely the Democrats are going to turn around and trash their own handiwork because it has been tough for them.
Again, the unions are all over them saying, why don't you just kill this?
Don't do anything at all.
So there has been a certain amount of political courage on the part of Democrats who are standing up to those interests as well.
Finally, when it comes to the issue of saying, well, you're being cruel to these people, number one, you're not talking about $2 an hour.
You're talking about people who are going to be making enough and saving enough over time.
Number two, you understand how it works.
You can always garnish enough wages to get that punishment and that penalty paid.
So the fact is, you're going to ask yourself, what's crueler?
Having somebody who's working and paying taxes and having those fines, what are they going to rather have?
That situation or one where they get sent back.
I mean, if they really want to become American citizens, they're going to have an opportunity to prove it the hard way, and all the incentives for them is going to be to stay.
Time is dwindling here, and I've really wanted to ask you this earlier, but what about the families of these people?
They're going to want their families here.
How's that?
It seems like this is going to have a possibility of really swelling the number of people into this country illegally.
Well, you know, there's a lot of talk about chain migration.
That has been a concern, and that is something, again, that is a matter of ongoing conversation and negotiation in this.
And let's just wait to see what they come up with on this.
But the fact is that we are certainly aware of the concern and the consideration.
And I go back to what I was saying before, which is you can't have people here who are not working and they are not paying taxes.
One other note here, by the way, and it's also worth considering.
You put together this program, you got your IDs and all this sort of stuff.
If people then decided that they're going to try to sort of migrate back and forth across the border suddenly, they lose the right to stay on American soil, and they've got to go back and apply for things like the temporary worker program and so on.
It's our calculation that as many as two-thirds of the people who are here illegally actually don't want to become citizens.
And at some point, they're going to filter back to where they came from and stay there.
So we may not be talking about 10 to 12 million over the long haul.
You may be talking about 3 or 4 million or 5 million who eventually want to become U.S. citizens.
And again, our aspiration is make them good U.S. citizens, responsible U.S. citizens, and ones who share our values by demonstrating it each and every day by the way they live.
All right.
I've got to go.
I have to make a closing comment.
I want to respond to the whole political aspect of this about, because I raised it about the Democrats wanting this legislation for future voters.
Tony, I've always thought it was a miscalculation, a mistake for Republicans of any stripe to think that these people are going to become Republicans because we do nice things like this legislation.
Simpson Mazzoli did grant amnesty, as you say, in 1986.
Those people didn't become Republican voters.
Well, what I'm saying is somebody who comes here to work and work hard and sharing the American dream, they can become Republican voters.
We ought to be out there, frankly, doing what you do every day, Rush, which is telling people exactly how great this country is and the values that make it great.
Because a lot of folks do come here chasing the same kind of dream that our ancestors did, which is they want to set down roots in a country that does have a rule of law where, in fact, if you work hard, you can achieve your dreams.
And frankly, there is an opportunity to reach out and make those folks Republican voters.
And we shouldn't shrink from not only the challenge, but the opportunity.
Tony, I got to let you run.
I know you're over your time limit here.
We appreciate that, and I'm a little bit over my break time.
But look, all the best to you, and we're all thrilled that you're doing well, and we hope that continues to be the case.
Rush, my friend, it's great being on.
Thank you.
Tony Snow from the White House, and we'll be back right after this.
And we're back, Rush Limbos, serving humanity simply, simply by being here on the EIB network.
You know, the time we had with Tony Snow, we ran two minutes longer than what was scheduled.
We ran 14 minutes.
We were going to go 12.
This segment's going to be shorter than usual because of that.
It really wasn't enough time to debate.
When he's talked about how the unions are for this legislation, they're not.
It's tough.
We had a story here, I don't know, seems like a month or six weeks ago.
John Sweeney's totally changed his mind on this.
He was opposed to this legislation, but for some reason, Sweeney's changed his mind.
The public sector unions are for this.
They've come around on this political reasons.
They're for the legislation.
It's winding its way through the Senate.
But there's something about this immigration argument that the proponents for all this legislation articulate that has always gnawed at me.
And I haven't been able to wrap my arms around it.
But after listening to Tony, it crystallized for me.
These people, these illegals, aliens, whatever, they're coming here on their own.
We're not forcing them to come here.
We are not burdening them at all.
And yet, we respond to their illegal entry by acting like we've done something wrong to them, and we need to do something to make it right for them.
And it's what's always bugged me.
Instead of doing what we can to make it right for American citizens and protect the jobs and the work that they're, we seem to be going out of our way.
Both parties seem to be bending over backwards and forwards to totally opposite the way the Dubai Ports deal was.
You didn't want the Dubai Ports deal, and by gosh, we weren't going to get the Dubai Ports deal.
Your thoughts on immigration don't seem to matter a hill of beans to these people up in the Senate.
So here we have to provide them with opportunities for citizenship just because it's a very odd way of thinking.
We've lost control of the border.
We can talk about now how we're going to make it more secure.
We're going to get tougher and all that.
Fine and dandy, but we're going to do that after Simpson Mazzoli in 1986 and it didn't happen.
And we've got a new law to replace the old law.
And the new law is supposedly going to have magical components to it, magical powers.
This new law is going to have its own enforcement mechanism.
The power of the law will make these people admit that they're here illegal, paid a fine, move to the back of the line, spend 13, 8, 13 years, whatever it is to get here.
The idea that we, as a country, have to go out of our way to accommodate these people has been the one thing I've never understood other than both parties are looking for votes.
But the process by which they're going through this, ignoring existing voters and contributors, is still mind-boggling to me.
Lots still to discuss, ladies and gentlemen.
Tremendous amounts of things right here.
A big-time stack of stuff.
And it's all coming up right after this break at the top of the hour.
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