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Dec. 18, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:48
December 18, 2009, Friday, Hour #2
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 Podcast.
Uh, you know, ladies and gentlemen, uh it really is.
It really is the height of HUTSPA to have unrepentant communists like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro lecturing us on environmentalism.
Yet they are.
The environmental record for communists is about as good as their human rights record, which come to think of they also lecture us on.
But just look at the ecological disaster areas that were uncovered in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union once communism fell.
Chernobyl was practically a walk in a park compared to the open wounds that we discovered.
But of course, uh, we heard very little about uh their crimes against the environment in our media at the time.
We had to be nice, and we had to be forgiven.
Live from the Southern Command in Sunny South Florida.
It's open line Friday.
Right oh, that means you get to choose the topics that we discuss.
The telephone number 800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program.
And the email address.com.
Two fascinating stories here.
Danny Huddleston in The American Thinker has a piece entitled The End of Liberalism.
From the very beginning of the Obama presidency, Democrats have been acting like kids in a candy store, doubling down on the TARP bailout.
The 787 billion dollar slush fund.
And they actually, Mr. Huddleston actually writes that.
I am show prep for the rest of the media.
No offense, Mr. Huddleston.
At any rate, the most recent 1.1 trillion spending bill, and now the uh the health care bill, which with a little accounting sleight of hand comes in at under one trillion, which of course is a joke.
The Democrats are spending like there are no tomorrow's.
What will be the results of all this out of control spending?
The consequences will be many, but one of the most surprising results could be the end of liberalism.
Now, I, of course, wouldn't go that far because these people are never going to go away.
What he means is the end of liberalism uh being masked for as something it is isn't and becoming a uh uh something can win majorities in elections.
There was an editorial in the Washington Examiner recently, which begins with this extraordinary statement.
With its most vigorous advocate in memory presiding in the White House and commanding Democrat majorities in Congress, it's difficult to believe that the end of liberalism may be within sight.
The examiner piece goes on to explain how out-of-control spending may bring about the end of liberalism.
The Peterson Pugh Commission on Budget Reform has produced a new report warning that over the past year alone the public debt of the U.S. rose sharply from 41 to 53% of GDP.
Under reasonable assumptions, the debt is projected to grow steadily, reaching 85% of GDP by 2018, 100% of GBP by 2022, and 200% in 2038, long before the debt reaches those levels, the Commission warns.
Fears of inflation and a prospective decline in the value of the dollar would cause investors to demand higher interest rates and shift out of U.S. Treasury securities.
The excessive debt would also affect citizens in their everyday lives by harming the American standard of living through slower economic growth and dampening wages and shrinking the government's ability to reduce taxes, invest, or to provide a safety net.
In other words, within the lifetimes of the vast majority of living Americans, government as we know it, since the New Deal will become paralyzed, unable to deliver even basic services, let alone the myriad of entitlements that politicians had promised would last forever.
Liberalism will owe its undoing to its blind faith that government could forever be the inexhaustible provider of ever more spending, more benefits, more prosperity with Narya Day of reckoning.
Now, Obama and the liberal Democrats in Congress have inadvertently implemented a top-down Cloud Pivon strategy, and that's where liberal entitlement programs sow the seeds of their own destruction by being too ambitious.
Now the Cloud Privan Strategy is essentially what Obama and a number of these people are following.
And its ultimate objective is to have everybody in the country on welfare.
By destroying it.
If America survives this experiment in socialism, it could well be the end of liberalism as we know it today.
That's uh very optimistic.
Very optimistic.
But we are experiencing things that we haven't experienced before on such grand scales.
And uh the American people are figuring out uh figuring it out as as each day goes by the damage that is being done here.
Now, also by uh Bruce Walker here, the American thinker, the battleground poll and the battle for America.
There is good news for conservatives in the latest battleground poll.
The political implications are profound if the already energized conservative base takes even more initiative.
In August 2008, Bruce Walker wrote an article, the biggest missing story in politics.
The article explains that conservatives are an overwhelming majority in America.
One year later, I wrote an update on that theme, this time based on the Gallup poll, which showed that conservatives outnumber liberals in virtually every state of the Union by two to one.
I have been writing about the remarkable battleground poll results in many articles for many years.
Now, the Battleground poll is not a Republican polling organization.
It is one of the few bipartisan polling organizations.
Republican and Democrat pollsters agree on the language of the questions for respondents, so that the questions asked are not only fairly worded, but unusually fairly worded.
Now, what we I've told you about Mr. Walker before and his focus on this, and he focuses on question D three, which is asked in every battleground poll.
And he says that the responses to question D three have been remarkably consistent.
Respondents have changed dramatically about what they thought of President Bush or of the state of the economy or the most important issues facing them.
Respondents may swing quite a bit about which party they support or trust the most, but in one single area of this long list of polling data, the American people have not wavered at all from battleground poll to battleground poll.
About 60% of the American people in poll after poll, year after year, describe themselves as conservative.
On December 16th, 2009, Battleground released its latest poll.
In this poll, 63% of Americans describe themselves as very or somewhat conservative.
The rest of America, not just the liberals, but moderates, and people who are unsure about their ideology or chose not to respond, totaled 37% of America.
A measly one percent of Americans called themselves moderates.
David Brooks, you know, you ought to take a look at that and find out who your readers are.
Because he thinks moderates are the end of the game.
End of the world, that's a great thing.
He considers himself a moderate.
One percent of Americans in the battleground poll call themselves moderates.
Twenty-five percent call themselves somewhat liberal, eight percent say very liberal.
And it's no aberration.
Consider in battleground poll results since June 2002 the percentage of Americans who have described themselves as conservatives.
I'm going to go through each year here, from June 2002 up to October 2008.
59%, 59%, 60%, uh 59%, 60, 61, 59, 58, 63, 62, 60, 59 percent, 56% October of 2008.
What is this mean for American politics today?
Well, what it ought to do is boldly empower conservatives, the right, which every Democrat leader reflexively attacks whenever political opposition to their plans grows strong is the overwhelming majority of Americans.
This explains why the left's ballot initiatives in California last year failed.
In some cases in every single county of the state, and why in liberal Maine, the gay marriage ballot measure failed.
This also explains why Obama runs away from labels as all leftists do, and have for many years.
What it means in politics is that any true conservative against a true leftist should carry every state and win by a landslide.
And I don't doubt that any of this is true.
The polling is consistent from 2002.
It makes sense when you look at it.
2008, even conservatives were that that was the lowest percentage, 2008 was at uh well, not the lowest close to the second law as it's 50 uh 56 percent.
But it means more than just being able to carry every state.
It it conservatives in the areas of culture, media, entertainment, and education are treated like unwanted stepchildren, or worse.
This despite the fact that conservatives on average are better educated than liberals.
The worst victims of invidious bigotry in America today are conservatives.
Only a tiny percentage of professors are conservative, conservative.
The same is true for government-supported media like NPR, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the National Endowment for Perversion.
Libraries are dominated by the minority left.
How different would America be if 50 or 60 percent of teachers, librarians, professors, public media producers, and staff in government were conservative.
That ought to be a goal for conservatives.
Winning elections is fine, but how much more vital is it for us to recover at least an equal voice in colleges, media, scrubs, libraries, and entertainment?
What's wrong with us?
The overwhelming majority of Americans demanding not to be consigned to a ghetto or treated by Jim Crow standards.
We begin by pointing out the obvious conservatives are the majority of Americans, but almost invisible in our public and private institutions of education, information, entertainment, and study.
Uh a new way of describing the four corners of deceit.
Now I love seeing this piece today because it uh confirms my basic instincts.
People, how come you wouldn't know when you wouldn't endorse McCain?
It's not conservative.
What do you think uh McCain lost?
Not conservative.
Our own party, as you well know, is also lined up against conservatives and trying to make a minority out of our presence, or make us a minority in the entire party.
And it just this is a teachable moment.
Every Republican candidate for every office ought never ever be afraid of espousing conservative principles, learning to articulate them.
It is who the country is by a vast majority.
Back after this.
And back to the phones, it's open line Friday, and this is oh, or we're working on something, folks.
I gotta tell you this before we go to the phones.
I saw something that I loved seeing today on the Democrat channel.
And that would be PMS NBC.
They have this guy.
What's his name?
Dylan Radigan.
Dylan Raddigan is his name.
I think they brought him over from CNBC.
And this guy, he fits the mold.
I know, you know, like Roger Ailes told me that he has a factory that produces blondes out there at uh bikini atoll.
These people at MSNBC must have a factory that produces empty-headed knee-jerk liberals, because this Radigan guy is one of them.
He had on as his guest a Florida Congresswoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
She's from down here in Boca Raton.
And she's uh, I think, I think fairly high up in uh in Pelosi's leadership organization.
And Dylan Radigan practically ran, I think he did shut her down.
I think he ran her off of the show.
She was on via satellite from Florida.
I could tell by the background out there where she was in front of some marina.
And he asked her, What do you think?
Why are you doing this?
Why are you all about to agree to mandating people by insurance from insurance companies?
And she wouldn't answer the question.
She wanted to Nancy Pelosi talking points, and this guy was having none of it.
And he started shouting at her, treated her like she was a Republican.
And she was kind of shocked at first.
She's a scrapper.
I've I've seen Debbie Wasserman Schultz uh in action.
She's one of those women you're happy somebody else married.
And I tell you, she did she acted like she didn't know.
Don, it's a joke.
Dawn's in there going, oh no, why did he have so good today?
Why did he have to do that?
I don't know.
This is how at any rate, we're working on getting the audio that because it's Uh I hope I saw it and I'm reading it on close caption.
I I did not listen to it, but it looked to be pretty heated.
Okay, to the phones we go.
Kathy in Bloomington, Illinois.
You're on open line Friday.
Hi.
Merry Christmas and to all your listeners as well.
Thank you very much.
I was wondering if you thought there might be a chance that the ACLU would step in and stop the terrorists from coming to Illinois.
After all, it's going to be pu pure torture for them coming from a tropical island of subdegree weather here in Illinois.
Uh I don't know what's gonna happen.
I think the ACLU is busy finding them all lawyers.
Well, I don't want them in Illinois, but in all fairness, I think we should take them because after all we sent most of our criminals to Washington this year, so we're we're short criminals here.
Excuse me, that is hilarious.
You sent most of your criminals to You did, Axel Rod.
We did.
Roman Manuel Obama, Valerie Jarrett, all those crimes.
I know, I know.
We're shorts, so I mean, you know, I don't want the terrorists here, but in all fairness, we shouldn't have to be able to do that.
You know it's it is interesting that Dick Durbin's running around acting like this is the single biggest achievement he has ever made or accomplished for you in Illinois.
It's um I just think the whole world has um lost their minds.
I don't understand where the common sense is.
Uh there isn't any.
See, that's what you have to understand when you're looking for common sense, you're not gonna find it on the left.
You're going to find lies.
I mean, they're out there saying three thousand jobs.
Three thousand that's all that's what matters here.
And people worried about uh terrorists escaping and Durban says there's no way.
There's no way these guys are ever going to escape.
No way.
It's like prison breaks never happen.
Uh I don't know.
It's it's it's fascinating.
I th I think all this, all of this stuff that they're doing, they have no idea how it's being perceived out in the country.
This is Anne in Houston, and great to have you with us on Open Line Friday.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
Uh, we're a home school family, and you are a part of the curriculum.
Very wise.
Thank you very much.
Yes.
My husband is a doctor, and he has seen the cost of drugs dramatically increase over the last year.
And he's seen this both personally, he drugs he takes and professionally.
And he thinks that the drug companies are being allowed to do this as a part of the deal they made with Obama to cover what they will be contributing to his health care plan.
And this increase that patients are now paying, of course, is just a really a hidden tax.
And Rush, I want to also say, for the sake of our country, I would like to see your listening audience double or triple.
And I have five ideas how to do that.
The first idea is to make available to your listeners bumper stickers that say join Rush, 7 40 A.M., 11 to 2.
We would sell those to all of the listening areas around the country.
And I would like a job with you to execute my ideas.
And may I come interview for a job?
What's your second idea?
Okay, another idea.
I've got five, but this is number six.
We know how you just mentioned how our kids are being brainwashed in our schools.
Hold it, hold it, hold it.
Oh, yeah.
Yes?
You got five ideas, and this is number six.
Yes, I'm six because I want to do two, three, four, and five personally.
With you.
All right.
But this is but number six is the most important.
But there's only five.
Okay, but oh, this is number six.
I'm sorry.
We know our kids are being brainwashed in our schools, and Rush, we need to start a camp for advanced conservative studies.
It will be your legacy.
It would be for children from seventh to the ninth grade, and we would wash their little brains in the morning, and then they would have the fun activities in the afternoon.
And who would come to this camp?
The children and grandchildren of your twenty million listeners.
I'm I'm a school teacher.
And we would teach things I'm teaching right now, Henry Hazlitz Economics in One Lesson to five of my grandchildren.
And then we would teach the Federalist papers.
And who would be doing the teaching?
Folks like Michelle Malkin, your your substitute, uh the other talk show radio host would be thrilled to come do a morning.
What do you think, Rush?
may I come interviewed?
You don't know what I've gone through to uh get this get my and I'm unemployed, and I want to be employed with you.
Well, I admire uh your entrepreneurism here.
Yes.
I really do.
I'm gonna have a talk with Snerdly uh after the program today.
Okay.
Um, but uh I I could not possibly bring you in for an interview until I decide whether or not I want to implement uh all of your plans.
Okay.
Well, because what you've just told me essentially is I'm not working hard enough.
No.
We we need people are lazy.
They don't necessarily know when you when you're on.
We're gonna make it easy with these bumper stickers.
You see, what what but people would do, they would mail their two dollars.
We won't we have to charge them so that the liberals don't deplete the supply, and they would mail in with a little I I can do that whole thing.
I can do it in Houston.
See, I can do the whole deal.
I'll have I'll have stacks I've I've run for office, Brush.
I've so I know how to I know how to mass produce.
I was the Republican nominee for state rep a few years ago.
And I'm a I'm uh also a uh developer.
I drive a tractor, I have six kids.
I can do it.
You have six kids and six questions.
I have six children and six grandchildren.
Uh six questions and twelve kids.
Yes.
At any rate, look, I I I love your thought on this.
I love the the uh the the uh desire that you have here to uh expand the audience exponentially as uh as you have.
And I'll think about it.
We uh people pepper me with with ideas constantly on other things that I couldn't could do or uh or should do.
And I'll throw yours into the hopper along with uh with everybody else's.
I thank you for the call out there, uh, and and all the uh the best to you.
Thanks again for your call.
It's open line Friday, folks.
This a great example.
Whatever you want to talk about is fair game on open line Friday.
If I don't care about it, I'll still talk about it and act like I do.
You know, along with the uh the news from the latest battleground poll, that's sixty-three percent of Americans describe themselves as conservative.
Yet the combination of liberal, independent, moderate, whatever, all those other disparate little ideologies add up to only thirty-seven percent.
And I have more proof positive that conservatives across the fruited plain have regrouped after last year's elections and taken a firm stand.
The Heritage Foundation, I came down here this week and they uh they told me that uh they were going to release their annual membership stats, and they've done so today, and get the membership at the Heritage Foundation is up forty-three percent since Obama took office.
That is not a B plus grade, that is an A plus grade, and they are ahead of their own desired results.
They are ahead of their own projections.
Now the Heritage Foundation is the single most influential public policy think tank in Washington, D.C. Every independent analysis shows it to be.
They have impact.
They advise Republican members of Congress and the Senate, and have even advised presidents.
They were Heritage Foundation people were intimately involved in the Reagan administration.
Now, you in this audience are loved by the Heritage Foundation people.
They gushed about you.
You are responsible for this kind of growth, this statement of fighting progressivism in America.
And before the year is over, if you haven't joined, make yourself a member of Heritage.
Uh if you haven't done so, go to AskHeritage.org and become a member.
It's a tax-deductible investment.
Make it in what you believe in.
Your membership do is only strengthen the intellectually honest principal direction of the Heritage Foundation.
You help keep them afloat.
They're a nonprofit, you help keep them running.
In the process, in the process of you joining such a great movement in conservatism, sanctifying it, officializing your conservatism.
You will benefit from a constant, never-ending flow of information, revelations, and documented research to help you strengthen your own arguments and become the go-to person in your family whenever anybody has confusion or uh question, whatever, about anything political or cultural.
Join the Heritage Foundation today.
You will not regret it.
It's at ask heritage.org.
Here's the audio soundbite.
Two of them, Dylan Radigan talking to Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
And it starts with this question Take a look at the insurance stocks since November 17th.
Well point up 13%.
That's over a course of a few weeks.
United Health up 10%.
Aetna up 12%.
Humana up six percent.
Those health insurance companies are up because being an unreformed oligopoly monopoly, it basically allows the taxpayer to take the hit to pay for the uninsured.
But it doesn't deal with the underlying symptom as to why there are so many uninsured, which is we have an unreformed private insurance monopoly in this country that is now being guaranteed more customers by the health care bill.
Why is that a good thing for America?
Congresswoman Schultz.
When this bill passes and becomes law, life in America for insurance companies is going to be ex very different than it is today.
Apparently so.
It's apparently it's worth again another 10% in their style.
I mean, I think the best.
Come on, Dylan.
Are you telling me Wall Street's so stupid that they bit up the insurance stocks?
10 to 15%.
Because they're morons?
I'd love an opportunity to answer your question.
Go nuts.
Because we are going to shift to a consumer-focused system.
How is it a consumer-focused system for you to mandate by law that people buy health insurance without giving them more choices?
How is that?
If I can pass a law to force everybody to watch my TV show and not let them change.
And have the government make it so you can't change the channel doing what health insurance.
I'm all ears if you actually answer my question.
So uh that's just a little snippet of of how that went.
Now, notice also that here's this guy on the Democrat channel.
Dylan Radigan.
He is livid.
That the insurance company's stock is going up.
There are average Americans who own stock in all these insurance companies, and this guy is ticked off like I've never heard anybody be ticked off.
And he's treating Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who is a harmless, defensive little woman, like she is the most evil, rotten Republican this guy's ever met.
Oh, yeah, of course they love it.
Oh, Debbie, the insurance stocks are going up.
That's something that just irritates the hell out of him.
And he said he knows it because the health care bill is going to mandate people buy insurance from these private sector insurance companies.
So Radickens will have a specific question.
Why are those stocks up?
I'll tell you why those stocks are up, because stocks go up, they make more money in the future.
It could be your own guest.
Okay, Dylan.
This is the most significant reform of the health care system in history.
We are shifting the insurance companies.
You're not answering my question.
You're not answering my question.
I don't understand.
That's good time for you to come do talking points.
You want to come on and do Democratic or Republican talking points.
You should go on a show where you do Democrat and Republican talking points.
Thank you so much.
He got rid of her.
He sent her packing back to the condo in Boca Raton.
You're just coming over here with talking points.
So, well, she's I don't know anything about stock market.
If you want a stock market guy, go get a stock market guy.
Anyway, it's just a great example of how these things are beginning to fall apart.
And how livid, how livid the left is about this.
Let's go to the health care stack and start making a dent in it.
From the political today, health deadline obstacles pile up.
There's a sense that the sense of inevitability has been lost on passage before the end of the year.
Dingy Harry needs Ben Nelson by Saturday night.
In the uh New York Times, a race to win one more vote for health care.
I'll summarize this story for you.
After abortion, after the abortion issue, then Nelson still worries about states being saddled with expanded Medicaid mandates and burdens.
Uh and uh and an opt-in, and the and the Democrats are working on that too.
Nelson said, or has said, he wants to change the bill to let states decide if they want to expand Medicaid, though he has not suggested how very low income people would otherwise gain insurance coverage.
Democrat leaders said they were working on a compromise for Senator Nelson.
Uh the New York Times.
Well, how will a very low income people be covered?
Oh no, but he doesn't want a guarantee of the the governor of Nebraska sent uh Nelson a note or spoke publicly, said we don't want this, Senator.
This will bankrupt the state, and he was talking about the uh the new Medicaid Uh expenses that will be borne by the states.
Again from the New York Times, liberal revolt on health care stings White House.
The left wanted universal coverage.
That's gone.
That was a public option.
They wanted the Medicare buy-in.
They wanted the option to buy into Medicare going under age 55.
That's out.
They are fit to be tied, as you have seen and heard, not only on this program, but on television as you watch it yourself.
And I look at this.
This even with the public option gone, and even with the Medicare buy-in gone.
This is still a disaster.
This is still something that gives the government total control over our lives.
You have to buy insurance or you go to jail.
Why can't you people on the left be satisfied with a garden variety liberal disaster?
Why do you have to have a nuke?
Why is it you want to nuke the country?
Why can't you just settle for a garden variety liberal disaster?
You libs are getting ideologically and policy greedy out there.
Oh my God, you've already got a bill here.
It's going to wreck the country.
Is that not good enough for you?
What the hell more do you want?
This is what happens when you hate.
You can never satisfy it.
You can never satisfy your hate if that's what you exist on, and plus you need to hate.
Senate health care bill now relies on regulation.
This is the LA Times.
Without a public option to compete with private insurers, which is one of the biggest jokes to come down the path in my lifetime.
Without a public option to compete with private insurers, the government would instead police the industry.
But do regulators have enough authority to make a difference?
This is by Noam Levy.
When Senate Democrat leaders agreed this week to remove a public insurance plan from their massive health care bill, they did more than quash a liberal dream of expanding the government's safety net.
They effectively pinned their hopes of guaranteeing coverage to all Americans on a far more conventional prescription, and that is government regulation.
Democrats in the House and Senate have filled their bills with a dizzying array of rules and regulations on insurers.
The insurance market provisions in the Senate bill alone total nearly 400 pages.
All the new regulations on private insurance total 400 pages.
For example, the Senate legislation would require all insurers to fully cover federally recommended preventive health services, such as immunizations, colonoscopies, HIV testing, which do not save money, by the way.
Insurance companies would be prohibited almost immediately from rescinding policies for people who get sick and imposing lifetime limits on how much they pay for customers' health care.
So this is the government's going to be crawling up your colon.
That's how the regulation goes.
Regulation.
Regulation has driven up cost quite well so far in any area they regulate.
You don't realize how cheap you could buy a house were it not for federal, state, city, county regulations.
You would have no idea.
Practically every activity in this country is regulated.
And all regulations do is add to cost.
And I'll bet you the CBO is not factoring that in because it's not something that you can calculate and predict because it's dynamic.
It's not static in nature.
So what they'll regulate and they'll regulate some more to demand guaranteed coverage to everyone.
That's where this is all headed if they get their way.
But Ben Nelson stands in the way.
And of course, this LA Times piece, like any regulatory framework, this one has holes.
Provisions in the Senate bill that authorize companies to sell nationwide health plans may allow insurers to skirt existing state regulations that require them to cover many medical procedures.
That's why the states are opposed to letting insurance companies sell to anybody anywhere in the country.
Because the state mandates then go out the window.
So the Fed government would have to come in and uh and issue new mandates, and there would be uh in in conflict in large part with many of the state mandates.
Latest from Rasmussen.
Just 34% of the American people say passing health care is better than passing nothing.
The other way to look at this is fifty-seven percent of voters nationwide say it would be better to pass no health care reform this bill or this year instead of passing the plan currently being considered by Congress.
Middle income voters are more likely than others to say that passing no legislation is the better option.
Brief time out.
We'll be right back.
Now let's look at the timing here and why they're running out of time to pass this bill before Christmas before the end of the year in the Senate.
If they have any hope of passing the health care bill before Christmas, the senators will need to cast votes in the dead of night and early in the morning next week.
The Senate would essentially stay in session twenty-four hours a day next week to burn the clock on procedural rules that require a 30-hour break between votes.
But Gingy Harry has shown that he doesn't mind breaking rules.
He has talked about using reconciliation if he has to.
That reading of the Bernie Sanders amendment was stopped in violation of Senate rules.
So who's to say that Dingy Harry won't do something with the 30-hour rule between votes?
So here's here's how it would look.
Following passage of the Defense Department of Appropriations Bill, and I think that has passed, and that wasn't expected to pass until tomorrow morning.
But they did it early this morning, late last night, barely getting it through.
So Harry Reid has he has to file cloture on three things now.
The manager's amendment, which is the real bill, the substitute amendment, and the underlying bill.
The manager's amendment is what Mitch McConnell says nobody's seen.
Now, this would set up the first cloture vote on the manager's amendment on Monday at one o'clock, or maybe now Sunday night at 6 p.m.
The 30-hour clock would then begin to run, setting up the second cloture vote on the substitute amendment, which would happen roughly at 7 a.m. on Tuesday.
The cloture vote on the underlying bill would follow on Wednesday at 1 p.m.
They got 30 hours you have to wait after that.
That takes you to 7 p.m. on Christmas Eve.
Maybe they could get it done in the morning on Christmas Eve, but that's if everything falls into place.
Everything falling into place includes Ben Nelson.
And he's not there yet.
And I'll give you a couple reasons why.
Right now in Nebraska, Ben Nelson is at 51% approval, 41% disapproval, according to uh the Terrence poll or Torrence poll.
Now there's a state treasurer in Nebraska, very popular, named Shane Osborne.
He's already running against Nelson, who's up in 2012.
Now, Shane Osborne is a hero of the U.S. plane that China forced down in 2001.
2012 is long enough for the problems in the bill to surface, but before the benefits kick in, and Nelson's looking at this.
The problems in the bill are all the regulations and all the tax increases, and they start immediately.
But the benefits, quote unquote benefits, the so-called spending and getting everybody covered, that doesn't start till 2014.
So none of the so-called good in the bill will show up, even though it's all good.
I'm giving you Nelson's frame of mind here.
The bad part of the bill will show up immediately.
He also has businesses and uh pro-life groups pounding him.
A lot of ads are being run in Nebraska.
If if uh if Ben Nelson votes for cloture on the health care package at any point from here on out, without the abortion language being sanctioned by an outside pro-life group, and mainly in Nebraska, that means the U.S. Catholic bishops, he will either not run for re-election or he'll be defeated.
It's that bad.
If he caves on abortion and votes for this thing, he's finished and he knows it.
He'll either retire and not run, or he's gonna get creamed in 2012.
So they're they're very, very much worried about Nelson.
And in fact, Reuters has the uh story here today.
Democrat hopes for passing a broad health care overhaul in the Senate took a hit on Thursday when Ben Nelson rejected a compromise on abortion funding aimed at winning his vote.
Senate Democrat leaders racing the clock to finish work on the bill before leaving for the holidays, struggle to line up the 60 votes they need to overcome Republican procedural hurdles.
The Democrats have no margin of error.
They control exactly 60 votes they face so far unified Republican opposition.
Nelson is an abortion rights opponent.
He's a pro-lifer.
He said compromise language designed to strengthen a ban on using federal funds for abortions wasn't good enough to meet his concerns.
As it is without further modifications, the language concerning abortion is not sufficient, he said in a statement.
He added that he would not back Democrats on a series of upcoming procedural votes without more changes in the bill.
He's a legitimate holdout.
Uh and for all the reasons that I have uh mentioned to you.
You got Bernie Sanders thinking he's not in there yet.
Roland Burris saying he's not in there without a public option, but those two guys can be handled pretty easily.
Nelson's another story.
And let's also not forget this.
The leaders of the AFL CIO and the Service Employees International Union said the Senate bill had been watered down so much by these changes to appease party members that they don't like it.
We don't like the bill.
We think it has to be improved.
But we have no belief that these senators are going to do anything better.
Clinton's out there saying, if you don't get this pass right now, it's going to be lost forever.
And uh don't make a mistake I made.
If you don't get this pass, you are dead meat.
You're dead meat next year.
President Clinton, you're advising these guys on political suicide.
They are dead meat if they vote for it.
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